Of Beliefs and Respect

I'm writing this because, recently, I ran into some people who were incredulous over a person stating that there is no hell. These people claimed that this person was not showing enough "respect" for religion. As one of them said, they were respectful of people being atheists, and not believing in a god, but somehow these atheists have the audacity to, essentially, voice their opinion that these religious tenants are false, and, thus by extent, so is the religion as a whole.

It was a fascinatingly strange line of reasoning. They would claim that they respect these people's ability to not believe in a god, but, they could not criticize or say that the religion as a whole is untrue. I'm sure you can spot out the issue with this. If a person is an atheist, they don't believe in a god(s). Thus, the logical following of this belief is that religions built around the base assumption that there is a god have got it wrong. Yet, essentially, these people were saying that they can hold the belief that there is no god, but shouldn't be allowed to voice all the logical offshoots of that opinion.

This line that stating there is no god (or hell, or angels, or that eating crackers and drinking wine/grape juice is merely just that) is disrespectful of religious belief(s) is one that I've seen touted about a couple of times in other circumstances. Sure you can decide not to believe in god, but criticize the institutions or the reasonings of people who do believe in god, that is not allowed.

It's a silly argument. "I don't believe in your belief or opinion, but I shall not criticize it because I must respect it". No, that is not the case, nor should it be the case. People should respect other people's ability to state their own opinions and beliefs, and their ability to choose their own beliefs, but to claim that their beliefs should be beyond other people's ability to question or criticize is ridiculous, generally hypocritical, and most definitely not allowing people to exercise their full right of speech.

Not all opinions and beliefs are of equal weight and value. Not all beliefs deserve as much respect as others. Somehow insisting that all opinions and beliefs are equal and unassailable is fallacious. Does the opinion that the holocaust did not occur have equal weight and deserve equal respect of the opinion that it did? What about the belief that monsters live in lakes? That 2 + 2 = 5 rather than 4? Should we all just accept them and go "we can't criticize those beliefs, but rather must respect them?". I say no.

Criticism is an important part of life. It's important for learning, for understanding, living, working, and generally succeeding in life. Without criticism, how could we be sure our methods are sound, or improve our abilities? Critical thinking, the ability to take ideas and opinions, analyze them, and critique their truthfulness and effectiveness is an essential skill to learn. All of our financial, medical, scientific, and literary achievements and institutions would not be without the ability to think critically, without being able to postulate that maybe this idea or opinion is flawed or outright wrong.

To somehow claim that religion should be thus excluded from being criticized is completely arbitrary. Why should some ideas and postulations be open to being questioned, yet these other ones cannot?

For a belief or opinion to be respected and generally accepted, one would normally provide evidence that this belief is representative of reality. The belief in gravity is vindicated by the simple tossing of an object into the air. The belief that fire is hot can be attested to by touch or via thermometer. The belief that there are such things as protons, neutrons and electrons can be seen in the assembled data from various experiments, and the use and success of equipment and technology through out the world that depends upon the validity of the idea that such things exist and behave in certain ways.

Yet, somehow, religious beliefs are demanded to garner that same respect and acceptance with very little evidence or reasoning. Just because some book said so, or because your parents thought so, doesn't mean it's true or should garner your respect. At a time, Zeus and Poseidon were thought to be existing deities, yet, nowadays, they're thought of as myths and stories from a less developed past in human history. Why is it so horrible to consider the possibility that todays god(s) are just as much of a myth as the Greek gods?

History has shown that beliefs are a powerful and potent force. People's perceptions of the world can have profound and far reaching affects on their actions and other people's lives. People have killed and died in the name of their beliefs. 9/11 is such an example of how people's beliefs can lead them to do great and terrible things. The holocaust is another. For how powerful beliefs can be, and what they can lead people to do, all beliefs should be questioned and criticized, to ensure they are as truthful, honest, and reality based as possible.

Intro to Animation Video Dump

Here is a bunch of animations I did for my Intro to Animation class back in freshman year that I had never uploaded to youtube until now.

Woot! Advanced 3D Project Video

My Advanced 3D project collaboration with the most excellent Gene Kim can be viewed here.

Edit: Ah, instead of a crummy ol' link, I now have an embedded youtube version I can put here.

Scientific Integrity, Self-Honesty, and Belief

If there is one thing that people have chided me about (well, at least people who know me in real life) is how uncertain and equivocal I can be, especially with answering questions. "I guess", "I think", "probably", "maybe", "possibly", "hopefully", "I suppose so", "I don't know", etc. It used to bug the hell of out my dad (it might still).

"Why can't you ever give me a definite answer?" He would ask. "Can't you just simply say 'yes' or 'no'?" To which I would often just shrug my shoulders and say "I don't know", which would only bug him even more.

I did know why though. I tried to explain it once to him, but I don't think I did a very good job (I believe I was only in middle school at the time), because he just dismissed it almost immediately. "That's nonsense, Mikael" he said (or something equivalent to that), "no one is going to be interested in such technicalities. People are only going to want hear definite confirmations and definite results! You can't be so wishy-washy about it." I think I said something like "I see", and then proceeded not to really follow his advice.

I mean, I did listen and follow it somewhat. I now try to keep in mind how my responses might come off to others, and so I put a more enthusiastic emphasis on it, but I never really changed the certainty of it, like, for example, saying "I'll try my best".

You see, if there is one thing that has been instilled in me successfully by my parents and my teachers it is being honest. Yes, being honest to others was nice and good for society and all that, but it was most important, above all else, to be honest with yourself. In a way, self-honesty is the most important virtue of all. If you aren't honest with yourself, how can you be honest with others? And without self-honesty, you also cannot have good thinking, which, I hope most people realize, is important for a wide variety of things and just getting through life in general.

So, when I answer, I'm just being very honest about the fact that there is hardly any, if any at all, 100% certainties in life. For all I know, I could die in the middle of the night, or a huge storm might come along and hugely void any sort of otherwise planned activities for the immediate future. There is very little certain in life, so I could never bring myself to say that I would definitely be able to 100% be able to do X by time Y. There is the possibility, a very small possibility no doubt but a possibility nonetheless, that a meteorite would strike the Earth and end life as we know it. Thus, it would make it rather difficult to have completed my task by that specific time, to say at the least.

Now, you might think I'm a paranoid schizoid but I don't think I am. I honestly don't really always think about something that might come along and kill me at any given moment, it slips my mind most of the time. But, the point is, when it does come to mind, I acknowledge it. I don't make any delusions about myself like "I can't die unless I've done X or found Y", or especially things like "I'm fated to do such and such". It would be nice if I didn't die before I accomplished certain things, but I can't realistically expect death to hold itself back on my account. That's another thing about being self-honest: you aren't entitled to achieve or perform something.

The biggest most important aspect about self-honesty though, and the one that most people have the hardest time with, is the ability to truly realize and accept the possibility you can be dead wrong about everything. There are varying degrees to how probable it is you might be wrong about any given thing, of course. For example, the chances of being wrong about oxygen being necessary for aerobic respiration or that hydrogen has only 1 proton are hugely and vanishingly tiny, as in comparison to the thought that you for sure left your shoes in the closet this morning.

Be sure also not to take it too far in the other direction, though, that the admittance of possibility that it is wrong doesn't mean that it is wrong. Ideas that have evidence for them being true, while they can never be proved to be 100% correct, it would be highly dishonest to think of them as wrong, especially if you have no solid evidence that says otherwise.

There is this thing called "confirmation bias". It's a well documented psychological occurrence in which people tend to pick out and remember data or events that help prove or coincides with already held beliefs, and forget or overlook data/events that goes against those beliefs. Part of being self-honest is to being aware of this, and constantly being on guard against it. For one should always be searching for the truth, not just what will enable one to look best or win an argument. For when armed with the truth, people and society can benefit much more than off a biased delusion or lie.

Seems straight forward enough, doesn't it? Now, what was the point of all that?

I recently have read a lecture by the esteemed physicist Richard Feynman. In it, he laments over what he calls the "cargo cult" science that seems to run rampant. He cries out for standing against training and educating people to look only for particular results, results that will simply get them money, fame, votes, etc. Instead, he wants people to practice what he calls "scientific integrity", to go fight against all this bad science being done.

What is scientific integrity? Well, funnily enough, I've already essentially told you what it is. It's simply being honest. It's the attempt to be objective, and to allow as little bias as humanly possible. It's the refusal to show only the results that support your beliefs/argument and hide the ones that don't. It's the placing of truth above personal beliefs and wants. Don't start out with a preset idea of what you want to find or think you should find, and then work only to achieve results that fulfill that. Be open to any result you may find, and be prepared to find a truth that is different from one you thought existed.

One of the examples Feynman talks about is hearing about how he heard the Director of the Institute of Parapsychology telling people to only train students who already get results at proving people have telepathic/psychic abilities, and not to waste time training other students who only get what they called "chance results", a.k.a. results that showed people did not have an inherent telepathic or psychic ability. That is not science, only culling and leading people to produce the results you want. That is not helping anyone find out the truth.

Some of you may be thinking something along the lines of "why does this matter? This is something for scientists to worry about, not me. I'm not trying to do scientific studies or research." It's also possible that absolutely none of you are thinking that and I'm just a presumptuous ass, and if that's the case, please indulge me so that I may make a point here.

Science is every where, and affects everyone. It's not a field only limited to those people who call themselves scientists, slaving over complicated mathematical formulas, or meticulously operating complex machines to ascertain the character of certain small bits of matter. No, not at all. Everyone and anyone can do science. You know why? At the very base of it, science is just a process, a mindset for solving problems or understanding something. You formulate an idea of what you think is happening or why something is happening, then you perform some way to test that idea, see what the results are, and see if that either validates or invalidates your original idea. It's as simple as that, though, in execution, it can turn out to be quite complex for certain ideas or problems.

The scientific method has applicability to just about every field and every question, from whether it's as something as mundane as "why does my computer not work?", to the silly ("I wonder if there's a way to make an egg survive a 10 story drop"), or to the more abstract and theoretical such as "do black holes store information?". Almost all fields of knowledge has been formed and refined thanks to the scientific thinking, even whether the people realized they were doing it or not. So, while the average person may not get a research article printed by a peer-reviewed publisher, or win a Nobel prize, science is regularly performed by everyone on some level. It's broad applicability and role in pretty much every aspect of human life means that having scientific integrity is very important quality to have and strive for.

Now to get the crux of this post. It's because of my dedication to scientific integrity and truth, and seeing how important it is, that I have not been able to accept a religious view of life.

I was brought to churches by my parents from a fairly early age, and I was always uncomfortable with being at them and talking with people there about religion. Something about them just did not sit well with me, but, being young and my faculties not yet at the level they are now, I never really could tell why. I just always assumed it was because it bored me, or that I would've rather been spending the time playing with friends or doing something more exciting. But those were not really reasons why I wasn't comfortable with it, they were just my reactions to it growing from that original source of discomfort.

It was not until years later that I understood why I was never really comfortable with religion, why I could never make myself believe in it, and why I always felt so awkward whenever my parents tried to have religious conversations with me. As I was growing up, I was, I think, a very curious and honest kid (as honest as a kid could be, granted, which might not seem all that honest to people). I loved questioning things, and finding things out. Unfortunately, this sometimes was taken as me questioning people's authority at times, which sometimes led me to trouble. In the end, however, I loved figuring out the "why"s and "why not"s of things, which, most importantly, always involved the questions of "well, what if you're/it's wrong?" and "how do we know that you're/it's right?".

I realized that while at school, such lines of inquiry were encouraged and often resulted in me learning something interesting or new, at church, it was quite the opposite. Such questions were discouraged and if I did ask them, would often receive unsatisfactory answers. "Why is it this way?" "Because God/the Bible/Jesus said so." I always hated that answer, especially as a kid. I never liked it when my parents would answer a question with "because I said so", and I didn't like it anymore when someone else used it.

I knew even as a kid that "because I said so" was not a good reason for doing anything, in fact, it's not even a reason at all! Why? Because these very people would teach that to me themselves. It was often in the situation of "don't listen to strangers" lessons that they give to young kids, and I always was like "why should I not accept that answer from certain people, but should from others? I should just not accept it from anyone!". I learned that I had to have a good reason to believe or act upon something somebody else was telling me, and I wasn't going to relax it for anyone, much to my parents later frustration.

Anyway, I began to realize these people thought such lines of inquiry were bad, because that's what the Bible itself said. To doubt and ask the question "am I possibly wrong about this?" was considered a bad thing. They were assuming very huge assumptions, that there was this super-powerful guy named god, who made everything, who sent his very own son (how did he have a son? It was never made very clear to me) to Earth, and that there was a place called heaven and a place called hell. One you went to if you believed in the Bible and this Jesus guy and followed certain instructions, and you went to the other place if you didn't.

I've always been taught to wary of the fallibility of assumptions, particularly ones that don't have any easily accessible evidence for them, but these people didn't even try to realize that these were simply assumptions. They acted as if they were true, and they were setting themselves up in a belief system that wouldn't allow them to question the validity of these assumptions. They were deceiving themselves. They weren't being honest with their line of reasoning.

I think this is what I detected even at an early age, even though I couldn't realize it exactly until I was much older. It was encapsulated in the quandary that I had thought up when I was little. Why is it Sunday is such an especially reserved day for going to church? I had learned in school that day and night were caused by the Earth's rotation, thus, the idea of there being seven "days" to the week was just an arbitrary creation of keeping track of time. It could've easily been week of eight days (which would've been awesome, I had though as a kid, because then we would always have three day weekends), or six, or ten, or two. The distinction that a random, arbitrary day of a random, arbitrary time frame was "holy" puzzled me as a kid, but these people whole-heartedly believed that this day really was a special day to commemorate to some big invisible thing in the sky.

It's just crazy to me. A belief system where it's a bad thing that admit that you might be wrong? Being open to the idea that you might be wrong was always the first step I was taught to being empathetic, being modest, and being a good thinker. Yet, religions seem to actively call for their followers to purposefully lie to and deceive themselves. It's astounding to me, and, as events in history have shown, positively dangerous and alarming.

I've rambled on long enough. I hope I've managed to say something of worth amidst all this text. I hope, just like Feynman hoped, that you, dear reader, have the freedom and ability to be honest with yourself. It would be a disservice to your own intelligence and ability if you weren't.

Going to Class on Inauguration Day May Result in an "F"

Tuesday, the 20th of January, 2009. A memorable day, not the least because it was the day that Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States, and Bush could finally vacate the White House and proceed to figure out how to live in a nation that almost universally detested him. The upside, however, is that he's probably living in the one country that likes him the most out of all the countries in the world.

Anyway, it is clearly a historic day, the first (half) black President being sworn in after a ground-breaking campaign. It seems it will be a day to cherish and remember for all American history, with a President who might end up being remembered as among the greatest, in the company of Lincoln, Washington, and FDR. It was an inauguration that you couldn't let just slide past unexperienced and unseen. Unfortunately, it was also the first day of classes at NYU.

I pondered going to class. I've experienced some of the righteous jealousy of teachers in the past, when students let other, non-academic events take precedence (or, even other academic classes) over their class. The teachers would often, in great annoyance, state how utterly important this class was for the future success of their students, and a failure to give it the respect (and attendance) it deserves put your education and well-being at risk. They then would huff indignantly and return to their planned lecture for the day. For some reason or another, I mostly remember this being done by English teachers of mine.

So, I have a great deal of respect for my teachers, and I do not easily decide not to go to classes (especially considering how much my family is paying for them). However, inauguration day puts that dedication to the test. Should I stay in my room to watch this historic figure become President? A man that seems to have the ability and the leadership to steer our country into even greater glory and responsibility? A man that I personally rooted for and voted for?

I checked what class I had first. Life Drawing: Anatomy. A class that doesn't exactly sound like it has the most intellectual and academic gravitas to it. Taking into consideration the liberal nature of NYU and the level of Obama support I've seen around on campus, I decide that my teacher might be nice and understanding enough to forgive me for missing class for the inauguration.

I stay in my dorm, and have a good time watching and listening to President Obama's inauguration, though I get a nervous pang in my stomach as I watch the clock get ever closer to when my class starts, but I ignore it and continue watching, enjoying it all the while.

Finally, it finishes, and I check the clock. It's fifteen minutes past the time my class started. I check how long the class is supposed to go on for, and it's about a three hour class. I then begin to think about whether I should go now and show up considerably late for class (as the travel time to get to class would tack on about another 20 minutes or so), or just skip it altogether. For some reason, showing up late to a class seems so much worse to me than just missing it entirely. Despite my nervousness about showing up late, however, I decide to go, since I would still be there for the majority of the class time. Whatever the disapproval I got, I figured it would be better of me to have to face my teacher for the first time being late rather than having missed the first class altogether.

I grab my stuff and hop on the bus that will take me to main campus. While I wait for the bus to start to move, I briefly consider some excuses for why I'm showing up late, but I quickly drop the line of thought to settle into some nice reading (Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time). After some fifteen minutes or so, I'm on campus and rushing to my class room.

When I get to the room, however, the door is locked. I push on it a little bit, making the door make a bit of a loud "thunk", but no one comes to open it. I try to look through the windows to see if anyone is inside, but the windows are those purposely distorted kind that makes it impossible to tell what's past them. I start to think "Was class canceled because of the inauguration? Did I come all the way up here for no reason?". Since the class was in the animation area, the floor had a front desk where staff sat to check out people into the computer labs on the floor and to give them technical assistance. They also had the keys for all the rooms.

I walk up to the desk and ask "By any chance, do you know if the Life Drawing class is canceled?". A man behind the desk looks up at me and shakes his head.

"No, I'm pretty sure it's on-going."

I explain to him how I tried to open the door, how it was locked, and it seemed there was no one inside to open it. The man sighs slightly and stands up, grabbing a chain of keys.

"They must've locked it because of the model," he tells me as he leads me to the door and begins to unlock it.

I'm puzzled. "Model?" I ask as he opens the door.

Let me just say, when I read the description of the class, I thought we'd be doing some studies of animals, skeletal structures, hands, etc. I had seen fellow students of mine in, what I thought, was the Life Drawing: Anatomy class, and they had been drawing skeletons and animals in various poses, so my expectation of the class was not without justification. However, it seems that I had it completely wrong. I must have been seeing students working for a different drawing class or something.

The door swings open to reveal that, indeed, the class was in session, and that probably all the other students in the class was already there, arranged in a semi-circle, each sitting at a drawing desk. A woman in gray hair sits in the corner, who, I assume, must be the professor. They all stop and look up at me, as it seems I have interrupted them in the middle of drawing something. I stand there, in the door way, realizing that I'm the only one, or the last one, to show up late to the class, something I wasn't quite counting on. I had expected other students to have done what I had did, but it does not seem to have been the case. I start to have that familiar sinking feeling in my chest as I turn to see what they could possibly be drawing. A stark naked girl standing in an elegant pose stares back at me.

Needless to say, I'm completely astonished. I feel all the color drain from my face. I quickly avert my gaze and turn to look back at the teacher, who seems to be either watching me in bemusement or disapproval. I hesitantly make my way to her, knowing not what else to do. I approach her and begin to mumble, trying to explain myself but failing as my brain apparently stopped functioning properly.

"I...I'm sorry for, uh, being so, uh..."

She lets out a small chuckle at my consternation.

"No worries," she says in a kindly voice, "today is a very important and exciting day. Now, just fill out your information here and find a desk to sit at. You can ask one of the other students what we're doing."

She gives me a piece of paper that has the various names and contact information of all the other students, which I fill out. I then numbly look up and try to spot an empty desk. There isn't one. I have to drag one out. So, I go, and as quietly as possible, pick up a desk and place it at one end of the semi-circle of desks, all the while trying to avoid looking at the nude girl posing at the front of the class. I sit down, and bend over to the kid next to me.

"What are we doing?" I whisper.

The kid hands me a blank piece of paper and a crayola marker.

"We're drawing her as fast as we can with one color marker, and then we stop and use a different colored marker when she changes poses."

I look down at his paper, which already has several different iterations of drawings on it. They've been at this for a little while. I pick up the marker, and finally look back up at the model, who is facing away from me. I then try to toss aside my embarrassment and attempt to begin drawing her as quick as I could. By far, this was one of the most awkward and embarrassing ways I've ever entered a class, and it was the first class of the semester. A most excellent start.

After about thirty minutes of (attempting at) drawing the model, the teacher stops us, and tells the model to get dressed. She then tells us why she gave us such huge markers (to make it impossible to draw intricate details), and how we could use any medium we would like to draw the subject (a.k.a. the model). She then tells us some information, some of the materials we need to get, and then releases us early. I had only been there for about forty minutes.

As everyone gets up and leaves, some smiling bemusedly at me as they walked past, I got up and went to the teacher once again to try and apologize, and also find out if I had missed any other information.

"I'm sorry I showed up so late. I had been watching the inauguration..." I begin, at which she laughs.

"No, no, don't worry about it. We were all late for class as well, and we even tried to watch the rest of it here." She motioned at a computer monitor that had CNN's website displayed.

"Really?" I asked, feeling more relieved.

"Yes," she chuckles, "You know, if I had come in and any of my students had actually shown up on time for this class, I would've failed them!"

I laughed.

The Legend of Batman

As the summer begins in earnest and the blockbuster movies start kicking in I find my thoughts turning to Batman. Of course it's not very hard to get me thinking about Batman, since he's been one of those pop-culture mainstays/father figures I grew up with. I had been thinking about how much I was just tooting my own horn talking about how great video-games are and how much potential they have. So I decided to try and make a Batman Videogame.

Unfortunately, one man cannot make a videogame alone, especially if he has no knowledge of programming, limited time and funds, and a chronically short attention span. 

I have already done a little concept work and have a friend working on a side-scroller engine, but any help/encouragement would be greatly appreciated. 

I hope to post some of the concept work within the week, but any word in the interim is welcome.

GTA IV: Tough Choices

There are many reasons to like GTA IV. It's a technical achievement that has tons of features, great gameplay, a fully fleshed out and realized recreation of New York City, and compelling characters with snappy dialogue. However, as much as I appreciate and enjoy all those, they aren't the specific reason why I, personally, enjoyed and liked GTA.

The Choice is Mine, But Do I Care?

Player choice is not a new mechanic in videogames, it has been utilized in games for a long time now, but often it is not used properly or to its full potential becoming simply a way to have multiple endings for a game, or to choose your "alignment". They often lack depth, emotional involvement, and/or intellectual motivation. In too many games that I've played, the choices are too easy, very few actually make me weigh and consider the options. I am naturally inclined to choosing the "good" option of any choices given to me, and so many games make it so plainly obvious which choice represents the moral high ground and which ones don't. I barely even give that much thought to them, thus the impact of having a choice is lost on me. All I see them as is the different paths to the alternative endings, if I feel so inclined to replay the game.

The first game I've ever played that actually made me sit and consider which choice I should actually take was the sublime Deus Ex. There was no obvious moral high ground in the game, each choice carrying a variety of associated good and bad consequences to it. I really had to bring my own judgment and thoughts to the game to really try to plumb which choice was the best one for me to make, which one would, in the end, would do the most good. It has been a long time since I've come across a game that has made me feel similarly.

Bioshock was the next game that I can recall that added a higher level to the choices they give the player other than "get good end/bad end". The intellectual and theoretical emotional implications between choosing whether to save the twisted girl beings you found, or end their misery (so you might convince yourself) while gaining greater profit, where more profound than many other games. However, I, in the end, could only appreciate the intellectual motivation behind the choices, but emotionally, they were void of conflict or feelings. You profited just as much, if not more so, by saving the girls while also keeping the more empathetic and moral high ground. I read some reviewers having such a hard time deciding what to do with the little gathering girls, but my mind was made up before I even got to them. They were mentally stimulating to consider and think about but, ultimately, they left little impression upon me, which is not what you want to be said of having to make supposedly hard choices.

Difficult Choices

Grand Theft Auto IV was the first of the GTA series that I've actually played through the main story. I've never owned one of the previous installments (by virtue of my parents), and my experience with them was limited to small bursts of random enjoyment. While it seems that they had more side missions and larger maps, the whole experience was aimed to be much more comical and satirical rather than a serious narrative venture. IV, though maybe not having as many sidequests or as much landscape to travel, it certainly seems to have expanded upon and matured their narrative. They haven't entirely discarded GTA's satirical nature though, but it's now made all the poignant and relevant by the equally compelling story and its residents.

That's what really made the experience for me; the characters. They are empathetic yet reprehensible, likeable yet disgusting, they are aspiring yet ultimately their own flawed humanity undoes them. They feel, very much so, like real people; mixed with a bit of good and a bit of bad. You can't really dislike any of them, while you can't really love any of them.

What does this all have to do with choice? At certain points in the game, GTA gives you a choice where you must choose one person to live and another to die. You can't save both and you can't kill both, you can only side with one. It is not the first time such a situation has been brought before me; Mass Effect, for example, did a very similar thing with two of the characters. However, GTA, unlike Mass Effect, does not simply leave you to save someone from a fatal, antagonistic force, but rather it is you that are the fatal force to befall on the character of your choosing.

This was an interesting twist to the choice paradigm normally presented in video games. Most often, the good choice is in the abstaining of an action, usually to kill someone, while the evil choice is to follow through with it (or, vise versa, depending on the situation). However, here, there is no choice of inaction, you have to do something, and no matter which way you choose, you are going to perform an altogther immoral deed. That is ultimately what got the hooked me: not that I had to simply choose between a moral choice and an immoral choice, but that I was now stuck with deciding which was the less immoral choice, the lesser of two evils.

The particular situation in this choice was choosing between killing the characters of Dwanye Forge, or Trey "Playboy X" Stewart, neither of them being either a saint or a demon, further adding to the moral muddiness in choosing between the two. They're both gangsters, both were and are involved in illegal activities, and probably have killed people themselves. But they both aren't psychopathic sociopaths, they both realize, somewhat, the wrongness of their deeds, but yet they cannot do anything else for it is all they know. They are faulted people, trying to survive in a world that is harsh and violent. However, as events turn out, Dwayne and Playboy both end up telling you you must kill the other.

I remember quite clearly, as I was driving along to the district in Algonquin where they both lived, trying to choose which one was the lesser immoral action, in the game, the sun slowly drew down behind dark stormy clouds, from which rain started falling. I drove along slowly, giving myself time to ponder, with Phillip Glass' Pruit Igoe playing on the radio. It was that moment that keenly defined GTAIV for me, driving along, contemplating the consequences of each action, while the deeply melancholic music filled the air, and the cityscape of New York stood towering in the rain. It was then that the narrative took me, and fulfilled me in a way that few other story-telling mediums has managed to, not just videogames themselves. It was then that I finally experienced the interactive experience of choice, and the weight of the consequences that might ensue from that. GTAIV transformed from being merely a great videogame to being a great experience.