Well if you're really interested in studying the nature and effects of media on its consumers, he is well worth checking out.
I might do that.
The thing is, people are insistent on comparing gaming stories to novels and saying they're crap, or drama in games to movies and saying it's crap.
Realistically, it may very well be outright impossible to achieve the same effect from those other media. You can't have a truly dramatic scene in a game like you can in a film because you cannot script what will happen, what the main actor is going to do or how they'll react.
You can't achieve the same level of raw storyline for much the same reason, the narrative and drama in a book depends on being fixed. What if your main character decided half-way through an emotional scene to start chucking characters out the window? Or leave the scene altogether? All of a sudden the emotional drama has turned into something else altogether, can it reach the sheer tension of a completely pre-scripted scene though? Probably not.
What the best games tend to do though, in terms of their fiction, is not act against the player, but rather have the actions of the player act in concert with the narrative to create their own piece. It may not be as masterfully and meticulously crafted (down to the dramatic lighting and musical cues) as a film, but it will be fundamentally personal to the player.
What about other games that don't dwell on that though? What if it's just an action game, can you still put story and narrative into that? I would argue that you can, you can present a context for the actions, however, in games where the actual gameplay is paramount, you need to make sure that this delivery of story doesn't interfere with the gameplay. It is definitely something that a lot of games get wrong, but I also feel it's something that's improving.
I'll give you an example that I really liked. In SWAT 4, you essentially engage in a series of "stand alone" missions to bring order to chaos. It would have been very easy to just make these just linear sequences of corridors and rooms, with little to no context, no story or reason behind the missions.
But on of my favourite missions in that game, is mission 2, where SWAT is called in on a high-risk warrant at the home of a serial killer. It could have just been a normal house environment and you find the guy somewhere inside and you arrest him. But it wasn't like that at all. Little narrative touches were everywhere. Garbage piled up in the kitchen. His senile old grandmother upstairs. The radio turned to where a mother was making a heartfelt plea for the return of her daughter. A locked basement door with a security camera outside. The basement, the newspaper clippings all about the walls, the disturbing photos and masks and... other things. It created this incredible narrative and story set piece inside the mission. Arguably the game was all about the gameplay, but with all those touches it truly became something so much more involved and downright creepy for me to experience.
Really all this is description of the events, but you have no idea how it feels to play through unless you do it yourself. I can't describe the tension of going through a door, of breaching and dropping a flashbang and the howling, hissing static that the music abruptly changes to when you do. It just works. They adapted narrative touches and techniques seen elsewhere in a hundred films and stories about crime and drama and psychological thrillers, and implemented them as another part of a whole.
And that's nothing compared to the "Children of Taronne" mission. *shudder*
Fundamentally, it's possible to argue that games should only ever be about gameplay, but there's so much more they can deliver in terms of the experience if you know how to do it.
subedii on
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
Subedii, I did read your posts. Actually, whenever I find that you and I are in the same thread, we share a lot of the same opinions.
I just think that games have yet to find their own identity in relation to story. It sucks, because I feel like a lot of the effort made by truly creative people gets stamped down by the way the gaming industry works these days. Yes, there are still good independent developers that truly can be creative, but a vast majority of games are made by big development companies that are unwilling to risk anything, because they want to make money. I can't really blame a business for wanting to make money. That's just the way it is.
Anyhow, I think games are trying way too hard to be like movies, or books. I almost want to say that developers had it right in the NES era. There were games that had gained a lot of benefit from having a long narrative. And there were also games that didn't need anything other than a loose framework. But now it seems like almost every game is trying to shoe-horn in some ridiculously grand story, and it detracts from a lot of what the game could have been. (What up, Indigo Prophecy?)
I still feel like, because video games are such a young medium, they've yet to find their identity. Much like early movies hadn't found a way to separate themselves from theatre.
Subedii, I did read your posts. Actually, whenever I find that you and I are in the same thread, we share a lot of the same opinions.
I just think that games have yet to find their own identity in relation to story. It sucks, because I feel like a lot of the effort made by truly creative people gets stamped down by the way the gaming industry works these days. Yes, there are still good independent developers that truly can be creative, but a vast majority of games are made by big development companies that are unwilling to risk anything, because they want to make money. I can't really blame a business for wanting to make money. That's just the way it is.
To be honest, I don't really feel that's any different from any other industry. You can't have indie film makers without Hollywood bringing in all the cash, and likewise Hollywood needs the creativity of the indie scene to showcase where the new and the creative is.
I enjoy my in-depth sci-fi books, but they're never going to sell as well as the next airport novel.
Anyhow, I think games are trying way too hard to be like movies, or books. I almost want to say that developers had it right in the NES era. There were games that had gained a lot of benefit from having a long narrative. And there were also games that didn't need anything other than a loose framework. But now it seems like almost every game is trying to shoe-horn in some ridiculously grand story, and it detracts from a lot of what the game could have been. (What up, Indigo Prophecy?)
Well sometimes, but that's what the indie scene is for. These days, you've got creative standalones like "World of Goo" and "Audiosurf" pushing into places that haven't really been explored, and they can't really be said to have epic prose as their impetus. Meanwhile at the other end you've got this constant stream of indie adventure games coming out of places like mainland and eastern Europe that are heavily story driven and don't focus so much on action, some barely even focus on puzzle solving.
Mainstream big-budgets are largely for the blockbusters with the epic scale and the large production values.
Really, I have no problems with a game trying to make use of a grand story, they just need to do it properly. You point to Indigo Prophecy as an example of where this fails, and in a way that's true. But it's also largely true that Indigo Prophecy's first half wouldn't have survived without it's story and narrative. On the strength of ti's gameplay alone and no story, I'm not sure many people would have bought it, and with good reason. The story and narrative are two of the main reasons you buy an adventure game (and it is arguably an adventure game).
I still feel like, because video games are such a young medium, they've yet to find their identity. Much like early movies hadn't found a way to separate themselves from theatre.
I agree. What baffles me the most is when devs make backwards steps with regards to this. Assassin's Creed is a good example, with its completely unskippable cutscenes. Most developers left that behind a decade ago, and in a game where you're likely to be repeating segments over again and again, it's completely inexcusable that they did this, no matter how good they may have thought their story was. Fundamentally people want to play their interactive entertainment, if you are forcefully wasting their time then you don't understand anything and are just frustrating the player.
You've touched on what I think is the main problem. Development houses have made a nasty habit of including verbose narratives in games that really have no business having them.
I'm not saying that narratives should be done away with in all cases. I'm just saying that they should be done away with in a lot of cases. I think there are a lot of games that have narratives that don't add anything to the game at all. They're either just plain bad, derivative, or extremely boring.
If you wanted to make a good game, would you put in a gameplay mechanic that possessed one of those three qualities? Fuck no! You'd be a dumbass to do that. So why should those kinds of things be excusable in a narrative?
You've touched on what I think is the main problem. Development houses have made a nasty habit of including verbose narratives in games that really have no business having them.
I'm not saying that narratives should be done away with in all cases. I'm just saying that they should be done away with in a lot of cases. I think there are a lot of games that have narratives that don't add anything to the game at all. They're either just plain bad, derivative, or extremely boring.
If you wanted to make a good game, would you put in a gameplay mechanic that possessed one of those three qualities? Fuck no! You'd be a dumbass to do that. So why should those kinds of things be excusable in a narrative?
They're not. But the narrative, like the gameplay, is still developing.
Fifteen years ago the gameplay of Dune 2 was just fine. Now we expect a lot more from our RTS gameplay. Maybe in another fifteen we'll look back on the narratives in games today and feel the same.
You're right, sometimes it is wholly inappropriate. I can think of few things worse than the endless Codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid 2. I wouldn't have minded so much, but aside from the fact that they constantly interrupted the core gameplay, they were also just plain poorly written. At least the English Translation was, I can't say whether it was any better in Japanese.
Now in a game like Planecape: Torment, the gamplay pretty much centred on the storyline. I was happy to read through all the text because to me, that was what the game was about. The story, dialogue and setting. Plus I also found it much more well written. If I had found it crap, then I wouldn't have bothered, since the game was failing at the only real thing it was trying to do. And on the odd occasions where I was bored or couldn't be bothered with the dialogue (it happens), I would just skim read it or skip it altogether, no harm no foul. Heck, I do that with most modern games, just skim the text and then skip on instead of waiting for the "professional voice actor" to finish their line. It's why I always prefer to have the subtitles on. As bad as you might say text is in a game, I find endless voice acting equally tiresome sometimes.
It's when a game unavoidably wastes my time that I'm really frustrated with it. More than dialogue, what irks me the most is when a game forces me to travel large distances between locations, "just because".
Oh God. I am even less of a fan of voice acting. I still have flashbacks of FFX.
EDIT: Actually, when I think about it, I'm probably equally put off by voice acting as I am with shitty writing. So, it can be good, but is more often done very poorly.
You've touched on what I think is the main problem. Development houses have made a nasty habit of including verbose narratives in games that really have no business having them.
I'm not saying that narratives should be done away with in all cases. I'm just saying that they should be done away with in a lot of cases. I think there are a lot of games that have narratives that don't add anything to the game at all. They're either just plain bad, derivative, or extremely boring.
If you wanted to make a good game, would you put in a gameplay mechanic that possessed one of those three qualities? Fuck no! You'd be a dumbass to do that. So why should those kinds of things be excusable in a narrative?
They're not. But the narrative, like the gameplay, is still developing.
Fifteen years ago the gameplay of Dune 2 was just fine. Now we expect a lot more from our RTS gameplay. Maybe in another fifteen we'll look back on the narratives in games today and feel the same.
You're right, sometimes it is wholly inappropriate. I can think of few things worse than the endless Codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid 2. I wouldn't have minded so much, but aside from the fact that they constantly interrupted the core gameplay, they were also just plain poorly written. At least the English Translation was, I can't say whether it was any better in Japanese.
Now in a game like Planecape: Torment, the gamplay pretty much centred on the storyline. I was happy to read through all the text because to me, that was what the game was about. The story, dialogue and setting. Plus I also found it much more well written. If I had found it crap, then I wouldn't have bothered, since the game was failing at the only real thing it was trying to do. And on the odd occasions where I was bored or couldn't be bothered with the dialogue (it happens), I would just skim read it or skip it altogether, no harm no foul. Heck, I do that with most modern games, just skim the text and then skip on instead of waiting for the "professional voice actor" to finish their line. It's why I always prefer to have the subtitles on. As bad as you might say text is in a game, I find endless voice acting equally tiresome sometimes.
It's when a game unavoidably wastes my time that I'm really frustrated with it. More than dialogue, what irks me the most is when a game forces me to travel large distances between locations, "just because".
Haha, I do the EXACT same thing when there's lots of dialogue. It takes them so damn long to say the lines, and for some reason in a game it bores me WAY more then it does in a movie or on TV or on the stage.
Anyway, when I think of "Story" in games, I think I go back to RPGs alot, as they are considered the "Best" of the Genres for stories. Which is, imo, part of the problem. The medium that is supposed to be all about the story has such poorly done ones. Cliched, bland, over-written. It's awful stuff in general. For any game, it's always felt to me like the minute they try and make the plot bigger, they fail due to amateurish writing. Other genres do much better by sticking to a simple story, and doing good presentation instead.
See, at least in a game like Resident Evil 1, I could laugh off the bad voice acting. For those of you who have never played the original game, it was hilariously bad.
But, Jesus. Final Fantasy 10. You could tell that they were actually serious. At first, I just ignored it. Then, it kept coming back. It wouldn't go away. It made me feel hollow.
You've touched on what I think is the main problem. Development houses have made a nasty habit of including verbose narratives in games that really have no business having them.
I'm not saying that narratives should be done away with in all cases. I'm just saying that they should be done away with in a lot of cases. I think there are a lot of games that have narratives that don't add anything to the game at all. They're either just plain bad, derivative, or extremely boring.
If you wanted to make a good game, would you put in a gameplay mechanic that possessed one of those three qualities? Fuck no! You'd be a dumbass to do that. So why should those kinds of things be excusable in a narrative?
They're not. But the narrative, like the gameplay, is still developing.
Fifteen years ago the gameplay of Dune 2 was just fine. Now we expect a lot more from our RTS gameplay. Maybe in another fifteen we'll look back on the narratives in games today and feel the same.
You're right, sometimes it is wholly inappropriate. I can think of few things worse than the endless Codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid 2. I wouldn't have minded so much, but aside from the fact that they constantly interrupted the core gameplay, they were also just plain poorly written. At least the English Translation was, I can't say whether it was any better in Japanese.
Now in a game like Planecape: Torment, the gamplay pretty much centred on the storyline. I was happy to read through all the text because to me, that was what the game was about. The story, dialogue and setting. Plus I also found it much more well written. If I had found it crap, then I wouldn't have bothered, since the game was failing at the only real thing it was trying to do. And on the odd occasions where I was bored or couldn't be bothered with the dialogue (it happens), I would just skim read it or skip it altogether, no harm no foul. Heck, I do that with most modern games, just skim the text and then skip on instead of waiting for the "professional voice actor" to finish their line. It's why I always prefer to have the subtitles on. As bad as you might say text is in a game, I find endless voice acting equally tiresome sometimes.
It's when a game unavoidably wastes my time that I'm really frustrated with it. More than dialogue, what irks me the most is when a game forces me to travel large distances between locations, "just because".
Haha, I do the EXACT same thing when there's lots of dialogue. It takes them so damn long to say the lines, and for some reason in a game it bores me WAY more then it does in a movie or on TV or on the stage.
Anyway, when I think of "Story" in games, I think I go back to RPGs alot, as they are considered the "Best" of the Genres for stories. Which is, imo, part of the problem. The medium that is supposed to be all about the story has such poorly done ones. Cliched, bland, over-written. It's awful stuff in general. For any game, it's always felt to me like the minute they try and make the plot bigger, they fail due to amateurish writing. Other genres do much better by sticking to a simple story, and doing good presentation instead.
Oh, God yes! This. Exactly this.
KrunkMcGrunk on
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
See, at least in a game like Resident Evil 1, I could laugh off the bad voice acting. For those of you who have never played the original game, it was hilariously bad.
But, Jesus. Final Fantasy 10. You could tell that they were actually serious. At first, I just ignored it. Then, it kept coming back. It wouldn't go away. It made me feel hollow.
I just happen to have a link based around bad voice acting!
See, at least in a game like Resident Evil 1, I could laugh off the bad voice acting. For those of you who have never played the original game, it was hilariously bad.
But, Jesus. Final Fantasy 10. You could tell that they were actually serious. At first, I just ignored it. Then, it kept coming back. It wouldn't go away. It made me feel hollow.
I just happen to have a link based around bad voice acting!
The thing is, in the Resident Evil games it actually works. It's part of the B-movie charm of the games that the dialogue is so corny and badly acted. Resident Evil 4 carried on this find tradition with such classic introspective dialogue as "You're SMALL TIME" and "Your right hand comes off?" . Really, it just adds to how awesome those games are.
I sincerely hope they don't change whatever translator / scriptwriter they had in number 5. The cheesy one liners are all part of the charm of those games.
I mean, how can you not love a line like "You were almost a Jill Sandwich!"
I think an example of a game that is amazing and yet had a terrible storyline is God Hand.
The game knows what it is and doesn't take itself seriously, and is all the better for it.
Developers always feel like they have to make a game that is 'real and gritty' and that makes them all the more ludicrous than if they wrote it a bit tongue in cheek.
I think an example of a game that is amazing and yet had a terrible storyline is God Hand.
The game knows what it is and doesn't take itself seriously, and is all the better for it.
Developers always feel like they have to make a game that is 'real and gritty' and that makes them all the more ludicrous than if they wrote it a bit tongue in cheek.
In regards to all of this stuff about how storytelling should be handled in games, my personal thought is that story games work the best when as much control is given to the player as current technology can allow for. Games like Shadow of the Colossus and Portal are lauded for their great stories, but there's actually very little story being told. Instead, they created unique new worlds and gave us the ability to make our own stories out of them. SotC opens with a brief cutscene that nudges us slightly in the direction the game would like us to start going, and from there on out the player is left in charge of the story. Does The Wanderer charge through the Forbidden Land, cleaving through monster after monster only to find himself cheated in the end, or does he become increasingly hesitant to kill the monsters as he sees how innocently they behave, and find what happens to him in the end to be poetic justice and exactly what he deserved? The game doesn't tell you that because you are The Wanderer. Your character is his character. Events happen, and the only times that he responds to them, such as when Agro falls in to the ravine, are the times when his reaction is almost certainly the same reaction as the player. Occasionally pieces of characterization will bleed in, like the desperation he uses to cry out for Agro in the middle of a fight or the way he's animated when trying to escape from the vortex at the end, but these are perfectly acceptable because once again, it's a reflection of what the player is in all likelihood feeling.
As for Portal, a world can be said of the character of Chell by asking a player one question: how long did it take you to kill the Weighted Companion Cube?
This is where I feel that most if not all Zelda games fall short. It's been repeatedly stated that Link never speaks because they want you to feel like he's a blank slate that you can impress your own feelings and thoughts onto, a Wanderer or Gordon Freeman sort of character. That doesn't work though, because instead of just leaving Link blank, they make other characters tell you how he's feeling. Rather than Link somehow expressing concern, another character will say something like "oh you're concerned." My own character telling me how I feel is bad enough, but a character that's a completely separate entity from myself doing it? Downright ridiculous. Now to be fair, that trend is fairly recent, and the only two that are especially guilty of doing it are TP and OoT. MM and WW do it a little, but their saving grace is that they have pretty extensive sidequests in which the game grants you much more freedom. The game doesn't shove you towards Sarcon's hideout. The only reason to go there is a character-related reason. Either you're interested in a reward or you actually care about Anju and Kafei.
I got a bit ranty and could probably rant a lot more, but I'll stop here. To sum up what I'm trying to say, in order for a story to be well-told in a game, I feel that the developers need to understand that the player is simultaneously one of the audience, one of the characters, and one of the writers, and they need to be treated accordingly. Failing to acknowledge even one of those roles can be devastating to the effectiveness of a game's story.
On the Portal/euthanising the Companion Cube bit there, I just took that as Aperture saying that to everyone to try and detach them in some way. If you're told you did that the fastest, then you assume that you care less than anyone else who's been through.
I think an example of a game that is amazing and yet had a terrible storyline is God Hand.
The game knows what it is and doesn't take itself seriously, and is all the better for it.
Developers always feel like they have to make a game that is 'real and gritty' and that makes them all the more ludicrous than if they wrote it a bit tongue in cheek.
This seems to address the point Santa Claustrophobia was making. I would agree with this idea - that the game must adhere to a set of laws that govern its own universe. I think the vast majority of gamers are willing to accept a number of unacceptable ideas provided they make sense within the context of the game.
This is a pretty common trait of fiction regardless of the medium.
Part of the problem with games as art, I think, is that we have so many more variables to take into account than most other forms. Artists always have to contend with audience prejudice and audience attention but in video games we are given much more control over the what the characters do and what their motivation is that the artists may have trouble anticipating what the audience is thinking/attempting (how long will it take for the artists to catch up with the players?) Basically, the artists don't have as much control so the finished product is fluid and this is something very modern.
Have we ever had a Choose Your Own Adventure book that has been considered literature? Do we read them as adults? I think because that same mode of thinking is the current model for interactive games we are being held back a bit.
I still hold Killer7 and Silent Hill 2 as the pinnacles of videogame storytelling.
They both have the distinction of leaving a great deal to the imagination (although K7 did so because it was unfinished), so maybe that has something to do with it.
I still hold Killer7 and Silent Hill 2 as the pinnacles of videogame storytelling.
They both have the distinction of leaving a great deal to the imagination (although K7 did so because it was unfinished), so maybe that has something to do with it.
I've always liked Suda51's storytelling, especially ever since the Fire Pro game he worked on that had such a shocking ending.
On the Portal/euthanising the Companion Cube bit there, I just took that as Aperture saying that to everyone to try and detach them in some way. If you're told you did that the fastest, then you assume that you care less than anyone else who's been through.
I was talking more about how long you as a player took from the moment you were told to do it onward. From my understanding, a lot of people tried to figure out a way to take the cube with them or get through the door without killing the cube. That's pretty strong evidence that Portal managed to effectively make both Chell and the player act as a single entity, since there's no reason for the player to have any sort of connection to the cube, whereas with Chell it's implied that lots of people have gone crazy and became affectionate for the one even slightly friendly thing in the test facility.
Ahh, fair enough. I think I might be the only person who actually didn't develop these feelings for the cube. I saw the hearts on it and laughed (I saw everything as pathetic attempts by Aperture to coddle and control me), like when GLaDOS tries to congratulate you and says "subject name here" and stuff. And the emphasis on cake for being your reason to risk life-and-limb, because "people like cake!".
Ahh, fair enough. I think I might be the only person who actually didn't develop these feelings for the cube. I saw the hearts on it and laughed (I saw everything as pathetic attempts by Aperture to coddle and control me), like when GLaDOS tries to congratulate you and says "subject name here" and stuff. And the emphasis on cake for being your reason to risk life-and-limb, because "people like cake!".
No I pretty much felt the same way. It was all just a sad, mechanical attempt to elicit emotion in the test subject for the sake of further testing. Like how a machine would understand human emotion, that's how the WCC is implemented.
Ahh, fair enough. I think I might be the only person who actually didn't develop these feelings for the cube. I saw the hearts on it and laughed (I saw everything as pathetic attempts by Aperture to coddle and control me), like when GLaDOS tries to congratulate you and says "subject name here" and stuff. And the emphasis on cake for being your reason to risk life-and-limb, because "people like cake!".
No I pretty much felt the same way. It was all just a sad, mechanical attempt to elicit emotion in the test subject for the sake of further testing. Like how a machine would understand human emotion, that's how the WCC is implemented.
Hi5!
I know this thread's now heading the way of Portal, but it always bothered me that everyone would go "lol cake is a lie! I WCC" and stuff, and it seemed like they missed the point of the joke. It's a box with a heart on it. Why should I care about the same damn box I've been using all along? Oh, because you kind folk at Aperture painted a freaking heart on the side of it. Why should I care about jumping through all these deadly deadly hoops? Oh, because I get cake at the end. Whoop-dee-doo guys, that's great.
Ahh, fair enough. I think I might be the only person who actually didn't develop these feelings for the cube. I saw the hearts on it and laughed (I saw everything as pathetic attempts by Aperture to coddle and control me), like when GLaDOS tries to congratulate you and says "subject name here" and stuff. And the emphasis on cake for being your reason to risk life-and-limb, because "people like cake!".
No I pretty much felt the same way. It was all just a sad, mechanical attempt to elicit emotion in the test subject for the sake of further testing. Like how a machine would understand human emotion, that's how the WCC is implemented.
Hi5!
I know this thread's now heading the way of Portal, but it always bothered me that everyone would go "lol cake is a lie! I WCC" and stuff, and it seemed like they missed the point of the joke. It's a box with a heart on it. Why should I care about the same damn box I've been using all along? Oh, because you kind folk at Aperture painted a freaking heart on the side of it. Why should I care about jumping through all these deadly deadly hoops? Oh, because I get cake at the end. Whoop-dee-doo guys, that's great.
Really what makes the companion cube special isn't any sort of emotional attachment, it's the completely inept and sardonic attempts at emotional manipulation surrounding it. You need an emotional impetus and goal to complete your tasks, hence cake. It makes sense, just only in a purely logical perspective, not necessarily how it actually comes across.
I don't think people missed the joke, everyone just goes along with it. W00t, cake! I am so doing this test!
I guess I didn't mean to say that everyone missed the joke, as that does just make me look pretentious, but it does irk me that that's only about as far as I ever see it mentioned, that "the cake is a lie and I was devastated when I had to euthanise the cube".
Either way though, I see a Condemned 2 demo is finally up and available here in the UK (thought it was out in the States too a couple of weeks ago), and everyone should give it a go. I really loved the game and it'd be great to see more people play it.
edit: looks like I thought wrong, I saw the demo announced a few weeks ago, turns out it only went up recently. DOWNLOAD THAT SUCKER.
Given the in-game commentary the only reason the cube was painted up and pushed on you so much was because players left it at the start otherwise. The resulting attachment was accidental.
Is there a PC demo? Or did the second game not have a PC version?
Inference through interaction with the context woven by the game's world. Every single game mentioned does not outright tell you what is going on, but rather leaves hints, like with the SWAT 4 mission mentioned by Subedii. The context presented was strengthened by interacting with the world. Shadow of the Colossus is a sublime experience not (or at least not only) because of the AWESOME GIANT FIGHTS and saving the poor girl, but by everything between.
I'm going to stop now because my thoughts are scrambled, but I hope I'm coherent enough.
Ahh, fair enough. I think I might be the only person who actually didn't develop these feelings for the cube. I saw the hearts on it and laughed (I saw everything as pathetic attempts by Aperture to coddle and control me), like when GLaDOS tries to congratulate you and says "subject name here" and stuff. And the emphasis on cake for being your reason to risk life-and-limb, because "people like cake!".
I didn't care about the cube either, but that's exactly what I'm trying to say. When we played the game, Chell was rational enough to understand just how hollow of an attempt this was to make her feel affection and didn't have to think twice about dumping the thing. In someone else's game, however, Chell may have actually cared a little bit about the Cube and wanted to figure out a way to take it with her. Even though both people are playing the same game, the main character has a fundamentally different personality and state of mind unique to each player.
And this is why mute protagonists are a good idea.
If done right. Like I said earlier, the same effect isn't achieved with Link, at least not anymore anyway, because other characters tell him how he's feeling.
And this is why mute protagonists are a good idea.
If done right. Like I said earlier, the same effect isn't achieved with Link, at least not anymore anyway, because other characters tell him how he's feeling.
Not to mention that he gets a lot of facial reaction shots in wind Waker and Twilight Princess.
Posts
I might do that.
The thing is, people are insistent on comparing gaming stories to novels and saying they're crap, or drama in games to movies and saying it's crap.
Realistically, it may very well be outright impossible to achieve the same effect from those other media. You can't have a truly dramatic scene in a game like you can in a film because you cannot script what will happen, what the main actor is going to do or how they'll react.
You can't achieve the same level of raw storyline for much the same reason, the narrative and drama in a book depends on being fixed. What if your main character decided half-way through an emotional scene to start chucking characters out the window? Or leave the scene altogether? All of a sudden the emotional drama has turned into something else altogether, can it reach the sheer tension of a completely pre-scripted scene though? Probably not.
What the best games tend to do though, in terms of their fiction, is not act against the player, but rather have the actions of the player act in concert with the narrative to create their own piece. It may not be as masterfully and meticulously crafted (down to the dramatic lighting and musical cues) as a film, but it will be fundamentally personal to the player.
What about other games that don't dwell on that though? What if it's just an action game, can you still put story and narrative into that? I would argue that you can, you can present a context for the actions, however, in games where the actual gameplay is paramount, you need to make sure that this delivery of story doesn't interfere with the gameplay. It is definitely something that a lot of games get wrong, but I also feel it's something that's improving.
I'll give you an example that I really liked. In SWAT 4, you essentially engage in a series of "stand alone" missions to bring order to chaos. It would have been very easy to just make these just linear sequences of corridors and rooms, with little to no context, no story or reason behind the missions.
But on of my favourite missions in that game, is mission 2, where SWAT is called in on a high-risk warrant at the home of a serial killer. It could have just been a normal house environment and you find the guy somewhere inside and you arrest him. But it wasn't like that at all. Little narrative touches were everywhere. Garbage piled up in the kitchen. His senile old grandmother upstairs. The radio turned to where a mother was making a heartfelt plea for the return of her daughter. A locked basement door with a security camera outside. The basement, the newspaper clippings all about the walls, the disturbing photos and masks and... other things. It created this incredible narrative and story set piece inside the mission. Arguably the game was all about the gameplay, but with all those touches it truly became something so much more involved and downright creepy for me to experience.
Really all this is description of the events, but you have no idea how it feels to play through unless you do it yourself. I can't describe the tension of going through a door, of breaching and dropping a flashbang and the howling, hissing static that the music abruptly changes to when you do. It just works. They adapted narrative touches and techniques seen elsewhere in a hundred films and stories about crime and drama and psychological thrillers, and implemented them as another part of a whole.
And that's nothing compared to the "Children of Taronne" mission. *shudder*
Fundamentally, it's possible to argue that games should only ever be about gameplay, but there's so much more they can deliver in terms of the experience if you know how to do it.
And narrow-minded.
I also hate when people bring up that type of argument in regard to art.
It's a long way until next Wednesday...
I just think that games have yet to find their own identity in relation to story. It sucks, because I feel like a lot of the effort made by truly creative people gets stamped down by the way the gaming industry works these days. Yes, there are still good independent developers that truly can be creative, but a vast majority of games are made by big development companies that are unwilling to risk anything, because they want to make money. I can't really blame a business for wanting to make money. That's just the way it is.
Anyhow, I think games are trying way too hard to be like movies, or books. I almost want to say that developers had it right in the NES era. There were games that had gained a lot of benefit from having a long narrative. And there were also games that didn't need anything other than a loose framework. But now it seems like almost every game is trying to shoe-horn in some ridiculously grand story, and it detracts from a lot of what the game could have been. (What up, Indigo Prophecy?)
I still feel like, because video games are such a young medium, they've yet to find their identity. Much like early movies hadn't found a way to separate themselves from theatre.
To be honest, I don't really feel that's any different from any other industry. You can't have indie film makers without Hollywood bringing in all the cash, and likewise Hollywood needs the creativity of the indie scene to showcase where the new and the creative is.
I enjoy my in-depth sci-fi books, but they're never going to sell as well as the next airport novel.
Well sometimes, but that's what the indie scene is for. These days, you've got creative standalones like "World of Goo" and "Audiosurf" pushing into places that haven't really been explored, and they can't really be said to have epic prose as their impetus. Meanwhile at the other end you've got this constant stream of indie adventure games coming out of places like mainland and eastern Europe that are heavily story driven and don't focus so much on action, some barely even focus on puzzle solving.
Mainstream big-budgets are largely for the blockbusters with the epic scale and the large production values.
Really, I have no problems with a game trying to make use of a grand story, they just need to do it properly. You point to Indigo Prophecy as an example of where this fails, and in a way that's true. But it's also largely true that Indigo Prophecy's first half wouldn't have survived without it's story and narrative. On the strength of ti's gameplay alone and no story, I'm not sure many people would have bought it, and with good reason. The story and narrative are two of the main reasons you buy an adventure game (and it is arguably an adventure game).
I agree. What baffles me the most is when devs make backwards steps with regards to this. Assassin's Creed is a good example, with its completely unskippable cutscenes. Most developers left that behind a decade ago, and in a game where you're likely to be repeating segments over again and again, it's completely inexcusable that they did this, no matter how good they may have thought their story was. Fundamentally people want to play their interactive entertainment, if you are forcefully wasting their time then you don't understand anything and are just frustrating the player.
I'm not saying that narratives should be done away with in all cases. I'm just saying that they should be done away with in a lot of cases. I think there are a lot of games that have narratives that don't add anything to the game at all. They're either just plain bad, derivative, or extremely boring.
If you wanted to make a good game, would you put in a gameplay mechanic that possessed one of those three qualities? Fuck no! You'd be a dumbass to do that. So why should those kinds of things be excusable in a narrative?
They're not. But the narrative, like the gameplay, is still developing.
Fifteen years ago the gameplay of Dune 2 was just fine. Now we expect a lot more from our RTS gameplay. Maybe in another fifteen we'll look back on the narratives in games today and feel the same.
You're right, sometimes it is wholly inappropriate. I can think of few things worse than the endless Codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid 2. I wouldn't have minded so much, but aside from the fact that they constantly interrupted the core gameplay, they were also just plain poorly written. At least the English Translation was, I can't say whether it was any better in Japanese.
Now in a game like Planecape: Torment, the gamplay pretty much centred on the storyline. I was happy to read through all the text because to me, that was what the game was about. The story, dialogue and setting. Plus I also found it much more well written. If I had found it crap, then I wouldn't have bothered, since the game was failing at the only real thing it was trying to do. And on the odd occasions where I was bored or couldn't be bothered with the dialogue (it happens), I would just skim read it or skip it altogether, no harm no foul. Heck, I do that with most modern games, just skim the text and then skip on instead of waiting for the "professional voice actor" to finish their line. It's why I always prefer to have the subtitles on. As bad as you might say text is in a game, I find endless voice acting equally tiresome sometimes.
It's when a game unavoidably wastes my time that I'm really frustrated with it. More than dialogue, what irks me the most is when a game forces me to travel large distances between locations, "just because".
EDIT: Actually, when I think about it, I'm probably equally put off by voice acting as I am with shitty writing. So, it can be good, but is more often done very poorly.
For those that need a reference point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU8-e-C4Uy0
Haha, I do the EXACT same thing when there's lots of dialogue. It takes them so damn long to say the lines, and for some reason in a game it bores me WAY more then it does in a movie or on TV or on the stage.
Anyway, when I think of "Story" in games, I think I go back to RPGs alot, as they are considered the "Best" of the Genres for stories. Which is, imo, part of the problem. The medium that is supposed to be all about the story has such poorly done ones. Cliched, bland, over-written. It's awful stuff in general. For any game, it's always felt to me like the minute they try and make the plot bigger, they fail due to amateurish writing. Other genres do much better by sticking to a simple story, and doing good presentation instead.
See, at least in a game like Resident Evil 1, I could laugh off the bad voice acting. For those of you who have never played the original game, it was hilariously bad.
But, Jesus. Final Fantasy 10. You could tell that they were actually serious. At first, I just ignored it. Then, it kept coming back. It wouldn't go away. It made me feel hollow.
Oh, God yes! This. Exactly this.
I just happen to have a link based around bad voice acting!
http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/residentevil/index.html
The thing is, in the Resident Evil games it actually works. It's part of the B-movie charm of the games that the dialogue is so corny and badly acted. Resident Evil 4 carried on this find tradition with such classic introspective dialogue as "You're SMALL TIME" and "Your right hand comes off?" . Really, it just adds to how awesome those games are.
I sincerely hope they don't change whatever translator / scriptwriter they had in number 5. The cheesy one liners are all part of the charm of those games.
I mean, how can you not love a line like "You were almost a Jill Sandwich!"
The game knows what it is and doesn't take itself seriously, and is all the better for it.
Developers always feel like they have to make a game that is 'real and gritty' and that makes them all the more ludicrous than if they wrote it a bit tongue in cheek.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
"Wait, you're not a human are you!"
As for Portal, a world can be said of the character of Chell by asking a player one question: how long did it take you to kill the Weighted Companion Cube?
This is where I feel that most if not all Zelda games fall short. It's been repeatedly stated that Link never speaks because they want you to feel like he's a blank slate that you can impress your own feelings and thoughts onto, a Wanderer or Gordon Freeman sort of character. That doesn't work though, because instead of just leaving Link blank, they make other characters tell you how he's feeling. Rather than Link somehow expressing concern, another character will say something like "oh you're concerned." My own character telling me how I feel is bad enough, but a character that's a completely separate entity from myself doing it? Downright ridiculous. Now to be fair, that trend is fairly recent, and the only two that are especially guilty of doing it are TP and OoT. MM and WW do it a little, but their saving grace is that they have pretty extensive sidequests in which the game grants you much more freedom. The game doesn't shove you towards Sarcon's hideout. The only reason to go there is a character-related reason. Either you're interested in a reward or you actually care about Anju and Kafei.
I got a bit ranty and could probably rant a lot more, but I'll stop here. To sum up what I'm trying to say, in order for a story to be well-told in a game, I feel that the developers need to understand that the player is simultaneously one of the audience, one of the characters, and one of the writers, and they need to be treated accordingly. Failing to acknowledge even one of those roles can be devastating to the effectiveness of a game's story.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
This seems to address the point Santa Claustrophobia was making. I would agree with this idea - that the game must adhere to a set of laws that govern its own universe. I think the vast majority of gamers are willing to accept a number of unacceptable ideas provided they make sense within the context of the game.
This is a pretty common trait of fiction regardless of the medium.
Part of the problem with games as art, I think, is that we have so many more variables to take into account than most other forms. Artists always have to contend with audience prejudice and audience attention but in video games we are given much more control over the what the characters do and what their motivation is that the artists may have trouble anticipating what the audience is thinking/attempting (how long will it take for the artists to catch up with the players?) Basically, the artists don't have as much control so the finished product is fluid and this is something very modern.
Have we ever had a Choose Your Own Adventure book that has been considered literature? Do we read them as adults? I think because that same mode of thinking is the current model for interactive games we are being held back a bit.
Of course, if I knew a new formula that worked...
They both have the distinction of leaving a great deal to the imagination (although K7 did so because it was unfinished), so maybe that has something to do with it.
I was talking more about how long you as a player took from the moment you were told to do it onward. From my understanding, a lot of people tried to figure out a way to take the cube with them or get through the door without killing the cube. That's pretty strong evidence that Portal managed to effectively make both Chell and the player act as a single entity, since there's no reason for the player to have any sort of connection to the cube, whereas with Chell it's implied that lots of people have gone crazy and became affectionate for the one even slightly friendly thing in the test facility.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
No I pretty much felt the same way. It was all just a sad, mechanical attempt to elicit emotion in the test subject for the sake of further testing. Like how a machine would understand human emotion, that's how the WCC is implemented.
Hi5!
I know this thread's now heading the way of Portal, but it always bothered me that everyone would go "lol cake is a lie! I
Really what makes the companion cube special isn't any sort of emotional attachment, it's the completely inept and sardonic attempts at emotional manipulation surrounding it. You need an emotional impetus and goal to complete your tasks, hence cake. It makes sense, just only in a purely logical perspective, not necessarily how it actually comes across.
I don't think people missed the joke, everyone just goes along with it. W00t, cake! I am so doing this test!
Either way though, I see a Condemned 2 demo is finally up and available here in the UK (thought it was out in the States too a couple of weeks ago), and everyone should give it a go. I really loved the game and it'd be great to see more people play it.
edit: looks like I thought wrong, I saw the demo announced a few weeks ago, turns out it only went up recently. DOWNLOAD THAT SUCKER.
Is there a PC demo? Or did the second game not have a PC version?
Inference through interaction with the context woven by the game's world. Every single game mentioned does not outright tell you what is going on, but rather leaves hints, like with the SWAT 4 mission mentioned by Subedii. The context presented was strengthened by interacting with the world. Shadow of the Colossus is a sublime experience not (or at least not only) because of the AWESOME GIANT FIGHTS and saving the poor girl, but by everything between.
I'm going to stop now because my thoughts are scrambled, but I hope I'm coherent enough.
I didn't care about the cube either, but that's exactly what I'm trying to say. When we played the game, Chell was rational enough to understand just how hollow of an attempt this was to make her feel affection and didn't have to think twice about dumping the thing. In someone else's game, however, Chell may have actually cared a little bit about the Cube and wanted to figure out a way to take it with her. Even though both people are playing the same game, the main character has a fundamentally different personality and state of mind unique to each player.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
If done right. Like I said earlier, the same effect isn't achieved with Link, at least not anymore anyway, because other characters tell him how he's feeling.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Not to mention that he gets a lot of facial reaction shots in wind Waker and Twilight Princess.