Here is my longest and last letter to N'Gai Croal, wrapping up my involvement in this epic debate about the epic "God of War II." It's also the letter I had the most fun writing...

N'Gai,

I'm using my Dell desktop subweapon to write this, my final letter in our series. I could have used my Apple laptop or texted this whole thing over my cell phone. But I wanted to level up my home computer.

Now you've made something perfectly clear in your previous letter. You're a gameplay guy. You're not one of those people who is going to be seduced by a pretty screenshot or tricked by a lovely cutscene. No sir. You demand quality gameplay. And you quite properly demand your games prove their value in their play rather than in their pomp and circumstance. If only the marketing divisions of gaming companies shared your values. I know many gamers do. And rightly they should.

But allow me to pound the terrain at your feet a little to see if you still want to hold as steadfastly to those values. Allow me to praise some non-interactive moments in gaming history.

I'm taking this tack because of a question you asked me. I said I was more moved by Kratos' quest in the first "God of War" than in the second. You asked me: "How much did you care about Kratos during the gameplay as opposed to during the cutscenes?" You proceeded to provide a superb analysis of how, in "Ico," the gameplay and control mechanics define the characters and develop the player's attachment to them, no movie scenes required. You also praised what you feel is the sole example of story being woven into the game mechanics in the first "God of War": Kratos fighting a horde of himself. Here comes my "Phoenix Wright" "objection!"

I believe that in the interest of defining and praising games as interactive entertainment, a bias has arisen against those moments that are not interactive. My issue is that some of the most powerful moments I can remember experiencing in games occurred in scenarios I literally had no control over. (I'm going to deftly avoid spoilers here, as best I can):

-"Knights of the Old Republic": The game's big reveal - the one no "KOTOR" gamer will ever forget and that stands as one of the best plot twists in the medium's history -- occurs in a cut-scene. It's rendered in-game, but it's something the player has no control over. It involves the discovery of who a key character really is and involves a slow pan from behind the character to the front. If the player had control, they might have swung the camera the wrong way and missed the amazing revelation. If they had any control of the character in the scene, they might not have had the experience I had: sitting, waiting, watching the scene develop and having it dawn on my, split seconds before it happened, what I was about to see: who I was about to see revealed in their true identity. The power in the scene is that: you can not do anything about what is happening.

-"Silent Hill 2": At the end, after you find out how your player-character's wife really died, you're given only minimal control: you can just walk the lead guy down a long hallway. As you walk, you hear a letter from your dead wife sorrowfully explaining everything and justifying her own murder. You can't turn back during this walk. You can't control the pace at which she reads. You can just shuffle on in shock. (It reminds me of the scene in "Metal Gear Solid 3" that I know you liked, when Snake slowly climbs straight up a really high cliff, a trek made long enough to allow Team Kojima to turn the scene into a musical set-piece).

-"Killer 7": I'm going to spoil this one flat-out, because who that is reading this and hasn't played it is really going to go to the end? You spend the game using clunky controls to maneuver seven different scarred and beaten hitmen in a series of shootouts against creepy enemies. One of the seven who you control seems like a wimp. He's the rescuer. You use him to run into the field and rescue any of the other hitmen if you get them shot down. But his gun is weak, and he carries a big briefcase that he seems to have no use for. He's quiet and kind of lame. Late in the game you take control of this wimpy guy and make a return to a hotel level, which, if memory serves, is now depicted in black and white. There are no enemies for you to fight; just several splotches of blood to investigate, one or two per floor. You approach the first and a wholly non-interactive flashback cutscene is triggered. In it, you see your wimpy guy gunning down a healthy-looking version of one of your hitmen. You check out another blood spot and see your wimpy guy gun down another healthy version of another one of the hitmen - in cold blood. By the third, fourth and fifth one, you realize what is going on. His character, who used to think was the weakest and was the one you never really liked controlling? Well, before the game began, he apparently murdered the other six you've been playing as. You've really only been dealing with his delusions that the others are still alive. You've only been controlling him. And in that briefcase he's been toting? That's where he keeps the weapons he used to murder each of them in cold blood. The power of this comes from the hotel cutscenes. It's an incredible sequence.

I'm not trying to badger you with my more-encyclopedic-than-thou knowledge of games. Rather, I've never previously articulated the emotional value I now realize games can generate by switching to a non-interactive mode, subjecting the player to an impotent state and walloping them with a strong emotional moment. I didn't pay much mind when "Gears of War" scripter Susan O'Connor recently boasted about a scene in which the game's designers chose to kill off one of Marcus Fenix's commanding officers in a cutscene. She pointed out that the scene rendered the player as helpless to interact and try to stop things as was Marcus, who was pinned under enemy fire the whole time.

Getting this back to your question about whether the gameplay or the cut-scenes in the first "God of War" made me care as much as I have stated about Kratos' quest, I need to talk about my own favorite scene from the game. It uses a great blend of interactive and non-interactive moments. The scene comes a couple of hours into the game. At that point I've done many bloody, barbaric things as the puppeteer of Kratos. He and I ripped people's arms off and stabbed them with their own swords! Just nasty stuff. Fairly early in the game, while the siege of Athens is still under way, Kratos is tasked with rescuing a woman - I can't recall who and it doesn't really matter - from the second floor of a temple of some sort. Normal video game flow would have Kratos hacking up the bad guys and then winning the affection of the beautiful lady. Not so this time. The player hacks up the bad guys and then runs up toward the lady. She has more of a moral compass than most video game damsels in distress and is horrified by the brutality of her rescuer. So in a cut-scene--while Kratos can do nothing--she flees and runs right off a balcony. She falls to her death. Out of the hands of the player and out of the grasp of Kratos, that scene gains its power.

The function of most of the rest of the cut scenes in the first "God of War" was to deliver information about Kratos' past. Since his past is the story of an uncontrollable lust for power I again don't' might having no control as I watched that story unfold.

I agree with you that gameplay is pre-eminent, but I don't see a fault in the artful use of non-interactive moments to hit certain emotional beats. Now if we were talking about some "Final Fantasy"-style cutscenes being used solely to express how heroic the hero is, what a great and lovely flower-dancer the dainty love interest is or how awesome the crew's traveling air-ship is, then I'd be calling for the editing scissors as quickly as would you.

I guess I should mention "God of War II" at some point in this letter. Did I mention I beat the game? I want to bounce a few things off you about the tail ends of games, without, of course, giving too much away.

-Revisiting scenes from earlier games: Don't worry, I'm not going to ruin it for you--not completely. Just know that near the end of "God of War II" something will happen that will transport you right into a scene from the first game. Now if there's a kind of interactivity you really want me to praise, it's this kind. Consider that the malleability of all video game scenes is an illusion. Once you do something in them, you've played through - maybe, at best, created - an event. Because games and game levels can be re-played, we can re-open those chapters and try to have them play out differently. Invariably, though, they don't change too much and scenarios stay fairly fixed. A game sequel, however, can re-use or re-create familiar assets and literally drop you back to a moment you've already been and let you mess with things from another angle.

When this kind of thing happens in the movies, as in, say, "Back to the Future," you're merely watching Michael J. Fox interact with his past. That's cute and all, but in "God of War II" you're able to interact with a past you were--virtually--in yourself. It's a neat sort of pseudo-time-travel games can suck you into. Other games that have done this that I can recall are "Sly 3," which has you go back and play the "memory" of a boss battle that you would have played in an earlier Sly Cooper game. Late in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" you get to run a mission in "Grand Theft Auto III"'s Liberty City. The most familiar example to SNES-era gamers would probably be "Super Metroid," which follows up a prologue with an eerily quiet return to the battle-torn environment that players probably last ran through in the closing, catastrophic moments of Metroid on the NES. I would like to see more game designers exploit this advantage of the gaming medium: the ability to return players to their past and, better, to have them interact with it. It's a magical feeling.

-Sequels that say goodbye to hardware: My second-favorite game of all time, the side-scroller "Yoshi's Island" featured several end-of-level boss battle. The bosses were always based on normal enemies who, when sprinkled with a wizard's spells grew to screen-filling giant size. Yoshi's was one of the final major games on the SNES and therefore one of the last 2D console games Nintendo was going to be making in a while. I'll always take it as a tip of the hat to the old and new generations alike that that final sprinkling of the game made a little Bowser grow not just to screen-filling size, but into a third dimension. While all other bosses essentially stood at screen-right, giant Bowser approached, Godzilla-style, as a giant from the background. He bore right down on Yoshi, who suddenly wasn't able to throw his eggs left, right, up or down, but instead into the background - into a new angle of the playing field. And then the game ended and the Mario world went into 3D. 

"God of War II" wraps with a cut-scene (uh-oh!) that sets up the premise for the sequel. Without giving anything away, just trust me that what is being shown is a situation you'll want to play through, but which you'll know the PS2 could never render in real time. So in essence the game ends with a message: Kratos' adventure is about to get so big, the system you're playing on can't handle it. I think that's a great touch.

I need to wrap up now, with nary enough time to tell you that Okami did the thing you were talking about regarding giving the enemy characters in a game control of the same visual and interactive language as the player. You spend the first half of "Okami" tossing enemies around with calligraphy brush-strokes. Then you fight this one boss enemy. When you draw a stroke against him, an enemy brush crosses it out and draws it's own. It's a great touch, and one that you're right to encourage for future "God of War" games.

As this is my last turn in this exchange, I'd like to thank you for batting the ball back and forth with me. This was a fun experiment. You're going to get the last word, so speak on regarding whatever strikes your fancy.
I have one request: I would like you to handle one question for me. You raved about the game in late February. For a time you couldn't stop playing it. Then you did.

Some people complain about the length of games. Some find difficulty a turn-off. Others might think a good game should be savored as long as possible. I'd love to know what you think. Did you think back in late February that you'd be done with the game by now? If so, what went wrong? You or the game? Or is this the way gaming should be? What motivates us as players and what gets in the way of that is certainly a ripe topic for discussion.

It's been a blast...

-Stephen