Digging through golden-hued poo in Blue Dragon on Xbox 360, I find myself wondering what the developer expects me to do.  I can either “Search it” or “Leave it alone.”  Do they really think that I might ”Leave it alone”?  I am playing a game here, not physically digging through feces in my living room.  For crying out loud, there’s gold in them mounds of dung!

The choice of whether or not to sift through the poo is already made by the time I hit that glorious “action” button and initiate an examination of the stinking pile.  I will plunge my beautifully-rendered hands into that steaming product of a mythical digestive system and I will take the ten gold and be on my way.  Fortunately, I have yet to catch a whiff of these turds, so I really have no reason to refrain from digging in.

There are no repercussions for these types of decisions in gaming.  I’m not going to be repulsed by something that produces no visceral reaction.  I’m going to constantly assault pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto, and I’m going to murder folks I’m done questing for in Oblivion.  Just for fun.  I also harvested all of the Little Sisters in BioShock.  And I enjoyed it.

Clearly, there are some more weighty decisions put forward in many games; decisions that affect the story arc of the game in very serious ways.  Mass Effect is still fresh in my memory.  There were plenty of choices to be made in that title (I genocided!) that would seem to carry serious narrative consequences.  However, after the shine wears off, the decisions the player makes in between those game-altering whoppers become more and more apparent for what they really are: superficial. 

The medium is certainly limited as of yet by storage devices and disc formats, but decisions like whether or not to dig through the poo need to disappear.  I can see through the sleight of hand these choices employ to make me forget that I’m not really deciding anything.  All of the games I’ve mentioned offer pretty excellent gameplay and some of them even pull off storytelling in innovative ways that push the craft forward.  I just want them to stop trying to convince me that I care about the smell of digital shit.