Meh I don't know enough about the Conan stories to argue, but the first woman you encounter is a chained up prostitute. You can't tell me that Robert E. Howard would have mandated this be your first interaction with a female? Or maybe you can.
GTA has already been brought up, but it's the same problem. GTAIV is a mature rated game that seems to take itself pretty seriously, but overall the portrayal of women is hookers/prostitutes/porn stars. I guess this has changed somewhat in the newest game, but it's still pretty juvenile.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
There are these huge questions that any reasonable and normal person would ask but Gordon doesn't. Why? Because Valve doesn't think he should speak at all. I'm not making value judgements on Gordon speaking or not, just that at times it stretches and breaks through the bounds of believability because it really does feel like a hackneyed and stupid solution.
I understand not wanting to give everything away at once. I understand "pretty standard narrative techniques." I do not think literary techniques always fit shoehorned into videogame narrative. In books or movies you're watching people who are already active participants within the world. Gordon Freeman is not at the start of Half-Life 2 and neither is the player.
Not having Gordon speak makes him seem less than human to me. Why doesn't he ask questions? Why doesn't he speak? It doesn't make me get more involved with the game, it just makes me frustrated with Gordon being such a huge blank slate that he isn't really a person and he can't be made to be a person through my actions. He just is. And it's not enough. I can ask questions of the NPCs myself like I seem to be expected to, but the NPCs don't respond. They have their own lines and their own little scenes and nothing I do has any impact on them.
I still liked Half-Life 2, but it doesn't feel to me to be an ideal solution to anything.
I am a reasonable and normal person, and I had all those questions answered during the course of the game, after I was done kicking ass.
The stuff in the middle about your opinion is completely fine and shows the other side, the percentage of the audience on whom any given technique will not work.
The first paragraph however, is all wrong. You are generalising your opinions towards other people, people who directly tell you this wasn't the case for them, and that it did work. So you can't say what you said there. You can't generalise and say "player". You have to say "me" and only "me".
You get what I'm saying here right. This is an interactional text, and the audience is one half of that interaction. It cannot be talked about purely from a third person objective standpoint, because you ignore the interaction itself in doing so. It has to be talked about from your point of view, and not as a point of view that tries to override how others interacted with it. If you try to do that, you are going to have dozens of counterpoints in as many posts. Before you have even finished saying it, you are already wrong.
Directed at entire thread now:
There is no overriding meta theory or consensus that could be achieved here. No "one great way" of presenting interactional texts. By their very nature, they will be different each and every time, with only degrees of commonality.
It worked for some, and it didn't work for others. That is, sadly, all you can say, until you know the numbers for whom it worked and for those it didn't and can compare them statistically. It's not something you can gaily theory crunch, because it's all personal.
People really need to drop their ways of thinking about previous non interactional texts, like movies or books, when talking about interactional storytelling. It is not the same, and it will not work consistently, and the language they employ is not suited for it. It's flat earth geologists discussing continental plate tectonics.
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There are these huge questions that any reasonable and normal person would ask but Gordon doesn't. Why? Because Valve doesn't think he should speak at all. I'm not making value judgements on Gordon speaking or not, just that at times it stretches and breaks through the bounds of believability because it really does feel like a hackneyed and stupid solution.
I understand not wanting to give everything away at once. I understand "pretty standard narrative techniques." I do not think literary techniques always fit shoehorned into videogame narrative. In books or movies you're watching people who are already active participants within the world. Gordon Freeman is not at the start of Half-Life 2 and neither is the player.
Not having Gordon speak makes him seem less than human to me. Why doesn't he ask questions? Why doesn't he speak? It doesn't make me get more involved with the game, it just makes me frustrated with Gordon being such a huge blank slate that he isn't really a person and he can't be made to be a person through my actions. He just is. And it's not enough. I can ask questions of the NPCs myself like I seem to be expected to, but the NPCs don't respond. They have their own lines and their own little scenes and nothing I do has any impact on them.
I still liked Half-Life 2, but it doesn't feel to me to be an ideal solution to anything.
I can totally understand that reaction, but it's not my own.
For me, HL2's narrative style was a refreshing shift of focus from open storytelling to experience and exploration. I also enjoyed how malleable Gordon was, and how he was completely formed by his actions and the reactions of the NPC, and their logical implications inside my head. Those two major things which hadn't been done very well in games previously and were now being done surprisingly skilfully were enough to suspend disbelief.
I think the Gordon-style silent protagonist is one logical consequence of have a strict, never-changing first-person viewpoint. If immersion and control must be priority one throughout the game, if you can never deviate from that, I guess this is the result.
After all, Dr. Kleiner talking about teleporters while you jump up and down on his desk and throw chairs at him is mildly less ridiculous and mildly more immersive than Dr. Kleiner talking about teleporters while you jump up and down on his desk and throw chairs at him, all the while replying calmly and chatting about ole' times at the BM.
Actually the GFW guys were talking about this on their podcast when Age of Conan came up. It's a "Mature" game that is anything but mature when it comes to sex. It's all teenage boy fantasies.
Maybe once the average age of gamers is in the late 30's instead of late 20's companies will take the gamble on dealing with sex in a truly mature fashion.
As it is I still think most of them don't see their audience as intelligent adults looking to be entertained in a mature way.
Hmm, I thought the average age of gamers was already in the 30s nowadays, although that may include casual games as well (which is a lot of people, many of which are older and plays games like Bejeweled and Spades).
But I agree, even if the stigma that everyone who plays games is an immature kid is untrue, it'll take a long time for that stigma to go away. When you've got loads of immature jackasses in online games who keep spouting all sorts of stereotypes and curses, it's easy to think that the general audience isn't ready for a serious game that attempts to tackle sex in a mature way.
I do think that a small, perhaps independently made, game will be the first to figure this out, do it well, and really get people talking.
Weighing in on HL2, I'm pretty sure the GMan said something about the world being really really different.
Also people state in the beginning that the water's been drugged so they forget shit. So they most likely lost some long term memory and wouldn't really be able to provide the desired answers.
And then there's some plot-twists later about the terms of Freeman's contract...
basically stating that he was up for the highest bidder.
So I don't have a problem with stuff not being told to someone who's sole purpose in life is to do something for someone.
'Welcome back, Mr. Freeman. I think you'll find the world has changed. It's been X years and humans live and die at the whims of an alien-dominated police state, and we need your help' would have done wonders for that game.
You didn't get all that from the first 5 minutes of the game? All except the alien part.
I'm pretty sure the first 5 minutes of the game just introduced me to the concept that policemen don't like being pegged with bottles .
No, I REALLY found the HL2 player-to-world introduction to be lacking. I mean painfully so. The first part of HL2 is just the player exploring one huge Orwellian cliche discovering 'how bad and oppressive such a society is'. I get it! It's Orwellian. Give me a pistol and let's move on, shall we?
HL1 is 'oh god, a bad accident!', followed by the player seeing the power of the black mesa facility gone wrong (it's a huge and deadly accident zone at the start remember, dodging electrical blasts, high powered lasers gone wonky), along with a gradual introduction to the alien elements that become the focus of the story as the player works through them and a revelation of the true nature of the black mesa facility.
HL2 is 'Oh no, a train. Oh no, baggage carts. Oh no, policemen wearing masks and blinky light drones. Oh no, they know our secret hideout! Oh no, I have to follow Alyx! Oh no, in the future people still spell names with the presumption that swapping one vowel out for a different but similarly sounding vowel makes them seem unique, not stupid!'
HL1's introduction is a clear view of exactly what goes wrong and an open enough goal to allow lots of cool things to happen: get the hell out of here. It takes what, 2 minutes?
HL2's introduction is essentially a long drawn out technological demonstration that eats up WAY too much of the game and still doesn't tell the player anything meaningful other than that the world sucks, something a guy could have just told him at the very start.
Ego on
Erik
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
The immature jackasses wont ever go away though. The faceless nature of the internet ensures that the 30 year olds, no longer needing to look people in the eye, will act like twelve year olds.
So relying on that to "clear up" aint ever going to help you.
Ego, you did not mention the lights that are similar to the ending of half life 1, and the G-man. This is a direct tie in to the previous game, basically turning it into one long story, if you will.
Seperating it as you do (and ignoring the G-man) sure helps your argument that their introductions are different....but if they weren't trying to achieve the same thing with each introduction, it falls flat.
Also the intro to half life 1 began with a train scene, and the intro was more like 15 minutes before the accident happened.
You don't have a very good memory mate.
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...So you would rather have had the Gman say "The world has become an Orwellian nightmare" and have you get straight to the slaughter of Combine troops?
Nevermind that a stunt like that would make everyone scratch their heads.
There are these huge questions that any reasonable and normal person would ask but Gordon doesn't. Why? Because Valve doesn't think he should speak at all. I'm not making value judgements on Gordon speaking or not, just that at times it stretches and breaks through the bounds of believability because it really does feel like a hackneyed and stupid solution.
I understand not wanting to give everything away at once. I understand "pretty standard narrative techniques." I do not think literary techniques always fit shoehorned into videogame narrative. In books or movies you're watching people who are already active participants within the world. Gordon Freeman is not at the start of Half-Life 2 and neither is the player.
Not having Gordon speak makes him seem less than human to me. Why doesn't he ask questions? Why doesn't he speak? It doesn't make me get more involved with the game, it just makes me frustrated with Gordon being such a huge blank slate that he isn't really a person and he can't be made to be a person through my actions. He just is. And it's not enough. I can ask questions of the NPCs myself like I seem to be expected to, but the NPCs don't respond. They have their own lines and their own little scenes and nothing I do has any impact on them.
I still liked Half-Life 2, but it doesn't feel to me to be an ideal solution to anything.
I can totally understand that reaction, but it's not my own.
For me, HL2's narrative style was a refreshing shift of focus from open storytelling to experience and exploration. I also enjoyed how malleable Gordon was, and how he was completely formed by his actions and the reactions of the NPC, and their logical implications inside my head. Those two major things which hadn't been done very well in games previously and were now being done surprisingly skilfully were enough to suspend disbelief.
I think the Gordon-style silent protagonist is one logical consequence of have a strict, never-changing first-person viewpoint. If immersion and control must be priority one throughout the game, if you can never deviate from that, I guess this is the result.
After all, Dr. Kleiner talking about teleporters while you jump up and down on his desk and throw chairs at him is mildly less ridiculous and mildly more immersive than Dr. Kleiner talking about teleporters while you jump up and down on his desk and throw chairs at him, all the while replying calmly and chatting about ole' times at the BM.
The funny thing is that in HL2 I feel I wanted to refrain from stupid behaviour like that, because I didn't want to look like an idiot. I didn't want the main characters I was acting like a complete moron. That gives a good indication of how effective I feel Valve's efforts have been in that respect.
It was actually similar in Deus Ex 2 come to think of it. If you feel the world takes account of your actions and that you can relate to the characters in it, you're less likely to act like an nutcase just for the sake of it.
Of course, this all depends on how "into" the game you get I suppose. And that varies from person to person. Heck, sometimes I'll break down and just do something crazy like hammering equipment with a crowbar "just because", but that'll always happen in interactive fiction where you can't fundamentally restrain the player from doing these things. On the whole though, I felt it was quite effective the way in which they built the atmosphere and character around the game such that I would inherently try to act like a part of it.
In addition, Ego, the intro of HL2 is there to portray a whole society and give you a brief taste of what it's like to be a civilian there - in short, to help you understand why this regime needs to be booted the fuck off of Earth.
Unless you really want to sit through a slideshow with G-man going "This is a floaty thingy. It takes photos, and is often used to chase people wanted by the Combine. *click* This is a door."
Let's go back to Indigo Prophecy for a second, okay?
The sex scene near the end of that game is absolutely bizarre, granted. However, EVERYTHING post-train scene in Indigo Prophecy is so completely idiotic that I can't find a suitable metaphor for it. "Zombie killer having sex with cop in a hobo train" pales in comparison to the statement that hobos are part of a giant secret society that fights against two other secret societies - and one of these is made up by cyborgs, of all things. o_O
I'm not spoilering this paragraph, unless someone asks me to do so - I don't consider those who read IP's venture into the depths of idiocy to be "spoilered", but "saved"
However, the first sex scene, with the main character and his girlfriend, is very tastefully done, IIRC.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
It even has an "accident" whereupon the enemy realises you exist because you are standing in front of them and then when the accident resolves you see....the search clicky bots of doom....
Whereupon your only goal, is get the fuck out of there, amidst the chaos of lots of people trying their hardest to kill you.
Wait wait, is this half life 1 or 2, I'm getting confused, they're so similar.
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
The funny thing is that in HL2 I feel I wanted to refrain from stupid behaviour like that, because I didn't want to look like an idiot. I didn't want the main characters I was acting like a complete moron. That gives a good indication of how effective I feel Valve's efforts have been in that respect.
I feel similarly, and I find this totally fascinating. Because in effect, you've got the freedom either to play along, or mess around, and it's self-resolving - if you really want the scene to play out well, and have gravitas, and you want to play your part as an actor, you stand and watch and occasionally follow or walk around a bit. If you just want to fuck around, well, you still can, but you're confined to an area, so you can still listen to the exposition while you're trying to teleport an old can of beans or whatever.
edit: And am I the only one who suddenly detects a note of disapproval and bemusement in every NPC's face and voice whenever you start acting up around them? I'm aware it comes completely from the context around their scripting, but it's a cool psychological effect.
Meh I don't know enough about the Conan stories to argue, but the first woman you encounter is a chained up prostitute. You can't tell me that Robert E. Howard would have mandated this be your first interaction with a female? Or maybe you can.
Howard's Conan stories were the ravings of a lonely man on the brink of going mad as a hatter. They were brutal. They were base. They were infantile. In almost every aspect... including sexuality. So, while he may not have made the mandate, it very much fits in the the crazy world he created.
The funny thing is that in HL2 I feel I wanted to refrain from stupid behaviour like that, because I didn't want to look like an idiot. I didn't want the main characters I was acting like a complete moron. That gives a good indication of how effective I feel Valve's efforts have been in that respect.
This actually isn't a conversation about sex anymore--which is awesome, who really wants to spend yet another twenty minutes on internet sex?--but I notice that for many players its venturing into "what is roleplaying?" territory. The later reference subeddii made to Deus Ex is salient because it is an fps containing RPG elements, and I would suggest that he is in at least one respect role playing HL2 insofar as he is acting the way he thinks Gordon Freeman should act in this situation.
Other players are treating it like an FPS. Plot inconsequential, make with the shooting.
That may be part of the difference behind why some players treat the game like art and some treat it like, well, a game. Subedii is approaching the game almost like it's theater, and he's improvising one of the roles while the other characters are scripted. He's not role playing in the sense that he's min-maxing a priest, he's actually acting a role out. Other players are more concerned with the core gameplay elements: shooting things and finding things so you can shoot more things until you beat the game.
The immature jackasses wont ever go away though. The faceless nature of the internet ensures that the 30 year olds, no longer needing to look people in the eye, will act like twelve year olds.
So relying on that to "clear up" aint ever going to help you.
Ego, you did not mention the lights that are similar to the ending of half life 1, and the G-man. This is a direct tie in to the previous game, basically turning it into one long story, if you will.
Seperating it as you do (and ignoring the G-man) sure helps your argument that their introductions are different....but if they weren't trying to achieve the same thing with each introduction, it falls flat.
Also the intro to half life 1 began with a train scene, and the intro was more like 15 minutes before the accident happened.
Which lights are you speaking of? The flying by star-type lights from the wacky space tram at the end of HL1? Anyhow...
I'm viewing the games as separate entities, and the ending of HL1 doesn't in any way make the start of HL2 more excusable as poor story-telling. If you view one as a continuation of the other, I'd have to say it actually makes HL2 into a worse game.
Ah I forgot the tram ride in HL1. Actually that was an awesome introduction.
Now, my argument isn't the the introductions are different, it's that HL1 has a good introduction that doesn't lose anything for Gordon's muteness, whereas HL2 has a boring introduction that makes you annoyed to be a voiceless entity. I would rather choose to be a voiceless entity, when playing as the protagonist in a game, I just think HL2 shows how to do it wrong while HL1 shows you how to do it right.
Also, it's totally unrelated but I contend that where HL1 turned the G-man into an awesome character basically from the first moment you see him after the catastrophe has ensued (given that you did see him beforehand), HL2 ruined the G-man as a neat mysterious character and just turned him into a god-tool and reset-button for filling plot holes in the story.
You don't have a very good memory mate.
It's probably just all the brain damage .
...So you would rather have had the Gman say "The world has become an Orwellian nightmare" and have you get straight to the slaughter of Combine troops?
I think the ENTIRE introduction of HL2 could have been better replaced by Gordon waking up and walking along-side someone explaining why they woke up him, the world he's in, and what they're going to need him to do (realistically this is what ANYONE would do if they woke someone up to help them out at some future date), and then the conversation being interrupted by -whatever- and the player being thrust into the game.
Honestly, you think HL2 had a good intro? Just try playing the game again. Play through 20 minutes of HL1 and 20 minutes of HL2 and tell me which is a better story.
I liked HL2 enough to beat it (a rare thing for me, I'm very picky and if a game strikes me as flawed I'll usually just put it away and play something that doesn't), but it wasn't nearly the game half-life was, IMO.
Ego on
Erik
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
Not me.
For once I'll talk third person.
I become completely immersed in the character of gordon freeman, that I roleplay a silent talking, capable, intelligent, kickass, efficient, killer.
But when I'm actually playing, I'm not thinking I'm roleplaying gordon freeman hyuck hyuck....I become immersed so greatly I remember the actions I guide him to do as things I, personally, did.
edit: Better replaced for you Ego. Not for me. I have played through both recently. Neither one is better than the other, because comparing them to me is stupid and petty. But it's not to you, so you do. Hey whatever man. I can respect that.
"Honestly, you think HL2 had a good intro? Just try playing the game again. Play through 20 minutes of HL1 and 20 minutes of HL2 and tell me which is a better story."
I can't respect this though.
I don't think like that. Don't pull me into your way of thinking. It's not self evident that I would think like this. It's your personal opinion, and you must justify it within your own terms. I don't need to agree with you, and I don't.
Morninglord on
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The funny thing is that in HL2 I feel I wanted to refrain from stupid behaviour like that, because I didn't want to look like an idiot. I didn't want the main characters I was acting like a complete moron. That gives a good indication of how effective I feel Valve's efforts have been in that respect.
I feel similarly, and I find this totally fascinating. Because in effect, you've got the freedom either to play along, or mess around, and it's self-resolving - if you really want the scene to play out well, and have gravitas, and you want to play your part as an actor, you stand and watch and occasionally follow or walk around a bit. If you just want to fuck around, well, you still can, but you're confined to an area, so you can still listen to the exposition while you're trying to teleport an old can of beans or whatever.
HL2's immersion was broken for me at the first cutscene in Steiner's (?) lab. They were narrating and dumping tons of exposition on me, while I ran around the lab knocking shit over and messing with the teleportation thingy. No one in the game world reacted at all. It's at the point that I realized that Half-life has cutscenes, but their big innovation is that I can move the camera. Whee. No one in the game world reacts to me, at all.
Regarding Mass Effect, my wife (doesn't play games) would occasionally wander by while I was having dialogue with Liara and laugh at how cheesey it all was. When she heard Liara describe her species' reproductive habits, she thought it was only something a lonely guy in a basement would think up. It's also not deep. I stumbled across it just because I made a habit of being nice to everyone and exploring all dialogue options because I got XP for them. There's even a clear point where they say, "Would you like to bone me?" When Mass Effect is an example of sex in a video game done right, that just exposes the immaturity of videogames.
Ego: I played HL2 beginning to end for the fifth or sixth time not long ago when I got the Orange Box. Sorry man, but I just don't get it. I just don't understand how you think your intro would be better. I loved HL2's intro just as much as the first time, which is to say, loads.
Regarding Mass Effect, my wife (doesn't play games) would occasionally wander by while I was having dialogue with Liara and laugh at how cheesey it all was. When she heard Liara describe her species' reproductive habits, she thought it was only something a lonely guy in a basement would think up. It's also not deep. I stumbled across it just because I made a habit of being nice to everyone and exploring all dialogue options because I got XP for them. There's even a clear point where they say, "Would you like to bone me?" When Mass Effect is an example of sex in a video game done right, that just exposes the immaturity of videogames.
Basically agree completely, here. I found Mass Effect depressingly juvenile, as much as I loved what they were trying to do with it.
Oh well, I've been known to hate things senselessly, and I've long known that my opinion of HL2 is not the prevailing one, by a long shot.
That said I still think I'm right, and you're wrong, as none of you can prove that you aren't humaniform robots created to populate the earth and keep me company, to fall back on an old stand-by.
Speaking of 'cutscenes' in half-life,
I liked how the 'cutscenes' in HL1 would have scientists yell at Gordon to stop messing around if he started running around the room and bumping into them . But my favourite thing about HL1 was how few these 'scenes' really were and how much of the game was just you going around doing things. I mean there was the scene with the long-jump boots, the scene before he opens the portal, and the scene with the two docs discussing the first experiment with Gordon before the catastrophe, but not too much more than that.
Ego on
Erik
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
The funny thing is that in HL2 I feel I wanted to refrain from stupid behaviour like that, because I didn't want to look like an idiot. I didn't want the main characters I was acting like a complete moron. That gives a good indication of how effective I feel Valve's efforts have been in that respect.
I feel similarly, and I find this totally fascinating. Because in effect, you've got the freedom either to play along, or mess around, and it's self-resolving - if you really want the scene to play out well, and have gravitas, and you want to play your part as an actor, you stand and watch and occasionally follow or walk around a bit. If you just want to fuck around, well, you still can, but you're confined to an area, so you can still listen to the exposition while you're trying to teleport an old can of beans or whatever.
HL2's immersion was broken for me at the first cutscene in Steiner's (?) lab. They were narrating and dumping tons of exposition on me, while I ran around the lab knocking shit over and messing with the teleportation thingy. No one in the game world reacted at all. It's at the point that I realized that Half-life has cutscenes, but their big innovation is that I can move the camera. Whee. No one in the game world reacts to me, at all.
Regarding Mass Effect, my wife (doesn't play games) would occasionally wander by while I was having dialogue with Liara and laugh at how cheesey it all was. When she heard Liara describe her species' reproductive habits, she thought it was only something a lonely guy in a basement would think up. It's also not deep. I stumbled across it just because I made a habit of being nice to everyone and exploring all dialogue options because I got XP for them. There's even a clear point where they say, "Would you like to bone me?" When Mass Effect is an example of sex in a video game done right, that just exposes the immaturity of videogames.
Actually, re half life cutscenes, they weren't cutscenes. Except for a few key people, you could shoot most of the talkers and plow on immediately without listening. This is an appreciable difference, but it didn't overly bother me personally, because I no longer wanted to shoot them. I can see why it would break your immersion though.
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Honestly, you think HL2 had a good intro? Just try playing the game again. Play through 20 minutes of HL1 and 20 minutes of HL2 and tell me which is a better story.
Half-Life 2.
No. Doubt. What. So. Ever.
I felt HL2's intro was really brilliant. They don't outright spell everything out for you, that's for you to discover as much or as little about as you want. The world is all laid out for you, all the little details are there for you to pay as much or as little attention to as you want. G-Man dumps you there with no knowledge, because that's pretty much his job, you're the one that has to take the action. And Within the first 20 minutes I'd say I felt I had a pretty good understanding of the situation. Humanity under siege and control, the resistance fighting to take control back, and Gordon Freeman being dumped into the middle of it. Beyond that, well you find out as you go along. For me, it was enough impetus from there, and all pretty evocatively told, they just didn't tell it to you directly. Instead they adopted an approach of "Don't tell, SHOW!". I honestly feel that worked so much better than if G-man had just spent those 15 minutes talking at me. It probably would have ended up feeling like the Metal Gear series (good series, but the narrative exposition is really intrusive in the way it's done and is very good at breaking the flow of the game).
In HL1 I just find myself getting bored and wishing I could just jump ahead to the first gun.
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ViscountalphaThe pen is mightier than the swordhttp://youtu.be/G_sBOsh-vyIRegistered Userregular
If you look at things like Second life, it exemplifies the uncanny valley theory. Its just creepy. People suspend their creepiness to have sex with other creepy people. I wonder how the red light district is working out as a sex video game. I don't have any direct input on that one but I don't believe it really works out in the long run.
My opinion on sex related video games still follows the stigma of being a prudish religious sort- Sex is not a public thing. It is a private matter and video games is not where it belongs. It either becomes silly or stupid if its out there in that form.
I think the fact that we have people who disagree so much with the choice of making Gordon silent is an indicator of art. Just like how one person can look at a painting in a chosen style and like or loathe it, this specific choice has people of different opinions on how it made them feel.
It has NOTHING to do with gameplay. It is all about how the story affects them. Just like how some books are narrated, some are from first person, some are third person. Like with other art, the creators choice isn't necessarily good or bad. It works for some people and not for others.
Also, 'art' is such a subjective term. It's one of those things where people bring their own bias to the word. As one poster said, he felt that art couldn't be compromising. That certainly isn't the dictionary definition of the word. But, to them, that is one of the qualities to art. To me, simply having a creative process makes it art. How well this is carried out determines how GOOD the art is.
And just because something has 'LOL boobies' does mean that other aspects aren't artful. And even gratuitous things can be artfully done. I mean, look at Shakespear. I think most count his stuff as art. Well, Taming of the Shrew has dick and fart jokes.
Since we're back to talking about sex in videogames, I would like to bring up Baldur's Gate 2, particularly sex with Anomen.
I'm sure everyone remembers Anomen and I'm sure everyone that does remember Anomen hates him with a burning passion. But as you play through his romance, which does branch, and especially if you take him down his chaotic neutral path, he develops quite a lot as a character.
While Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic had fairly short romances, the romances in BG2 are actually fairly long, it being a long game itself. So you talk with Anomen quite a bit and at first he's very annoying and pompous and full of himself, but he does seem to have a sort of admiration for your character.
Over time you become his biggest source of support as he finds he doesn't have the strength to tackle the things he has to and eventually comes into his own because of it. Whether he passes or fails his test, he does develop in slightly different ways, but he has realized he loves you and in a tender moment, it eventually comes to sex.
But it's all entirely implied. You could entirely miss that it even happened if weren't for Anomen or your character being able to mention it or joke about it later, but it comes as the culmination of your relationship with him and as an expression of love.
The other romances are perhaps not quite as good about it (especially Viconia's, but she's a drow and that's just kind of how they are), but it was handled in a far more mature way than it was in BioWare's subsequent games. I don't think any of them really feel quite so much like a real developing relationship as Anomen's does, though.
The funny thing is that in HL2 I feel I wanted to refrain from stupid behaviour like that, because I didn't want to look like an idiot. I didn't want the main characters I was acting like a complete moron. That gives a good indication of how effective I feel Valve's efforts have been in that respect.
I feel similarly, and I find this totally fascinating. Because in effect, you've got the freedom either to play along, or mess around, and it's self-resolving - if you really want the scene to play out well, and have gravitas, and you want to play your part as an actor, you stand and watch and occasionally follow or walk around a bit. If you just want to fuck around, well, you still can, but you're confined to an area, so you can still listen to the exposition while you're trying to teleport an old can of beans or whatever.
HL2's immersion was broken for me at the first cutscene in Steiner's (?) lab. They were narrating and dumping tons of exposition on me, while I ran around the lab knocking shit over and messing with the teleportation thingy. No one in the game world reacted at all. It's at the point that I realized that Half-life has cutscenes, but their big innovation is that I can move the camera. Whee. No one in the game world reacts to me, at all.
Regarding Mass Effect, my wife (doesn't play games) would occasionally wander by while I was having dialogue with Liara and laugh at how cheesey it all was. When she heard Liara describe her species' reproductive habits, she thought it was only something a lonely guy in a basement would think up. It's also not deep. I stumbled across it just because I made a habit of being nice to everyone and exploring all dialogue options because I got XP for them. There's even a clear point where they say, "Would you like to bone me?" When Mass Effect is an example of sex in a video game done right, that just exposes the immaturity of videogames.
Actually, re half life cutscenes, they weren't cutscenes. Except for a few key people, you could shoot most of the talkers and plow on immediately without listening. This is an appreciable difference, but it didn't overly bother me personally, because I no longer wanted to shoot them. I can see why it would break your immersion though.
The example above pretty clearly is a cutscene, since you need to take the teleportation device, and in many cases you have to wait for someone to open a door or something to go forward.
HL2 tried to have it both ways by telling a scripted story, but leaving control of Gordon in the player's hands at all times. However, IMO, all they did was leave the protagonist as a non-participant in the world and ended up telling a pretty weak story. HL2's story is razor-thin, especially for such a long game. The setting is well-realized, but the story is little more than pushing you on to the next objective.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
I basically agree with that monkeydrye, but most "arts' aren't really interactive, so I don't think it's appropriate to use that terminology either.
@Dagnabbit: I was actually making a distinction between Hl1 and 2 cutscenes there Dagnabbit, I didn't make that totally clear sorry. I agree with your take on the hl2 cutscene(that is to say, I agree that it could happen to some people), it just didn't happen to me.
And you are using generalised language in the last paragraph, so I'm going to just have to dismiss what you said until you rectify it to be a personal opinion, as generalisations are incorrect.
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Sadly, i must prepare for work and cook myself breakfast and lunch. So my comments will be brief.
I think a problem in this discussion is that we are equating sex with depicting the actual act of sex. In fallout 2, my character had a lot of sex, she was a hooker and porn star. The actual act of sex did not need to be depicted for it to be considered a part of gameplay. I didn't need to see Rain get a bath at the whorehouse to know that she was making progress to the Sexpert perk.
One thing we can learn from comic books is that there are a number of ways to hint and allude toward a sexual encounter without actually depicting it or stepping on anyone's shoes. GTA:SA could have kept the sex minigame if they were smart about how they showed it. Just show the outside of the home bumping while you do the controls.
Another problem with sex in games is that with open ended game play, you allow the player to take a route to sex that you didn't intend and can loose the emotional content you intended.
Let me explain, at several points in Fallout 2, a number of communities and the people within them could be wiped out due to certain events. Some you can stop, others you cannot, 1 you start. Each of the massacres could have a profound emotional impact on the player if he or she developed an emotional bond with those communities. But if the player has refused such a bond or hasn't interacted with these communities at all, then their deaths are meaningless to the player and contribute to the story in a different way.
Relating this back toward sex in games, you are not guaranteed that a player will have the emotional reaction you want toward a sexual encounter. The upside is that in a roleplaying game, this can further the players' roleplaying experience and let them play as they character they want, and that by letting them supplement their own reactions, they play the game their way.
The downside is that if you are trying to tell a specific story, the player will not feel and act according to how you planned it out and ultimately, sex will fail to help tell the story and let the player play the game.
Ultimately, the amount of interactivity in sex in a game will depend on how freeform the story is, MGS3, you were a witness, GTA:SA and Fallout 2, you were more of a player and actor. The more freedom the player is given toward sex in a game, the less emotional content sex will have.
edit: Forgot about Indigo Prophecy's/Fahrenheit's first sex scene. It was so real and required a severe emotional investment that you knew it wasn't trivial fanservice but a interaction between two characters, total opposite of the second scene, which was so bad that i didn't care I was looking at boobs....which were oddly warm in that situation.
I basically agree with that monkeydrye, but most "arts' aren't really interactive, so I don't think it's appropriate to use that terminology either.
@Dagnabbit: I was actually making a distinction between Hl1 and 2 cutscenes there Dagnabbit, I didn't make that totally clear sorry. I agree with your take on the hl2 cutscene(that is to say, I agree that it could happen to some people), it just didn't happen to me.
And you are using generalised language, so I'm going to just have to dismiss what you said until you rectify it to be a personal opinion, as generalisations are incorrect.
Ah, I see. Nevermind then. I agree that HL1 did a better job than HL2 in this regard, but I also think HL2 tried to do more heavy-lifting, storywise.
True. The interactivity makes it a different form of art. And, in ways, it mixes several different arts (music, writing, visual) within game design. And honestly maybe we should be begining to look at gameplay itself as a possible art. The design and mixing of a flowing series of combos could be akin to coriographing a dance.
But, it doesn't HAVE to be art. I can watch a episode of a show and just be entertained. But I can also be moved by the same show.
I think we as humans like to make everything black and white. We like to compartmentalize things. But the universe isn't really like that for many things. It's just easier for us to deal with it, when we do it like that.
For me, the best depiction of a sexual relationship so far was in PoP: Sands of Time. While there is nothing shown, and only hints of any actual sex occuring, the bathhouse scene is the only truly erotic scene I've actually seen in games.
The only reason it works is because SoT actually tried (and succeeded) to have a mature storyline, even though the storyline is very simple.
To portray sex in games, we must first have story lines not written by amateurs, unlike many. It is a rather cart-before-horse request for sex portrayal in games to get better.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
True. The interactivity makes it a different form of art. And, in ways, it mixes several different arts (music, writing, visual) within game design. And honestly maybe we should be begining to look at gameplay itself as a possible art. The design and mixing of a flowing series of combos could be akin to coriographing a dance.
But, it doesn't HAVE to be art. I can watch a episode of a show and just be entertained. But I can also be moved by the same show.
I think we as humans like to make everything black and white. We like to compartmentalize things. But the universe isn't really like that for many things. It's just easier for us to deal with it, when we do it like that.
I study psychology mate. I know what we do, and this is why I try not to.
It's really fucking hard, since we do seem to be, in part, "wired" that way.
But it can be really helpful, and lead to a lot of interesting insights and useful ways of approaching even everyday life situations.
Incidentally I wrote a massive post last page saying basically what you said only I used the terms "interaction". You might find it interesting since you seem receptive to the ideas I am presenting.
Why has nobody mentioned the Witcher yet, by the way. I am completely unequipped to talk about it, since I approached it all as "haha I wonder which card I can get next...." but I'm sure someone can talk about it as a mature, intelligent adult for me.
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Why has nobody mentioned the Witcher yet, by the way. I am completely unequipped to talk about it, since I approached it all as haha I wonder which card I can get next....but I'm sure someone can talk about it as a mature, intelligent adult for me.
It's hard to talk about The Witcher being mature when it comes to sex, though. On one hand, it feels very misogynistic. I mean, it turned sex into a hunt for collectable girly cards. But I think with Shani and Triss, at least, it handled it far better.
Triss does sleep with you right off the bat if you consent to it and Shani will sleep with you after the party which comes as a culmination of completing her quests, but with both, you have a history. A sexual history, even.
I've only played through choosing to side with Shani in the whole Alvin situation, but it was fairly interesting. She does immediately have sex with you again. She now has a child under her care and you're acting as his father figure so she first wants to make sure that you three could be happy together as a family. Whether this is a good idea or not is covered by the game and I won't really go into it.
Once she thinks everything could work, if you give her a symbol of love, she admits she loves you and would like to make love and it transitions into that slow calm music and you get the card. It seems weird that "make love" would be strange, but it's an entirely different terminology than is used in the rest of the game and for some reason, that sequence of events felt far more mature and less frivilous than the rest of the sex in the game.
But the rest? I'm not sure anyone could make an argument for it being mature. I doubt you could argue anything but it being a relatively small part of the game that you can completely ignore.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Why has nobody mentioned the Witcher yet, by the way. I am completely unequipped to talk about it, since I approached it all as haha I wonder which card I can get next....but I'm sure someone can talk about it as a mature, intelligent adult for me.
It's hard to talk about The Witcher being mature when it comes to sex, though. On one hand, it feels very misogynistic. I mean, it turned sex into a hunt for collectable girly cards. But I think with Shani and Triss, at least, it handled it far better.
Triss does sleep with you right off the bat if you consent to it and Shani will sleep with you after the party which comes as a culmination of completing her quests, but with both, you have a history. A sexual history, even.
I've only played through choosing to side with Shani in the whole Alvin situation, but it was fairly interesting. She does immediately have sex with you again. She now has a child under her care and you're acting as his father figure so she first wants to make sure that you three could be happy together as a family. Whether this is a good idea or not is covered by the game and I won't really go into it.
Once she thinks everything could work, if you give her a symbol of love, she admits she loves you and would like to make love and it transitions into that slow calm music and you get the card. It seems weird that "make love" would be strange, but it's an entirely different terminology than is used in the rest of the game and for some reason, that sequence of events felt far more mature and less frivilous than the rest of the sex in the game.
But the rest? I'm not sure anyone could make an argument for it being mature. I doubt you could argue anything but it being a relatively small part of the game that you can completely ignore.
Uh, sex doesn't have to be meaningful to happen. Sometimes two people just might want to have a shag, for fun and profit, and no strings attached. Which is something I think the game presented quite well, considering his motivations. Card thing aside, the actual conversations and interactions seemed...reasonable? There were a couple I did find pretty, "har har, lonely guy in a bedroom", like the dryad and such.
I actually found Shanii's sequence to be unsettling because I realised the Witcher's world isn't one where this kind of thing works very well....that it's something he'd rarely hear or let himself hear. It was still meaningful however.
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Uh, sex doesn't have to be meaningful to happen. Sometimes two people just might want to have a shag, for fun and profit, and no strings attached. Which is something I think the game presented quite well, considering his motivations.
I actually found Shanii's sequence to be unsettling because I realised the Witcher's world isn't one where this kind of thing works very well....that it's something he'd rarely hear or let himself hear. It was still meaningful however.
I know it doesn't have to be meaningful to happen. I wasn't trying to insinuate that it does.
But allowing you to have sex with half the female NPCs in the game and then giving you a card with a naked woman on it as a reward and turning the whole thing into a collectable card hunt? I'm not entirely sure I'd call that "mature."
The Witcher has a reputation for being something of a sex obsessed game, and while that's not entirely true, it does have some basis in fact. It's not handled in as childish a way as I would expect, that much is true, but it's still filled with easy women to fuck and then get a nudey card from. I can't think of one single area in the game where there isn't at least one woman to have sex with except for the dungeon areas and the swamp cemetary.
As for Shani's whole sequence not being something that would normally happen in the world of The Witcher, of course, but Geralt barely knows what the fuck is going on and he can act any way he pleases. That was kind of the point of taking away his memory. Geralt is an established character and by making him more or less a blank slate, the player can define who he is. The other characters you meet in the game have known him and know how he was and how witchers themselves are, but this in no way affects how the player can shape him.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Uh, sex doesn't have to be meaningful to happen. Sometimes two people just might want to have a shag, for fun and profit, and no strings attached. Which is something I think the game presented quite well, considering his motivations.
I actually found Shanii's sequence to be unsettling because I realised the Witcher's world isn't one where this kind of thing works very well....that it's something he'd rarely hear or let himself hear. It was still meaningful however.
I know it doesn't have to be meaningful to happen. I wasn't trying to insinuate that it does.
But allowing you to have sex with half the female NPCs in the game and then giving you a card with a naked woman on it as a reward and turning the whole thing into a collectable card hunt? I'm not entirely sure I'd call that "mature."
The Witcher has a reputation for being something of a sex obsessed game, and while that's not entirely true, it does have some basis in fact. It's not handled in as childish a way as I would expect, that much is true, but it's still filled with easy women to fuck and then get a nudey card from. I can't think of one single area in the game where there isn't at least one woman to have sex with except for the dungeon areas and the swamp cemetary.
As for Shani's whole sequence not being something that would normally happen in the world of The Witcher, of course, but Geralt barely knows what the fuck is going on and he can act any way he pleases. That was kind of the point of taking away his memory. Geralt is an established character and by making him more or less a blank slate, the player can define who he is. The other characters you meet in the game have known him and know how he was and how witchers themselves are, but this in no way affects how the player can shape him.
I knew the card thing would stifle this discussion. I guess that's why nobody discussed it.
I always looked upon them as Geralt's fond memories, but if you want to look at it as a collection quest forced upon you by the game then sure, it demeans it. I don't think it's demeaning if the women just wanted fun though, not an attachment, as many of them seemed to be indicating.
So having "lots of women to have sex with" or being "sex obsessed" be a fault is meaningless if each incident is handled in an adult manner. That's making a "too much" judgement, I think.
It is, incidentally, a choice, and you don't have to make it.
I'm not saying it's the height of maturity, or a way to do it, but it did present casual sex in a game in a manner that fitted into the world. If it didn't have the cards nobody would have a negative opinion on it, I think.
It should still be mentioned, is all I'm saying.
The main relationship is a worthwhile discussion aside from all the rest of it anyway, since even here we get mixed reactions that tie into the nature of the world. It reminded me of some of BG2's romances.
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I'm not saying it's the height of maturity, or a way to do it, but it did present casual sex in a game in a manner that fitted into the world. If it didn't have the cards nobody would have a negative opinion on it, I think.
I do agree with that and I know you can completely ignore the sex and the cards, but it seems most people that haven't played it don't. I know I didn't before I bought and played it. I initially wasn't going to either because the game does have the reputation that it has.
And to be honest, it doesn't bother me that much. The Witcher is one of my favorite RPGs and probably one of the best in years.
As for the too much argument, I only mentioned how many women there are to have sex with because it got on my nerves how many would practically try to fling themselves at you.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I'm not saying it's the height of maturity, or a way to do it, but it did present casual sex in a game in a manner that fitted into the world. If it didn't have the cards nobody would have a negative opinion on it, I think.
I do agree with that and I know you can completely ignore the sex and the cards, but it seems most people that haven't played it don't. I know I didn't before I bought and played it. I initially wasn't going to either because the game does have the reputation that it has.
And to be honest, it doesn't bother me that much. The Witcher is one of my favorite RPGs and probably one of the best in years.
As for the too much argument, I only mentioned how many women there are to have sex with because it got on my nerves how many would practically try to fling themselves at you.
Hey, the guy's got charisma. My gf hates epic people, but she liked his character. He's like, ugly handsome.
But seriously yeah I can see where that would annoy.
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GTA has already been brought up, but it's the same problem. GTAIV is a mature rated game that seems to take itself pretty seriously, but overall the portrayal of women is hookers/prostitutes/porn stars. I guess this has changed somewhat in the newest game, but it's still pretty juvenile.
I am a reasonable and normal person, and I had all those questions answered during the course of the game, after I was done kicking ass.
The stuff in the middle about your opinion is completely fine and shows the other side, the percentage of the audience on whom any given technique will not work.
The first paragraph however, is all wrong. You are generalising your opinions towards other people, people who directly tell you this wasn't the case for them, and that it did work. So you can't say what you said there. You can't generalise and say "player". You have to say "me" and only "me".
You get what I'm saying here right. This is an interactional text, and the audience is one half of that interaction. It cannot be talked about purely from a third person objective standpoint, because you ignore the interaction itself in doing so. It has to be talked about from your point of view, and not as a point of view that tries to override how others interacted with it. If you try to do that, you are going to have dozens of counterpoints in as many posts. Before you have even finished saying it, you are already wrong.
Directed at entire thread now:
There is no overriding meta theory or consensus that could be achieved here. No "one great way" of presenting interactional texts. By their very nature, they will be different each and every time, with only degrees of commonality.
It worked for some, and it didn't work for others. That is, sadly, all you can say, until you know the numbers for whom it worked and for those it didn't and can compare them statistically. It's not something you can gaily theory crunch, because it's all personal.
People really need to drop their ways of thinking about previous non interactional texts, like movies or books, when talking about interactional storytelling. It is not the same, and it will not work consistently, and the language they employ is not suited for it. It's flat earth geologists discussing continental plate tectonics.
I can totally understand that reaction, but it's not my own.
For me, HL2's narrative style was a refreshing shift of focus from open storytelling to experience and exploration. I also enjoyed how malleable Gordon was, and how he was completely formed by his actions and the reactions of the NPC, and their logical implications inside my head. Those two major things which hadn't been done very well in games previously and were now being done surprisingly skilfully were enough to suspend disbelief.
I think the Gordon-style silent protagonist is one logical consequence of have a strict, never-changing first-person viewpoint. If immersion and control must be priority one throughout the game, if you can never deviate from that, I guess this is the result.
After all, Dr. Kleiner talking about teleporters while you jump up and down on his desk and throw chairs at him is mildly less ridiculous and mildly more immersive than Dr. Kleiner talking about teleporters while you jump up and down on his desk and throw chairs at him, all the while replying calmly and chatting about ole' times at the BM.
Hmm, I thought the average age of gamers was already in the 30s nowadays, although that may include casual games as well (which is a lot of people, many of which are older and plays games like Bejeweled and Spades).
But I agree, even if the stigma that everyone who plays games is an immature kid is untrue, it'll take a long time for that stigma to go away. When you've got loads of immature jackasses in online games who keep spouting all sorts of stereotypes and curses, it's easy to think that the general audience isn't ready for a serious game that attempts to tackle sex in a mature way.
I do think that a small, perhaps independently made, game will be the first to figure this out, do it well, and really get people talking.
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Also people state in the beginning that the water's been drugged so they forget shit. So they most likely lost some long term memory and wouldn't really be able to provide the desired answers.
And then there's some plot-twists later about the terms of Freeman's contract...
So I don't have a problem with stuff not being told to someone who's sole purpose in life is to do something for someone.
I'm pretty sure the first 5 minutes of the game just introduced me to the concept that policemen don't like being pegged with bottles
No, I REALLY found the HL2 player-to-world introduction to be lacking. I mean painfully so. The first part of HL2 is just the player exploring one huge Orwellian cliche discovering 'how bad and oppressive such a society is'. I get it! It's Orwellian. Give me a pistol and let's move on, shall we?
HL1 is 'oh god, a bad accident!', followed by the player seeing the power of the black mesa facility gone wrong (it's a huge and deadly accident zone at the start remember, dodging electrical blasts, high powered lasers gone wonky), along with a gradual introduction to the alien elements that become the focus of the story as the player works through them and a revelation of the true nature of the black mesa facility.
HL2 is 'Oh no, a train. Oh no, baggage carts. Oh no, policemen wearing masks and blinky light drones. Oh no, they know our secret hideout! Oh no, I have to follow Alyx! Oh no, in the future people still spell names with the presumption that swapping one vowel out for a different but similarly sounding vowel makes them seem unique, not stupid!'
HL1's introduction is a clear view of exactly what goes wrong and an open enough goal to allow lots of cool things to happen: get the hell out of here. It takes what, 2 minutes?
HL2's introduction is essentially a long drawn out technological demonstration that eats up WAY too much of the game and still doesn't tell the player anything meaningful other than that the world sucks, something a guy could have just told him at the very start.
So relying on that to "clear up" aint ever going to help you.
Ego, you did not mention the lights that are similar to the ending of half life 1, and the G-man. This is a direct tie in to the previous game, basically turning it into one long story, if you will.
Seperating it as you do (and ignoring the G-man) sure helps your argument that their introductions are different....but if they weren't trying to achieve the same thing with each introduction, it falls flat.
Also the intro to half life 1 began with a train scene, and the intro was more like 15 minutes before the accident happened.
You don't have a very good memory mate.
...So you would rather have had the Gman say "The world has become an Orwellian nightmare" and have you get straight to the slaughter of Combine troops?
Nevermind that a stunt like that would make everyone scratch their heads.
The funny thing is that in HL2 I feel I wanted to refrain from stupid behaviour like that, because I didn't want to look like an idiot. I didn't want the main characters I was acting like a complete moron. That gives a good indication of how effective I feel Valve's efforts have been in that respect.
It was actually similar in Deus Ex 2 come to think of it. If you feel the world takes account of your actions and that you can relate to the characters in it, you're less likely to act like an nutcase just for the sake of it.
Of course, this all depends on how "into" the game you get I suppose. And that varies from person to person. Heck, sometimes I'll break down and just do something crazy like hammering equipment with a crowbar "just because", but that'll always happen in interactive fiction where you can't fundamentally restrain the player from doing these things. On the whole though, I felt it was quite effective the way in which they built the atmosphere and character around the game such that I would inherently try to act like a part of it.
Unless you really want to sit through a slideshow with G-man going "This is a floaty thingy. It takes photos, and is often used to chase people wanted by the Combine. *click* This is a door."
The sex scene near the end of that game is absolutely bizarre, granted. However, EVERYTHING post-train scene in Indigo Prophecy is so completely idiotic that I can't find a suitable metaphor for it. "Zombie killer having sex with cop in a hobo train" pales in comparison to the statement that hobos are part of a giant secret society that fights against two other secret societies - and one of these is made up by cyborgs, of all things. o_O
I'm not spoilering this paragraph, unless someone asks me to do so - I don't consider those who read IP's venture into the depths of idiocy to be "spoilered", but "saved"
However, the first sex scene, with the main character and his girlfriend, is very tastefully done, IIRC.
Whereupon your only goal, is get the fuck out of there, amidst the chaos of lots of people trying their hardest to kill you.
Wait wait, is this half life 1 or 2, I'm getting confused, they're so similar.
I feel similarly, and I find this totally fascinating. Because in effect, you've got the freedom either to play along, or mess around, and it's self-resolving - if you really want the scene to play out well, and have gravitas, and you want to play your part as an actor, you stand and watch and occasionally follow or walk around a bit. If you just want to fuck around, well, you still can, but you're confined to an area, so you can still listen to the exposition while you're trying to teleport an old can of beans or whatever.
edit: And am I the only one who suddenly detects a note of disapproval and bemusement in every NPC's face and voice whenever you start acting up around them? I'm aware it comes completely from the context around their scripting, but it's a cool psychological effect.
This actually isn't a conversation about sex anymore--which is awesome, who really wants to spend yet another twenty minutes on internet sex?--but I notice that for many players its venturing into "what is roleplaying?" territory. The later reference subeddii made to Deus Ex is salient because it is an fps containing RPG elements, and I would suggest that he is in at least one respect role playing HL2 insofar as he is acting the way he thinks Gordon Freeman should act in this situation.
Other players are treating it like an FPS. Plot inconsequential, make with the shooting.
That may be part of the difference behind why some players treat the game like art and some treat it like, well, a game. Subedii is approaching the game almost like it's theater, and he's improvising one of the roles while the other characters are scripted. He's not role playing in the sense that he's min-maxing a priest, he's actually acting a role out. Other players are more concerned with the core gameplay elements: shooting things and finding things so you can shoot more things until you beat the game.
Which lights are you speaking of? The flying by star-type lights from the wacky space tram at the end of HL1? Anyhow...
I'm viewing the games as separate entities, and the ending of HL1 doesn't in any way make the start of HL2 more excusable as poor story-telling. If you view one as a continuation of the other, I'd have to say it actually makes HL2 into a worse game.
Ah I forgot the tram ride in HL1. Actually that was an awesome introduction.
Now, my argument isn't the the introductions are different, it's that HL1 has a good introduction that doesn't lose anything for Gordon's muteness, whereas HL2 has a boring introduction that makes you annoyed to be a voiceless entity. I would rather choose to be a voiceless entity, when playing as the protagonist in a game, I just think HL2 shows how to do it wrong while HL1 shows you how to do it right.
Also, it's totally unrelated but I contend that where HL1 turned the G-man into an awesome character basically from the first moment you see him after the catastrophe has ensued (given that you did see him beforehand), HL2 ruined the G-man as a neat mysterious character and just turned him into a god-tool and reset-button for filling plot holes in the story.
It's probably just all the brain damage
I think the ENTIRE introduction of HL2 could have been better replaced by Gordon waking up and walking along-side someone explaining why they woke up him, the world he's in, and what they're going to need him to do (realistically this is what ANYONE would do if they woke someone up to help them out at some future date), and then the conversation being interrupted by -whatever- and the player being thrust into the game.
Honestly, you think HL2 had a good intro? Just try playing the game again. Play through 20 minutes of HL1 and 20 minutes of HL2 and tell me which is a better story.
I liked HL2 enough to beat it (a rare thing for me, I'm very picky and if a game strikes me as flawed I'll usually just put it away and play something that doesn't), but it wasn't nearly the game half-life was, IMO.
For once I'll talk third person.
I become completely immersed in the character of gordon freeman, that I roleplay a silent talking, capable, intelligent, kickass, efficient, killer.
But when I'm actually playing, I'm not thinking I'm roleplaying gordon freeman hyuck hyuck....I become immersed so greatly I remember the actions I guide him to do as things I, personally, did.
edit: Better replaced for you Ego. Not for me. I have played through both recently. Neither one is better than the other, because comparing them to me is stupid and petty. But it's not to you, so you do. Hey whatever man. I can respect that.
"Honestly, you think HL2 had a good intro? Just try playing the game again. Play through 20 minutes of HL1 and 20 minutes of HL2 and tell me which is a better story."
I can't respect this though.
I don't think like that. Don't pull me into your way of thinking. It's not self evident that I would think like this. It's your personal opinion, and you must justify it within your own terms. I don't need to agree with you, and I don't.
HL2's immersion was broken for me at the first cutscene in Steiner's (?) lab. They were narrating and dumping tons of exposition on me, while I ran around the lab knocking shit over and messing with the teleportation thingy. No one in the game world reacted at all. It's at the point that I realized that Half-life has cutscenes, but their big innovation is that I can move the camera. Whee. No one in the game world reacts to me, at all.
Regarding Mass Effect, my wife (doesn't play games) would occasionally wander by while I was having dialogue with Liara and laugh at how cheesey it all was. When she heard Liara describe her species' reproductive habits, she thought it was only something a lonely guy in a basement would think up. It's also not deep. I stumbled across it just because I made a habit of being nice to everyone and exploring all dialogue options because I got XP for them. There's even a clear point where they say, "Would you like to bone me?" When Mass Effect is an example of sex in a video game done right, that just exposes the immaturity of videogames.
Basically agree completely, here. I found Mass Effect depressingly juvenile, as much as I loved what they were trying to do with it.
Oh well, I've been known to hate things senselessly, and I've long known that my opinion of HL2 is not the prevailing one, by a long shot.
That said I still think I'm right, and you're wrong, as none of you can prove that you aren't humaniform robots created to populate the earth and keep me company, to fall back on an old stand-by.
Speaking of 'cutscenes' in half-life,
I liked how the 'cutscenes' in HL1 would have scientists yell at Gordon to stop messing around if he started running around the room and bumping into them
Actually, re half life cutscenes, they weren't cutscenes. Except for a few key people, you could shoot most of the talkers and plow on immediately without listening. This is an appreciable difference, but it didn't overly bother me personally, because I no longer wanted to shoot them. I can see why it would break your immersion though.
Half-Life 2.
No. Doubt. What. So. Ever.
I felt HL2's intro was really brilliant. They don't outright spell everything out for you, that's for you to discover as much or as little about as you want. The world is all laid out for you, all the little details are there for you to pay as much or as little attention to as you want. G-Man dumps you there with no knowledge, because that's pretty much his job, you're the one that has to take the action. And Within the first 20 minutes I'd say I felt I had a pretty good understanding of the situation. Humanity under siege and control, the resistance fighting to take control back, and Gordon Freeman being dumped into the middle of it. Beyond that, well you find out as you go along. For me, it was enough impetus from there, and all pretty evocatively told, they just didn't tell it to you directly. Instead they adopted an approach of "Don't tell, SHOW!". I honestly feel that worked so much better than if G-man had just spent those 15 minutes talking at me. It probably would have ended up feeling like the Metal Gear series (good series, but the narrative exposition is really intrusive in the way it's done and is very good at breaking the flow of the game).
In HL1 I just find myself getting bored and wishing I could just jump ahead to the first gun.
If you look at things like Second life, it exemplifies the uncanny valley theory. Its just creepy. People suspend their creepiness to have sex with other creepy people. I wonder how the red light district is working out as a sex video game. I don't have any direct input on that one but I don't believe it really works out in the long run.
My opinion on sex related video games still follows the stigma of being a prudish religious sort- Sex is not a public thing. It is a private matter and video games is not where it belongs. It either becomes silly or stupid if its out there in that form.
It has NOTHING to do with gameplay. It is all about how the story affects them. Just like how some books are narrated, some are from first person, some are third person. Like with other art, the creators choice isn't necessarily good or bad. It works for some people and not for others.
Also, 'art' is such a subjective term. It's one of those things where people bring their own bias to the word. As one poster said, he felt that art couldn't be compromising. That certainly isn't the dictionary definition of the word. But, to them, that is one of the qualities to art. To me, simply having a creative process makes it art. How well this is carried out determines how GOOD the art is.
And just because something has 'LOL boobies' does mean that other aspects aren't artful. And even gratuitous things can be artfully done. I mean, look at Shakespear. I think most count his stuff as art. Well, Taming of the Shrew has dick and fart jokes.
I'm sure everyone remembers Anomen and I'm sure everyone that does remember Anomen hates him with a burning passion. But as you play through his romance, which does branch, and especially if you take him down his chaotic neutral path, he develops quite a lot as a character.
While Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic had fairly short romances, the romances in BG2 are actually fairly long, it being a long game itself. So you talk with Anomen quite a bit and at first he's very annoying and pompous and full of himself, but he does seem to have a sort of admiration for your character.
Over time you become his biggest source of support as he finds he doesn't have the strength to tackle the things he has to and eventually comes into his own because of it. Whether he passes or fails his test, he does develop in slightly different ways, but he has realized he loves you and in a tender moment, it eventually comes to sex.
But it's all entirely implied. You could entirely miss that it even happened if weren't for Anomen or your character being able to mention it or joke about it later, but it comes as the culmination of your relationship with him and as an expression of love.
The other romances are perhaps not quite as good about it (especially Viconia's, but she's a drow and that's just kind of how they are), but it was handled in a far more mature way than it was in BioWare's subsequent games. I don't think any of them really feel quite so much like a real developing relationship as Anomen's does, though.
The example above pretty clearly is a cutscene, since you need to take the teleportation device, and in many cases you have to wait for someone to open a door or something to go forward.
HL2 tried to have it both ways by telling a scripted story, but leaving control of Gordon in the player's hands at all times. However, IMO, all they did was leave the protagonist as a non-participant in the world and ended up telling a pretty weak story. HL2's story is razor-thin, especially for such a long game. The setting is well-realized, but the story is little more than pushing you on to the next objective.
@Dagnabbit: I was actually making a distinction between Hl1 and 2 cutscenes there Dagnabbit, I didn't make that totally clear sorry. I agree with your take on the hl2 cutscene(that is to say, I agree that it could happen to some people), it just didn't happen to me.
And you are using generalised language in the last paragraph, so I'm going to just have to dismiss what you said until you rectify it to be a personal opinion, as generalisations are incorrect.
I think a problem in this discussion is that we are equating sex with depicting the actual act of sex. In fallout 2, my character had a lot of sex, she was a hooker and porn star. The actual act of sex did not need to be depicted for it to be considered a part of gameplay. I didn't need to see Rain get a bath at the whorehouse to know that she was making progress to the Sexpert perk.
One thing we can learn from comic books is that there are a number of ways to hint and allude toward a sexual encounter without actually depicting it or stepping on anyone's shoes. GTA:SA could have kept the sex minigame if they were smart about how they showed it. Just show the outside of the home bumping while you do the controls.
Another problem with sex in games is that with open ended game play, you allow the player to take a route to sex that you didn't intend and can loose the emotional content you intended.
Let me explain, at several points in Fallout 2, a number of communities and the people within them could be wiped out due to certain events. Some you can stop, others you cannot, 1 you start. Each of the massacres could have a profound emotional impact on the player if he or she developed an emotional bond with those communities. But if the player has refused such a bond or hasn't interacted with these communities at all, then their deaths are meaningless to the player and contribute to the story in a different way.
Relating this back toward sex in games, you are not guaranteed that a player will have the emotional reaction you want toward a sexual encounter. The upside is that in a roleplaying game, this can further the players' roleplaying experience and let them play as they character they want, and that by letting them supplement their own reactions, they play the game their way.
The downside is that if you are trying to tell a specific story, the player will not feel and act according to how you planned it out and ultimately, sex will fail to help tell the story and let the player play the game.
Ultimately, the amount of interactivity in sex in a game will depend on how freeform the story is, MGS3, you were a witness, GTA:SA and Fallout 2, you were more of a player and actor. The more freedom the player is given toward sex in a game, the less emotional content sex will have.
edit: Forgot about Indigo Prophecy's/Fahrenheit's first sex scene. It was so real and required a severe emotional investment that you knew it wasn't trivial fanservice but a interaction between two characters, total opposite of the second scene, which was so bad that i didn't care I was looking at boobs....which were oddly warm in that situation.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Ah, I see. Nevermind then. I agree that HL1 did a better job than HL2 in this regard, but I also think HL2 tried to do more heavy-lifting, storywise.
But, it doesn't HAVE to be art. I can watch a episode of a show and just be entertained. But I can also be moved by the same show.
I think we as humans like to make everything black and white. We like to compartmentalize things. But the universe isn't really like that for many things. It's just easier for us to deal with it, when we do it like that.
The only reason it works is because SoT actually tried (and succeeded) to have a mature storyline, even though the storyline is very simple.
To portray sex in games, we must first have story lines not written by amateurs, unlike many. It is a rather cart-before-horse request for sex portrayal in games to get better.
I study psychology mate. I know what we do, and this is why I try not to.
It's really fucking hard, since we do seem to be, in part, "wired" that way.
But it can be really helpful, and lead to a lot of interesting insights and useful ways of approaching even everyday life situations.
Incidentally I wrote a massive post last page saying basically what you said only I used the terms "interaction". You might find it interesting since you seem receptive to the ideas I am presenting.
Why has nobody mentioned the Witcher yet, by the way. I am completely unequipped to talk about it, since I approached it all as "haha I wonder which card I can get next...." but I'm sure someone can talk about it as a mature, intelligent adult for me.
It's hard to talk about The Witcher being mature when it comes to sex, though. On one hand, it feels very misogynistic. I mean, it turned sex into a hunt for collectable girly cards. But I think with Shani and Triss, at least, it handled it far better.
Triss does sleep with you right off the bat if you consent to it and Shani will sleep with you after the party which comes as a culmination of completing her quests, but with both, you have a history. A sexual history, even.
I've only played through choosing to side with Shani in the whole Alvin situation, but it was fairly interesting. She does immediately have sex with you again. She now has a child under her care and you're acting as his father figure so she first wants to make sure that you three could be happy together as a family. Whether this is a good idea or not is covered by the game and I won't really go into it.
Once she thinks everything could work, if you give her a symbol of love, she admits she loves you and would like to make love and it transitions into that slow calm music and you get the card. It seems weird that "make love" would be strange, but it's an entirely different terminology than is used in the rest of the game and for some reason, that sequence of events felt far more mature and less frivilous than the rest of the sex in the game.
But the rest? I'm not sure anyone could make an argument for it being mature. I doubt you could argue anything but it being a relatively small part of the game that you can completely ignore.
Uh, sex doesn't have to be meaningful to happen. Sometimes two people just might want to have a shag, for fun and profit, and no strings attached. Which is something I think the game presented quite well, considering his motivations. Card thing aside, the actual conversations and interactions seemed...reasonable? There were a couple I did find pretty, "har har, lonely guy in a bedroom", like the dryad and such.
I actually found Shanii's sequence to be unsettling because I realised the Witcher's world isn't one where this kind of thing works very well....that it's something he'd rarely hear or let himself hear. It was still meaningful however.
I know it doesn't have to be meaningful to happen. I wasn't trying to insinuate that it does.
But allowing you to have sex with half the female NPCs in the game and then giving you a card with a naked woman on it as a reward and turning the whole thing into a collectable card hunt? I'm not entirely sure I'd call that "mature."
The Witcher has a reputation for being something of a sex obsessed game, and while that's not entirely true, it does have some basis in fact. It's not handled in as childish a way as I would expect, that much is true, but it's still filled with easy women to fuck and then get a nudey card from. I can't think of one single area in the game where there isn't at least one woman to have sex with except for the dungeon areas and the swamp cemetary.
As for Shani's whole sequence not being something that would normally happen in the world of The Witcher, of course, but Geralt barely knows what the fuck is going on and he can act any way he pleases. That was kind of the point of taking away his memory. Geralt is an established character and by making him more or less a blank slate, the player can define who he is. The other characters you meet in the game have known him and know how he was and how witchers themselves are, but this in no way affects how the player can shape him.
I knew the card thing would stifle this discussion. I guess that's why nobody discussed it.
I always looked upon them as Geralt's fond memories, but if you want to look at it as a collection quest forced upon you by the game then sure, it demeans it. I don't think it's demeaning if the women just wanted fun though, not an attachment, as many of them seemed to be indicating.
So having "lots of women to have sex with" or being "sex obsessed" be a fault is meaningless if each incident is handled in an adult manner. That's making a "too much" judgement, I think.
It is, incidentally, a choice, and you don't have to make it.
I'm not saying it's the height of maturity, or a way to do it, but it did present casual sex in a game in a manner that fitted into the world. If it didn't have the cards nobody would have a negative opinion on it, I think.
It should still be mentioned, is all I'm saying.
The main relationship is a worthwhile discussion aside from all the rest of it anyway, since even here we get mixed reactions that tie into the nature of the world. It reminded me of some of BG2's romances.
I do agree with that and I know you can completely ignore the sex and the cards, but it seems most people that haven't played it don't. I know I didn't before I bought and played it. I initially wasn't going to either because the game does have the reputation that it has.
And to be honest, it doesn't bother me that much. The Witcher is one of my favorite RPGs and probably one of the best in years.
As for the too much argument, I only mentioned how many women there are to have sex with because it got on my nerves how many would practically try to fling themselves at you.
Hey, the guy's got charisma. My gf hates epic people, but she liked his character. He's like, ugly handsome.
But seriously yeah I can see where that would annoy.