Quote:Original post by Ketchaval
It would be interesting to see more games that show the varied psychological reactions that people have to traumatic events.

With characters going through stages such as anger, denial and acceptance.

When you say "characters", are you referring to the main character? Or NPCs as well?

I think that it would be very difficult to demonstrate this with the main character, partly because it would impose feelings onto the real player. For example, I'm playing a game, my character goes through a traumatic event, then I'm shown a cutscene of my character responding to the event with a very specific reaction (one of the grief stages). The character's response could very well be a genuine, forseeable response. But as the player, what if the event didn't make me feel the same? In a way, the post-event cutscene has "forced" upon my character a certain reaction; it's a breach of control to the player.

Rather than imply how a chacacter responds to a certain event, the game should present the event, then allow the player to react/respond accordingly through his in-game character. If it's denial, then perhaps the player can choose to wander and gather information to find the truth. If it's anger, the player can choose to exact revenge or respond violently... etc.

With NPCs, however, there's seems much more room to show reactions. Example: some traumatic event occurs, I (as the player) see how NPCs are responding, some are angry, some are sad, some accept the event for what it is... this can influence the player and help shape/chain his own response. It is very similar to the famous Stanley Milgram experiment at Yale University. I won't get into the details (check HERE for an overview), but the experiment demonstrated that people's behavior/responses can be heavily influenced by authority (not in the "police" sense of authority). Very interesting read... and, FWIW, I've seen videos of the original experiment - very hard to watch participant responses to the electrocutions.

Thanks for reading,

-Razorguts