I can't see any situation in which 'No Russian' matters. It's certainly not an experience that's worth taking with me into the future as I play new games and consume new media, not by a longshot. The facade of player choice is so opaque here that I felt pretty pointless even playing the section. Whether I acted at all had no impact on the situation. If I didn't kill people, other's would gladly do it for me. My presence in the sequence stirred relatively little in me compared to the amount of feedback, not just the intensity of the feedback, in other sections. Civilians aren't designed to be interesting or dynamic.

In short, it just feels flat. I'm not confronting anything or facing something morally wrenching, I'm either venting the anger or slowly watching reasons to justify the equally terrible things I myself will be doing within minutes.

This article concerns itself too much with applying technical terms to the game's narrative mechanisms and not enough time on why the narrative is ineffective.

Here it goes again:

Is Zelda about human versus nature? I think it's human versus self. I think it's an adventure about growing up, losing your innocence. The macro of true adventure is self-discovery, contextualizing the self in different settings and examining the effects. Zelda already has that down.

Though I don't want my games to branch as depressingly as real life, I want more branching consequences that feel different. Your Megaton example is a good one because it shows that the consequences of good actions and bad actions are essentially the same, save for the world's view of you, the effect of which I never really felt heavily impacted my gameplay experience. It bothers me that you can take life as easily as you can maintain it in that game.

Ah, yes. Thank you.

Was my reply deleted?

"I’m not going to attempt to approach this review from anything that could even remotely be considered an unbiased perspective.."

Thank you.

I'd argue that what the player sees in the cutscenes is not what you get when controlling Drake. In gameplay, Drake shoots and kills indiscriminately, lobbing grenades at the first pixel to move. In cutscenes Drake becomes intimate with a woman, deciphers obvious treasure hunting puzzles, and expresses concern over enemies' well being. All the relatable parts of Drake are showcased outside of the player's realm of control. The only control over Nathan Drake I have is to make him kill without discretion. How human is that?

Eclectic.

Hype is part of one of my larger frustrations about the video game industry, which is the general coverage-cycle that most mainstream games go through nowadays.

(Although this seems to slowly be reverse-relegating to the biggest players in the video game industry,) the cycle of hype-building and coverage is all driven by the release window, which is usually, as said, mainly that first weekend and the first handful of weeks that follow it.

After that (and this part still applies to all games, I think), things are done - it's over. We move on to the next big blockbuster title - no vibrant post-release discussion beyond montages or video reviews, no analysis more detailed than the initial review, or, in many cases, the preview, both of which are usually just dry, objective enumerations of pros and cons and rarely a subjective presentation.

That's an interesting point - narrative in games. The examples you mentioned rely on artifacts from other mediums to support a narrative: the game tells you what's going on and then lets you walk a linear path to uncover more of the plot.

In some ways, that's not really a game. It's more like an interactive movie. The "game" part is based on a mechanic of shooting or exploring, and the engrossing "plot" part is based on static, cinematic sequences while the player is left in a reductive corner to merely watch.

What intrigues me about Wii Sports is how your actions become the narrative backbone. Everything important that happens, happens in real time according to player choice (by way of movement). Though the idea is admittedly simple in Wii Sports, I honestly think it's the future of game narrative.