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Examples like that are few and far between. Most of the time, what you witness are short diversions that give you additional information about your circumstances. And mind you, it's been fourteen years since that game was released, and it was in many ways the first of its kind. By the same token, JRPGs that were celebrated for their grasp of narrative during the same time period seem dated and inelegant today, but they created a foundation to work from.
Both main Half-Life games are far from narrative perfection or anything like that, but they're notable for using a style of narrative presentation that handles exposition more naturally within context of the game. You don't spend much time just standing around and listening to people, and when you do, it's generally towards the beginning of the game or at the very end. It could still stand to be improved, but it has the right idea -- that is, using a means of narrative engagement that is unique to video games, rather than half-assing something that cinema is much better at handling in the first place.
I only played the first one and never ever even seen anything about the second one except, like, screenshots, though.
So unless I'm heavily misremembering (Which is possible. I played it about three years ago, after all), then I'll have to disagree on that.
@Lai:
I wish my N64 wasn't broken so I could do that.
Lucky bastard.
Well, it's been awhile for me too, but I just played Black Mesa, which is a pretty faithful recreation of it, and 99% of the plot consists of stuff you see and hear while going through an area, and you usually don't even have to stop.
Anyway, reached Day 6 in Don't Starve. Built a science machine, but stupidly did it way away from my firepit
Well, it's been awhile for me too, but I just played Black Mesa, which is a pretty faithful recreation of it, and 99% of the plot consists of stuff you see and hear while going through an area, and you usually don't even have to stop.
Anyway, reached Day 6 in Don't Starve. Built a science machine, but stupidly did it way away from my firepit
Gah, what the hell just happened. I tried to edit that post, and instead the forum posted another copy of it?
The forum derps like that occasionally.
Also, Circle of the Moon (COTM) and Lord of the Rings (LOTR). And Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Knights of the Old Republic (LOTGH and KOTOR).
Right, so I got to day 10.
This game is really, really good.
Why can't you people play vidya games at time when Euroweenies want to play
Got massacred by spiders on night 11 T_T
Oh, well. Restart time.
Anyway, here's the game's site; it has a pretty good demo, so you should all try it out.
>I disagree with this sentence. I have no doubt that Spec Ops might have the best linear storyline out of any shooter out there, but does having the best storyline make it the "best shooter"?
Sure. The first four Silent Hill games have pretty shit gameplay but incredible atmosphere and storytelling. They're the reason I occasionally go back and replay them.
We could argue pedantry about whether it's a horror game or a shooter game, but the market's advertising it as a shooter (probably to sucker punch the usual fans of the genre) so that's what I'm referring to it as.
As for Mass Effect. Sure, it's an RPG but it also has heavy tactical shooter aspects in almost any point that isn't dialogue/moral choice options. Honestly, Bioware's always seemed uncomfortable with that aspect of the game and (especially looking at Dragon Age) it feels less like part of their vision and more like the fact that they were trying to reel in the Halo crowd.
are you actually defending the room
i mean
this is the game with a gigantic wobbly head as a horror set-piece
It does have a bitching soundtrack, though.
Silent Hill 4 does a lot of things wrong but it does a lot of things right as well (such as the eponymous room) It's doing new things and while moving Silent Hill towards more traditional J-horror probably wasn't the best move I appreciate a lot of its ideas.
And all the Silent Hill games, even the new ones, have great soundtracks but that's because Akira Yamaoka is amazing and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn's voice is sex appeal itself.
I dunno. I like a lot of its concept (Namely the tenous connection with Silent Hill 2, which I thought was a great marriage of the directions that Silent Hill 2 and 3 were going for in terms of the town's mythology) but for the most part, I just didn't feel its story or its atmosphere were as special as Silent Hill 2's or 3's.
I also felt that a lot of the set-pieces crossed that line where the bizarre becomes inherently funny rather than unsettling like in the previous games (Like the aforementioned head)
The original Resident Evil games could also be said to have poor gameplay, but like Silent Hill, were exceedingly effective at providing horror. A part of this is the limitations of the gameplay, which I believe were intentionally used to make the player feel vulnerable rather than being a mistake on the part of the developers. It all comes together to provide a focused experience, and I don't think those games would be better with more streamlined gameplay. In fact, we've seen what happens when the gameplay doesn't support horror in recent installments of both series, not to mention how the action of the Dead Space games move them away from the sense of vulnerability and dread horror thrives on.
Other mediums can do a lot of things just as well or better than games can, but games have the factor of systematic play at their disposal, and games that fail to take advantage of that aren't living up to the potential of the medium. One example might be Heavy Rain; despite its holes, the story is generally pretty good and the characters aren't bad. In any case, both factors stand head and shoulders above most games, but I still can't recommend it because it's not really a very good game. Instead of having a strong core system, much of the gameplay is a series of quick-time events. That's not really gameplay as much as it's following instructions.
A good example of the inversion of this is Mount & Blade. These games have no conventional, linear story at all, and only the barest minimum of characterisation. They are absolutely fantastic games, because they provide an emergent experience with problems that can be solved a range of different ways. None of these games try to be anything but an open-ended competitive experience against the game engine, but rather than their lack of plot or characterisation being a disadvantage, it plays directly into the kind of experience Mount & Blade tries to deliver. One could argue that they'd be even better games with highly-developed, emergent storylines that shift and change with the rest of the world, but that's impractical for a AAA studio with massive publishing support, let alone the Turkish couple that started the games.
Of course, you can still have perfectly good games that also deliver powerfully in terms of plot and characterisation, but a game that isn't engaging to play to begin with (with some, if few exceptions) fails as a game. It may as well have been a film or a TV series. So I feel games should divert from their current path of trying to imitate cinema and conventional storytelling techniques, because it means the medium is mostly doing things that other mediums do much better to begin with. Not that all that knowledge should be thrown out when it comes to games, mind, but video games also have to find their own means and techniques of delivering narrative without leaning too heavily on what works for other mediums.
I played Dishonoured recently, and one of the biggest strikes against the game is that just wasn't that engaging. It's a stealth game, but instead of providing opportunity for reconnaissance and planning, it throws you directly into the fray and asks you to make the best of it. That means that when your stealthing fails (and it does), the game becomes a mediocre action experience rather than something that requires deliberate planning and cleverness. It gives the illusion of emergent solutions (by giving a little choice, but not a whole lot) without actually making good on its implied promises -- probably in the name of providing its story, which is mildly entertaining but not particularly good anyway.
If games want to succeed when it comes to linear or semi-linear storytelling, there needs to be a large widespread improvement that doesn't seem to be happening right now. And even if that does happen, it doesn't obviate the need for gameplay that's engaging in its own right.
I'll be wrapping this post up shortly, I promise. Hang in there.
This all makes me think back to the SNES era of JRPGs, which are held to be the seeds of great storytelling in video games. If you go back and play those games, you might find the storylines and the characterisation to be a bit primitive in a technical sense, but they have two significant advantages modern games don't have:
These two advantages link; the storybook nature of SNES JRPG presentation combines with the interpretative nature that comes with the lack of extensive facial expression or voice acting, so we interpret character beats in the way which makes most sense to us rather than in the much more "objective" style of presentation we're used to today. It's no wonder that many people look back on those games fondly; in addition to often having strong gameplay, they presented their stories in ways that were open to personal interpretation. Today, everyone hears the same voice, sees the same facial expression, imagines the same objects and is given a similar impression of the shape of things, both abstract and solid. Those games had none of that interpretive objectivity. Back then, that was a necessary factor of the medium's limitations, but I think it might also have been a significant boon.
In any case, all that JRPG talk was an attempt to explain how factors unique to the video game medium can empower games where following the direct methods of other mediums can weaken them. And if that's the case, as I believe it is, then games and game genres have to be considered in a different light when compared to their equivalents from different mediums.
alex
i'm sorry
but if you seriously expect us to read that then you must be high as a motherfucking satellite kid
i'm older than you son shut up and read some words
they're good for your brain
you don't get to play with my brain
i am a free man!
If you want a truly bad horror shooter go play Cry of Fear.
That is all.
^^ no you are a number
tl;dr Games make piss poor films or books, with few and limited exceptions, so having a standard wherein a game's quality is defined by its conventional story discredits where the strength of the medium really lies. The game industry can't support conventional storytelling despite spending more than the last decade trying to do just that, so I think there's a sufficient body of evidence to suggest that, as much as those exceptional instances of great storytelling are wonderful, most development studios would be better off trying to express narrative in a way that deviates from cinematic or literary convention.
See, this all hinges on the idea that gameplay doesn't give the sense of desolation, loss, and yes occasional tedium that you're supposed to depend on.
It's not just about gameplay, it's about atmosphere.
Also, I only read the first paragraph because fuck you Alex laconism is a thing and this is not college.
I honestly don't think I even understand this discussion because the point Alex made is so unrelated to what Malk said that I'm just tripping at the fact he made that whole long-ass text.
But putting morer words in your posts make you smarter!
Yeah, but as I've covered I think Spec Ops covers that pretty well.
Alex's argument seems to hinge on the idea that the gameplay doesn't help deliver the game's message which I'm arguing against.
Edit:
So in Spec Ops the scene were
Welp, I think the general mechanics for how military shooters work are pretty dumb in the first case and this game has done the best with the worst tools.
This increasingly sounds like a game that only people who aren't fans of its genre would play.
^Implying 'fun' means 'best'.