I just had a session with the game, after a couple of days break from playing. Niko was given a choice, after chasing a man to a roof top: whether to pull him up, or kill him. Intuitively, I chose the option of pulling the guy up. I wonder what had happened, had I taken the other option. With the game, I could always go back to a previous save and see.
In any case, what interests me here is the choice - games are always about making decisions - which was presented as a moral choice. Yet, some time later, I was not given a choice as a player in a similar situation: there was no option but to execute Vlad the gangster, in order for the game to progress into the direction that the designers at Rockstar had wanted. This became especially evident in the narrative scene after the killing, where Niko confided to Roman for his motivation to come to America, to finish up a search that had started from Eastern Europe. I.e. the choice / no choice was a design solution in terms of the characters and the overarching narrative justification for the different missions in the game, and the goals that they impose on the player.
There is a design economy of choices at work, and I wonder how thought-out it actually is. The same goes for the narrative cutscenes: at many times when playing video games, I find myself thinking why was this event narrated, and not designed to be played - and, vice versa, at least in theory, yet it seldom occurs to me to think about ame play sequences that should have been narrated...mostly because there are examples of scripted events in games like Unreal, Half-life (2), and Bioshock, that work quite well. (Even though Bioshock goes for the 'safe' option of narrative means in its most significant turn of events.) GTA IV can be seen as mixing both approaches, yet missions are always 'foreshadowed' through narrative sequences, which also convey aspects of characterization.
As a side note, I also took the cab (as a passenger) for a couple of times in the game. Personally, I found that checking out the scenery from the back seat elicits a comfortably touristy disposition towards Liberty City.
The Economy of Choices
Aesthetics of arousal
Last night I progressed through a couple of simple missions, and let Niko indulge in criminal behaviour, such as mugging people. He had run out of money, and couldn't pass the road toll - very frustrating. I have also let him - or, should I say, forced him - to steal cars, and watch a private lapdance performance.
The latter is interesting, when we think about the so-called 'eliciting conditions' that game designers create into games. In psychological emotion theory, eliciting conditions refer to the conditions under which a particular emotion, or an emotional sequence, is triggered. This opens up a perspective to an emotion-centred design approach; an approach that I have tried to formulate into a systematic method in my own work. Seen from a perspective of emotional and (play) experience design, a simulation of a strip joint is more than something that a simulation of a metropolis should include. It is also a design for feelings of titillation and sexual arousal, in the same manner as the emergence of police car sirens is a design for general alertness that elicits emotions of suspense and curiosity.
As the sun is shining outside, my thoughts are directed to whether I should enjoy the simulated, urban beauty of a sunrise in Liberty City, or the actual warmth of a spring day in Helsinki. Whatever my choice is, both options present fascinating eliciting conditions.
