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Columns > LongShot > #114: Murderer's Remorse
The blood stained the white ruins in a pale crimson during the evening light.  The headline is sensational, but the feeling was disturbing. While playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you are often confronted by "Bandits". These men and women of varied race lie in wait for unsuspecting travellers such as yourself. While Oblivion Gates are spawning all over Cyrodiil, these low-lifes are preying on those travelling the roads or investigating ruins. Nevermind that it's sort of ridiculous for me to be exploring ruins while daemons are pouring into my homeland; these dudes are trying to get in my way. I mean, the Blades and the rulers of the land aren't visibly trying to stop this invasion at all and they're certainly not paying for the equipment I need to be the Lone Saviour, either (silver arrows instead of silver bullets don'tcha know). So I forage for money and equipment in the wild, both because I need it and because it's entertaining. I killed two bandits last night. Smacked them right in the face with a Dremora Mace. They bled. The blood stained the white ruins in a pale crimson during the evening light. Their bodies slumped on the steps with the life drained from their form. One of them, a mage, seemed to be almost sitting casually. It was as if he were relaxing and taking in the beautiful sight of the Imperial City right across the shimmering lake. He was killed by my hand because he decided it was either him or me that would be lying there, cold and dead. I've smashed a thousand like him before. Maybe nearing the ten thousands? I never kept track. I've played games since the late '70s but last night was the first time I felt like I had done something horrible to another person. I felt like I'd snuffed out a life. I know it's a game. I know that people often joke about the above, as though no one could possibly confuse real life with virtual reality. Thing is, as on-screen graphics approach real life, and in Oblivion people tend to respond and react to you similar to real life, my actions feel a lot more realistic. On the screen, in that one moment, it looked to me like I had killed someone. It wasn't just a collection of pixels to me anymore. It wasn't a monster of any kind. It was a person. One who had decided to tread the wrong path in life maybe, but a person nonetheless. He left me no choice, which I suppose made it "right" for me to stop him. I could possibly have hopped on my horse and rode away, figuring that he would follow me right to the guards in front of the city, where they would have stopped him cold. That even might have been the right thing for my goody two-shoes character to do?
 I've read comments recently about this new generation of consoles and how the want for better graphics is in a lot of ways driven by audiences in the West wanting more and more realism from their games. Given the game styles prevalent here and in Europe and the types of games coming out of those two continental cultures, that seems like a pretty astute observation. One reason people often cite for loving games set in the Elder Scrolls universe is the way everyone in the games responds fairly realistically to everything you do. People like the freedom to act out a power fantasy within this setting and the more it derives that fantasy from a sort of medieval reality, the happier they often are with the gameplay. I guess the question I'm beginning to ask myself is, "When has that quest for reality gone too far?" Everyone's going to answer it differently. Many probably think there is no limit. They'd be happiest if they could participate in a real-world simulation that goes into every detail of whatever setting the 'game' takes place within. I can understand that point of view. Though the bandits' deaths were disturbing, I didn't linger. I picked up the equipment they no longer needed due to their untimely demise and headed into the ruins. I separated out the game from the weird feeling I was getting of having killed someone and pressed onward. The ruins were populated with zombies, ghosts, skeletons and I wrecked them all pretty good if I do say so myself. I was all too ready to stay immersed in this 'simulation' of a dungeon delving adventure. Then today I'm thinking about that image of the mage slumped on the bricks and it's bugging me. Some will probably call me squeamish or a wuss. Some will say that even writing this all down is pointless since every game effects every person in a different way and really, they're all just games anyway. I wonder though if I'm really alone in being a bit disturbed by reality coming closer to fruition on our game screens and wondering if that's really something that will be entertaining over the long haul? I hope that this new virtual reality is approached with more focus on decision making with real consequence. Keep sticking people into moral dilemmas and have them make the hard choices. It's kind of funny to think about doing that, though. One of the reasons we play games is to escape from reality. And yet as the games get closer to reality in their portrayal of fantasy worlds, they're going to start making us consider all the things we play games to avoid... and that's going to be considered "fun"!
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