The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

My favourite part in the game Ico is when you're standing on a bridge with Yorda's mom who has captured Yorda. In a cutscene she begins to make the bridge seperate, leaving you one one side and Yorda on the other. Then the cutscene ends and you're left with a split second decision - do you ignore Yorda and follow the bridge to escape? Or do you try to jump across the widening chasm in a seemingly foolhardy attempt to save her? If you decide to jump back, you have literally only a second before the gap becomes too wide to jump across.

I've found a couple of other blog posts about this (here and here). Chad Concelmo from 'The Memory Card' Puts it well, so I'll quote him:

This is the beauty of the sequence. I don’t know about other players, but I immediately jumped across the gap to be reunited with Yorda without even thinking twice. I didn’t care about the size of the gap or the fact that I was basically ruining my chances of escaping from the castle. All I cared about was protecting Yorda. I can’t think of any other videogame when my instincts had fully taken over like that. It is like I became the character of Ico (sans the horns). That’s a pretty incredible experience to have while playing a videogame.

On another note, most videogames don’t offer this same sense of urgency. There are definitely timed sequences and the need for quick reflexes, but major game changing decisions can usually be made after thinking about them for a while. This is not the case with Ico’s leap of faith. If you don’t jump right away, it is game over.

But, again, what blows me away is you don’t have to think. At all. If the work of the incredible designers pays off, you will immediately jump over the gap to save Yorda. No questions asked.

In the autistically detailed game Deus Ex, your find your brother in a hotel room. Suddenly you hear a swat team outside, about to storm the room. Your brother tells you to escape through the window, since (for some reason) he's unable to leave. Do you follow your brother's request and leave him to fight alone? Or do you do the honorable thing and stay with him?

The moment had a genuine cinematic feel for me. It helps that the game is open world, so you get to hear your brother being killed as you climb the ladders outside to safety. There's a thread about it here.

In Portal, at one point you're travelling on a platform when you find yourself travelling towards an incinerator. GLADoS tells you everything is fine and to stay on the platform. Even if you wanted to, there's no way to jump off to safety... except you still have the portal gun. To beat this section you have to use the gun to create an exit on ledge above you.

Doing this requires you to go against GLADoS's orders. Until this point, she is an authority figure, and completing her goals means progress in the game. Disobeying her now subverts the expectation that all the game's goals will come from GLADoS; you have to take your fate into your own hands. It helps that the game hints throughout that GLADoS has a screw loose and doesn't place a huge importance on your safety.

My brother said he wouldn't have escaped initially, that he would've obeyed GLADoS, staying on the platform even as it went into an incinerator. I hope that if he had played the game, the design would have pointed him in the right direction instead.