How Far Can Suspension Of Disbelief Be Stretched?

A common problem with video games as opposed to movies, television, or novels, is that oftentimes the protagonist's actions come across as hypocritical.  Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series is a good example. 

While the writers try their best to make him come across as heroic, it is still hard to shake the realization that he is killing hundreds of henchmen simply because they're "the bad guys". 

Commander Shepard from Mass Effect could potentially be committing genocide if his opponents came from an endangered race.  Even the lovable pink puffball Kirby can be seen as a mass murderer, traveling through various worlds attacking creatures that never harmed him in the first place.  I may like all these characters, but from the wrong perspective, they seem like they're doing more harm than good.

I bring this up because my recent playthrough of Driver: San Francisco caused me to look at game mechanics interacting with the storyline in a new light.  For those unfamiliar, the main character, Tanner, gets hit by a truck and put in a coma early in the game.

He winds up dreaming that he can possess cars on the road at will and use that to his advantage.  As a setup for intertwining the gameplay and the story, this works really well, but it offers an interesting way of bypassing the normal narrative problems in games. 

Even within the game world, Tanner is existing within a fantasy, so when he takes control of a stranger's car in order to thwart an criminal's escape, he is still able to remain sympathetic as a character.  He may not know he is in a coma, but deep down he knows something is wrong with his perception of reality.

There is a scene in the game where Tanner as his partner are tailing one of the main antagonists, only to lose her because she traveled across a bridge to another part of the city.  Tanner could not chase her because a big red barrier was blocking his path, due to not having "unlocked" that part of the game world yet, so he is forced to come up with an excuse to his partner for why he gave up the chase. 

It is rare to see a game openly acknowledge those game mechanics, and evenmore so in a way that does not shatter the fourth wall.  As much as games like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout try, it is still rather easy to manipulate the A.I., which may be funny for youtube videos, but rather hurts our suspension of disbelief. 

On the other side of the equation, games like Shadows of the Damned have blatant and cartoonish item drops, and 2D shooter sections for no reason other than to be funny (though that probably came down to a lack of money on the developer's part).

You could probably just chalk this up to me being too picky about games.  I can kill tons of aliens in Gears of War without feeling guilty, and I'm too busy having fun collecting Ridder trophies in Batman: Arkham City to wonder how Riddler even managed to put them there. 

But the closer a work of fiction leans towards realism, the harder it is to stretch disbelief. Even Dexter, a show I love, tries to be realistic in the portrayal of police protocol and character motivation, but I just know the titular character could never get away with what he does in real life, no matter how prepared and thorough. 

The way Driver: San Francisco handles the weaving of gameplay into the narrative made it stand out to me, and Tanner in particular may wind up as one of the better handled protagonists this year, even if I have never played a Driver game in the past.