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[PATV] Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 5: Starting Off Right
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
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The Intro where you descent from space to earth right on the Racetrack... and then you think : "whoa, shit i have to drive already"
I dunno. I was a Dark Forces II person back in those days, and the level design was just so much *better*
I think Black Mesa may have cut some of the instances of that in order to put in fan-jokes (the ponytail comment, for example, Gordon's (never seen in normal play) model had a small ponytail at the nape of the neck). This was amusing for previous fans, but may have lost just enough of the encouraged direction for totally new players.
Also, the pacing may have been changed. As I remember the original, there was a first encounter with a headcrab you generally ran from ("WTF is this thing!"), THEN you got the crowbar and could fight headcrabs, THEN you encountered the headcrab zombies (no flare-section, which I found boring waiting for the security officer to shoot stuff with me only having picked up flares to use). The laser section you refer to was still there. I recall it causing me MUCH frustration as I got used to moving and crouching the first time I played.
Heck, the playable FPS tram ride was novel for the time. Let you get used to moving, show off the scenery you'll be working through, and shows NPCs doing normal stuff to draw you into the world, while the voiceover places the setting as a highly classified underground facility. In addition, your view wasn't constrained during this ride. You could look anywhere you liked, leading to it feeling less like an intro cutscene, and more like you were in that tram.
Best represented perhaps in how the little details brought forth such impact. Not so much in the grandiosity of huge cities, or scenes of graphically steroid-injected fire on water, but on the beauty of the smallest of touches. The light coming through the window in your room when your Mom opens the blinds. Moving your eyes to how finely crafted every single object in it was. The lushness of the sound-scape you were about to transcend with the open guitar strings resonating at first pluck (waking you into this world), and the sounds of cheers and balloons flying up from the fair-grounds as you got your first camera shot of the world at large.
It seemed less an invitation to be bedazzled at the epic or representation of scale for the events that were about to unfold, but an invitation to appreciate even the most subtle of details, because they will have been hand-crafted by masters to bring about a world you could only have wished for in your wildest dreams.
Even more interesting, it did it by almost breaking that fourth wall, simply in terms of presentation. Giving the the 2D RPG fan as souped-up, gloriously vibrant, and finely detailed world he or she could ever want. It almost seemed to scream, "You like RPGs? Well this is RPG crack!" Not trying to make you believe that yes, you were in another world, but shocking your senses into realizing, "This is everything I could ever want another world to be! I don't have to be convinced to join this, I'll stand gladly outside its gate asking to be let in." It seemed to understand that by this point in time, this late in the lifespan of the Super Nintendo, you weren't buying a game from Square by mistake. That you liked your RPGs - that you wanted your RPGs - and if this isn't just every dream-like stereo-type of RPG awesomeness rolled into a collective unit you could have ever felt just too greedy to want in the same place, well Square is giving it to you anyway, and more!
Doesn't seem so much a case of breaking the rule set you put forth (which, for the most part, is brilliantly true), but seems like a most noteworthy exception nonetheless.
This was why I will forever remember the intro to Half-Life as one of the most incredible gaming experiences of my life. Up until Half-Life, I'd played plenty of FPSs, and they would all follow the same general pattern: levels. You start at the starting point of the level, you shoot a bunch of monsters or nazis or whatever, and you get to the end. Then it probably tells you what percentage of the monsters you killed, how long it took you, maybe gives you some kind of score. Then a loading screen, and boom, start of the next level. An ambitiously narrative game might include some kind of text linking the levels together, or mission briefings or something.
But then Half-Life comes along, and just throws all of that shit out the window. There's no cutscenes, there's no interruption in the flow. The maps load with almost no perceptible loading time, and carry your state across transitions. No levels, no timer, no points. There's just you, and the Black Mesa Research Facility. That alone made it the most realistic game I had ever played. It was the first game (that I encountered, at any rate) to eschew the notion of even being a game in favor of being an experience, a story in which you are the protagonist.
It almost makes me sad. I don't think I've ever had another game absorb me the way Half-Life did; I don't know if it's even possible anymore. The experience was perfectly tailored to the state of the medium at the time, and changed the entire medium as a result. I wonder if that's not a moment that can never come again.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
I don't often buy games these days that start with spectacle alone as it never answers the question i am asking myself was this worth my money?
Its also true that people will just stop playing a game if they don't enjoy the first 5-15 minutes and it will take something special to get them to come back to it.
Take binary domain on the PC for example, the port was so bad playing on the keyboard i stopped playing it within the 1st half an hour and it wasn't until I got an Xbox 360 controller for windows did i consider trying it again.
I did enjoy the game in the end and with the controller i really enjoyed the first 15 minutes and beat the game 3 times.
They made the game right but just didn't port it well resulting in a very frustrating first 15 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=eKpxuptvQYU#t=84s
I'll be giving it another chance for sure, but my 'first five (forty)' was really, really offputting. I still appreciate a lot of the 'for the time' stuff, don't get me wrong, but I've been spoiled by how accessible things have been over the last few years.
Everything about it was perfect. The music, the visuals, the strong characterization... It was the PERFECT way to introduce the player to the characters and the world.
Yes, all of the games you mentioned are wonderful and show your thesis well... but have we all forgotten the sense of mystery, awe, wonder, and depth. Have we dulled our eyes to the spectacle of scenery and the diversity of life? Have we committed to amnesia the ache and longing for the next iteration of the book? Was the end truly written?
In the first 3 minutes, you were flung into a story. You had no idea what was going on, no function as to mechanics. Yet, intuition sought its course and mechanics became reflex and instinct. The mind was your playground, thought its mechanic and the world was one we longed to live in. The ability to write things into existence, the dream hoped for. A Language so complete, worlds created. Books so real, things lived in their very pages.
...how soon we forget Myst.
10 hours later, after completing midgar which was a huge ordeal on it's own... then you get a prologue! and it's not even the true prologue!
anyway. The narrative is awesome right from the get-go and keeps being awesome. It also showcases it's mechanics (in a battle) right after you take 2 steps. it's true you're not really 'doing' anything cool (apart from blowing up a reactor!) but hey, it's an RPG. racing on a bike swatting dudes with your huge sword comes later.
I just kinda feel ff7 was passed over a little too quickly, and I never understood why every single ff after that takes so god damned long to show you actual action. (FF8 especially)
:-) http://www.facebook.com/GoToHellDave
You can get away with the long build-up intro in games like FFT because the gameplay itself is methodical and story driven. Likewise something like the Metal Gear games or many other RPG's where the cutscenes are a nontricial part of the draw. But what drives me nuts is when a long long cutscene is used to preface a shooter or other twitch driven game.
If I've popped in an action game, that's what I want: action. The delay introduced by a long introductory cutscene to a story that's most likely utterly ludicrous, idiotic, contrived and unengaging--all it does is irritate me. If your game is hack and slash, get to the hacking and slashing immediately. Even if you have a good story, I don't give a flying fuck about it until you've sated the edge of the bloodlust that attracted me to your game in the first place.
commando uses his turret
siren uses her telekinesis thing
gunzerker...gunzerks...
assassin uses his hologram
Now you know the game is organized into missions and have some idea of what you're going to be playing and are given the opportunity to create your character or pick from defaults. In my opinion default characters are a must!
Maybe it's not your kind of game, but I think everyone should give Saints Row 3 a look and play at least through the 4th mission where you parachute into the penthouse (which is the BEST mission IMO)