Over the years interactive fiction had blessed me with a variety of different feelings, like anger, frustration and delight, but I don\u2019t think that this genre had ever disturbed me. That is, before I read \u201cThe Baron.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The game\u2019s premise and prose may sound clich\u00e9 at first to people who read interactive fiction. There is a girl that was abducted by an \u201cevil\u201d baron and you as the father have to save her. On your quest you encounter a dragon in a bone filled cave \u2013 a cave and a dragon that is interestingly the beginning and the end of the tale \u2013 a forest filled with danger, a village, and of course, a ruined castle. So what is so disturbing about \u201cThe Baron\u201d that the author had to write a disclaimer and a warning for it?\u201d After all, it\u2019s only a tale that is full of clich\u00e9s and propagates a fairly linear plot. The answer to this question lies in the representation and consequences of your decisions.<\/p>\n
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When I was in the forest and I encountered the wolf, I decided to kill her, even though deep down I knew that she was only protecting her son. I killed her, because I knew that \u201cmy daughter\u201d was in danger, and the fastest way to save her was to kill the wolf. I thought that trading wolf\u2019s life for my daughter\u2019s was a reasonable choice. I was wrong. After typing \u201ckill wolf,\u201d I not only had to read in gruesome detail as I killed her, but I was confronted by a gargoyle as to why I did it? That\u2019s when the game became disturbingly intriguing, because by then it was not about the protagonist anymore, but rather it was about me. I, like the protagonist, had personal stake in the tale.<\/p>\n
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Perhaps that is why it feels wrong to place \u201cThe Baron\u201d into the interactive fiction genre, since it offers so much more then traditional interactive fictions \u2013 like self-reflection by questioning our true selves. That is why \u201cThe Baron\u201d had me at \u201cWhy did you do that?\u201d and that is why I will keep an eye on this evolving genre from now on. Now lets get back to \u201cThe Baron\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the years interactive fiction had blessed me with a variety of different feelings, like anger, frustration and delight, but I don\u2019t think that this genre had ever disturbed me. That is, before I read \u201cThe Baron.\u201d The game\u2019s premise and prose may sound clich\u00e9 at first to people who read interactive fiction. There is … Continue reading You had me at, “Why did you do that?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[63,65,66,64,3,67],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-the-baron","tag-decisions","tag-disturbing","tag-genre","tag-interactive-fiction","tag-self-reflection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}