Aftermath, Part II

Earlier this month, we celebrated what turned out to be the most tragic Patriot's Day in the history of the Commonwealth (except for, perhaps, the the original one). Then, eleven days ago, my quiet street here in Watertown was transformed into the closest thing I'd ever experienced to a war zone. By this past weekend, the last of the reporters had finally left my neighborhood, leaving me only a lawn full of cigarette butts and a faint, lingering aroma of broken dreams to remember them by.

Today, thanks to my wholly anemic capacity for emotional memory, I can barely remember what it felt like to huddle with my children on the floor of my own home, while about 100 feet away scores of police opened fire on violent mass murderer. So, before I can forget anything else, I thought it would be a good opportunity to have one more discussion about these events, with the intent of returning thereafter to the serious business of playing and writing about video games.

Manhunt for the Boston Marathon Bomber: What to Do When You Suddenly Find Yourself in an Action Movie

When two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon on Monday—killing 3 people and severely injuring more than 100 others—my first thought was a fairly obvious one: "Wow... that could have been us." We've been down to watch the Marathon many times, and it was simply a matter of chance that instead of navigating the crowds in Copley Square, we had chosen to spend this Patriot's Day kicking around at home in Watertown. Had circumstances been just a little bit different, it could easily have been my family and I caught in that blast.

Except, I don't think deep down I really believed that. Even though a major terrorist attack had just happened in my city, my family and friends all turned out to be okay, and somehow I wasn't surprised. After all, I'm the main character in this story, and in my experience these sorts of things happen to other people.

I'm not sure this kind of narcissistic detachment from reality is particularly healthy, but I bet it's not all that atypical either, and I'm sure the massive amount of time I've spent playing video games in my lifetime has been a factor. Like television and movies, games reinforce our human tendency to distill stories from the randomness and chaos of the universe. We hone our sense of what will and won't happen to a protagonist, which side characters are and aren't expendable, and eventually the whole world appears as a patchwork of overused tropes and predictable plot points.

Just your typical mid-day armored surveillance.
No big deal.

So inertial was my concept of my own narrative, that when my wife woke me up at 3:00 AM yesterday to tell me that there had been a shootout and explosions here in Watertown, I don't think I was all that concerned. Even when we were informed that we were prisoners in our own homes, even as we drew our shades, locked our doors and windows, and retreated to the second floor of our house, I don't think I felt any real sense of danger. Soon they would catch "Suspect #2", the lockdown would be lifted, and life would return to normal.

Review: BioShock Infinite (Xbox 360)

BioShock Infinite does what the BioShock series does best, weaving a thrilling narrative into a rich and captivating world.

Like any medium for artistic expression, video games can allow us to experience fantastic new worlds that entertain and inspire us. Unlike most other mediums, though, games also allow us to interact with those worlds. This characteristic begets an enormous challenge when creating a video game; while a novel or a film has to create a world that is convincing when experienced through the controlled environment of the page or the screen, a video game has to create one that is convincing when you walk around inside of it and poke things, often in an effort to wreck the joint.

In the pantheon of video games, one title stands above all others in terms of creating a truly fascinating and compelling world: the original BioShock. The undersea city of Rapture is one of the most vivid locations I've ever visited in a game, and while some worlds have been bigger or more detailed or rendered with more polygons, none have ever felt as real. In fact, the place that comes the closest is the floating city of Columbia, the setting of the new BioShock Infinite.