Time Loop Nihilism

[droqen]

Regarding Jacob Geller's "Time Loop Nihilism"

Much like DOOM, Hitman, or Devil May Cry, Death Loop is largely a game about a process. Tell me the demon is evil, tell me the target is an oil baron, then let me loose in a playground of death. The method I use to take out these enemies is the game here, not figuring out my motivations why.

[droqen]

Dishonored [..] has lots of wacky, off-the-wall ways to kill characters

*shows holding a decapitated head and launching it across a room*

HOWEVER, Dishonored put a lot of weight of HOW the effects of killing people would ripple out into the world.

(more rats, darker ending.)

Nothing here about the morality of killing a person lol. Just the consequences. Cool morality, videogames.

[droqen]

Colt canonically experienced this day as many times as I did.

The fiction of Death Loop involves a time loop, and the protagonist experiences each replay at the same time as the player. But the illusion isn't complete; if I start the game on another machine, a new save file, suddenly this Colt is no longer my Colt.

I'm thinking about Roguelikes now, and games that don't communicate things that rely on save-state-data, but still try to present a timeless world. We don't know whether Link knows he's in a loop or not, but he is canonically in a loop.

I think Death Loop can still say some interesting things about the looping, but that hole bothers me so much.

[droqen]

that tactic never stops working [..but..] If I'm going to do this all again, if there are few real consequences for failure, why would I play in a way that's so BORING?

[..]

If I'm going to be living out this day forever, I'd like to do it in a way more interesting than crouching around corners with a silenced pistol in my hand.

It took a game whose content is time-loop nihilism for Jacob to appreciate this truth about the form of games

[droqen]

A major reason we never see [the characters in time loop movies such as Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, and Edge of Tomorrow], you know, punt a guy off a cliff is the understanding that that sort of violence affects who they are as a character.

[droqen]

Twelve Minutes, that's another time loop game that came out in 2021.

[droqen]

like in Death Loop, there's a feeling of consequencelessness that sets in as you loop over and over and over again and so the things you try start to get more extreme.

[..]

Like a monkey on the butterfly effect typewriter I pushed buttons at random.
What if I stab myself? Nothing. What if I stab my wife? Nothing.

[..]

I'm not sure if this is the intended way to play Twelve Minutes, but it sure feels like the way most people end up playing it. And as the game kept repeating and solutions didn't present themselves, any sense of ethics was the first thing to go. I didn't stab my wife because I hated her or thought she was evil, I stabbed her because I was out of other things to try.

[droqen]

It feels like no matter what happens next, [the protagonist] should be profoundly affected by [the time loop full of stabbing people at random, drugging people at random, etc]. But we don't see it. Because once again the story assumes that the actions he and we take mid-loop are consequenceless, and so they won't make an impact. And I just don't think that's an assumption we can make.

[droqen]

Through the Flash, unlike Death Loop, unlike Twelve Minutes, is a story about how your actions create an impression upon you, always. Even if no-one else remembers it or yesterday is the same as tomorrow, being a person who performs great violence or cruelty means you are a person capable of performing great violence or cruelty. Time loops are machines for introspection.

[droqen]

Link's Awakening.

[droqen]

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