Choice in videogames is a hinky thing.

In Deus Ex your decisions at an early point in the game determine whether or not your brother dies. The player is faced with this situation: the door to Paul Denton's seedy Hell's Kitchen apartment will explode in just a few moments, prompting your character's first encounter with the notorious Men in Black. Fleeing the firefight through an apartment window dooms your sibling, while rushing to meet your foes head-on gives him a chance to escape and fight another day. This choice is not immediately evident, so it came as quite a surprise to me while reading up on the game online. I rushed back to the title, playing through it as quickly as I could to get to the branching point. Deus Ex was not a particularly short game and Mr. Denton doesn't have his vital coin flipped until a few hours in. What's more, it's not until a bit later that the consequences of your choice become apparent.

At that time I was a little distressed to see the outcome. Rescuing your brother from certain demise accomplishes little else than a 30 second speech, and that's the extent of your "choice" in Deus Ex. The rest of the game plays as if good old Paul was pushing up daisies in some Federal cemetery.

I'm Lucas Kane. Today is going to be the worst day of my life. Hey, it worked for Twenty Four...

Indigo Prophecy also promises choice. It's the hallmark that the game was built on. In a diner, located in a very different New York City than Deus Ex's, you assume control of Lucas Kane moments after he has been forced to commit a brutal murder via the hypnotic meddling of an unknown source. Lucas is scared, erratic. The player then takes control, with Lucas fretting over the awful situation he's found himself in. Covered in blood, body on the floor, restroom in disarray... Lucas has to get out of there by whatever means necessary.

It's here that the illusion of choice begins. Do you mop up the blood? Do you wash your hands? Dashing out of the bathroom in a hurry accomplishes little more than imprinting your face on multiple witnesses as you burst into the night through the emergency exit. On the other hand, the quick-yet-fastidious player will have time to wash his face, conceal his self-inflicted wounds, and pay his cheque before disappearing from the scene of the crime. Even out on the snow-driven streets of New York City you're given a choice. Do you take the subway or the taxi cab? The seasoned player knows the choice is obvious. Take the subway: there's nobody to tell the cops where you went.

But you'll note I said the illusion of choice. Hallmark or not, there is very little actual free will in Indigo prophecy. There's the route that gets you more information and more scenes, or the route that doesn't. The curious, click-happy player will find just about everything worth finding and the careless slob that barrels through the game without pausing to sip on milk or wash his clothes will miss out on key moments.

In the end it doesn't matter, the detectives will find Lucas, Lucas will uncover the great conspiracy, and the player will have his choice of three endings that are all easily accessible from the last scene no matter what path is taken through the game. Choice, as the attentive player will realize, has much less to do with Indigo Prophecy than its creator David Cage would have you believe.

Even if the choices don't have the weighty bulk that one might hope, the system is still leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the players in the field. Some months ago Mr. Turner linked the 'game' Facade, which offered a chance to assume the role of the mitigating friend in a marital dispute. You could reminisce over old times, drink wine, even choose your gender! At the end of the game you could reunite the star-crossed lovers or send one storming out into the night. But, due to the game's cumbersome parser, most attempts just ended with the player getting ejected out of the apartment by an overbearing husband.

Indigo Prophecy has no such illusions of grandeur. The game is much more accessible. While this can sound like a detriment, it's anything but. While playing the game the system is almost invisible. People cried when Kings Quest V or Space Quest IV had clicky hand icons instead of a text-based input... but really, what does that give you the option of? There's equal amount of user input in Indigo Prophecy with the simple use of the analogs as there were in the ten plus adventure games Sierra put out in the late 80s. The action of using a mop is transparent, a simple twitch back and forth of the right stick. Most players will enjoy this. Avoiding bulky command systems allows you to immerse yourself in the moment instead of having to remember the X+Y+A+R combination for the "special mop clean-up maneuver".

It's the 1980s game of light and memorization!

Action scenes take a similar slant, asking the character to hit the analog sticks in cardinal directions according to little panels that appear on the screen, reminiscent of the "board game" Simon. It's a good way to drop you into the energy of the scene, and placing the panels in the center of the screen allows the player to recognize the button inputs without missing a significant amount of the actions those buttons elicit from the characters. Aside from two mandatory stealth sequences the input is generally forgiving, and for the few moments during the endgame when it gets to be a pain it's easy enough to drop the difficulty down from the main menu.

You won't feel bad doing this, because Indigo Prophecy isn't a game about action and quick button presses. It's a thriller! It's a murder mystery! It's a conspiracy theorist's dream!

The game starts strong with positively superb voice acting, considering its medium. Lucas's tension is palpable in the restaurant and, despite some poor dialogue choices for Tyler, the black cop who "grew up in the hood", the detectives act a lot like how you'd expect them to act were they called out to a run-down diner in the middle of the night. The voice acting on the three main characters is generally pretty good, even if poor Tyler has to drop some of the lamest lines in recorded gaming history (often accompanied by a swagger and funk music). A good majority of the supporting cast is easy on the ears as well. The character models could use a serious overhaul, often making the player lose track of the issue at hand in some of the more emotional scenes of the game, but they're not below par by any means. The problem is that David Cage is trying to elicit more from his characters than their lackluster polygons can produce. In close-ups models sometimes move like awkward ragdolls, and the mere act of stroking someone's face looks more like caressing them with a hunk of dead tuna than anything resembling a hand.

For the majority of the game the story is no slouch either. You'll want to be enraptured by it. I'm an easy sell when the words "detectives" come up, but the game does such a good job with making Lucas empathetic it's hard not to want to aid him in his plight. If you're anything like me you'll rush through the scenes with detectives Carla and Tyler in order to get back to playing Lucas and unraveling more of the mystery. You might even find yourself purposely leading the detectives astray in order to buy Lucas more time in his search. Of course, as we've discussed, you'll eventually figure out that your efforts were for naught (bits of essential evidences are collected whether you like it or not), but it's a good way of sublimating the urge to be in control.

It's not until the final hour of the game that the exquisitely wound story unravels, but when it unravels it does it like a pro. While in the 11th hour of Indigo Prophecy you'll wonder if David Cage forgot what game he was making. Even the illusion of choice goes out the window as the player is railroaded down one specific path towards Lucas's inevitable destination. To add insult to injury, the path Lucas chooses is fraught with inconsistencies and melodrama. The first six hours of the game takes place over a course of a few days, then a month passes without a single scene inbetween. It's very easy to miss the date stamp, which will cause the player to balk at how fast a love affair develops... one that leads to the the oft-mentioned sexual encounter that was cut out of the American release of the game.

Unfortunately, Basketball in sub-zero weather is one of the game's more forgivable continuity woes..

Frankly, if the uncensored version contains the same awkward motions and herky-jerky caresses of the rest of the game, I don't think we're missing out on anything.

It only spirals further down. The last moment reveals of certain antagonistic characters is outright laughable. There are no words to describe it; the final plot twists just have to be seen to be believed. What's more, the careful crafted dialogue moments start to fall apart in the last minutes, and you may hear Lucas referencing characters that have never gotten a single mention before. The carefully crafted story that's been woven throughout 90% of the game falls apart in its final moments in what I can only imagine is a dastardly attempt to ruin the positive experience you've built up.

So it turns out the player has a choice after all. The specter of choice is deeper than Deus Ex's fraternal dilemma, but the results are generally the same. Indigo Prophecy is a game that will give you five or six hours of exquisite mystery for a mere trade-off of just 60 minutes of head-rubbing crap. Indigo Prophecy makes leaps and bounds towards the marriage of cinematography and games, but unless you're a die-hard fan it probably isn't worth your hard earned dinars. All the same, at six or seven hours the game makes for a very solid rental that you can finish in a weekend. It's short, but mostly sweet. I don't feel bad dropping $40 on it if it gives David Cage the chance to make a better one next time.

But if he could exercise HIS choice for just a moment, maybe he'll end the next game an hour earlier.