All the Virtual World's a Stage...

A while ago I read this article (WARNING! SPOILERS IN THE ARTICLE!!!). It's about a critics reasoning behind the score that she gave to The Last of Us. In the article, she discusses the topic of choice, and how it was taken away from her in that moment. Though, I think that she's wrong to complain about that.

Characters in video games are just that: characters. They have motives, thoughts, feelings, and actions that they perform based on their CHARACTER. The way that this reviewer tried to act in that last scene, contradicted the character of Joel. Joel is not a good person. He kills anyone, or anything that stands in his way. Kind of a Joseph Stalin approach to life. In that last scene, player has to fight through a battalion of soldiers before they can make it to Ellie. The game really doesn't make stealth or pacifism an option here, as there are just too many guards. After making your way through all of them, not stopping until every single one is dead, you finally end up in the OR where Ellie is sedated lying on the operating table. One of the surgeons grabs a scalpel in an act of defense to stop Joel from taking Ellie, the hope for all mankind. This reviewer tried to go around it, while I on the other hand, straight up shot the guy like Indiana Jones in The Raiders of The Lost Ark. After all of the things that Joel had done up until that point, do you think that he would just walk on by someone who was a threat, and who stood in his way?

I feel like to try and do something that is out of character in a video game kind of breaks the immersion of the game. I like to play in a different way than most others. I used to be in theater, and let me tell you, being on stage is the most euphoric experience that you ever will have. To me, video games with story and character are kind of similar to a play. The writers of the game put so much into the game to create this world and the characters that inhabit it. I feel it kind of insults the writers when players roll around and screw with the world during what is supposed to be a dramatic, or story moment.

That's just my thoughts on it. Perhaps I'm overreacting, but I feel like when one of the characters is trying to talk to the player, and the player is trying to see if they can glitch to an area where they're not supposed to be, it kind of  breaks the moment. How do you feel about this?