Gaming Moments: "No brain" ledge

THE SCENARIO:

The storm rages outside the church's windows, Father Pain starts loading his holy shotgun, shell by shell, the thunder and lightning outside marks the rhythm for his motions, but while his hands are busy handling the weapon, his eyes are fixed on the window, staring deeply into the night. A lightning strike! the light it gives lasts for only a second, just  enough to remind him of the undead horde gathering outside his window, they are slow and stupid "gotta be at least a hundred of them shambling demons" thinks Father Pain, in his heart he keeps telling himself he'll be able to hold the church.

Fig. 1: Zombie Horde

As the last shell enters the barrel he falls to his knees and starts what could be his last prayer, he doesn't ask for anything, not even in this time of despair. He finishes his prayer and starts walking up the stairs, he has walked up this stairs every day for the past 30 years, but this time they feel a little bit longer, just enough for him to start regretting his decision, but he doesn't stop. Finally he reaches the bell tower, he used to love the view, as he watches the horde get closer he realizes he doesn't have enough ammunition, he knew that already, but he held some hope, now hope is a lost concept to him. As he readies his shotgun he notices a broken ledge in front of him, he gets close to examine it, he wouldn't want to fall, not tonight, as he looks down a thought crosses his mind "WOULDN'T IT BE AWESOME TO JUMP FROM HERE?!? DAMN THAT'D LOOK COOL" as the most idiotic thoughts of his life cross his mind all notion of logic and reason leaves his brain, he takes a step back, his body is ready, as he starts running, a little frail voice inside his mind says "you know, this is a stupid idea" but he cant hear it, for the loud and strong voice in his heart is screaming "LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY".
 

His hands are shaking, his heart is pumping, eyes fixed on the horizon, and suddenly, he reaches the ledge, and as he swan dives into the night his mouth lets out what would be his final words "I REGRET NOTHING!".
 

LOADING... LOADING... the bright white words light up the screen as you put your controller on the couch and think to yourself "well that was stupid, last checkpoint was about half an hour ago..." you stand up and go to the kitchen to get some juice, you know this game takes some time to load. As you grab the bottle and take off the lid a faint smile appears on your face as you say "...but it was totally worth it!"

Pictured: The result of many "great ideas"

THE GAMING MOMENT: 

Turning off your brain and jumping into inevitable doom (Jumping into inevitable Wolfenstein is not as entertaining) , those moments when we just forget everything we've learned so far through the game and act against our better judgement.

We've all been there, we find a certain something that we know for sure means game over, but we dont care, we just have to see for ourselves, we need to crash into the rocks at 200Kmph just to know what it feels like, and it doesnt need to be a ledge, common thoughts that lead to "No brain ledges" include:

• "I wonder if this would explode if i hit it with the knife"
• "I wonder what would happen if i shoot the king in the face"
• "I wonder i can fit underneath that tank"
• "I wonder how long can i cook the grenade" 

Thoughts that lead to:

• "(Knife sound)"
• "(Face exploding sound)"
• "(Crawling on mah belly sound)"
• "Tick... Tick... Tick..."

And these are usually followed by:

• "BOOM"
• "GUARDS!!"
• "SQUISH"
• "OH! So thats what my liver splattered on the ceiling looks like!"

And of course they all end up taking us back to the loading screen while the game reloads the last checkpoint. Now, it may sound like you could blame curiosity for all of this, but thats the thing, these moments start with a player possessing knowledge of the game, more than enough to know what the result of his actions will be, so, why do we do it?.

Lets go to an specific example for this: Halo, which one? any of them. while Halo is by no means an open world game, it does give the player the tools to fully explore the environment, and the environment themselves tend to be expansive and open to alternate paths, yes, there are clear "YOU WILL GO THROUGH THIS DOOR AND ONLY THIS DOOR! AND YOU WILL KNOW! THAT MY NAME IS BRIAN, SENIOR DEVELOPER AT BUNGIE! WHEN I LAY MY CUTSCENE UPON THEE!" But we still get a good amount of freedom, specially in the outside areas of the game, and here is where the Brainless brilliance happens.

A common mission in the halo franchise includes a driving section in an open enviroment, and this levels are filled with jumps, ledges and the ocasional mutant alien ostrich. 

Fig. 2: Mutant alien ostrich (possibly a terrorist)

And at one point or another we'll see something we cannot ignore, five mutant alien ostriches are hanging around a rock that looks like a ramp on top of a waterfall at the edge of a cliff, now, there are three things we know for a fact:

1. Killing ostriches has no impact on the game whatsoever.
2. When you make a jump with your vehicle you lose control of it.
3. If you fall of that cliff you'll die and will have to go back to the last checkpoint.

But the moment we see that scenario we throw all that knowledge out of the window to make room for "How awesome would it be to send those mutant alien ostriches flying over the waterfall" and before we know it we are midway through the ramp at maximum speed with the necks of 3 ostriches tangled up on the mounted gun, and as their bodies spin majestically in the air we realize the mistake we've made, but we don't care, whats best, we'll probably do it again to see if we can get all five of them. 

Wasting military resources and dooming humanity for eternity never looked so awesome

We do things like that because we love experimenting, one of the greatest characteristics of gamers is that we HAVE to know how far we can push the rules and mechanics set for us, we have to know how far can we send Sgt. Bobblepatch flying with our C4 charges, we have to know how a giant battlemech would look riding on top of a tank, we have to know. and that drives us to experiment and fully experience the game in ways not even the developers thought of. But that's not the only reason, we also do this because, sometimes, we need a break, even in something as fun as a videogame (Unless that videogame happens to be Resident Evil 5 where the only fun comes from turning the console off) sometimes we just want to forget everything about missions, and rules and just fool around, which is why games like Minecraft and Skyrim are so popular.
 

So, maybe we want to know what  we can achieve, maybe we want to see how far we can push the rules before the game punish us, or maybe we just need to turn our brain off and fool around, but for whatever reason, once we see that ledge overlooking the beautiful city of Venice, we wont care about the consecuences or what the game has thought us, we'll jump from the bell tower and plummet into the ground, and we'll smile while we "Press X to reload last checkpoint" while we think to ourselves "Worth it".