Immersion Therapy: One man’s attempt to immerse himself in the world of big name video-games, and come out the other side saner and, hopefully, wiser.

MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE GAME:

I WARNED YOU!

More Than A Feeling

I just finished the main story-line of Fable II, not including the Knothole Island DLC. I don’t have a real long post planned, here, but I’m feeling…unsettled. The ending that, I assume, I had a hand in creating through my choice in the Tattered Spire, has left me feeling spent, and a little unhappy. I think that may be the most ambiguous feeling I’ve had at the end of a video game.

Since Bioshock, I’ve heard game developers say that they offer gamers a choice, nuanced and subtle, about what kind of person they want their in-game persona/avatar to be. I’m not so sure they’ve done it, yet.

In Bioshock, it was a non-choice. I’m not going to kill little girls. Period. I don’t even care if you say, “it’s just a game.” Not gonna happen. In Mass Effect, there may be several options, but it’s fairly easy to discern the good, bad, middle responses in the conversation trees (and I’m not so sure they really had much of an impact, either way). It felt like a forced choice between an alternative LEAST like me, and one MOST like me. It wasn’t’ a real choice; it didn’t involve my emotions.

Holding Back the Years

Fable II, for most of the game, seemed to me to be a simple good/bad dichotomy. As I played it for two hours last night, gripped in the story-line from Bloodstone on, I didn’t really feel like there was too much of a choice. I felt fine stealing when no one was watching, as long as it was some tofu or a teddy bear. I was able to ignore my tendency to doing good in as a Spire guard, but I told myself that I needed to behave to get close to Lucien to have my revenge. That, in itself seemed like a real choice to me, and when I got the cutscene about being there for hundreds of days, then years, I thought I had made a mistake. I was tempted to start disobeying, thinking that the game designers wanted me to. I stuck to my principles, such as they were, and continued to do nothing to help the prisoners I was guarding. The game let me move on. That, to me, was the first sign that this game was different. No longer do I need to guess the designer’s intent to get through a game. This is, truly (if in its infancy), interactive narrative.

After I get shot (AGAIN!), I hear, “Death is not your destiny,” again, and figure, ah, well, we’re back to the same pattern. Then I wake up and realize where/who I am. This is my first real emotional response to the game. I’ve been playing the whole time until now. Now, I can NOT go to bed. I need to see this through. I need to work through these seemingly meaningless tasks (I actually didn’t finish either one fully). My emotions propel me out of this scene and into the next. I’m no longer using a controller, I *am* that Hero onscreen. I’m fully invested.

Which brings me to the final choice. Uh oh. There are three choices here. Forget money, I don’t need a game to tell me that wealth is not as important as people. But two of the choices are about people. People that I care about and people that have been wronged. Both these choices are noble, good and right, from my perspective within of story-line and in real life. People who cannot stand up for themselves need to be protected, saved and supported.

But families need love, support, and protection, as well. They mean a lot to me, and even though the way I played the game didn’t lend itself to much meaningful interaction with my wife, I was fairly attached to my dog, and VERY emotional about my sister. The first scene in the game really hit me. Her death had far more impact than my own, and that’s why I continued on with the game. THat kind of emotional hit is worth following up on.

When I finally made my final decision, however, it wasn’t a clean one. I was torn and took some time to think about it. That’s new for me, as well. In the other games I’ve been interested enough in to work through to completion, like Bioshock and Mass Effect, the choices I made were simple ones, and easily chosen. Not so in Fable II.

Cruel To Be Kind

Which did I choose? I’ll let you figure that out (it wasn’t money), but it was the one I would probably pick in real life. When I returned for the dénouement scenes, I wasn’t expecting to be complained at. I expected the humor, but not the guilt. Hammer expressed just what she thought of me for making the choice I did and to be honest, it hurt. I’d come to value her opinion of me far more than I did the opinion of the random villagers I danced or farted at.

I sat there, stunned at the subtlety of the resolution. Here is a game that has most closely simulated the consequences of a real life hard choice. No matter the flaws of the game, and there are many, this is what I believe gives Fable II its power. When I am dismissed from teh Spire, I go willingly, sadly, knowing that I must accept the consequences of my actions. Yeah, I could play through again, but I don’t have the heart or stamina to do that, yet. It would feel like cheating a powerful moment in a powerful story. Like rewriting a novel’s ending to be more to my liking.

And in the end, that’s why I play these games. To become immersed in feelings and emotions and characters and places that I wouldn’t in real life. But as any science fiction or fantasy fan knows, the genre itself is more about us as human beings.

In a sincere form of flattery, I invite you to post links to your own blog posts on Fable II, below in the comments. This is all about discussion, and my post is only one of many well-thought out discussions out there in the wider blogosphere. Here are a few you might enjoy (thought not an exhaustive list):

• The Brainy Gamer – http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/11/fable-disambiguation.html
• ManBytesBlog – http://blog.pjsattic.com/corvus/tag/fable-2/
• Experience Points – http://experiencepoints.blogspot.com/2008/10/infamy-in-albion.html
• Noble Carrots – http://noblecarrots.com/?p=561