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Penny Arcade - Comic - The Royal Treatment
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - The Royal Treatment
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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This reminds me of the porn-without-plot vs. porn-with-plot discussion.
Yeah you could swap DioField for TS in the comic and it still works
So what you're saying is this comic isn't made the way you want it to be.
No, that's not quite accurate. Let's see...
It's almost as if Gabe is a flawed caricature of a certain type of gamer who complains about things without regard for it being part of the traditions of that thing, exaggerated for comedic effect.
I think maybe that covers it.
Your profile says you joined in 2012, but apparently you are still new here. Welcome to Penny Arcade!
-Tycho Brahe
I feel the same way about a lot of JRPG's. While I love the RPG and adventure in many of them, it's rare that I can actually find one I like enough to actually dig into (usually GOAT titles like Persona 5 Royal or FF X) because the story is full of tropes I just don't connect with and don't really appreciate or enjoy. That doesn't make them bad games, but it does mean that no matter how good, say, Fire Emblem is, I'm probably not going to pick it up. I'm sure they're fantastic quality games (hard to have such a long running series with such great reviews if they aren't), but they don't appeal to me. Same goes for some WRPG's - never was able to get into Assassins Creed. Not knocking the quality of the series, it's just not for me.
Fortunately, I'm so far behind on my gaming to-do list (and getting worse - Elden Ring is denser than I thought it would be, and I already expected it to be as dense as Skyrim) that I'm almost glad when a game comes out that I'm not interested in so I can skip it. Hurray, Babylon's Fall sucks! I can skip it which means I might get through Elden Ring, Horizon: Forbidden West, and another Elden Ring run before God of War: Ragnarok...
Tactical rpg
Hours of Dialog
Yeah I’m in.
I wound up finding
That's how hard it is to not find Gabe griping about plot in the PA archives.
It's more of a problem in big-budget games since they're just creating a product, I think. They try to elevate the gameplay by giving it context, but most of the time they don't really have much in the way of character arcs, or strong themes, or suspense regarding threat to something we care about, or clever twists... The things that make a story worth paying attention to.
These stories usually have little to do with the gameplay. Which is to say, the gameplay is not affected by what's occurring in the story. This is true even if the story tries to make us feel a certain way about, say, fighting some guy? Is this my brother? Okay. Well, I have to kill him to continue the game, I guess. That'd be the objective whether or not the story tried to add some kind of narrative impact to the event. But he was a cardboard cutout anyway, so... I feel nothing anyway. Deplete the HP, move on.
That kind of pattern in games is common enough that I think it's entirely reasonable to not even give the story a chance. Are you playing a game for the story? Or are you playing a game for the gameplay? To me, it makes more sense to play games for gameplay.
So Gabe's attitude does exist with a lot of gamers and it's an immense risk for game companies to invest in making a game with hours of text, and we have to appreciate that.
Or unforgivably bad/cringe in execution. For example, I'm enjoying the hell out of Shin Megami Tensei V's combat. But I almost wish they had taken a DOOM 2016 approach to the writing in that they made the awful shonen trope bullshit exposition easily ignorable in favor of KILL MORE DEMONS.
I like story. *When* it is well done. But it has to be well done. Not overdone.
Actually, scratch that. They're worse. I've much more often got stuck into deep dives of wikis than I have of than the typical game writing. I don't skip past it because I... can't. But I'm almost never the better for having read it.
Just for emphasis, I use the word "typical". There are exceptions, and no one needs to point out how some specific game isn't typical.
Classic comedy
To be honest, by the 2nd panel I forgot it was about DioField and thought he was talking about Triangle Strategy.
Thanks a lot, now I'm bummed out about this rad lion game not being real all over again.
When a back story is well designed, it tells the player/reader/viewer things that they will need to know for the future. It's not setting a context of history - it's building a framework for the future. In a game, the player should be frantically noting down everything said about the Vice-Prince of Rubbadubb because when they meet, this knowledge will be important. When the player knows that it doesn't matter about what the envoys want to discuss, then they are bored.
You know they've been writing this comic three times a week for over twenty-three years, right? That's over 3500 comics. And you're coming in here whining that five of them were the same joke? If you're wondering, 5 comics out of 3500 = 0.15%. Your criticism about this free webcomic they've given you thousands of strips of for absolutely free just comes off as the worst kind of whining. This is why people are making fun of you, and why doubling down makes you look even more like a goose.
Anyone else saddened by the realization that this comic is old enough to vote?