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Thursday 2 October, 2008
Like the previous time, I spent my "half hour or more" goofing around rather than completing missions.
I started by taking the sports car from my garage. I'd like to say it was "mine", but the only way to get vehicles in the game is to steal them. There is no way to go to a dealer and buy a car - not that it would last long, and not that your money is legitimate either.
The game is very simplified and, outside the story, very utilitarian. CJ does make some moral decisions or at least raises protest when he feels a mission is wrong. However, in normal play, he does not have many wholesome options. The player can not help an old woman cross the street or donate canned goods to some bums; he can shoot them, blow them up, run them over, or just leave them alone.
In part of the simplification of the world, there are far fewer consequences. Stealing a car out of sight is fine, and it actually doesn't matter to anyone because it will just respawn later. The same is true for people and police - if you kill them, they are anonymous and unlimited in numbers. If you do nothing to them, they cease to exist when you leave the area. From a utilitarian perspective, the end justifies the means. Stealing a car helps the player/ CJ, and it leaves the world virtually unharmed. Having that car enables him to make money, get somewhere fast, or complete a mission. If CJ didn't steal it, the NPC would continue driving to nowhere, getting nothing done.
The citizens of San Andreas have one-dimensional personalities and might have a few lines of audio, but they really don't have lives (even virtually in the game). Letting them live would not help anything. If somehow by following them around for a day, you could watch their life - their family, their job, their hobbies - then killing a pedestrian might have create "negative happiness" in the game. Fortunately for the player, CJ is the only one with a life of any sort. Even his cohorts are only a means to an end - if they die on a mission, the player fails the mission. Outside of missions, the other characters no longer exist.
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