Quest to Nowhere

Playing Red Dead Redemption I found myself thinking a lot about the story, specifically within the context of the objective vs. subjective storytelling (which I discussed in a previous post.) The one thing that I kept coming back to was that within the game it seemed that there were two John Marstons, the one that Rockstar created for the game, and the one that the players create for themselves as they play the game. The players’ John Marston exists between the cut-scenes and in-game dialogues between characters, while the Rockstar John Marston exists in those scripted moments.

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I never finished Mass Effect 1, at least until the day Mass Effect 2 was released. I picked up ME1 on PC during Steam’s holiday sale intending to finish it so I would have a save to import into ME2. I played ME1 on 360 originally but never finished it, so the Steam sale provided a nice way to play the game over again, and get the save to import.

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I picked up Halo: ODST (which I now read in my head as “Ah-dst,”) a little over a week ago mostly to check out for the story stuff in the game. The story stuff is really interesting, since there are essentially two parts to it.

In the game you are playing as a lone special forces type trooper, who has been unconscious for a few hours after getting dropped into a urban warzone. As you make your way through the city you find items that give you flashbacks to what the rest of your team was doing while you were … Continue Reading