Saving Grace

If, as Mrs Gump once suggested in that unforgettable drawl, life IS like a box of chocolates… I’m sure we’d find far too many coffee creams for our liking. On the whole, life can be difficult at times although “difficult” is clearly a very subjective term. What may be difficult to one person may be only be achievable in dreams for another, and vice versa.

For as long as mankind has been creative, we have been faced with the very simple principle of “art reflecting life”. Even looking back as far as the primitive cave paintings (primitive, and yet still so much more appealing than a flickering light bulb or an unkempt bed) we are presented with an art form representing a snapshot of time or a period in one person’s history. Whether it was Caveman #1 squaring up against a sabre toothed tiger or Caveman #2 telling stories around his brand new campfire with his friends (no doubt showing off at being the first in the block to have fire, much like the “Joneses” of today with their 100 inch plasma), the ultimate goal was achieved… communication through timeless expression.

In modern times, this genetic aspiration to translate real life into an art form has culminated in games that are more realistic than ever before. The back stories are more immersive, the attention to detail in terms of texture mapping and object meshing has pushed us to the point whereby we question that which we see before us. Our teachings tell us that the image can’t possibly be real because such creatures do not yet roam our plane of existence, and yet the brain is still tricked by the realism and so we are pulled in deeper still.

The game studios dedicate years, and entire teams, into developing new rendering engines capable of taking an idea and making it as photorealistic as possible… for the sole purpose of either pleasing the graphics whores (such as myself) or the hardcore gamers that want to be taken to worlds unknown for hours at a time, and to never be reminded that they are merely watching pixels dancing on a screen like sparks rising occasionally from burning embers. They employ writers to bring life to alternate realities in such a way that, if done properly, we are immediately taken to that time or that fantastical land and, for as long as we remain there, we think and feel like the residents. We live and breathe their past, present and future… knowing their politics, their customs, and understanding how we should be conducting ourselves. On the whole, gaming has become such a detailed arena that powering up a console or booting up a PC can be like taking a small vacation and leaving the problems and mundanity of reality behind for as long as we allow ourselves to wander their parallax planes.

There is one aspect of gaming, however that stands it apart from reality… but this flaw is not the fault of the games designers or the lack of innovation within the technical team, the problem itself lies within the realms of reality and not within the games themselves.

Decisions in the virtual world are overseen by an almighty beast, the likes of which we will never experience in reality. The save point. No matter what choice we are given in gaming, we never have to live with the consequences longer than is deemed appropriate by our own guilt or tolerance. Split second decisions are made within games, just as they are within our own existence and yet somehow we manage to escape consequence if we feel that the decision has brought about a change that we find unacceptable. Suddenly the in-game world changes after a character has been slain… your reputation swings from one social group to the next, and those who would extend a hand of friendship now turn away from you as you approach. All alone, you face the world with a fresh perspective and a new direction that was forced upon you by the decision that was made in that split second… just like in reality.

In reality, however, the decisions made and the consequences of our actions are carved in stone for all time. There is no CTRL+U available to us and we can’t quickly access the HUD and return order by using those three little words that mean so much in gaming terms yet mean so very little in our world of concrete and steel… “load saved game”. Would that we could, I’m sure the world would be a very different place than what we see before us. Whether it would be better is something we are never likely to find out but I, for one, am more than willing to take that chance should it ever arise.

After all… if the very act of using the save point created a whole new set of problems and seemingly insurmountable obstacles, we need only load the previous save to rectify it.

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