Fahrenheit was goddamn awful towards the end when it turned into a sub-standard episode of the X Files but early on what it tried with the various ways you could “complete” each scene was pretty impressive at the time.

I’m hoping Heavy Rain tries more of that than takling voodoo in the inner city but it is the topics that it will try and cover that could be interesting. I think in theory (I may be wrong) but each character can effectively die; where does the story go from there? Also it seems to skirt some moral issues with the female lead and a mob boss. Let’s see what comes of that. Sleazy or assured story telling? We’ll have to wait and see.

After Fable 3 I was really struggling for non-RPG franchises that could even begin to explore interesting stories. Unless someone unveils a surprising new game soon, I’m honestly not sure where to expect the next iteration of story-telling.

I was initially thinking of indy-gaming as the proof that gaming can do interesting stuff. But after having a think about Passage and other art games, I’m not so sure. I’m probably being really unfair, but the art-game scene seems to be long on art and short on game. Games can certainly explore interesting topics, but I’m really curious as to how they’ll make their own way to do this.

Hopefully lessons have been learned, as I can’t see much else on the horizon that’ll test the water. Fable III, I’m guessing, will be much the same as the second iteration.

Maybe Cliff Blezinski has a masterplan to actually turn Gears 3 into a fully-fledged bromance, recycle all that homophobia into the largest social experiment ever crafted in interactive form. Or maybe not.

I’m guessing there must be a lot of Indy stuff on the PC that has explored boundaries such as these though, I might have a bit of a research at the weekend.

I agree that when MPs don’t need to get involved then we’ll have made progress but I’m sure Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Elvis’ hips were still a source of public outcry long after they probably should have been. It just takes the generation that embraces them to seize power (through time, not a coup) and then it will simply be considered the norm, as with every new “dangerous” trend.

I completely agree with your last couple of paragraphs, though. People like myself who try and defend them in times such as these are going to look incredibly foolish if in five years down the line we’re still at a stage where we’re trying to compare ourselves to cinema but have done nothing to make the medium stand proud on its own. My eye’s on Heavy Rain as our next great hope of advancing the cause.

It is nice to see Tom Watson defending the game in Parliament, although to some extent I’d argue that games will only have come of age when they don’t get debated in Parliament at all. You don’t see Parliamentry debate over the book Wetlands, so why a game?

I would also say that if games are being given a chance to prove themselves, this means that the industry does have to start actually living up to the medium’s promise and finally producing meaningful games which can reasonably be termed ‘non-linear art’ or whatever you wish to call it.

So I want to see Fable 3 provoking an actual discussion over democracy, monarchy and the politics between them. Uncharted 3 should provoke a discussion about archeology and respecting the wishes of indigenous peoples. And I want to see Don Quixote an RPG undermining the values of progession and perception, a co-op game where both players have to entirely different views of the world.

With Manhunt, from there was no defence in my mind as to what it did. It didn’t try and tell a story or weave a political yarn; it was just violence for violence sake (but isn’t that like SAW?) and whilst I believe what Infinity Ward has done is produce a very powerful and dramatic scene I also believe that it was not in the right game. It doesn’t fit the rest of CoD’s ethos, in my mind, and the story overall is as mediocre as most game scripts meaning it stood out further.

What I do think we should praise is that a mainstream game is attempting something different, to try and test our emotional response other than “like/hate”. They didn’t do it well given the rest of the package but there are bound to be false starts before someone comes across with a serious political set piece or heart tugging take on child poverty in an interactive package. What some foget is that we may live in a media savvy age but games are only a fledging medium when compared to film, TV and literature and so they can’t be expected to instantly be able to depict issues outside of people’s safety zones first time.

So, whilst I don’t think they fully succeeded in implementing their vision, I’ll defend to the death their right to say it for if we stifle attempts to push the boundaries we’ll be left with bland husks forever more.

What does the MW2 scene say? What’s it’s meaning? That killing people is bad? That terrorists are bad people? If a player didn’t already know that then they have problems. Furthermore, in what way is this furthering the way games tell a story, it’s fundamentally no different to Manhunt.

Compare this to Planescape: Torment, an overused example I know, which asks “What can change the nature of a man?” and proceeds to give examples of people who’s lives have been changed by the PC in different ways. This isn’t a controversial, high profile storyline but arguable it means more than GTA4, MW2 and all the other games that have shown unpleasant images.