Wednesday 21 January, 2009

This log is from this morning:

While playing the game this morning I went on a spree of trying to ride around on top of cars while they are moving. This is something I always find amusing simply because of the reactions of the people inside the cars. I often times carry a baseball bat and start beating on the hood of the car when the driver doesn't start going. Usually that causes them to peel out and veer off the road. This doesn't always end well for CJ, who sometimes ends up being run over or simply falling to the side and getting hurt.

This doesn't necessarily involve any kind of moral implications, but if the driver speeds off while CJ is on the car and I didn't do anything it poses the question: Does the AI have a moral system? The answer to this is of course yes, but in regards to your character, the AI can do whatever it pleases, however if you so much as punch someone, it can cause an entire gang of thugs to come after you or draw the police to you as well.

As my final entry, I figure that reflecting on the situation brought up by games like GTA would be prudent. As in our class discussion, game makers are constantly under scrutiny for what is portrayed in their games. GTA was originally somewhat cartoony and unrealistic, but with the birth of GTA4, the game entered a whole new realm. The level of realism and grit of the game increased exponentially, even though at times, it is still obviously fiction. With the new higher power gaming systems on the market, the line between reality and game is getting more and more blurred as the worlds created grow to be more and more like our own. At what point will things start becoming so detailed they are virtual reality, with full body immersion and sensory assault? As a game design major, these are questions and possibilities that need to be thought about as the game industry evolves.

If the AI has a moral system, is it the same one that you, the player should follow? Or is the AI held to a different moral standard than CJ?

In response to your question JP, when in game, the character eventually is forced to follow the moral system presented. It is possible to survive in the game for a long time without doing any activities that would be considered bad by the game's AI, but eventually there will be a point where the character has to break the law in order to do something.

Ah, right. It seems that would be the main distinction between the "story" missions and everything else you can do. Only the story missions require you to break the law consistently and without recourse. Not that you can't do bad things anyways...