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EMOTION IN GAMING: GUILT

EMOTION IN GAMING: GUILT

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Before I begin I will warn you that this article is spoiler heavy!

I had an experience in gaming that I’ve never had before, guilt. Don’t get me wrong I’ve played games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead or Spec Ops: The Line, whereas guilt is forced on you in those titles. You cannot progress until you engage in the moral situations that the game wants you to see. However, Mass Effect is all about decisions. And I made the wrong one.

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In Mass Effect 2 you’re introduced to the Normandy’s Yeoman, Kelly Chambers. Amid Mass Effect’s glorious cast of interesting, sympathetic and generally awesome characters. Kelly Chambers is the only one guilt free, her role is to provide counselling and support for the crew. She constantly cheers on you and the crew’s conquests through space, her optimistic and happy personality are extremely well written.

The Normandy is on a suicide mission into Collector space, the choices you make and the interaction you have with the crew and the orders you give determines who lives and who dies. I immediately stated that no matter what, Kelly is going to survive. 

Omega_4_RelayNow cut to about 35 hours into the game, I making final preparations to launch into the Omega 4 relay, into uncharted, hostile space. But before I can launch, a new mission is made available to make sure the engines can make the jump, so you and your squad leave the Normandy to do some tests in a nearby planet. What you don’t know though is that you’ve left the Normandy wide open for an ambush, and sure enough a Collector ship warps next to the Normandy, shuts down shields and engines and begins to board. You begin to play as Joker, the charismatic pilot who due to previous events walks with a limp.

You slowly limp through the ship, watching the defenceless crew get massacred by the numbers. Normandy’s A.I “EDI” who had previous animosity with the Joker over how the ship should be maintained, demands that it should take control, ordering you down to the engine room to reboot the ship and escape.  The journey from the cockpit to the engines normally takes about 45 seconds, this trip felt like an eternity.  You defencelessly watch as the crew you spent so much time with are either ripped apart or rounded up like cattle. Easily the most terrifying, enraging and frustrating scene is watching Kelly being dragged by the hair, kicking and screaming into an elevator as the doors close behind her. My mind started racing thinking of what possibly could have happened to her, all the while seeing similar scenes of downright horror.

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Eventually sealing yourself into the engine room you are left with only one option, to fully clear the Normandy and escape you most open all the airlocks, sucking everything not nailed down into the vacuum of space. It is a gut wrenching moment as you’re left wondering who got sucked out and who got captured.  While the entire crew bar Joker is lost, a new friendship is formed between the AI and Joker. 

Now begins my mistake. Upon arrival of the now empty Normandy, Shepard is given the chance to immediately pursue the ship and save the squad. Thinking only of saving Kelly I declined the opportunity, thinking that if I took a minute to resupply and try and get a better weapon my chances of saving them would increase. We entered the relay and everything came together perfectly, the upgrades on the ship allowed us to land almost flawless on the collector Flagship, I divided up the teams perfectly, everyone got through to the holding cells.

It is at the cells you see the entire crew in the these pods with glass fronts, I immediately approach Kelly attempting together out but this gas spews out all over her, beginning to burn her alive as she screams and pounds on the glass as her flesh melts off her bones and she slowly becomes unidentifiable as a human all the while screaming the slowly turning into a red paste. I got to Kelly but I was too late, she was burned alive right in front of me, because I was too late. 

My indecisive nature got Kelly and half of the other crew killed in the same circumstances. My inability to act got the one character I wanted to survive to die in the most gut-wrenching scene I have ever witnessed in games.

I believe it is truly special to play a game with writing and characters so engaging that it makes you care for them to survive and to have them killed due to a tiny mistake I made in the character’s best interest.

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