08/04/16 - Responding to previous blog post

Blog post about Fahrenheit:


I played through two sessions of the game Fahrenheit, both for at least 2 hours each on the same day. I only planned to play it once, but for some reason the file didn't save so I decided to play it again. On my second encounter with the game I realized the my choices made in the game affected the game's story. In the first play through I was more cautious, trying to get used to the controls and learning what the game is like. When the police officer came towards the bathroom after my player had killed the other guy, I started panicking, not knowing what to do and realizing that this police officer was going to figure it out. I made the choice, unaware of it, to run straight out of the restaurant without paying my bill and the police man was chasing me. All of these choices I made, I had done differently in my second play through and I noticed the differences in the character interactions and the way the story was told. The story didn't change completely, the two police investigators still came to the crime scene and every main story path was still pretty much the same, but my minor choices in the game can affect the minor story nodes the and game play experience. I felt that this made a big impact on the game play experience in Fahrenheit because the freedom to act upon the situations given to the character within the game really immerses the player in the world of the game and it makes you feel like you are a part of the story being told.

In my previous blog post I commented of the choices presented in Fahrenheit Indigo Prophecy, but I did not link this to a reading which I have just found.

In the reading ''Storyplaying" by Sebastian Domsch, the choice situations in games is commented on, and this relates a lot to the choices presented in Fahrenheit because of the fact that they are affected by the passing of time.

"Choice situations can be either a-temporal or have a temporal dimension, which means that there might be a limited amount of time during which the options are available, or that – after a finite amount of time – not making any choices will produce an outcome that is different from the choice situation and that therefore constitutes a choice in itself."

The choices in Fahrenheit are presented to the player following the narrative of the game, and it is up to the player to respond to these choices efficiently as the time of the game is still ticking. The player can choose to do nothing and that choice could inevitably lead them to an end game situation where they get caught because their character just stood there doing nothing. The player can choose to act on these choices quickly, effectively making them less suspicious to police if the situation arises.