NSFW Best Thread Ever [No SJW-related posts allowed]

[Duraframe300]

Cage's gonna cage

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/08/22/no-game-over-in-beyond-two-souls-but-jodi-can-die/

"I've always felt that 'game over' is a state of failure more for the game designer than from the player," Cage told me at Gamescom. "It's like creating an artificial loop saying, 'You didn't play the game the way I wanted you to play, so now you're punished and you're going to come back and play it again until you do what I want you to do.' In an action game, I can get that – why not? It's all about skills. But in a story-driven experience it doesn't make any sense."

In an action game, I can get that – why not? It's all about skills. But in a story-driven experience it doesn't make any sense."

 

[Infinitron]

Er, LucasArts adventure games agreed. You do not necessarily need game over situations to make a game challenging.

 

[Spectacle]

Yeah it makes sense for adventure games. But that's a "dead genre" (lol). "Story-driven" games these days are actually action games with a veneer of story, so by eliminating the possibility of failure you basically eliminate the gameplay, turning it into boring mole-popping you need to work through to get to the next cutscene.

 

[Duraframe300]

Er, LucasArts adventure games agreed. You do not necessarily need game over situations to make a game challenging.

Cage is not talking about old Lucas Arts adventures. It's about his games and the majority of modern qte-fests, not figuring out actually challenging puzzles. The point is removing challenge to experience *story*.

 

[warpig]

Er, LucasArts adventure games agreed. You do not necessarily need game over situations to make a game challenging.

In adventure/puzzle games being stuck is failing.

In an action game, I can get that – why not? It's all about skills. But in a story-driven experience it doesn't make any sense."

Decoded: we need to further retardize games in order to broaden the target audience and maximize profit.
Also, "story driven experience":
-what's that racket son, playing your nerdy games again?
-it's no a game dad, its an interactive story driven experience. It's very deep, you wouldn't understand.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

"It's like creating an artificial loop saying, 'You didn't play the game the way I wanted you to play, so now you're punished and you're going to come back and play it again until you do what I want you to do.'

Failure Deferred Success is a matter of choice now?

 

[Delterius]

Er, LucasArts adventure games agreed. You do not necessarily need game over situations to make a game challenging.

I'm pretty sure that you can deviate from perfection in those games, you can get stuck and be forced to explore the world better. In Cage's games, there's not even that.

If Heavy Rain is any indication, its exploration/adventure segments are completely railroaded - you can't deviate from the path and that's why you're never punished. Not because the puzzles of the gameworld don't result in a game over (read here not just actual riddles but the broadest interactions with the gameworld), but because there are no puzzles at all. There's no gameplay.

One such example in Heavy Rain is figuring out the password to the antagonist's computer. The antagonist's background, his status as such and, more importantly, the piece of data you need (If I'm not mistaken the password is the name of his dead brother, whose death is the reason why the evil guy is evil) were all revealed in the prior segment, when the character you're playing as, Madison, talked with the guy's dying mother.

You see, when Madison reaches the computer and tries to figure out the password, the first thing you'll notice is that you don't get to type it. Like the rest of the game, you're dealing with a QTE segment. This, IMO, is a mistake by itself, but what's worse is that all the answers are wrong. You have to try the wrong answers until Madison figures out the password.

This is also what Cage seem to mean by 'story driven gaming'. Quite ironic for Mr. 'You didn't play the game the way I wanted you to play', his games are all about what story the pixels can enact with minimum input from the player and maximum power to the dev's script - that's to say what others already have: there's no gaming here for there's no player agency, no player choice. As far as the exploration aspect of his games go, David Cage makes movies.

He's like BioWare when compared to Obsidian, if the former was as obsessed with railroading as the Cult of Morgoth is towards D1Ps.

Of course, if I was to insult Cage even further, I wouldn't call him for railroading, rather for creating monorails due to a supposed lack of depht to his game-movies. After all, I kept talking about the exploration aspect but there's also the action aspect of the games - and they are driven by QTEs. There's some player deviation in the story here and perhaps the better side of Cage: your characters can die in Heavy Rain and the story moves on. But then again, this is limited to action/combat sequences and those sequences are as shallow as they can get.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

This cage guys sounds like a complete faggot. haven't played heavy rain though.

 

[corvus]

Heavy Rain is pretty damn hilarious.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

The Citizen Kane of gaming has been discovered

 

[Ranselknulf]

The Citizen Kane of gaming has been discovered

I want my 30 seconds back.

 

[Delterius]

Heavy Rain is pretty damn hilarious.

And the stakes went up.

This cage guys sounds like a complete faggot. haven't played heavy rain though.

In all fairness, that post was fueled by hate. Hate caused by the evil of people who call Cage a genius.

I didn't even dislike Heavy Rain, I'd give it a 6,5. Worth the few reais I payed for it.

As shallow as turning QTEs into the fundaments of gameplay can be, there's one scene I actually liked(skip to 11:00). You're playing a not-fucking-insane cop who's gone to interrogate a religious nutjob about the latest murders. Unfortunately, you're in the company of a bad cop, who in his brilliance pushes the nutjob over the top and, suddenly, you have a hostage situation - you see, as with most religious crazies, the guy's convinced the world is about to end and of course the bad cop is the anti-christ.

So you have the standard QTE's flying over your head: one option to shoot the nutjob yourself and other 4 others to try and convince him to put his gun down. So there's a clear choice here, you can be done with the situation rather easily or you can try and save everyone involved. So far so predictable. However, and here's the clever part, once you calm everyone down, the religious nutjob will search for a cross and repel the arsehole officer away. And when that happens, the button to shoot returns briefly and flashing and if you're retarded like me, you'll shoot by accident.

This means that the point I was trying to make isn't that QTEs are evil. But rather that they are simply neither well used (see the above movies for uncreative and sometimes ridiculous examples) nor enough. If your cinematic game has neither exploration and problem-solving nor interesting 'combat' segments (like what the more uncreative QTEs try to be), then its a movie. That's why I laugh when people say that BioWare, Square and even the Last of Us are more about movies than games, they never played that genius' creations.

 

[Duraframe300]

I actually think Cage would be a passable movie director. (If he takes care of his weird fetishes, like showers and sci-fi elements that are not needed in the subject matter)

He's just a terrible writer and game designer.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

 

[sexbad?]

Well I didn't think the author of that article was very cross about anything, but I guess acknowledging negative emotional response to something that's going to be immediately controversial because of old white people is a failing.

Ignoring your political bait, the point was the entire thing could have been easily predicted, it wasn't some discovery that people react emotionally to highly emotional and divisive issues online.

I agree! That is how I meant to sound, if I didn't come across that way.

I'm not sure that's political bait (I don't give enough real shits about borsh anymore), I was just generalizing people who are overly sensitive into a demographic, not attacking anything I think.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Fuck, even

has more challenge, this is just 3 in a sequence.

 

[sexbad?]

'

my stars...

 

[JarlFrank]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Luzur]

WTF

I miss the days when games didn't try to preach to us.

Were you born pre-1985?

only game i can think about that didnt preach something would be Pong.

 

[Dexter]

 

[RK47]

DA3 will be the best game ever.

 

[dnf]

Acepting that you are a shitty writer or living in denial(still knowing that you are a shitty writer)! Wish is better and why.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The "retcon" one is especially funny, considering that according to Gaider it also applies to characters coming back from the dead with no explanation.

 

[Whisky]

A look into the mind of Gaider. Jesus Christ.

Although, yes, there are plenty of people who misuse terms and act stupid, the shit he's pulled off lately is pretty much straight examples of most of those.