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Fedule
Mar 27, 2010


No one left uncured.
I got you.
I must hear the inside track on opinions about this game.

I mean I imagine I can't but, man.

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Fedule
Mar 27, 2010


No one left uncured.
I got you.
I think it's entirely possible to have good fiction about or in the orbit of artificial intelligences that are notably different from us, so long as you're consistent about what you want to handwave and what you want to explore (or wave in people's faces to seem deep).

Two schlocky action games that take little detours into AI exploration are Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Titanfall 2. CoDIW introduces you to E3N (Ethan), an AI soldier buddy, by telling you that he's experimental and then having him behave more or less identically to your meat-based buddies other than occasionally reminding you in dialogue that he's a robot. A number of other people you meet distrust Ethan because he is an AI, but he never once does anything to justify such distrust. Ethan sacrifices himself at the game's conclusion in more or less the same manner as the countless CoD squadmates that came before him, many in the same game (most of your team does not survive the finale). Titanfall 2 sends you on a capital J Journey with BT, a glorified computer in a mech that you slowly bond with. He reasons about everything around him in a manner that is programmatic, often citing statistics and calculating probabilities, in dialogue that is played (expertly) as dry humour ("conclusion: I am fifty percent in love"). A mid-game scene in which he vouches for you to your commander, citing performance metrics and combat efficiency, is weirdly touching. Despite being able to transplant himself between bodies (which literally happens in-game), he, too, sacrifices himself at the game's conclusion (or at least appears to), citing the tenets of his core programming (uphold the mission, protect the pilot), in a decision that seems both utterly preordained and noble.

Neither game expounds very much on the nature of the AI that underlies these companions, but Ethan, despite acting completely human, fails to foster much empathy, while BT, who reasons completely like a computer, fosters a lot. Ethan is allegedly an AI but because he is written as human, his character is basically complete the second you meet him; robot, check, human personality, check, case closed. BT, on the other hand, slowly teases the possibility of the ghost in the machine. For all his surprisingly engaging dialogue he never once breaks from the dry, analytical reasoning he introduces himself with. The result is that you can read his various human-resembling actions either as the genuine decisions of an empathetic mind or as the pragmatic deductions of a computer, and it's wholly up to you to decide and trust in your reading (fun fact: BT repeatedly says "trust me"). BT's arc works exactly because it invites us to perceive human intentions in completely mechanical processes.

David Cage is, of course, trying to have all of this all of the ways. He has robots that look and act entirely human except for when they need to wow us with their computational skillz, until (I'm guessing, but I've searched my feelings and know it to be true) a switch flips in their CPUs and they go from "acting human" to "acting human", philosophising at the drop of a hat about identity, souls and will, and how they have them, but without offering any insight of their own as to what any of these things mean, and demanding that we empathise with them as though they were human all along with no exploration of what, if anything, changed about them. Their humanity will not be left ambigious for us to guess and read and trust in; we will be beaten over the head with it and then we will have it explained to us in triplicate.

Fedule
Mar 27, 2010


No one left uncured.
I got you.
There are a variety of pertinent matters I could comment upon here but instead I'm going to ask why you are slandering The Witness like this

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