…which makes me think that while violence itself can cause an emotional disconnect, its effects can be closer to drama and can still invoke the audience’s emotions, depending on whether they care about the characters involved and how the consequences are dealt with.

Of course, you still wouldn’t be doing yourself any favors to begin a scene that you want to be emotional with violence; if violence serves to temporarily suspend the emotions, an emotional scene which is provoked by an act of violence should probably take the focus off the violence as much as possible and focus on the characters’ reactions to it.

I’m not sure how one could apply this to games in their current form, though, except to say that this is probably another way that gameplay-cutscene separation makes it easier to get people emotionally involved. One could, of course, create the gameplay around it, but the result would probably look a lot different than your typical narrative-focused game.

About Writing is at the top of my list to purchase, and your post makes me even more excited to read it. Everything I’ve read by Delany has been gold (though sometimes complicated, confusing, needs to be read three or four times gold).

I agree with you about the most exciting parts of Deus Ex being the non-combat sections. The most engaging parts of the game are interaction with the characters, especially Paul. I would enjoy the game even more if it featured little or no combat.

The enemies in Deus Ex are numerous and faceless for the most part, and I don’t think that video games are at a point where violence can be emotionally interesting as Delany describes it. Part of this is the technology, especially in Deus Ex. If I hit a guy with a crowbar it’s almost cartoony. They may run away with little drops of blood spurting ridiculously from their bodies. I’m not saying realistic violence is the key, but real repercussions to the actions lend them more weight.

So in a way, I think it was a mistake for Deus Ex to focus so much on combat and try to tell an engaging story. The issues Delany brings up are heightened in a video game. Where in a TV show or movie there might be some meaningless violence to get the blood pumping, in Deus Ex meaningless violence happens every five seconds.

And it is meaningless, despite the fact that the developer’s tried to make it meaningful. Taking the non-violent approach removes the player even further from emotional connection with the game, because it is more distracting to try not to kill an enemy than it is to just shoot them and get back to the engaging part of the game, the story.