I’ve Become An Awful Jerk Whenever I Play This Haunting Sledgehammer Game, But It’s Not My Fault

I had only played about an hour of Virtue and a Sledgehammer prior to sitting down to speak with a few of the game's devs. The third-person, narrative-driven exploration game is essentially a walking simulator, in that you methodically explore a space and slowly uncover a story. You learn about what's happening by swinging a sledgehammer, which can shatter buildings, break open painful memories, crush generators, and destroy the androids that each house the digitized ghost of a person who was once one of your neighbors. The story gets pretty freaky, pretty fast--it opens with the reveal that the body of the protagonist's mom is in their car's trunk--and is clearly more concerned with telling an affecting story than delivering a traditionally fun experience. Or at least that's what I thought before I spoke with the devs. And one small moment changed everything: I asked all those who were present if they found themselves playing the game the same way or if they tackled Virtue and a Sledgehammer's loop of tearing down both physical and figurative walls differently. "You know, actually--this is just funny and stupid--but there's actually aiming in the game," Deconstructeam composer an…