Rejecting Reality

After spending some time with FACADE and our online class on Friday I began to think about the implications of such games which provide a setting and history but then allow you to create your own. In terms of Resistance, I would compare it to reading the background notes that come up right before every level but then having the option to go through the notes, rewrite the history in terms of the main character and also the armed forces at a large ,and then go in and play the game each time with a new plot. That is almost exactly what these games allow for they provide the option to reject the already created reality by automatically using your actions to decide a new game type without which the game cannot go on. The difference I see between these games and First person Shooters in terms of plot is that there the action occurs after the plot methodology is decided, for the armed forces need a reason to fight, whereas FACADE is more creative and less reactive which means one is able to create one's own world and allow the plot methodology, but not the plot itself, to alter for the goal is to unite the couple at the end. Though i must mention, I am very skeptical as to the level of freedom that I have heard other reviews overestimate regarding these types of games as "a future canvas for players" for there are a limited amount of reactions that can be programmed. This leads us back to the same question about how "real" first person shooters are for they too have a programmed set of ways the enemy can react in terms of the players actions. I found that after a few movements, if one chooses a different route, such as going around a car or under a flight of stairs, the inevitable contact with the enemy occurs as a result of the setting eventually leading you back to where they are waiting to fight. in that sense, one may feel that there is much freedom in these games, but once again, our freedom as players is limited by the imagination of the programmers for they predict a list of our reactions and they ALLOW us to perform those actions in the game so the false sense of freedom will soon, I think, be treated like all other games that we've had in the past as limiting and our desire for "more reality" will continue.