#feel like htey dropped theball there

[pbaintthetb]

not to talk about a decades old game that has aged with some controversy but like LA Noire

and specifically homocide where, maybe im overthinking this, maybe it was an accident- but the game presents you with a choice of who to arrest (which is tldr the guy who probably did it, or the guy who probably didn’t do it but is also a far bigger hazard to society)

and it’s like? Do you do the right thing and arrest the guilty guy, sure-

and this is where storytelling and game mechanics merge because-

because if you do the right thing and don’t frame a probably innocent (of this) man you’ll get capped at a 3 out of 5 star rating (becuase your boss doesn’t really care about the guilt he j ust wants the one guy arrested, he just wants cases closed and things to look good. He doesn’t want doubt. Feel like there’s a commentary being made there if you squint /s)

and I knew this right. And I stood there, for ages, getting AFK dialgoues as I wondered whether it was better to fuck over my rating or to do the right thing. I even pressed the “ask your partner for help” prompt out of curiosity- and do you know what it said? It told me to do the right thing that penalises you. If you dither, if you go “shudl i do the right thing?” the game says “yes” and then it says “fuck you”

anyway I just think that’s really neat. LIke sure you could play it really emotionally unattached where you just care about statistics and achievements- but also isn’t that the point? That you care more about your job, about looking good than actually helping? idk just a very cool thing that came up there

but as i said, maybe im overthinking, maybe it’s an accident. but that was a very interesting moment of metagaming (if im using the term right)