What's The Story in Your Game

I enjoy video games a great deal, primarily because I think beyond entertainment, the good ones are trying to say something, trying to tell a story or make a statement. I recently started playing Assassin's Creed, a game that released last fall among the incredible lineup from last year's holiday season. I've really enjoyed the game, because of its detailed world, enjoyable action combat, and the story and message it's trying to tell.

In the game, two competing factions have the same end goals in mind. That is, a world at peace with itself, the end of war and suffering. However, both factions go about it in different ways, and both of their methods involve war and suffering, interestingly enough. The story examines the ways that we, as people, excuse means to a noble end, and whether one man's life taken in violence is worth the lives of countless others who may live on. This has a great relevance today in an era where we fight wars of choice and imprison supposed criminals without charges or trial in the name of making our country a safer place.

In the context of this moral examination, I can deal with the make-believe violence, process it, and not let it bother me. It isn't violence for violence's sake. It has as light of a touch as can be possible, and is thoughtful, and it's about doing bad things in the name of good. Or, at least, what you believe to be good.

Fallout 3 on the other hand is a game that has recently released that tells a different story. The game is set over 250 years in the future in a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of misery and pain and death. I'm not sure the story they're trying to tell, and, to be fair, I haven't played the game to see what they're trying to say, if anything. But I'm not sure that I could really take the dystopic environment due to what I perceive as a lack of a real story or message or some greater meaning other than just something ugly to defeat in a virtual world.

I'm not trying to go all Jack Thompson on video game violence, but instead address why I, personally, can watch these things happen on-screen and either take them in stride as part of a greater message or be utterly disturbed by them. And maybe I look forward to the day when people take video games in the way that television and movies are -- both entertainment as well as a vehicle for social commentary.