This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
Every human being will want to avoid a few things when the world ends: rednecks with shotguns, power-hungry sociopaths, and my wife. My wife is a killer. A ruthless thug who will gun you down in your home for a can of gasoline or a pair of biker goggles to accessorize her outfit. And then she'll press the reset button like nothing ever happened. Unless, she really loves those goggles.
It's the end of the world in Bethesda's Fallout 3, and she's completing a business transaction with a man sporting the latest in post-apocalyptic fashion: the spikes-on-shoulder-pads look.
From the other room, I hear him say something caustic. My fingers pause over my keyboard as I draw in a breath and hold it. The silence rings in my ears for the briefest of moments before I hear the distinct draw of my wife's favorite assault rifle. Several loud bangs and some squishy noises follow.
The violence gives way to the familiar clicks and beeps of the game resetting. I run to the other room.
"Woah, what are you doing?" I ask.
"I'm playing Fallout 3," she says.
"I know. You just killed that guy — what are you doing?"
"I'm resetting. I just wanted to teach him a lesson."
"But he's going to be alive now."
"Yeah, I don't want him to die. He just made me so angry."
Over the years, I've seen gamer friends destroy entire villages, rob people while they sleep, or leave their companions to die. Even commit the occasional genocide. And more often than I can remember, a swift restart of the game followed these actions. "Now I'll play it for real," they say.
But what if there was no restart? What if the consequences in games were permanent — if you had to live with the things you'd done? Like in life, you only get one shot. Would you enjoy it less?
There was a moment in Fallout 3 when I thought I'd lost Dogmeat, my furry, end-of-the-world best friend. I sent him off to scrounge for ammunition, and minutes later he was still gone. I panicked. I searched everywhere: in overturned trucks and half-destroyed buildings. I was devastated.
But I guess we don't play games to be devastated. We want to rescue the princess. We want infinite lives and the chance to leave our mark on a world in a way we choose. We don't want things to be permanent. If we die protecting the ones we love, we want to come back and get it right. If we steal from someone and feel guilty, we can erase it. And if we want someone with whom we've bonded — whether a companion or pet — to return from the dead, we can make it happen just by hitting the reset button.
A few days later, the game told me Dogmeat made his way back to Vault 101. I practically screamed.