Prey | Fictional Empathy

in gaming every decision matters until you stop playing the game [Music] the ultimate goal of morality systems and games is to make players empathize with fictional characters even if they typically don't I'm sure we've all been playing in RPGs such as Fallout New Vegas and decided to quicksave kill everyone in town and then quickload before carrying on as if it never happened the fact of the matter is that we aren't 100% immersed every time you even think about saving the game you're taken out of the experience and not many single-player games have the guts to give you a one life difficulty and now many players would bother with the option if it were there so another option of handling a games inherent disconnect from reality is to acknowledge it there will be post credits spoilers for prey 2017 ahead so if you've finished the game you know that the entirety of prey took place in the VR simulation of the events of the Talos one - outbreak in that you yourself are a type and phantom with one of many incarnations of Morgan you psyche along with some mirror neurons implanted into it as the in-game literature thoughtfully explains to you mirror neurons are essentially the empathy neuron if you saw someone bang their shin on a coffee table your mirror neurons would fire identically - if you'd hit your own shin on the table there the reason we cringe when we see somebody embarrass themselves and the reason you can sort of feel it in your own body when you watch something like this back to fictional stuff the biggest difference between the taifa and the humans is that type and are unable to empathize picture a cat toying with a rodent before killing it the cat doesn't recognize the rodent as being alive and for that matter probably doesn't even recognize itself as being alive and so the cat doesn't hesitate to hurt it the type in hive mind is much the same way since it's unable to empathize with other life it doesn't factor right and wrong into its decision-making the only thing it takes into consideration is its survival and its prominence they're animals in the same way that the cat is Alex you wanted to bridge the gap between humans and the taifa and he recognized that the taifa needed to be able to empathize with us first and acknowledge that we're just as alive as it is so a good place to start when attempting to give a creature empathy is to implant mirror neurons into it so that's some interesting and well thought out sci-fi but what's meta about it well who else do we know that routinely shows unimpeded behavior towards beings that it doesn't see as alive gamers odds are every single person listening has done this before whether you take your games very seriously and try to play them pacifistic aliy or behave in the exact opposite way there's no denying that the vast majority of us only do non-lethal playthroughs for the challenge not because we actually care about the generic guards well-being and that since gamers are as a whole exactly like the Thai Fionn I have a friend who played Bioshock for the first time recently and he told me that he only saved the first little sister because he thought that Tenenbaum would attack him otherwise and after she left he harvested every little sister he could why bother making the game harder for yourself just for the benefit of a fictional character right well rather than try to make us truly care about fictional characters outside of their role to the story like so many bioshock's Dishonored z-- new vegas --is and Deus Ex as before prey just wants us to show some sign of empathy before inevitably killing them all until the last couple hours of the game the player is left under the impression that the only way to complete the game is to destroy all of Talos one and every human on board so right off the bat we have to decide whether or not we're going to kill people as soon as we see them or give them a glimmer of hope before eventually destroying them after all most of them probably won't like it when they realized that you plan to kill them and indeed some of them make things difficult for you when you eventually make it obvious you intend to destroy the station all in all it probably would be less hassle to go ahead and kill everyone you meet as soon as you managed to get by when they're alone however the point of the simulation isn't to see whether you decide to destroy Talos 1 or save it the point is to see how well mirror neurons work at giving you empathy for characters that you otherwise wouldn't see as alive you go through most of the game under the impression that they all have to die so saving them is impossible however you can demonstrate to Alex and the game designers that you were able to show empathy most of the moral choices in this game aren't a simple good option evil option decision killing them right off the bat is totally justifiable and maybe even more merciful if you plan on destroying the station most of the moral choices instead are based around empathy the simulation we play through isn't exactly how it went down on Talos 1 this is a recreation of the type an outbreak with various empathy tests put in one of the first of these a psychotronics volunteer Aaron Engram we find Aaron locked inside of a test chamber within psychotronics in front of him a terminal showing his rap sheet which includes everything from distribution of controlled substances to solicitation of a minor however he insists that whilst some of what it says is probably true the record was inflated to make it easier to initiate the test which would be lethal to him he is of course begging to be let out however therein lies an ethical issue it's not as simple as it would be evil to keep him locked up he could be a major threat to the people on Talos 1 we even see another psychotronics test subject going on a killing spree all over the station a bit later but I'll get to mr. Caloocan soon this is as I said an empathy test in fact to let him out could almost be called too empathetic while Aaron turns out to not be a threat to the Talos crew he very easily could have been even if you had the foresight to dismantle the weapons in the armory before letting him out you're essentially asked whether you're going to play your empathy for the man in front of you ahead of your empathy for the rest of the Talos crew now that you aren't interacting with them directly it's decisions like this that separate this game from so many other RPGs you don't choose between a good guy playthrough and a bad guy playthrough it's a matter of whether or not you'll be empathetic in a hopeless situation letting Aaron Ingram out can totally be described as a bad thing to do in this case if you want to be the hero of the story you have to choose between morality and empathetic compassion that's driven home even further by the next example I'll draw on Lucca glucan the imposter chef when you first get into the crew quarters cafeteria you'll find a telepath as brainwashed several humans and ascending them to suicide bomb you the only way to non-lethal II deal with the humans is to use electric damage to knock them out then take out the telepath the man calling himself chef Mitchell as a different approach to the issue he holds up in the kitchen and puts a shotgun to any humans that tried a suicide bomb and under the telepaths influence observant players will note several things about this man firstly he doesn't recognize you even though you're an incredibly important scientist at the company secondly he has a Russian voice and appearance not like any Mitchell I know if your ontology more are just playing along with his ruse he sends you to his quarters to grab a medal he claims as important to him and he says to ignore the flickering lights if you've been paying attention you'll know that typin caused lights to flicker when they're near and sure enough there's a type and phantom waiting for you near his quarters it was a trap by Mitchell on top of that when you go into his quarters you can find an audio log of his and find that he has a totally different face and voice than the chef Mitchell you talk to and that last the final nail in the coffin with your suspicions raised you might check a security terminal to see that he's deceased and his tracking bracelet and body are in the freezer behind the imposter chef I played along with chef Mitchell's game and having shown that I survived his trap he played coy and tried to get me to go into the freezer this is when I pulled the rug from under his feet and knocked him out with a stun gun but now what do I kill him upon looking in the freezer it's revealed that chef Mitchell was only several victims of his this is putting your answer to the Aaron Ingram problem to scrutiny you know that this man is a murderer but he's completely helpless having been knocked out by you do you try to lock him in the kitchen somehow and risk him breaking free do you lock him in the freezer instead and risk him freezing to death or do you just kill him now well if you're on a perfectly in pathetic playthrough as I was my first time around you have to leave him alive I locked chef Mitchell in the freezer and I put some glue over the button to open the kitchen door just in case well unsurprisingly he managed to break free and upon making contact with Daniel show the girlfriend of one of the imposter chefs victims she pleads us to make sure that the imposter chef Luca dies there's no denying whatsoever that if he escapes he will kill again and probably in a much more brutal way than simply blowing up the station or putting one in the back of someone's head just as with Aaron Ingram this probably didn't actually happen or was just highly romanticized in the Talos 1 simulation but it's there as a test of the mirror neurons to see if we put our empathy above our common sense and arguably our morality Aleks will terminate us at the end of the game if he decides that the mirror neurons failed and we're on empathetic or just completely amoral but as with Aaron Ingram neither decision will count against us when it comes to whether or not Alex has made a more sociable type in phantom unless of course you subject Aaron Ingram to the experiment to get more exotic matter that's pretty a moral land on empathetic when you could just leave him locked up while prey is filled with decisions like whether or not to use - neuro mods or neuro mods at all or whether it's ethical to use a recycler grenade on the corpse of a human to get more organic matter what really matters in terms of getting Alex's approval when he decides whether or not to terminate you is how empathetic you were because just like the game designers the designers of the Tallis one simulation were simply trying to get you to empathize with characters whose lives had no true bearing on reality whereas you've won another wise by putting us in such an immersive game in which your decisions have long lasting consequences the game designers are essentially implanting mirror neurons into our heads as players and all of these slightly exaggerated moral problems were designed to put our newfound empathy to the test the game story mirrors the real-life intent behind the creation of the game that's a classic example of a meta-narrative above are two of the most blatant examples but there are several others one of my favorite moments in all of gaming is another great example even if it has no actual bearing on your ending the captain's dilemma when you get to the captain's loft on the bridge of Talos 1 you find that she's killed herself with a terminal in the room prompting you to choose whether or not to detonate the scuttle charges on a shuttle back to earth the audio log on her body reveals that the shuttle left not a half hour before the first alarms of a typhoon outbreak were activated with no way of knowing whether or not the shuttle has a mimic on board you're forced to choose whether or not you want to detonate the shuttle killing all of its passengers some of the only people in a position to survive the Talos 1 incident we even see a typhoon mimic hiding aboard another shuttle whose crew died before they were able to escape the towel is one magnetosphere the movements intention of course being to catch a ride earth as players who completed the game empathetically will know the earth has already overrun with - captain Jada marks indecisive suicide may very well be the reason the typhoon get to earth in the first place assuming a that the typhoon have no way of getting to earth without human input and be the captain marks really did kill herself and that it wasn't part of the simulation to give us another empathy test and even without knowing that earth was taken over by the type and after Talos won the player is asking themselves whether or not this event will lead to that eventualities this is a difficult decision to make especially on an empathetic playthrough again both answers are justifiable and I think the indecision that most players are probably struck with here is the reason that this is a part of the simulation at all if you're indecisive about it your newfound compassion is doing its job while by the end of the game we already know that neuro mods have been smuggled back to earth and that neuro mod users have gone back to earth after a nap too aggressive Narada me removal of neuro mods it's unclear whether or not this means that humanity was already doomed before the outbreak neuro mods are made from exotic matter extracted from the typhoon and whether or not this matter is dangerous before or after it's been injected into the subject isn't confirmed or denied although the fact that a subject with enough - neuro mods will appear as the type into the Eradicator Auto turrets psycho scope is pretty solid evidence if you ask me anyway is one of the ending options if we saved ioe Quay and a few other humans as to subdue tram stars mop-up operative Dowell and given an opto regressive Narada me resetting his memories - before he was ordered to wipe out the Talos crew we can then manipulate him into flying the shuttle back to earth with several of the surviving crew members thus saving their lives if neuro mods in and of themselves would allow the type and to get to earth then we're left with one issue regarding whether or not to do this there could very easily be a mimic onboard the shuttle with us which would undoubtedly escalate things on earth beyond any containment while any threat that neuro mods or exotic matter alone would pose would take some time to come to fruition and probably be containable a mimic could be a bit of food brought along for the journey it could be one of Sara eleazar guns or anything close to a mimics way brought on board by any of the dozens of people who are potentially in the shuttles cargo bay the more people you get aboard the shuttle the more likely it is that there will be a minute on board there's no way of knowing on top of the empathetic issues associated with rolling back someone's memories in order to manipulate them we're again faced with another morality versus empathy scenario if we use the prototype nor wave transmitter device to wipe the Taipan off the station then there's no need to get the crew off the station assuming Dallas subdued however deciding to activate the Talos 1 self-destruct then using the shuttle to get any survivors off the station sort of defeats the purpose of blowing it up in the first place if you truly believe that destroying the station is the best option for Humanity then you have to either accept the humanity was doomed before you introduce the possibility of a typhoon mimic getting to earth via the shuttle or accept that there can be no survivors of the station's self-destruct yourself included neither belief will get in the way of an empathetic or unimpeded ending but if you do believe that you can save humanity if everyone on Tallis dies as you do for the majority of the game then the only question is how humanely do I murder these people and you're asking yourself this under the assumption that anything short of killing every human you come across may very well by you and the rest of humanity in the ass when the humans realize you intend to destroy the station pray isn't about whether or not you believe in Alice's transhumanist vision for the future or if you believe the Transtar scientists can save humanity from the typhoon or whether or not neural mods would just amplify classism or if playing God like this is something humanity is ready to do pray is about whether or not gamers can empathize with characters whose doomed fate is already set in stone I'm going to play some key lines from the post-credits sequence on a perfectly and pathetic run try to look for the subtext in what alex says and remember the typhoon that we play as as an analog for us gamers and alex and the operators are an analog for video game characters it's finished how did it do division of the mirror neurons is promising empathy quotient shows to be exceptionally high probably thinks it was dreaming nothing mattered and later it recovered enlightenment inept ohms they were of no practical use except that they were deeply meaningful to me it found me it doesn't need to but it did I asked it to stop volunteer 37 but it left him alive they could mean a low drive for retribution there were a lot of humans controlled by the typhoon that it could have harmed seems like it went out of its way to avoid that you can hear us can't you we spent years trying to put what you can do into us we never tried putting what we can do into you until now you're the bridge between our species I need to know if you see us I mean really see us take my hand if you do at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you treat the humans with compassion because you're working under the assumption that you're going to have to blow up the station anyways it doesn't matter if you treat the humans with compassion because it's just a simulation and humanity is already overrun by the typhoon it doesn't matter if you treat the humans with compassion because it's just a video game and these characters have no meaning outside of their purpose to the story but we aren't the typhoon to the typhoon humans are only as alive as characters in a video game the difference between us and the typhoon is that we can empathize with something even if we know it isn't truly alive [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 215,767

Keywords: Prey, metanarrative, ending, explained, discussing, remaking, remake, post, modern, postmodern, meta, elements, essay, analysis, 2017, anniversary

Id: GkVXw4LfkQc

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 30 2019