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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - ludonarrative dissonance begone

shihonage

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Half-Life 1 was a front-loaded derp that impressed with its visuals, sacrificed gameplay to narrative, and foreshadowed the linear shooters of today.


Don't do it dude. Half Life was a superb game and only try hards call it bad. Quake and Doom were linear too in terms of story. HL was never meant to be so heavy on story, it's story was just to attract people who liked mild Sci-Fi in games. If HL2 were not better than HL then it would be de facto bad since they did not learn anything from it.

I said it was good for what it was. My opinion on HL hasn't changed since 1998. I saw it as harbringer of decline then, and it kind of came true.

I don't give a shit about linearity of story in an FPS. The levels themselves, however, allowed a lot less freedom of movement than better FPS that came before it. This was a sacrifice to the story. The gameplay itself was a far cry from the visceral fun of Doom or Duke Nukem. Hell, even Quake 2 had better gameplay, as it partially copied what made Doom fun to play. it may seem like a small accomplishment until you look at the likes of Serious Sam, which completely missed it.

HL's "innovashun" amounted to having a long reload animations (thanks!) and having non-interactive things happen where player couldn't reach them, while forcing him down a narrow corridor of a level so he would witness them in this exact order. In Duke3D you had a jetpack. In Half-Life, you can punch a soda can out of a vending machine. INNOVASHUN.

HL had jumping sequences and a shameful third act. Everyone chooses to forget that. Just as Bioshock was overrated and its horrible combat was largely overlooked, HL was essentially the Bioshock of 1998. A "storytelling masterpiece" in a genre which is primarily about shooting things in the face and making it fun. Heralded by near-sighted, pretentious reviewers as a coming of new age of FPS.

Behold, your new age of FPS has come. It comes out each November, it has long reload animations, propels you down corridors so you witness non-interactive events, and occasionally lets you press a quicktime button so you do a more elaborate equivalent of what in 1998 was punching a soda machine.
 

Lancehead

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Expecting or comparing Half-Life to shooters like Doom and Duke Nukem is disingenuous. Half-Life was story-driven, and unless you think there's no value to story in FPS regardless of context or execution (which would be quite stupid, by the way), it did a very good job of how to do it. The shooting was competent, the AI was better than most other games which made encounters more fun. The game had a great atmosphere, and yeah that counts. The storytelling template is the best for FPS, and Half-Life more or less nailed the execution, something its successor failed at. The cutscenes occur and progress organically. Level design was linear but it wasn't a borefest by any margin, thanks to some competent AI. The last part of the game was terrible, yeah.

Comparison to BioShock is confusing too. BioShock had the most lazy way of telling its story through tapes. Not that the tapes are a bad way to do it, but it had tapes at most convenient places, often containing content that makes one wonder why that was recorded.
 

tuluse

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Half-Life was a masterpiece in video game story telling. Probably half the story, maybe more was communicated through details in the environments or things happening rather than using dialog, or monologs, or narration, or cutscenes taking action away from the player. No one had to tell you that there were portals opening and aliens were invading, it just happened. HL2 was a major decline in this area because they had characters prattle on and on about what was happening instead of just letting the player go out and experience it.

In a sense shihonage is right, Half-Life marked a turning point in what audiences could expect from video game, unfortunately just about everyone missed what made it great. That caused decline, but it was going to happen anyways, Half-Life at least showed the good way of doing it before hand.
 

Lancehead

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^ Yeah, I feel STALKER was the natural evolution of what Half-Life did, but with a sandbox level design approach.
 

shihonage

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HL was too stringently attached to "directing" the narrative. Compared to earlier FPS, it felt suffocative. It is hardly a "good way" of accomplishing a story-based FPS.

A proper way to do Half-Life would be to use a looser, freer level structure of earlier FPS, with spaces where you can take on enemies and pick power-ups in different order, make weapons more distinctly useful based on situation, and tie the important "story events" to the points where the player is forced to arrive in a fixed order - such as opening a new door with a keycard acquired in the previous sprawling/mazey area.

Don't do it in the middle of an area, because then you get paranoid of the player triggering a different script before he's meant to see this one, and then you end up walling off the alternate paths in the area until it becomes just another glorified fucking tunnel. I'm looking at you, HL, Bioshock, COD and your brethren.
 

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Unfortunately what Half-Life really ended up bringing to video game story telling was heavy scripting and "moments" hand-placed by the developers instead of things emerging from gameplay or player initiated interactivity.
 

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"I call it the Citizen Kane of gaming," he says. "It's a really boring movie that's incredibly important for movies."
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SearchEngine

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First Ocarina of Time is the Citizen Kane of gaming. Then Half-Life is the Citizen Kane. Then Bioshock. Now Dear Esther is the new Citizen Kane. As much as I love the arrogance of getting ready each time to name the Citizen Kane of games, I wish mainstream "journalists" get more consistent, and move on to whoever is the next Godfather (a far more interesting movie).
 

Adrian Chmielarz

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I was thinking you could maybe invite him to register on the Codex and join the discussion?

Nah.


What is he supposed to say? The general idea of "ludonarrative dissonance" isn't a bad one. Do you think he will admit that lifting "Dear Esther" into the gaming olymp is pretentious bullshit to stir up discussion?

Crap, I don't know how to quote with the nick attached. Anyway, this quote is an example of a clusterfuck of misunderstandings that has poisoned this thread. First, I am not a big fan of Dear Esther as game. Quote from the article: "I'm not a big fan of Dear Esther as a game". Second, I do call it an extremely important game, though. TO ME. Quote: "[...] to me, that's one of the most important games in the history of gaming". Why can't I consider this game important to me? Is there like an official list of "Games Allowed to be Mentioned as Inspirations" that I am not aware of?

Anther one:


Now he is a dumbfuck talking about ludonarrative dissonance and Bioshock:Infinite as an example of how games should look like in the future.

On the contrary, I am using Infinite as an example of how games should not look like in the future. But, you know, that's just, like, my opinion, man.

I did not invent "ludonarrative dissonance" term. I am not the first, the second, or the hundredth guy who talks about it. It exists, and it may not bother you, but it does bother some people. I believe we can do better. Even without changing anything, we can just do better (which some of you mentioned in this thread). It's not that hard, but it requires a certain design discipline.

Take Red Dead Redemption for example. It's almost a perfect game and one of my favorites EVER, from ANY angle - but it does have one tiny little problem... The hero's quest is to save his wife and child, held hostage by the feds until the hero kills all members of his old gang. Great idea, but one would assume the hero would be in a bit of a hurry. And yet we have all of these side missions where you collect flowers or help random strangers do random stuff.

Damned if I do, damned if I don't. If don't go for side missions and focus on the main story, it all makes sense, but I am missing tons of amazing content. If go for side missions, I am no longer as immersed in the world, since I've been reminded what pretends to be real is actually artificial.

And yet there are dozens of solutions. For example, have it so the feds give the hero at least a year to kill the targets, but achieving the goal faster is pointless, as his wife and child will still be imprisoned until that year passes, as a punishment for his old crimes. There, voila, suddenly I am not in a hurry anymore, and yet still I want to achieve the main goal as much as I did in the original version.


Now, some people were not bothered by this little dissonance AT ALL. But if they don't care ...why not design the game in a way that won't wake up the feeling in dissonance in those who do care?

---

And so on, and so forth. No point wall text spamming this thread addressing every possible "cum-stained" misunderstanding, so just a couple of random thoughts:

- As I mention it often on our blog, I don't have all the answers and I don't know if I am right. It's all "here's what I truly believe in" rather than "this is how it's gonna be, motherfuckers".

- These things I believe in, I'm trying to put into The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. You will tell me (or other gamers if anyone chooses to buy it) if I failed and it's all hipster boredom, or I we did something right.

- There are tons of alternative to the current structural solutions used in most games. 1) Fuck it, we're good. 2) Like now, just better. 3) New thingies. 1 is easy. 2 is a bit harder. 3 is terra incognita.

- Yes, sometimes "pressing a button" is all we need. Why not? To the Moon is all about pressing a button. And it this game did not move you, nothing will.

- ...however, "pressing a button" is not the only way. There are dozens of others, and some of them do involve even MORE gameplay that we have now (Drama Director, procedural story-telling, emergent story-telling like DayZ, etc.)

- I mentioned Call of the Firefly on our blog last year. Loved the Worry of Newport and cannot wait for the new version of Triptych. http://www.theastronauts.com/2012/11/ten-indie-games-that-will-make-you-feel-things/

- Some people mention they liked my previous games like Painkiller and Gorky 17. Great! But I was kind of hoping that exactly because of this background I'd be given the benefit of the doubt. "If this guy made all of these old school gameplay systems-heavy games, but now is looking for something different, MAYBE there is something to it?". Feel free to disagree, but I'm not sure if there's a need to get territorial and grab nuclear pitchforks and torches.

Peace.
 
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The impulsive overexcitement of one guy who by chance stepped out of his comfort zone in the year 2013 to discover that there's a whole other world.

Dude. You don't even know what you don't know. That list of ten games is cute but is crap. There are already games that have been out for a while, having been doing the stuff you're so overexcited to find out about just now, and doing it masterly. One has to question just how severely you have limited yourself in the past, to even think at any point to have played or seen all there is to gaming.

It's also cool that you were involved with a bunch of games with some reverence here but we don't do privileges around here. Usually. Even current exceptions can fall into decay in a moment under the right conditions.

Looking forward to Ethan Carter, btw.
 

Kirtai

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Isn't nuclear pitchforks and torches the default Codexian response to pretty much anything?. There's even a suitable smiley for it, though with less nuclear and more demonic imps :)
 

Adrian Chmielarz

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Dude. You don't even know what you don't know. That list of ten games is cute but is crap. There are already games that have been out for a while, having been doing the stuff you're so overexcited to find out about just now, and doing it masterly.

This is exactly why creators rarely talk on forums, and this is exactly why I have been warned against engaging. Still, I'll bite.

First, it's not "The Ultimate List of Most Emotional Games Ever". It's just a subjective list of great games I've stumbled upon during a research phase. I clearly say that in the post (or so I thought).

Second, I know that I don't know. I talk openly how I was missing out on the good stuff and how new I am (at the time) to all this. I clearly say that in the post (or so I thought).

Third, and WAY more importantly than any of the above, instead of showing off your superiority, share. I love exploring new games and worlds. Even though I did play a fuckload of off games in the last six months, there's obviously a great chance I missed something (like I did with "The Void", which is odd, because I did play "Pathologic"). If you claim to know games that "masterly" do the stuff that I am "so overexcited to find out about just now", by all means, go ahead and list them. I'll be happy to know of even one such gem, and I'm sure there might be others who can benefit from such information.
 

Tehdagah

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'Videogame' is a poor media to tell stories.

If you care too much about story or try to develop story and gameplay at the same time, you're putting severes limitations on the game design.

Except, of course, if your game lacks real gameplay and is more like a 'interactive story'.
 

shihonage

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I believe videogames are a great medium to tell stories. As long as the stories don't make the player feel railroaded and micromanaged into a very specific experience.

Unfortunately few understand how to code a game like that, thanks to "breakthroughs" of games like Half-Life and Mass Effect, which were really a different kind of breakthrough - they showed developers that your average player is as dumb as a rock and will let them get away with blatantly non-interactive "story" and obviously linear gameplay.

There's been plenty of coding breakthroughs in regards to graphics fidelity, and pretty much none in regard to telling a dynamic story. Not since 1997.
 

tuluse

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Adrian Chmielarz why is Dear Esther more important than Loom? A game which came out 22 years before hand, features solid story telling, no killing from the main character, and actually lets the player do things in the gameworld instead of just walk from place to place? Or what about the reams of text adventures made in the 80s?
 

Broseph

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Adrian Chmielarz why is Dear Esther more important than Loom? A game which came out 22 years before hand, features solid story telling, no killing from the main character, and actually lets the player do things in the gameworld instead of just walk from place to place? Or what about the reams of text adventures made in the 80s?
:hmmm:

Did you even read the posts he already made?
 

tuluse

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:hmmm:

Did you even read the posts he already made?
It's possible he has played Loom and thinks Dear Esther is still more important. In which case I'm interested in hearing why. If he hasn't, well I'm on a never-ending quest to make more people play Loom. It's not even hard these days, it's on Steam.
 

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