Reviews VideoGame / Discovery

Video Games as Art; A god As An Interesting Character

You don't see too many godlike characters, because they're hard to pose conflict to.

Discovery keeps conflict close to it's nigh-omnipotent main character through a little spin on the concept of God that I found in Bruce Almighty: that God (or whatever the deity is that you're talking about) cannot alter free will.

Therein lies the main conflict of Discovery. A being of incredible power, a mere white dot in the endless darkness, sketches reality out of nothing, brings life, beauty, and motion to the newly created world, but can't get the humans down right. Animals will have conflict as well, but are easily solved from the beginning. On the other hand, it will constantly struggle with mankind, whether it's to calm their violent urges or punish them for their apathy towards you. Sure, you could just give up and literally wipe everything out with the press of a button (it's Z), but you would be lonely in a meaningless void.

In one part of the story, humans have become too passive towards animals, and are dying because of this. You take action to save them, because you want to have humans around. The reason doesn't matter, but the bottom line is that you want to keep your creations, but they aren't the way you want them to be. Why does the main character not want to be lonely? Does that mean it has feelings and a conscience? Why can't it simply let the humans to their own devices? The game poses many interesting questions.

Roger Ebert once said that video games cannot be art: this is sure enough proof that he has never played this game. It's not pointless violence or tedious item collection, and though it is a bit of a puzzler, it is so different from endless rounds of "connect the pipes".

Discovery is ultimately a free, accessible game that will make you find out that video games can be free of micro-transactions, can be played anytime and anyway you want, don't have immersion breaking minigames or broken elements, ''can'' tell serious stories that don't involve endless combat or endless fetch quests, all in an environment without immersion breaking mechanics. However, the protagonist is still white.