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Started by Mister Six, February 15, 2011, 07:27:51 PM

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mobias

#30
Quote from: HappyTree on February 16, 2011, 11:38:55 AM


I actually don't like time-dependent challenges in games, they make me feel stressed out. I don't want to have the same feeling of panic I get with real life deadlines, being forced to do things when I don't feel like it or having a ticking clock.

Yup, totally agree with you there HappyTree. I think there's a fine line is some games between giving you as a gamer the sort of challenge that requires a certain amount of skill and thought and a challenge that only requires the monotony of perseverance to complete. There's an awful lot of the latter in gaming I think.
One of the reasons I love open world type games like GTA, infact especially GTA, is that you can turn them on and as Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth says, you can just mindlessly enjoy them if you want. Drive around, have fun and not feel like you're pressured into doing something.

Speaking of story lines and games. I actually find the difficulty of some games actually gets in the way of the story telling. Its a balance I think a fair few games struggle to get right. For example with GTAIV, both with the main story and the extra episodes I found there were missions that I struggled with, got fed up with and then decided to give a rest. But then of course by the time you come back to them you've forgotten the massively convoluted overly complex plot you were part of (GTAIV was hugely guilty in this area for me)

I do think non linear gaming plus complex plot lines isn't a good mix. 

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Further to that, I don't like it when games throw in obstacles that break the flow of things. Prince of Persia: Sands of time and Spiderman 2 both give you characters that are a joy to control, but when it comes to a fight, they mess things up by letting the enemies block your attacks, whch doesn't add any challenge and only serves to  that enjoyable sense of motion that the rest of the game has fostered.

HappyTree

I get around that usually by putting the difficulty level to the minimum setting. But other gamers are all about the challenge of beating something hard. Takes all sorts, apparently ;)

madhair60

Quote from: Mister Six on February 16, 2011, 10:50:53 AM
I'll reply to SNG's larger post after he's elaborated on Zetec's questions (because I'm not quite sure myself what he intended to say and don't want to argue/agree with something that's only in my head. However:

But you started off saying 'You can enjoy a game's storyline in the same way you can enjoy trash TV'. What exactly is your argument?

You're right, I screwed that up.  Here follows more.

QuoteSaying that sometimes games do X or Y is a criticism of those games, not of the storytelling powers of the medium itself. Especially when your examples are drawn from FPS games and platformers, two genres that are traditionally not story-heavy at all. And one of them is so vague as to include the qualifiers 'often' and 'something'.

The qualifiers are fine, because I'm sure you know what I'm getting at; SNG explained it better in discussing FFVII, in which a supposed crisis/race against time is taking place, yet no punishment is offered if you just go to the Golden Saucer and snowboard for ten hours.  Sephiroth will wait patiently, the planet will not die.

Quote...engagement with the text...

I recently played through Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (another FPS, I know), and it was the most absorbed I've been by a game's narrative and set-pieces in some time.  It's cobblers, of course, but it's entertaining and well-made cobblers.  I can accept plot cobblers in a genre like this which, as you said, is rarely plot heavy.

It's when games are marketed on the strength of their story, for example The Longest Journey, or Planescape: Torment.  Both excellent games, with decent writing.  However, none of the story's twists and turns mean jack when you can just reload your old save and render them non-existent, or tweaked to your liking.

Also, nobody in those games ever shuts the fuck up.  Games really struggle to communicate with anything besides dialogue, since overly-realistic characters hit the uncanny valley so frequently, and stylised efforts tend to be tied to less plot-based games anyway.  For example, bollocks like the plot-focused but dull Heavy Rain.

Quote(this argument also ignores games like KGB, The Last Express and the like where things will continue if you leave the machine alone for several hours, to the point of causing you to fail the game).

Honestly, I am not familiar with those games.  I assume they're time-limited kind of games, which is fair enough, and a more assured way of forcing the narrative through.  Last Express is Charles Cecil, right?  The Broken Sword guy?

More later maybe

Zetetic

Oooh, interactive fiction's (or 'text adventure', if you prefer) is another nice counter-example to the issues of game time - there are plenty which are time-limited in so far as you can only 'do' a certain number of things before something else (frequently catastrophic) happens. However, I'd also admit that there's been plenty of times where the game being fun, or at least enjoyable, has been frustrated by such schemes. Particularly combined with the often too dumb (or worse, inconsistent) parsing of such games.

(Incidentally, along that line, Starship Titanic is a lovely game that I tells a very, very, very little story perfectly well, even though it's far the from the main point of the game. It also has a fairly fantastic parser and domain of responses, though you'll still inevitably run up against it at times.)

Phil_A

The Shenmue games both take place in (accelerated) real time, don't they. Time is constantly passing while you're playing. In fact you're given so much time it's very hard to actually fail, but the constantly ticking clock gives your quest a sense of urgency that is absent from a lot of other games.

Odd to think that up until the end of the 16 bit era it was still very common for many games to have a strict time limit for completion, and to be honest I'm glad that trend died out. I think it was Uninvited that allowed you only a certain number of moves before your character dropped dead, which in a game based around exploration and puzzles seemed rather unfair. King's Quest 3 also included a time-dependant section and that was a total nightmare.

Also, games telling a story without dialogue - Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus both do this very well, I think.

Mister Six

Where's SNG gone? I was really enjoying his contributions. Ah well. Here are a couple of things from his first post that I wanted to comment on...

Quote from: Still Not George on February 15, 2011, 11:00:12 PMA good example is the classic view of a third-person character, running up against a wall, still running at full speed, head bowed down. It's an amusing scene in and of itself, but because it's such a common side-effect of animation meeting collision systems, it's simply ignored.

This made me chuckle - my ex hadn't played a video game since Duck Hunt on the NES and, after entering my flat and seeing me play Dragon Age, decided she wanted a go on that. I gave her the controller and wandered off to get a drink; when I returned she was doubled-up laughing as my brave elven archer jogged into a bit of scenery. That was, to her, the funniest thing she'd seen all day.

QuoteAnd ultimately, story is the same. Story in games means non-physical-emulation sequences by default. Even in Half Life and its successors, the story is played out in scenes that cannot be prevented, only evaded. Decision making and emotional impact is handled using incredibly crude (if easy to use) mechanics like the conversation wheel in Mass Effect. Nearly everything that happens inside a game serves to remind you that the game is not the story and the story is not the game. The game is the experience, and the story is the sugar on that experience.

Not necessarily.

SPOILERS FOR FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS'S WHITE GLOVE SOCIETY FOLLOW



So I'm walking through The Strip, the glowing, avaricious heart of New Vegas, when I happen across a couple pacing nervously outside the Ultra-Luxe Casino. They turn out to be a pair of farmers who lost their property in a shady deal with a thuggish baron named Heck Gunderson. The man, Walter, asks me to help him get revenge. Being a protector of the weak, I decide to do just that. But when I get in there I find out that Heck is all cut up about his son going missing. Seeing a more human side of the man - and not wanting a kid to be killed or kidnapped - I agree to help.

It turns out that his son has been taken by rogue members of the elite White Glove Society, who are planning to cook and serve him at a banquet in the hope of convincing the other members to take up cannibalism. I follow a trail of clues, eventually finding the son (who, it turns out, is a loudmouthed adult) locked in a pantry. Rather than drugging the wine in the cellar and sneaking the son out, which is an option, I use my skills to make fake human pies. The rogue members of the society make a big speech about how their compatriots have just eaten human flesh, so they might as well make a regular thing of it only for me to step out and reveal the deception. The rogue members are run out of town, the society thanks me and I return Heck's son to him.

And as I step outside I remember Walter and his wife. Not wanting to kill the man I just helped - even if he is a dick - I convince the couple to move on and start afresh. Everyone wins, justice is served - literally - and I'm left with the nagging doubt that I could've taken down Heck.


On the other hand, a mate of mine killed the son and let the society serve him up (thinking that the son was a dick anyway), then took samples of the son's blood and tissue and left it in Heck's bedroom before reporting him to the police, who arrested him for murder. Later he had his robot army kill off the now cannibalistic society, believing them to be too dangerous to live.


Two markedly different stories starring two very different protagonists told entirely through interaction and gameplay rather than cutscenes and passive plot consumption.

Mister Six

Quote from: madhair60 on February 16, 2011, 08:00:59 PMThe qualifiers are fine, because I'm sure you know what I'm getting at; SNG explained it better in discussing FFVII, in which a supposed crisis/race against time is taking place, yet no punishment is offered if you just go to the Golden Saucer and snowboard for ten hours.  Sephiroth will wait patiently, the planet will not die.

Like I said, that's more of an issue of implementation than a limitation of the medium. There's nothing to stop entire games - or just crux moments if you prefer them - to have time limits or other restrictions that increase tension and force the player to maintain momentum.

QuoteI recently played through Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (another FPS, I know), and it was the most absorbed I've been by a game's narrative and set-pieces in some time.  It's cobblers, of course, but it's entertaining and well-made cobblers.  I can accept plot cobblers in a genre like this which, as you said, is rarely plot heavy.

Modern Warfare is a genuine masterpiece of game storytelling, incredibly subversive and the most convincing anti-war polemic I've seen in years. The sequel is gash in that regard, though. I died a little inside playing it.

QuoteIt's when games are marketed on the strength of their story, for example The Longest Journey, or Planescape: Torment.  Both excellent games, with decent writing.  However, none of the story's twists and turns mean jack when you can just reload your old save and render them non-existent, or tweaked to your liking.

That falls under the 'not engaging with the text' heading I brought up earlier. You can re-write the ending to a book in your head (or on paper) if you like. It doesn't invalidate the medium. I make a point of not reloading if a plot goes in a direction I don't like, instead saving the other options for exploratory replays.

QuoteHonestly, I am not familiar with those games.  I assume they're time-limited kind of games, which is fair enough, and a more assured way of forcing the narrative through.  Last Express is Charles Cecil, right?  The Broken Sword guy?

Jordan Mechner, the guy behind the original Prince of Persia games and the excellent Sands of Time. Basically you're a man with a mysterious past who boards the Orient Express and finds himself embroiled in all kinds of pre-WWI intrigue. It runs in real-time, or a close facsimile thereof, so you're constantly being made to choose (whether you're aware of it or not) between talking to character X or overhearing conversation Y. The characters are all fabulously well-rounded and written, the plot is drip-fed in such a way that it never feels contrived or false and it's filled with an incredible sense of place and time.

I haven't finished it yet, though, so it might all go tits up after a strong start.

HappyTree

That's a good point about engaging with the game story. Just as with a book, you decide how seriously you want to take it. You can choose with a book to read it casually, stop and start, have a conversation at the same time, skip boring bits, draw in the margin, etc. With a film you can pause it to go to the loo, rewind, make a sandwich, discuss where you've seen that actor before, etc.

It all depends on how much you're willing to invest the narrative experience yourself. Personally, I am a slow reader as I have to read every word, savour descriptions, ponder philosophical points and re-read sections I realise I've not paid full attention to because my mind has been wandering. Consequently I get a lot out of the book.

With films I try not to pause too much and pretend I'm in a cinema. Though I do go to the toilet if I need to. But generally I am sitting there willing myself to be transported into another universe for awhile.

I'm the same with games. I try to take their parameters seriously and avoid rewriting sections using saved games. That's akin to keeping bookmarks in Choose Your Own Adventure books so you can backtrack and work out the best way to the finale. That's "cheating" and so results in a less immersive and satisfying experience.

In all these formats of artificial story-telling there are ways to cheat and circumvent what the author intended you to do. You have to put yourself into the universe to get the most out of it. Otherwise it's just a way of passing the time.

Mister Six

Absolutely, though I should add that there's nothing wrong with 'just passing the time' - or at least I hope not, because I'm having so much fun in Red Dead Redemption playing poker and trying to do all the side quests that I keep neglecting the story.