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I always pick the ape. I'd like to say I do this for some meaningful reason. But the truth is I do it because monkeys are funny. Not as funny as penguins. Penguins are slapstick incarnate. But you can't play as a penguin in Black & White. Note to all game developers: more penguins please. Yet as I've returned to Black & White over the years, I've realised the ape is the ideal creature for a god in its universe. Apes are one evolutionary step away from a higher intelligence, capable of using their minds in ways beyond what nature has instilled in them. This can be productive, such as using tools, or something destructive, such as murder. In this way the ape a perfect embodiment of a human playing god; a creature that sends probes to distant worlds while slowly microwaving its own, that uses a smartphone to take pictures of its genitals, equal parts divine and asinine.
But the ape represents more than that. It's a microcosm of Black & White itself because the game is also one step away from a higher intelligence. Even 14 years on, it still does things that no game has come close to matching since. Within its code are glimpses of a path games ultimately never ventured down. But its pursuit of the revolutionary also includes moments of monumental stupidity, revealing glimpses of another path that its own creator seems unable to prevent himself pursuing.
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