Upon first hearing about facade, I was romanticized by the idea of revisiting a favourite childhood book genre. Promises of a \u201cchoose your own plot\u201d story, coupled by the digital age\u2019s gaming angle spiked my interest radar. I resolved to leave this nugget of homework for last of all, as beginning with it might leave me ensnared an unwilling to look at biology\u2019s dull intro chapters. When I could finally play facade, I discovered the epitome and embodiment of tragedy. Ironically it was found not in the tragic plot but rather in the experience of the game itself.<\/p>\n
The first playthrough dashed most of my hopes. My notebook was poised and dated, ready to record all my responses, though Facade was drastically different. It felt like watching a movie that slowly morphed into the Sims, like a hybrid cinematic cut scene in regular titles. \u00a0I interacted minimally with my surroundings and talked even less. The characters, Grace and Trip, barely noticed and after only a few feeble attempts at involving myself in conversation took off on a tangent, criticizing one another. The plot was set and very few could be done to alter the narrative. It felt like surfing out the story as opposed to either reading, or playing a game. Resolving to take action in the next trail, right as the game began I pecked away at the keyboard trying to steer the conversations like a detective out on a hunt. I soon found that this too was vain and that scripting prevailed in directing narrative. With the eerie music, fights, and irrationalism of the whole situation winning out quickly, I lost focus of the plot and decided to finally just see what could be done with the game physics itself. This time I knocked on the front door, and rushed past Trip as soon as he opened, running to the room I knew Grace would be in. I hugged her, kissed her, and told Trip to get lost; that his time was over. I never got slapped or beaten up but merely escorted out of the apartment.<\/p>\n
Illogical as the game was, Facade probably achieved something in its era. It set the bar and showed that AI games could be made. Sadly, Facade was too early to enter the computing world as it would require way more sophisticated heuristics capable only by a modern, if possibly futuristic machine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Upon first hearing about facade, I was romanticized by the idea of revisiting a favourite childhood book genre. Promises of a \u201cchoose your own plot\u201d story, coupled by the digital age\u2019s gaming angle spiked my interest radar. I resolved to leave this nugget of homework for last of all, as beginning with it might leave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_links_to":"","_links_to_type":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19,13,9,12,10,14,11,16,18,17,15],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-course-blog","tag-19","tag-ai","tag-facade","tag-fiction","tag-game","tag-grace","tag-interactive","tag-novel","tag-premature","tag-too","tag-trip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296,"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gantercourses.net\/fall13engl214\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}