THE INTERACTIVE EDGE

Z, 20, 🇦🇺: The most memorable gaming experiences tend to come from role-playing games that encourage you to make a character to put in the world (e.g. SWTOR or Skyrim). By putting a little bit of myself through a character and their relationship to the universe around them, I find that story beats tend to resonate with me far more than if I was playing a pre-made protagonist.

(On Corcit, his Imperial Agent in SWTOR): The thing to know about Corcit is she is an opportunist first and foremost. Her stint with Imperial Intelligence is the first step she really took towards loyalty; after the close-knit team thing happened, and to have that shattered really just sent her backwards. In the long run, she ends up a ghost agent on call for the Empire but she fundamentally has no loyalty to any state. It twists her into a selfish soldier without a nation, and without a nation, what is a soldier? They’re empty.

LD, 28, 🇦🇺: She sees a lot of herself in her characters. “Xucie is my recklessness, my smart-ass mouth, my wild side.” J’aadar is my mental illness, my depression, and Vii is my niceness, my need to help and be kind.”

Kai, 18, 🇺🇸:

“I cried when Solas [from Dragon Age: Inquisition] broke up with me for like a week… For one, I’d never had a relationship before, and he was my first romance in a game. My brother had actually told me that Solas breaks up with you, so I let him take Vissa’s vallaslin [Elven tattoos] in some misguided attempt to keep him. But, oh man, the voice acting… Still hurts. [Vissa was] angry. She felt betrayed. She wasn’t about to bend over backwards to try to get him back after it was clear it was over. In the moment, though, she would’ve done anything.