Ripping a child from the arms of her loving parents and murdering her to showcase your awesome zombie game that probably won't be near as visceral in reality is crassly manipulative in my opinion. But then that's the name of the marketing game.
Oh come now, every piece of medium serves only to manipulate your emotions in order to return a desired emotional result. That this trailer does it more skillfully than the others is no more crass than a Killzone trailer being all "NUH NUH NUH WAR HOORAH" or a Nintendogs trailer being all "Man, aren't dogs cute"?
I think the point, for me at least, is that focusing on a child in any sort of threatening situation is "the easy way out" and can quite easily be done in such a manner as to be considered crass.
Media has long used kids in this manner. And it's rarely done well. It can be and when it is, it's a powerful moment. The problem is that it's very much a balancing act to get it right.
For some, this wasn't effective and was a little too much. Did it get us talking? Oh, hell yes, so in that regard, it worked. But, that doesn't mean it wasn't crass or cheap.
Now, all of this is very much my own view on it. However, it sounds like it's a view that others have. For some of us, it was too crass. It wasn't one of the times when threats to a kid or the death of a child is done well.
But, again, we are talking about it, so the trailer did it's job to get in our heads.
It's a zombie apocalypse played fairly realistically. Kids will die, and rise, and need to be killed again.
Anyway, I hope for two things. That the zombies don't run like they do in the trailer and that one bite doesn't turn you into a zombie. Cause those two things in a game that's heavy on the melee and guns are few with ammo being even more scarce. Would suck. One of the two would be fine, but both? Do not want.
UNLESS! I can level up melee to the point that I can kill a mob of zombies with a spoon.
I'm pretty much all zombied out but I give them credit for looking different from 99% of the other living dead games out there (urban, bad "metal" soundtrack, modern warfare arsenal, dudes looking like the Road Warrior).
TrippyJingMoses supposes his toeses are roses.But Moses supposes erroneously.Registered Userregular
edited February 2011
How many times have zombie stories done this?
Oh noes, my parent/significant other/child/friend/etc. is dying/turning!
Isn't that the point of zombie stories that feature such human relationships? To make the cold, unfeeling, flesh-eating walking corpses even more terrifying?
Oh noes, my parent/significant other/child/friend/etc. is dying/turning!
Isn't that the point of zombie stories that feature such human relationships? To make the cold, unfeeling, flesh-eating walking corpses even more terrifying?
In movies / literature , yes. In games, [IMO] no. Zombies in games are just something else to shoot at. I don't want them personified to the level of what is in that trailer. But that is just a personal preference.
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
If this was the end of a movie and/or if the theme wasn't zombies, it'd probably get me.
I find zombies to be incredibly ridiculous. It's impossible for me to take it seriously.
The zombies isn't what gets to me. It's the thought of watching your wife and child being murdered while you are powerless to stop it.
It's the thought of the zombies that ungets me. Even an alien invasion is more possible, as in at all possible.
As much as a lot of horror is founded on things that could totally happen to you, a lot of other horror is founded on things that could not possibly happen ever
It's the fundamentals of zombies that a lot of people find terrifying - generally the "unthinking, unfeeling mob" concept, although the cannibalism is also a big scary thing for some people, and the whole "disease" angle is another
It's all the worst parts of a viral disease epidemic and survival coupled with the worst parts of human nature personified into tens of thousands of walking, rotting corpses
Of course, if you were just going "I CAN'T SUSPEND MY DISBELIEF SO THIS IS DUMB" then I'm sorry that I can't help you, except to tell you that some people can be horrified by things that did not or can not happen!
Exactly. That's not a trailer. It's a short film. It's a GREAT short film. And I almost don't want a game made out of it, because the reason this trailer works will more than likely NOT translate into a game, for a couple reasons.
1) The brevity of the short is what gives it power - minimal story, minimally told. There's nothing that 15 hours of gameplay can add to this particular experience.
2) I honestly think that decades of zombies as villains in videogames has deadened their ability to do anything but be oogy jump scares at best, but more often than not, just basic bullet food.
Hell, Zombie MOVIES have been around since the late 60's, and we've only just now (with Walking Dead) gotten a filmed version of the creatures that tries to remember these shambling monsters were once people, and are being completely and utterly degraded in death. The closest we've gotten to that before was Bub in "Day of the Dead" and even then, he was a jokey, almost hopeful figure.
I know games like Bioshock and Red Dead have shown they can provide a sucker punch after hours and hours of gameplay, but I don't see this trailer translating into a game that will be anywhere NEAR as evocative.
regarding the "they're trading on a little kid's death" issue - Zombie children have been part of the genre since "Night of the Living Dead." Literally from the beginning - dead kids coming back to life has been a big part of it. At some point, using the term "manipulative" when describing horror films becomes meaningless. Manipulation, SHAMELESS manipulation, is kind of the point of horror movies, more than any other genre. If anything, this short film tackles the subject of the young undead more tastefully than say, "Dawn of the Dead."
Ripping a child from the arms of her loving parents and murdering her to showcase your awesome zombie game that probably won't be near as visceral in reality is crassly manipulative in my opinion. But then that's the name of the marketing game.
Oh come now, every piece of medium serves only to manipulate your emotions in order to return a desired emotional result. That this trailer does it more skillfully than the others is no more crass than a Killzone trailer being all "NUH NUH NUH WAR HOORAH" or a Nintendogs trailer being all "Man, aren't dogs cute"?
Did you miss the bolded part up there or something? Or how about the bit before that where I state that this is simply my opinion?
I mean, it's not like I use marketing to make my purchasing decisions anyway. Especially for games.
It is interesting seeing how much this trailer is driving a lot of the desire for this game though.
edit: As a piece of media in the Zombie genre, it's a simple trope that's been around for ages. The fact that it's given this kind of queasy, close up and slo mo voyeurism isn't even unique. The only thing unique about it is that it's in a trailer for a video game.
As a piece of marketing for the game, I seriously doubt any of what we saw is indicative of actual gameplay (par for the course). So that's my reasoning for calling it crassly manipulative.
You missed the point of the trailer entirely. It was slow, methodical, and close up to show the humanity of the family. The girl, the father, and the wife were human beings with lives that have suddenly been torn apart. Left 4 Dead trivializes the violence, this shows the impact of it. It's horrible and terrible and lives are lost in the blink of an eye - that's what a zombie outbreak means in the real world. It's not fun or cool, it's just awful.
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Exactly. That's not a trailer. It's a short film. It's a GREAT short film. And I almost don't want a game made out of it, because the reason this trailer works will more than likely NOT translate into a game, for a couple reasons.
1) The brevity of the short is what gives it power - minimal story, minimally told. There's nothing that 15 hours of gameplay can add to this particular experience.
2) I honestly think that decades of zombies as villains in videogames has deadened their ability to do anything but be oogy jump scares at best, but more often than not, just basic bullet food.
Hell, Zombie MOVIES have been around since the late 60's, and we've only just now (with Walking Dead) gotten a filmed version of the creatures that tries to remember these shambling monsters were once people, and are being completely and utterly degraded in death. The closest we've gotten to that before was Bub in "Day of the Dead" and even then, he was a jokey, almost hopeful figure.
I know games like Bioshock and Red Dead have shown they can provide a sucker punch after hours and hours of gameplay, but I don't see this trailer translating into a game that will be anywhere NEAR as evocative.
regarding the "they're trading on a little kid's death" issue - Zombie children have been part of the genre since "Night of the Living Dead." Literally from the beginning - dead kids coming back to life has been a big part of it. At some point, using the term "manipulative" when describing horror films becomes meaningless. Manipulation, SHAMELESS manipulation, is kind of the point of horror movies, more than any other genre. If anything, this short film tackles the subject of the young undead more tastefully than say, "Dawn of the Dead."
Not that Dawn of the Dead wasn't awesome, just not in that particular way
If anything, the best thing that we can expect from the game based on this trailer is a mood and an atmosphere. It may not have the emotional impact of the trailer, but it will probably have the same tone
Ripping a child from the arms of her loving parents and murdering her to showcase your awesome zombie game that probably won't be near as visceral in reality is crassly manipulative in my opinion. But then that's the name of the marketing game.
Oh come now, every piece of medium serves only to manipulate your emotions in order to return a desired emotional result. That this trailer does it more skillfully than the others is no more crass than a Killzone trailer being all "NUH NUH NUH WAR HOORAH" or a Nintendogs trailer being all "Man, aren't dogs cute"?
Did you miss the bolded part up there or something? Or how about the bit before that where I state that this is simply my opinion?
I mean, it's not like I use marketing to make my purchasing decisions anyway. Especially for games.
It is interesting seeing how much this trailer is driving a lot of the desire for this game though.
edit: As a piece of media in the Zombie genre, it's a simple trope that's been around for ages. The fact that it's given this kind of queasy, close up and slo mo voyeurism isn't even unique. The only thing unique about it is that it's in a trailer for a video game.
As a piece of marketing for the game, I seriously doubt any of what we saw is indicative of actual gameplay (par for the course). So that's my reasoning for calling it crassly manipulative.
You missed the point of the trailer entirely. It was slow, methodical, and close up to show the humanity of the family. The girl, the father, and the wife were human beings with lives that have suddenly been torn apart. Left 4 Dead trivializes the violence, this shows the impact of it. It's horrible and terrible and lives are lost in the blink of an eye - that's what a zombie outbreak means in the real world. It's not fun or cool, it's just awful.
Right. Me saying that it's "queasy, close up and slo mo voyeurism" isn't me trying to slam the trailer or anything. I actually mean that sort of thing as praise when talking about this kind of subject matter. Just because I prefer not watch the trailer because that kind of fear is too close to home doesn't mean I don't appreciate what they are doing here as a horror short. I've already stated that I think the trailer is quality work.
What I'm willing to put money on though, is that it doesn't really represent the experience you'll have playing Dead Island. And in that regard it's crass and manipulative. They are selling people on a gameplay experience that is most likely not gonna happen. Which is just another day in the marketing business. I don't get what's so tough to understand about what I'm saying.
And zombies, will be in the game. And more than likely killing them with objects will be in the game.
But it's not the people killing zombies with objects in the trailer that people are getting so excited about. Those aspects have been in hundereds of other trailers.
It's the emotional impact and the presentation of the trailer, and the detailed violence that people are getting excited about, and I agree that this will be very difficult, if not impossible to translate effectively into the game itself.
Count me as one of the people who felt like the kid was going a tiny bit too far. I mean, it worked - I was a little shocked when I realised what had happened to her. And I'm not against games going in this direction in terms of emotional aspects, but in this trailer? I dunno.
Oh noes, my parent/significant other/child/friend/etc. is dying/turning!
Isn't that the point of zombie stories that feature such human relationships? To make the cold, unfeeling, flesh-eating walking corpses even more terrifying?
In movies / literature , yes. In games, [IMO] no. Zombies in games are just something else to shoot at. I don't want them personified to the level of what is in that trailer. But that is just a personal preference.
See, that's exactly what I want from games; the ability to deal with subject matter that films and literature can. I don't know if we're quite there yet but slagging on attempts to even deal with it doesn't sit right with me.
I was burnt recently by... a game I can't talk about... but merely by putting a child who is in danger or who dies into a game doesn't automatically qualify it for 'kids = drama' status. It's all, you know, how the game deal with it.
What I'm willing to put money on though, is that it doesn't really represent the experience you'll have playing Dead Island. And in that regard it's crass and manipulative. They are selling people on a gameplay experience that is most likely not gonna happen. Which is just another day in the marketing business. I don't get what's so tough to understand about what I'm saying.
Okay, yeah, that I understand. But as you say - marketing is all lies anyway...
In all honesty, I don't think I even noticed that she was a kid until like two thirds of the way through the trailer.
I was much more struck by the snarling, the slurping, the crunching, and the screaming.
I'm no gorno fetishist or sadist or anything, but it just seems like very few zombie games actually show someone being taken down and eaten by the undead outside of the RE-style "neckbite, neckbite, groan, game over screen" deal. This sort of shit should be mind-shatteringly, soul-destroyingly horrible, and really that's like half of the zombie's advantage, that it can scare the living shit out of people to the point of making them kill themselves or completily destroying them mentally or whatever. But games - understandably so given the times we live in, but disappointing nevertheless - usually wind up glossing over that and dulling down that impact to the point of triviality, or try to channel that through some kind of contrived character relationship or whatever that more often than not utterly fails to make the player give a fuck.
I guess what I'm really trying to get at is that games should be just as capable of presenting players with the extremes of input and output, of overwhelming ecstacy and accomplishment and heart-wrenching terror and depression, and that trailer makes me hopeful that the devs are going to push this shit as far as they can to get players' empathy and whatnot into overdrive.
I was much more struck by the snarling, the slurping, the crunching, and the screaming.
I'm no gorno fetishist or sadist or anything, but it just seems like very few zombie games actually show someone being taken down and eaten by the undead outside of the RE-style "neckbite, neckbite, groan, game over screen" deal. This sort of shit should be mind-shatteringly, soul-destroyingly horrible, and really that's like half of the zombie's advantage, that it can scare the living shit out of people to the point of making them kill themselves or completily destroying them mentally or whatever.
If that was done to your character in 1st person I'd probably have to mute the TV and look away every single time because that is the stuff of my nightmares right there.
KlykaDO you have anySPARE BATTERIES?Registered Userregular
edited February 2011
Ok guys, let's look at it with the info we have:
The game is in first person. If you remember quite a few games in the past have done some really great "first person interactions". You know, like flying through windows, your arms/hands doing stuff/monsters in your face. I am sure we will find this here, upped by quite a bit.
Now, they also show off their "multi layer damage system". That's not just going to be used for the Zombies.
That is going to be used for every living thing in the game (ok animals,maybe not,no idea!). Including character. I bet the game will show at least your arms/legs from first person view, MAYBE even your entire body. And these parts will get damaged or maybe even ripped off! Imagine a Zombie attacking you in first person and ACTUALLY BITING A CHUNK FROM YOUR ARM. Cause their damage system allows for that.
That, coupled with some gut wrenching sound design is what I expect from this game.
If they deliver less than that they wasted their own technology.
Oh noes, my parent/significant other/child/friend/etc. is dying/turning!
Isn't that the point of zombie stories that feature such human relationships? To make the cold, unfeeling, flesh-eating walking corpses even more terrifying?
In movies / literature , yes. In games, [IMO] no. Zombies in games are just something else to shoot at. I don't want them personified to the level of what is in that trailer. But that is just a personal preference.
See, that's exactly what I want from games; the ability to deal with subject matter that films and literature can. I don't know if we're quite there yet but slagging on attempts to even deal with it doesn't sit right with me.
I was burnt recently by... a game I can't talk about... but merely by putting a child who is in danger or who dies into a game doesn't automatically qualify it for 'kids = drama' status. It's all, you know, how the game deal with it.
What I'm willing to put money on though, is that it doesn't really represent the experience you'll have playing Dead Island. And in that regard it's crass and manipulative. They are selling people on a gameplay experience that is most likely not gonna happen. Which is just another day in the marketing business. I don't get what's so tough to understand about what I'm saying.
Okay, yeah, that I understand. But as you say - marketing is all lies anyway...
The problem with that is in a game you remove editoral control. If that scene in the trailer was actual in game then one of two things would happen:
1) The player has the posibility of stopping the horrible outcome and saving the girl. (Thus turning what was supposed to be a very sad scenario into happy one [yay! you're a hero!]). Maybe the player fails to rescue the girl, then feels bad and reloads a previous save and tries again until they rescue the girl (if that is the players desired outcome).
2) The game developer doesn't want you to save the girl and you are left watching an interactive movie or worse just a straight cutscene. You are there for taken completely out of the game. So you are only left with the conclusion that your actions ultimately don't matter.
So, as a game developer you are left with two options, either remove player control over events (thus trivializing the players choices) in order to get across what you (the director) wants.
OR
You give up editorial control allowing the player the change the outcome of events thus making the player feel as if their choices have meaning. But doing so lessens your ability to convey the type of emotion that is in that trailer and movies and literature.
I'm not sure if I that makes any sense, it's late and I'm tired and this discussion probably deserves its own thread (though it is very close to the games==art? question and I don't know if we really want any more of that).
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Now, they also show off their "multi layer damage system". That's not just going to be used for the Zombies.
That is going to be used for every living thing in the game (ok animals,maybe not,no idea!). Including character. I bet the game will show at least your arms/legs from first person view, MAYBE even your entire body. And these parts will get damaged or maybe even ripped off! Imagine a Zombie attacking you in first person and ACTUALLY BITING A CHUNK FROM YOUR ARM. Cause their damage system allows for that.
This makes me think of a 3D, first-person Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode with a focus on zombies. Keepin' track of every entity's individual components, damaging them, destroying them, outright severing them, affecting their performance but not nessecarily outright killing them. Like some fucker gets a lucky grab at you and manages to poke your eyes before you shake him off, but you don't die and you can still try and defend yourself using audio perception, and you get super fuckin' paranoid and shit and start jumping at every sound as you wait for your vision to recover, if it even can.
My god.
EDIT: From what I hear properly modelling and animating kids is usually a bitch and a half compared to ordinary folks, so I can sorta' forgive how she looked, especially considering how awesome the rest of it was as mentioned.
Way Of The Samuari had a system where if you fucked up, primarily this was breaking that sword you spend hours and hours working to get - It would immediately and automatically save. Which meant there was no going back.
Mid fight, you see your favourite bad assed sword's "health" right on the edge. You block an opponent's swipe without thinking and bam, it shatters, you see the saving symbol and you know you just lost that sword forever, no reloading to do it differently.
I loved this system, and I think as long as a game does not treat the outcome of losing a loved one or a friend or a party member as a failure in terms of gameplay, and the storyline doesn't suffer for it (or even better, the storyline improves because of it) I think it could really work in a game like this - if it actually is going for the emotional aspects of a zombie apolocalypse.
Yeah, there's really no reason to believe the trailer will have anything to do with gameplay whatsoever. It's just a piece of marketing to get people talking about the product.
It's basically a really neat, moving short film that's meant to get people talking about what will ultimately end up being a rather generic, unimpressive zombie game. There's really no way to make a game as involving as that trailer; we're a long way from actually having organic drama in a game.
This is the most depressing thing I have watched in some time. Do not watch with your children, do not watch if you have children, do not watch if you are on anti-depressants or will consume alcohol in the immediate future, do not watch this within 1 day of watching Titanic, Empire of the Sun, Toy Story 3, Toy Story 2, The Lion King, Bridges of Madison County, Million Dollar Baby, A Tale of Two Cities, Poetic Justice
Yeah, the dwarf fortress example is something I have really, REALLY wanted from a zombie game or most games in general, hide, run and scour for resources, return and build.
Doesn't have to be zombies, could be colonists (space and the past), disaster survivors, cave people.
Yeah, that trailer was awesome. The CG looked a little funny, sure, but it touched the key points of Zombie lore that I've always wanted to be realized in games.
Excited.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
Ripping a child from the arms of her loving parents and murdering her to showcase your awesome zombie game that probably won't be near as visceral in reality is crassly manipulative in my opinion. But then that's the name of the marketing game.
Oh come now, every piece of medium serves only to manipulate your emotions in order to return a desired emotional result. That this trailer does it more skillfully than the others is no more crass than a Killzone trailer being all "NUH NUH NUH WAR HOORAH" or a Nintendogs trailer being all "Man, aren't dogs cute"?
Did you miss the bolded part up there or something? Or how about the bit before that where I state that this is simply my opinion?
I mean, it's not like I use marketing to make my purchasing decisions anyway. Especially for games.
It is interesting seeing how much this trailer is driving a lot of the desire for this game though.
edit: As a piece of media in the Zombie genre, it's a simple trope that's been around for ages. The fact that it's given this kind of queasy, close up and slo mo voyeurism isn't even unique. The only thing unique about it is that it's in a trailer for a video game.
As a piece of marketing for the game, I seriously doubt any of what we saw is indicative of actual gameplay (par for the course). So that's my reasoning for calling it crassly manipulative.
You missed the point of the trailer entirely. It was slow, methodical, and close up to show the humanity of the family. The girl, the father, and the wife were human beings with lives that have suddenly been torn apart. Left 4 Dead trivializes the violence, this shows the impact of it. It's horrible and terrible and lives are lost in the blink of an eye - that's what a zombie outbreak means in the real world. It's not fun or cool, it's just awful.
Right. Me saying that it's "queasy, close up and slo mo voyeurism" isn't me trying to slam the trailer or anything. I actually mean that sort of thing as praise when talking about this kind of subject matter. Just because I prefer not watch the trailer because that kind of fear is too close to home doesn't mean I don't appreciate what they are doing here as a horror short. I've already stated that I think the trailer is quality work.
What I'm willing to put money on though, is that it doesn't really represent the experience you'll have playing Dead Island. And in that regard it's crass and manipulative. They are selling people on a gameplay experience that is most likely not gonna happen. Which is just another day in the marketing business. I don't get what's so tough to understand about what I'm saying.
So basically, this is just like the Halo 3 Believe commercials.
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It's a zombie apocalypse played fairly realistically. Kids will die, and rise, and need to be killed again.
You know.
'Cause they're zombies.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Anyway, I hope for two things. That the zombies don't run like they do in the trailer and that one bite doesn't turn you into a zombie. Cause those two things in a game that's heavy on the melee and guns are few with ammo being even more scarce. Would suck. One of the two would be fine, but both? Do not want.
UNLESS! I can level up melee to the point that I can kill a mob of zombies with a spoon.
Aw
That little bitch!
Aw again
It's completely irrelevant to anything having to actually do with the game, though.
I find zombies to be incredibly ridiculous. It's impossible for me to take it seriously.
my twitter | my youtube
The zombies isn't what gets to me. It's the thought of watching your wife and child being murdered while you are powerless to stop it.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
It's the thought of the zombies that ungets me. Even an alien invasion is more possible, as in at all possible.
my twitter | my youtube
Oh noes, my parent/significant other/child/friend/etc. is dying/turning!
Isn't that the point of zombie stories that feature such human relationships? To make the cold, unfeeling, flesh-eating walking corpses even more terrifying?
In movies / literature , yes. In games, [IMO] no. Zombies in games are just something else to shoot at. I don't want them personified to the level of what is in that trailer. But that is just a personal preference.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
As much as a lot of horror is founded on things that could totally happen to you, a lot of other horror is founded on things that could not possibly happen ever
It's the fundamentals of zombies that a lot of people find terrifying - generally the "unthinking, unfeeling mob" concept, although the cannibalism is also a big scary thing for some people, and the whole "disease" angle is another
It's all the worst parts of a viral disease epidemic and survival coupled with the worst parts of human nature personified into tens of thousands of walking, rotting corpses
Of course, if you were just going "I CAN'T SUSPEND MY DISBELIEF SO THIS IS DUMB" then I'm sorry that I can't help you, except to tell you that some people can be horrified by things that did not or can not happen!
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
I do agree with zombies you just sort of gloss over since everyone eventually turns it's hard to get emotional about someone getting murdered.
I never asked for this!
But that trailer is fuckin' incredible, regardless of it's connection to a video game
It is a fantastic short film
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Exactly. That's not a trailer. It's a short film. It's a GREAT short film. And I almost don't want a game made out of it, because the reason this trailer works will more than likely NOT translate into a game, for a couple reasons.
1) The brevity of the short is what gives it power - minimal story, minimally told. There's nothing that 15 hours of gameplay can add to this particular experience.
2) I honestly think that decades of zombies as villains in videogames has deadened their ability to do anything but be oogy jump scares at best, but more often than not, just basic bullet food.
Hell, Zombie MOVIES have been around since the late 60's, and we've only just now (with Walking Dead) gotten a filmed version of the creatures that tries to remember these shambling monsters were once people, and are being completely and utterly degraded in death. The closest we've gotten to that before was Bub in "Day of the Dead" and even then, he was a jokey, almost hopeful figure.
I know games like Bioshock and Red Dead have shown they can provide a sucker punch after hours and hours of gameplay, but I don't see this trailer translating into a game that will be anywhere NEAR as evocative.
regarding the "they're trading on a little kid's death" issue - Zombie children have been part of the genre since "Night of the Living Dead." Literally from the beginning - dead kids coming back to life has been a big part of it. At some point, using the term "manipulative" when describing horror films becomes meaningless. Manipulation, SHAMELESS manipulation, is kind of the point of horror movies, more than any other genre. If anything, this short film tackles the subject of the young undead more tastefully than say, "Dawn of the Dead."
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
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You missed the point of the trailer entirely. It was slow, methodical, and close up to show the humanity of the family. The girl, the father, and the wife were human beings with lives that have suddenly been torn apart. Left 4 Dead trivializes the violence, this shows the impact of it. It's horrible and terrible and lives are lost in the blink of an eye - that's what a zombie outbreak means in the real world. It's not fun or cool, it's just awful.
Not that Dawn of the Dead wasn't awesome, just not in that particular way
If anything, the best thing that we can expect from the game based on this trailer is a mood and an atmosphere. It may not have the emotional impact of the trailer, but it will probably have the same tone
That tone being "bleak as shit"
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Right. Me saying that it's "queasy, close up and slo mo voyeurism" isn't me trying to slam the trailer or anything. I actually mean that sort of thing as praise when talking about this kind of subject matter. Just because I prefer not watch the trailer because that kind of fear is too close to home doesn't mean I don't appreciate what they are doing here as a horror short. I've already stated that I think the trailer is quality work.
What I'm willing to put money on though, is that it doesn't really represent the experience you'll have playing Dead Island. And in that regard it's crass and manipulative. They are selling people on a gameplay experience that is most likely not gonna happen. Which is just another day in the marketing business. I don't get what's so tough to understand about what I'm saying.
I think the game has you being a tourist going to an island for a vacation but found zombies instead.
And zombies, will be in the game. And more than likely killing them with objects will be in the game.
But it's not the people killing zombies with objects in the trailer that people are getting so excited about. Those aspects have been in hundereds of other trailers.
It's the emotional impact and the presentation of the trailer, and the detailed violence that people are getting excited about, and I agree that this will be very difficult, if not impossible to translate effectively into the game itself.
Count me as one of the people who felt like the kid was going a tiny bit too far. I mean, it worked - I was a little shocked when I realised what had happened to her. And I'm not against games going in this direction in terms of emotional aspects, but in this trailer? I dunno.
It was a very good "short film" over all though.
See, that's exactly what I want from games; the ability to deal with subject matter that films and literature can. I don't know if we're quite there yet but slagging on attempts to even deal with it doesn't sit right with me.
I was burnt recently by... a game I can't talk about... but merely by putting a child who is in danger or who dies into a game doesn't automatically qualify it for 'kids = drama' status. It's all, you know, how the game deal with it.
Okay, yeah, that I understand. But as you say - marketing is all lies anyway...
But she didn't. It was uncanny.
I was much more struck by the snarling, the slurping, the crunching, and the screaming.
I'm no gorno fetishist or sadist or anything, but it just seems like very few zombie games actually show someone being taken down and eaten by the undead outside of the RE-style "neckbite, neckbite, groan, game over screen" deal. This sort of shit should be mind-shatteringly, soul-destroyingly horrible, and really that's like half of the zombie's advantage, that it can scare the living shit out of people to the point of making them kill themselves or completily destroying them mentally or whatever. But games - understandably so given the times we live in, but disappointing nevertheless - usually wind up glossing over that and dulling down that impact to the point of triviality, or try to channel that through some kind of contrived character relationship or whatever that more often than not utterly fails to make the player give a fuck.
I guess what I'm really trying to get at is that games should be just as capable of presenting players with the extremes of input and output, of overwhelming ecstacy and accomplishment and heart-wrenching terror and depression, and that trailer makes me hopeful that the devs are going to push this shit as far as they can to get players' empathy and whatnot into overdrive.
If that was done to your character in 1st person I'd probably have to mute the TV and look away every single time because that is the stuff of my nightmares right there.
RE5 they basically pussed out and censored all of them.
Brains.
The game is in first person. If you remember quite a few games in the past have done some really great "first person interactions". You know, like flying through windows, your arms/hands doing stuff/monsters in your face. I am sure we will find this here, upped by quite a bit.
Now, they also show off their "multi layer damage system". That's not just going to be used for the Zombies.
That is going to be used for every living thing in the game (ok animals,maybe not,no idea!). Including character. I bet the game will show at least your arms/legs from first person view, MAYBE even your entire body. And these parts will get damaged or maybe even ripped off! Imagine a Zombie attacking you in first person and ACTUALLY BITING A CHUNK FROM YOUR ARM. Cause their damage system allows for that.
That, coupled with some gut wrenching sound design is what I expect from this game.
If they deliver less than that they wasted their own technology.
The problem with that is in a game you remove editoral control. If that scene in the trailer was actual in game then one of two things would happen:
1) The player has the posibility of stopping the horrible outcome and saving the girl. (Thus turning what was supposed to be a very sad scenario into happy one [yay! you're a hero!]). Maybe the player fails to rescue the girl, then feels bad and reloads a previous save and tries again until they rescue the girl (if that is the players desired outcome).
2) The game developer doesn't want you to save the girl and you are left watching an interactive movie or worse just a straight cutscene. You are there for taken completely out of the game. So you are only left with the conclusion that your actions ultimately don't matter.
So, as a game developer you are left with two options, either remove player control over events (thus trivializing the players choices) in order to get across what you (the director) wants.
OR
You give up editorial control allowing the player the change the outcome of events thus making the player feel as if their choices have meaning. But doing so lessens your ability to convey the type of emotion that is in that trailer and movies and literature.
I'm not sure if I that makes any sense, it's late and I'm tired and this discussion probably deserves its own thread (though it is very close to the games==art? question and I don't know if we really want any more of that).
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
Yeah, when she was alive her face was a bit typical CGI human face
But the rest of the animation within the trailer, particularly the facial animation on the dad, made up for it
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
My god.
EDIT: From what I hear properly modelling and animating kids is usually a bitch and a half compared to ordinary folks, so I can sorta' forgive how she looked, especially considering how awesome the rest of it was as mentioned.
Mid fight, you see your favourite bad assed sword's "health" right on the edge. You block an opponent's swipe without thinking and bam, it shatters, you see the saving symbol and you know you just lost that sword forever, no reloading to do it differently.
I loved this system, and I think as long as a game does not treat the outcome of losing a loved one or a friend or a party member as a failure in terms of gameplay, and the storyline doesn't suffer for it (or even better, the storyline improves because of it) I think it could really work in a game like this - if it actually is going for the emotional aspects of a zombie apolocalypse.
It would also make the game tense as fuck.
Probably NSFW and skip to 0:18.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2HfdGEfnk0
Want it now!
I'm sure the game will manage to defy expectations and be utterly mediocre.
It's basically a really neat, moving short film that's meant to get people talking about what will ultimately end up being a rather generic, unimpressive zombie game. There's really no way to make a game as involving as that trailer; we're a long way from actually having organic drama in a game.
Yeah, the dwarf fortress example is something I have really, REALLY wanted from a zombie game or most games in general, hide, run and scour for resources, return and build.
Doesn't have to be zombies, could be colonists (space and the past), disaster survivors, cave people.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Excited.
So basically, this is just like the Halo 3 Believe commercials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnw-Sfvh-zo