The Ellen Page Escort Simulator by Uncharted devs

[sexbad?]

I watched some Bro Team stream of the game. Human enemies don't know what the fuck to do when they see you and your companion AIs at the same time. It's fucking hilarious.

 

[Gurkog]

I watched some Bro Team stream of the game. Human enemies don't know what the fuck to do when they see you and your companion AIs at the same time. It's fucking hilarious.

But, but the gaming asskissers leeches cumrags journos all said it was 10/10, best game ever, made Citizen Kane weep with inadequacy and they are NEVER wrong!

 

[Jarpie]

If the game industry wants to tell serious, meaningful stories, perhaps stop with all the fantasy, sci-fi and other geek/man-child confections? Not to say fantasy can't relate or tie into reality or highlight certain truths (see The Illiad, The Divine Comedy), but I can't take seriously as artists people who revel in only make-believe. 98% of games are completely irrelevant to anything that is or has ever been on planet Earth. I'd rather watch The Pianist if I want a story on what it's like to survive during a widespread crisis, made by someone who knows a thing or two about it.

Are you suggesting this seriously, or do you mean this more as reverse psychology along the lines of "the game industry should stop trying to tell serious, meaningful stories"?

I don't think either option is desirable. As a medium, games have some particular strengths in terms of creating narrative, such as environmental storytelling, nonlinearity, dispersed narrative, using interaction to develop immersion as well as evoking moods and ideas through the particulars of the rulesets and gameplay solutions of the game. To make the most out of these, in general an exaggerated and stark setting works best, if only because a realistic real-world setting with all its nuances is somewhat difficult and inconvenient to represent through gameplay and generally ends up breaking immersion anyway. Bluntly put, most games function through abstractions that amount to dream logic, which is why many games with a good narrative usually try to incorporate this vaguely surreal quality to the experience rather than pretending that it doesn't exist. Others just feature a vaguely fantastical or unrealistic setting to minimize the dissonance. It's easier to accept that a character can survive being shot repeatedly if he's a vampire, for instance.

Of course, that's not to say that games shouldn't move away from fantasy and sci-fi staples to something more interesting. It really comes down to how you define fantasy - Silent Hill has obvious fantastical elements, yet it also takes place in a contemporary setting and thematically deals to varying degree with real-world issues. Would you call that fantasy in this context? I suppose one could advocate for more "magical realism" in games, and more original source material in general. Beyond that, though, I doubt that asking more reality in games would do a lot of good, unless you want more "visceral, cinematic" World War II games.

I meant that as rhetorical. They want their 'Citizen Kane' moment, but they indulge in make believe worlds and situations that have no relation or say nothing about who we are, where we are or where we are heading. They're there merely for Rule of Cool credits. Then they demand cultural respect for their boy's adventures and Hollywood aping. Basically I don't think 90+% of people in the industry have the chops to just tell a story that doesn't really on some kind of whiz bang or another. They could never do the kind of stories Hemingway, Twain, Ozu, or Bergmann did. It's got to be whiz bang and candy, all the time.

On the other hand, that's fine. I agree that strengths of video games, at least the kind I enjoy, are better exploited by or suited to fantasy worlds. X-Com wouldn't have been the same in a real world military context, and it wouldn't make a lot of sense. Samus Aran couldn't be as agile or have the kinds of abilities she has if Super Metroid was a space-sim. On the flip side, I thought much of Assassin's Creed 2 was silly. Everyone's a parkour expert in 16th century Italy? And the sci-fi component is exactly what I mean by geek confection. A little sugar to make all that stuffy period stuff go down. Spec Ops: The Line, which does have something to say no matter how shallow, was a bore to play. Part because of the limitations of the story and setting, part because they didn't go all the way and make the play just as real (ARMA). I completely fine with indulging in make believe from a play perspective, but the Industry wants to claim an importance and maturity in game stories when it isn't there.

Silent Hill 2 is exactly one of the few, good examples that use fantasy in a relevant and mature way. I'd rank it among the best, artful horrors that's been in a couple decades of film and games.

As far as asking for more reality, it's not something I personally care about. But I see and have seen many shades between 28 Weeks Later/Aliens/LoTR and WW2. I appreciate your Total Wars, Crusader Kingses, ARMAs, etc. But those don't have the right kind of 2deep4U stories for the reviewers to validate their use of time with.

The problem with games being storytelling medium isn't the fact that most are in one way or another scifi, fantasy, war etc., the big problem games being storytelling medium is imo that they try to be films when games doesn't have nearly the same visual fidelity and flexibility as films have, live-action or animated films alike.

If games use prerendered cut-scenes then there's big disparity between gameplay and the storybits, and many of the modern games try to circumvate this by using the games' own graphical engine which is supposed to remove the beforementioned problem but the same problem still stands IMO as there are first bunch of shootybits and then we watch (in most cases) passively cutscene.

Another problem is that even actions films can advance story during the action scenes or characters so the experience is fluid which is opposite to the action games which try to have "deep" story, just watch some action scenes in early John Woo films. Trying to fit in deep story into action game is like trying fit big square block into a smaller round hole. IMO only way games could have a solid and deep enough story fluidly told is to tie it into the gameplay one way or another, mainly point'n'click adventures or RGPS, Fallout: New Vegas did this rather well from modern games and some point'n'click games too, like Broken Sword 1.

 

[Skunkpew]

I think games can never progress beyond telling the simplest story, because once you hand control to the player, the player's ego and personal desires take over, in lieu of any actual in-game character development. Without character development, the story is always flat. As long as there is a winning solution, there is always a disconnect, because the player wins and just affirms their own greatness without learning anything. The character is just a pawn used for stroking the player's ego.

In a book or movie, good characters can lose, and it makes you actually wonder why. A reader has no control.

 

[Karellen]

If the game industry wants to tell serious, meaningful stories, perhaps stop with all the fantasy, sci-fi and other geek/man-child confections? Not to say fantasy can't relate or tie into reality or highlight certain truths (see The Illiad, The Divine Comedy), but I can't take seriously as artists people who revel in only make-believe. 98% of games are completely irrelevant to anything that is or has ever been on planet Earth. I'd rather watch The Pianist if I want a story on what it's like to survive during a widespread crisis, made by someone who knows a thing or two about it.

Are you suggesting this seriously, or do you mean this more as reverse psychology along the lines of "the game industry should stop trying to tell serious, meaningful stories"?

I don't think either option is desirable. As a medium, games have some particular strengths in terms of creating narrative, such as environmental storytelling, nonlinearity, dispersed narrative, using interaction to develop immersion as well as evoking moods and ideas through the particulars of the rulesets and gameplay solutions of the game. To make the most out of these, in general an exaggerated and stark setting works best, if only because a realistic real-world setting with all its nuances is somewhat difficult and inconvenient to represent through gameplay and generally ends up breaking immersion anyway. Bluntly put, most games function through abstractions that amount to dream logic, which is why many games with a good narrative usually try to incorporate this vaguely surreal quality to the experience rather than pretending that it doesn't exist. Others just feature a vaguely fantastical or unrealistic setting to minimize the dissonance. It's easier to accept that a character can survive being shot repeatedly if he's a vampire, for instance.

Of course, that's not to say that games shouldn't move away from fantasy and sci-fi staples to something more interesting. It really comes down to how you define fantasy - Silent Hill has obvious fantastical elements, yet it also takes place in a contemporary setting and thematically deals to varying degree with real-world issues. Would you call that fantasy in this context? I suppose one could advocate for more "magical realism" in games, and more original source material in general. Beyond that, though, I doubt that asking more reality in games would do a lot of good, unless you want more "visceral, cinematic" World War II games.

I meant that as rhetorical. They want their 'Citizen Kane' moment, but they indulge in make believe worlds and situations that have no relation or say nothing about who we are, where we are or where we are heading. They're there merely for Rule of Cool credits. Then they demand cultural respect for their boy's adventures and Hollywood aping. Basically I don't think 90+% of people in the industry have the chops to just tell a story that doesn't really on some kind of whiz bang or another. They could never do the kind of stories Hemingway, Twain, Ozu, or Bergmann did. It's got to be whiz bang and candy, all the time.

On the other hand, that's fine. I agree that strengths of video games, at least the kind I enjoy, are better exploited by or suited to fantasy worlds. X-Com wouldn't have been the same in a real world military context, and it wouldn't make a lot of sense. Samus Aran couldn't be as agile or have the kinds of abilities she has if Super Metroid was a space-sim. On the flip side, I thought much of Assassin's Creed 2 was silly. Everyone's a parkour expert in 16th century Italy? And the sci-fi component is exactly what I mean by geek confection. A little sugar to make all that stuffy period stuff go down. Spec Ops: The Line, which does have something to say no matter how shallow, was a bore to play. Part because of the limitations of the story and setting, part because they didn't go all the way and make the play just as real (ARMA). I completely fine with indulging in make believe from a play perspective, but the Industry wants to claim an importance and maturity in game stories when it isn't there.

Silent Hill 2 is exactly one of the few, good examples that use fantasy in a relevant and mature way. I'd rank it among the best, artful horrors that's been in a couple decades of film and games.

As far as asking for more reality, it's not something I personally care about. But I see and have seen many shades between 28 Weeks Later/Aliens/LoTR and WW2. I appreciate your Total Wars, Crusader Kingses, ARMAs, etc. But those don't have the right kind of 2deep4U stories for the reviewers to validate their use of time with.

The problem with games being storytelling medium isn't the fact that most are in one way or another scifi, fantasy, war etc., the big problem games being storytelling medium is imo that they try to be films when games doesn't have nearly the same visual fidelity and flexibility as films have, live-action or animated films alike.

If games use prerendered cut-scenes then there's big disparity between gameplay and the storybits, and many of the modern games try to circumvate this by using the games' own graphical engine which is supposed to remove the beforementioned problem but the same problem still stands IMO as there are first bunch of shootybits and then we watch (in most cases) passively cutscene.

Another problem is that even actions films can advance story during the action scenes or characters so the experience is fluid which is opposite to the action games which try to have "deep" story, just watch some action scenes in early John Woo films. Trying to fit in deep story into action game is like trying fit big square block into a smaller round hole. IMO only way games could have a solid and deep enough story fluidly told is to tie it into the gameplay one way or another, mainly point'n'click adventures or RGPS, Fallout: New Vegas did this rather well from modern games and some point'n'click games too, like Broken Sword 1.

I haven't played the Last of Us yet, but it seems to me like the major narrative feature of the game isn't the cinematic cutscenes but rather the character interaction, a lot of which takes place while just walking around in the gameworld and sometimes in reaction to gameplay, including combat; at least, the girl appears to be quite chatty and reactive, and even the mooks that you kill seem to talk to each other behave a bit more like people than they do in most games. Anyone want to confirm if this is the case in the game in general, or if it's just something that happens in the trailer? I actually have a great fondness for games that integrate dialogue into gameplay segments ever since Final Fantasy Tactics, so I'm willing to give an action adventure game that makes a big deal out of doing that a chance to impress me.

That said, I don't even think that cutscenes are the devil. I see them more in terms of the "show vs. tell" dichotomy; people keep saying that the former is better, but in a novel, it sure is a good idea from time to time to throw in some pure, unadultered exposition to get the story to the interesting bits that are actually worth telling. It's the same in games; cutscenes are a pacing tool, and sometimes it's best to throw one in to move the story along. There are many ways to misuse cutscenes, but that doesn't mean that they have no place in a game. Of course, if you want to make the narrative a main point of your game, clearly the cutscenes shouldn't be the most important component of that, but on that point, the Last of Us looks like it does a lot better than Bioshock Infinite.

Of course, that means that the game is more of a mood piece where the big thing is immershun and building up attachment to the characters. That's fine, it's a valid use of games as a medium. A narrative doesn't need to be sophisticated to be efficient, necessarily. Of course, there's nothing wrong with greater depth and scope, but to get those in a game, you have to trade them for other things. Honestly, I wonder if this perception of adventure games and RPGs as a superior medium for game narrative isn't partly because we just have a greater buy-in to the way they tell stories from the start. I mean, adventure games are a prime example of absurd dream logic and characters that behave in wildly unrealistic ways, and really RPGs aren't usually much better. It's just that once you play enough games like that, you learn to appreciate the conventions that the games use to tell stories, and apply sufficient suspension of disbelief to them that some of the abstractions and absurdities won't bother you much.

This is the part where the talk about "Citizen Kane" or "Birth of the Nations" of games has a slight modicum of relevance, actually. The way I see it, you can't really use narrative devices with any great sophistication until you've taught people how to decode them effectively. Cohesive genres like adventure games, CRPGs and JRPGs have their own conventions, devices and "language" that they use to convey ideas, but to an outside observer much of it looks like total gibberish, so they conclude that the games suck. To make good narrative in games, it really helps to have a continuum of earlier games with established conventions that you can trust your audience to comprehend. "Cinematic AAA games" aren't really there yet. Of course, that's why they try to throw in excessive amounts of film conventions to make the games more accessible for people, which is pretty asinine and I hope they'd stop doing that. Still, with any luck, they'll manage to lay in some adequate groundwork for future games too. Much of the Last of Us seems to to be an attempt to be less ridiculous than Uncharted, so maybe it's even working.

 

[grdja]

Watched bits of this movie on youtube. Well... there is far worse shit that won "10/10 instant GOTY must buy reinvented video games" rankings. Movie itself drags out as fuck, I'd chew my head of if I had to play 18 hrs of game to get trough that. For yet another zombie game... could have been worse, so much worse.

While main character is maybe supposed to look at Ellen Page character as adopted daughter, pedo vibes are present in force. "2013, the year when romances between barely legal and even full on jailbait girls and thee times older man became the next big thing in vidyagaems".

 

[CrimsonAngel]

Watched bits of this movie on youtube. Well... there is far worse shit that won "10/10 instant GOTY must buy reinvented video games" rankings. Movie itself drags out as fuck, I'd chew my head of if I had to play 18 hrs of game to get trough that. For yet another zombie game... could have been worse, so much worse.

While main character is maybe supposed to look at Ellen Page character as adopted daughter, pedo vibes are present in force. "2013, the year when romances between barely legal and even full on jailbait girls and thee times older man became the next big thing in vidyagaems".

Can ban all you edgy retards yet. Can i exchange some money for the right to ban some of these dumb mother fuckers.

I WATCHIN YOUTUBE VIDEO I KNOW WHAT TALK ABOUT!!! You dumbass internet hipsters are getting annoying. NO there is no pedo vibe at all through the entire game between the 2 main leads, but hey got to try and be cool on the internet right. OH and if you are going to act stupid on the internet at least be fucking funny instead of wasting our time with what is more or less a youtube comment.

 

[grdja]

Considering its a Sony exclusive and this is mainly PC master race forum, we shouldn't even be discussing the game, and youtube videos are the only way for wast majority of Codexers to form any opinion on the game.

 

[anus_pounder]

 

[Nryn]

I haven't played the Last of Us yet, but it seems to me like the major narrative feature of the game isn't the cinematic cutscenes but rather the character interaction, a lot of which takes place while just walking around in the gameworld and sometimes in reaction to gameplay, including combat; at least, the girl appears to be quite chatty and reactive, and even the mooks that you kill seem to talk to each other behave a bit more like people than they do in most games. Anyone want to confirm if this is the case in the game in general

You have an accurate idea. It’s a character-driven story and the cutscenes almost entirely focus on pivotal events, and so are devoid of a lot of context in the process. Significant character interactions occur while exploring the world for resources. For instance, you frequently run into some fairly mundane everyday objects which your ward has only ever read or heard about. The warring between the girls’s guarded curiosity about the said object and the man’s reluctance to remember the world that housed the said object is another source of conflict that is present throughout the game.

Combat is another source of characterization that cutscenes don’t convey:

Spoiler

Initially each character’s distrust of the other is mutual, and as a result, the girl does not help much in combat. She calls out when you are being flanked, and that’s it. Once the game develops character motivations a lot more, the girl is much more proactive in combat, throwing bricks and bottles at enemies to stun them, buying you some time. Towards the last third of the game, the girl throws herself with reckless abandon on to the backs of enemies when they are one blow away from killing you, buying you precious seconds to bandage yourself.

 

[Jarpie]

The problem with games being storytelling medium isn't the fact that most are in one way or another scifi, fantasy, war etc., the big problem games being storytelling medium is imo that they try to be films when games doesn't have nearly the same visual fidelity and flexibility as films have, live-action or animated films alike.

If games use prerendered cut-scenes then there's big disparity between gameplay and the storybits, and many of the modern games try to circumvate this by using the games' own graphical engine which is supposed to remove the beforementioned problem but the same problem still stands IMO as there are first bunch of shootybits and then we watch (in most cases) passively cutscene.

Another problem is that even actions films can advance story during the action scenes or characters so the experience is fluid which is opposite to the action games which try to have "deep" story, just watch some action scenes in early John Woo films. Trying to fit in deep story into action game is like trying fit big square block into a smaller round hole. IMO only way games could have a solid and deep enough story fluidly told is to tie it into the gameplay one way or another, mainly point'n'click adventures or RGPS, Fallout: New Vegas did this rather well from modern games and some point'n'click games too, like Broken Sword 1.

I haven't played the Last of Us yet, but it seems to me like the major narrative feature of the game isn't the cinematic cutscenes but rather the character interaction, a lot of which takes place while just walking around in the gameworld and sometimes in reaction to gameplay, including combat; at least, the girl appears to be quite chatty and reactive, and even the mooks that you kill seem to talk to each other behave a bit more like people than they do in most games. Anyone want to confirm if this is the case in the game in general, or if it's just something that happens in the trailer? I actually have a great fondness for games that integrate dialogue into gameplay segments ever since Final Fantasy Tactics, so I'm willing to give an action adventure game that makes a big deal out of doing that a chance to impress me.

That said, I don't even think that cutscenes are the devil. I see them more in terms of the "show vs. tell" dichotomy; people keep saying that the former is better, but in a novel, it sure is a good idea from time to time to throw in some pure, unadultered exposition to get the story to the interesting bits that are actually worth telling. It's the same in games; cutscenes are a pacing tool, and sometimes it's best to throw one in to move the story along. There are many ways to misuse cutscenes, but that doesn't mean that they have no place in a game. Of course, if you want to make the narrative a main point of your game, clearly the cutscenes shouldn't be the most important component of that, but on that point, the Last of Us looks like it does a lot better than Bioshock Infinite..

The problem with cutscenes with exception of intro and maybe outro is that A) they are not interactive and B) they try to pull same stuff what films do and fails miserably, the editing in cutscenes is almost always very crude and unnatural, they are poorly directed by hacks who have no idea how to actually direct live action nor animation, it's like watching Uwe Boll or Ed Wood film at best. Games at current state are just very poor at handling certain type of stuff, like where you would need to get things happen outside the gameplay where the player is passively just watching what the developers want them to see, with or without the main character involved.

Of course, that means that the game is more of a mood piece where the big thing is immershun and building up attachment to the characters. That's fine, it's a valid use of games as a medium. A narrative doesn't need to be sophisticated to be efficient, necessarily. Of course, there's nothing wrong with greater depth and scope, but to get those in a game, you have to trade them for other things. Honestly, I wonder if this perception of adventure games and RPGs as a superior medium for game narrative isn't partly because we just have a greater buy-in to the way they tell stories from the start. I mean, adventure games are a prime example of absurd dream logic and characters that behave in wildly unrealistic ways, and really RPGs aren't usually much better. It's just that once you play enough games like that, you learn to appreciate the conventions that the games use to tell stories, and apply sufficient suspension of disbelief to them that some of the abstractions and absurdities won't bother you much.

This is the part where the talk about "Citizen Kane" or "Birth of the Nations" of games has a slight modicum of relevance, actually. The way I see it, you can't really use narrative devices with any great sophistication until you've taught people how to decode them effectively. Cohesive genres like adventure games, CRPGs and JRPGs have their own conventions, devices and "language" that they use to convey ideas, but to an outside observer much of it looks like total gibberish, so they conclude that the games suck. To make good narrative in games, it really helps to have a continuum of earlier games with established conventions that you can trust your audience to comprehend. "Cinematic AAA games" aren't really there yet. Of course, that's why they try to throw in excessive amounts of film conventions to make the games more accessible for people, which is pretty asinine and I hope they'd stop doing that. Still, with any luck, they'll manage to lay in some adequate groundwork for future games too. Much of the Last of Us seems to to be an attempt to be less ridiculous than Uncharted, so maybe it's even working.

Why I think computer rpgs and adventure-games are superior medium for narrative is because the developers can generally tie the story-bits into the gameplay more fluidly than with for example action-games. IMO the best way to tell a story or narrative in games is to tie it into the mechanics one way or another with actual interactivity and mechanics.

Telling less-interactive story like in adventure games works is exactly because of the conventions of the genre as it's always been natural for delivering the dialogue and exposition in the actual game engine/gameplay without needing to put cutscenes or separate gameplay segments/styles and there are adventure games which doesn't use or uses very little of 'dreamlogic' or absurdly behaving characters, such as Broken Sword 1 if I remember correctly.

I think that many of the adventure game developers chose to use 'dreamlogic' because they weren't restricted by the expectations of the medium like in films - most (vast majority?) of the films are tied into the real world logic and expectations how characters behave and that wasn't expected from the games. Games being realistic and having to adhere into the conventions of the real life is relatively new trend which is imo a shame.

The more traditional CRPGs (Fallout 1+2, Arcanum etc) are imo the best way games have delivered interactive narrative/storytelling because rpgs tend to lean toward skill checks and other mechanics (such as branching dialogue and scripting), delivering descriptions and narrative by written text and no need to use make several different kind of cutscenes due not using the conventions of the third-/first person games where you need to show the changes or have dialogue scenes not only written but also created/directed since players nowdays expect cutscenes where they have the dialogue.

Sure there are some games what uses first-/third person perspective and have to things I mentioned before but those are very few and far between, such as Fallout: New Vegas.

Because CRPGs are not tied down by the conventions of Cinematic AAA-games they have much more freedom to have alternate paths or actions player to choose from lot more variety and have actual reactivity.

The games are also very limited on what kind of stories they can tell, basicly games usually either have somekind of adventure or action (pew pew! whack whack!) and thus they imo can't have very deep characters or story/narrative, I'd say rpgs and adventure-games are our best bet for proper deeper story/characters given the limitations of what action game can provide due the conventions of the genre/game type.

The cinematic AAA-games are creative and narrative dead end and they can't get there because of the conventions they have and the expectations of their audience, that's like expecting Michael Bay film to have more philosophical story and complicated characters. Only way Cinematic AAA-games would make games further is to teach gamers and developers not to do cinematic shitty games if they expect games to have deeper narrative.

If you make someone watch film like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive without having any understanding on how film narratives generally work or how films can be edited to have non-linear narrative or even things what characters imagine without really having happened, what do you think their reaction would be? I see the difference between CRPGs/adventure games and Cinematic AAA-games like that, if I just throw...say Arcanum at someone who's completely illiterate when it comes to RPGs, I'd expect them to react same way as someone who doesn't understand how films work who sees Mulholland Drive: confused as hell and not capable understanding what to look for.

 

[tuluse]

I think games can never progress beyond telling the simplest story, because once you hand control to the player, the player's ego and personal desires take over, in lieu of any actual in-game character development. Without character development, the story is always flat. As long as there is a winning solution, there is always a disconnect, because the player wins and just affirms their own greatness without learning anything. The character is just a pawn used for stroking the player's ego.

In a book or movie, good characters can lose, and it makes you actually wonder why. A reader has no control.

The main character of a game doesn't have to be a player avatar, and finishing a game doesn't need to mean the player"won" the story. Have you played the blade runner PC game?

 

[CrimsonAngel]

Considering its a Sony exclusive and this is mainly PC master race forum, we shouldn't even be discussing the game, and youtube videos are the only way for wast majority of Codexers to form any opinion on the game.

This is not a PC master race forum and any fucker who uses that sentence in a non ironic manor should be fucking taken out back and shoot. Hahahaoldmemehahaha fuck you!.

This is General Gaming section and nothing else so that means that any game on any platform can and should be talked about. When a good or bad game comes out and some one plays it. We then share opinions about it so people can tell if they would like to play it or not. This is not your personal place to talk shit about game series because you are to fucking poor to buy a console and it is not a place to talk shit about something when you are to fucking stupid to say any thing interesting.

 

[MoLAoS]

My laptop costs 3x what a console costs. Its not a matter of being poor. Its a matter of not being a philistine. Or a plebian. Or pedestrian in taste.

Man what is it with p words being good for being patronizing. I think p is my favorite letter.

 

[anus_pounder]

Come on guys, seriously?

 

[MoLAoS]

Come on guys, seriously?

It would be much easier to figure out trolls if regular people weren't so fucking stupid about what comes out of their mouth.
/elitist

Crimson Angel is just mad he doesn't get to be drowned in a tributary.

 

[deuxhero]

I think games can never progress beyond telling the simplest story, because once you hand control to the player, the player's ego and personal desires take over, in lieu of any actual in-game character development. Without character development, the story is always flat. As long as there is a winning solution, there is always a disconnect, because the player wins and just affirms their own greatness without learning anything. The character is just a pawn used for stroking the player's ego.

In a book or movie, good characters can lose, and it makes you actually wonder why. A reader has no control.

The main character of a game doesn't have to be a player avatar, and finishing a game doesn't need to mean the player"won" the story. Have you played the blade runner PC game?

There's also the Baten Kaitos games, which make the player avatar separate from the main character (You are a spirit from another world that plays Jiminy Cricket inside Kalas/Sagi's head) and use it for two of my favorite video game plot twists.

 

[Machocruz]

The problem with games being storytelling medium isn't the fact that most are in one way or another scifi, fantasy, .

It's a problem when people make unjustified comparisons to Citizen Kane. You don't get to Citizen Kane by aping 28 Days Later. And I'm not talking about technical quality either. Sure, Kane isn't what I would call deep, but it is observed of human nature and the world it expresses itself in. Guys like Welles, Kubrick, Leone, Hitchcock, Herzog, are/were able to create spectacle out of life. No need for zombies, robots, lasers, bodybuilding space marines, dragons, super spies, or aliens to get people engaged or inspired.

I admit it's a personal peeve. It's all just so childish because it is constant. Countless big, stupid future worlds that don't exhibit any kind of observation of any possible directions we are heading, and no real attempt to create a credible future or one that makes sense. Countless Tolkien fantasies, 'chainmail bikinis,' asymmetrical armor, etc. Endless, endless, poorly conceived make-believe.

I'm probably coming off as a pretentious artfag, but that's really not the case. Mindless escapism in itself is fine. I've watched, read, played a ton of pop and low culture work. I'm not anti sci-fi or fantasy either. Alien and Aliens are my two favorite films. The Odyssey is my favorite literature. I love good fantasy creature and armor design. But 1. Do it well, with some thought behind it 2. Don't blow smoke up my ass and tell me it's 'A'rt or Important 3. The gameplay better be there, otherwise it's just a bunch of graphic designers and writers jerking off.

 

[MoLAoS]

I think that's the most important thing.

There wouldn't be all this hate if they hadn't talked the damn thing up so much with the Citizen Kane comparisons and the other hyperbole. I don't spend a lot of time trashing CoD or Battlefield, because they don't try to play it up as something its not.

 

[Machocruz]

Exactly. But I loath modern "cinematic" games to begin with, so take it as you will. Give me cinematic like Resident Evil, with varying camera angles while I'm actually playing, and cheesy voice acting using the in game perspective.

 

[Jarpie]

The problem with games being storytelling medium isn't the fact that most are in one way or another scifi, fantasy, .

It's a problem when people make unjustified comparisons to Citizen Kane. You don't get to Citizen Kane by aping 28 Days Later. And I'm not talking about technical quality either. Sure, Kane isn't what I would call deep, but it is observed of human nature and the world it expresses itself in. Guys like Welles, Kubrick, Leone, Hitchcock, Herzog, are/were able to create spectacle out of life. No need for robots, lasers, bodybuilding space marines, dragons, super spies, or aliens to get people engaged or inspired.

I admit it's a personal peeve. It's all just so childish because it is constant. Countless big, stupid future worlds that don't exhibit any kind of observation of any possible directions we are heading, and no real attempt to create a credible future or one that makes sense. Countless Tolkien fantasies, 'chainmail bikinis,' asymmetrical armor, etc. Endless, endless, poorly conceived make-believe.

I'm probably coming off as a pretentious artfag, but that's really not the case. Mindless escapism in itself is fine. I've watched, read, played a ton of pop and low culture work. I'm not anti sci-fi or fantasy either. Alien and Aliens are my two favorite films. The Odyssey is my favorite literature. I love good fantasy creature and armor design. But 1. Do it well, with some thought behind it 2. Don't blow smoke up my ass and tell me it's 'A'rt or Important 3. The gameplay better be there, otherwise it's just a bunch of graphic designers and writers jerking off.

Yeah, and when game developers and writers try to do anything what has more substance in it they tend to fail miserably, and with exception of couple writers (MCA etc) game writers are fucking atrocious. Games are very restrictive on visual storytelling compared to the films too and there's also so little what games can do compared to films except with dialogue and the story/narrative itself; the editing, cinematography, the direction itself, can you imagine any game getting even close to what Terrence Malick does audio-visually in his films? Sure games can have very impressive art direction but it can go only so far because they can't move the narrative forward since games are interactive medium or at least suppose to be.

There's one other thing especially: the actors' performance what can give shallowly written character much more depthness than any game is capable of and that's why we'd need much better writers. No matter how good voice actor is the games can never ever replicate the subleties of a really good actor and that's why games suffer as storytelling medium.

That being said, I agree that those directors' flms always had something to do with people as you said, the human nature but when I've seen games trying that (with exception of couple games) they fail miserably because they're usually ridiculously melodramatic because the writers seemingly can't write any other way.

 

[wergle]

Part of the reason AAA games have terrible stories is because melodramatic, overblown crap is what your average AAA gamer responds to. By and large, anything more subtle than not at all is going to be seen as boring. So why even bother trying?

 

[Karellen]

That said, I don't even think that cutscenes are the devil. I see them more in terms of the "show vs. tell" dichotomy; people keep saying that the former is better, but in a novel, it sure is a good idea from time to time to throw in some pure, unadultered exposition to get the story to the interesting bits that are actually worth telling. It's the same in games; cutscenes are a pacing tool, and sometimes it's best to throw one in to move the story along. There are many ways to misuse cutscenes, but that doesn't mean that they have no place in a game. Of course, if you want to make the narrative a main point of your game, clearly the cutscenes shouldn't be the most important component of that, but on that point, the Last of Us looks like it does a lot better than Bioshock Infinite..

The problem with cutscenes with exception of intro and maybe outro is that A) they are not interactive and B) they try to pull same stuff what films do and fails miserably, the editing in cutscenes is almost always very crude and unnatural, they are poorly directed by hacks who have no idea how to actually direct live action nor animation, it's like watching Uwe Boll or Ed Wood film at best. Games at current state are just very poor at handling certain type of stuff, like where you would need to get things happen outside the gameplay where the player is passively just watching what the developers want them to see, with or without the main character involved.

While I agree that games would be better off not trying to imitate cinema, I don't really subscribe to the first point. Some games have no use for cutscenes and some do, but either way, there is rarely much to be gained by trying to turn sequences that do not constitute meaningful gameplay into something interactive. Actually, I think we can blame this line of thought for the proliferation of QTE as well as Bioware-style dialogue options, since they create the illusion that these sequences are somehow comparable to real gameplay and can therefore be used without impunity. With actual cutscenes, developers are more likely to opt to limit them to the minimum needed, in which case they can play a useful function in the game as a whole.

The cinematic AAA-games are creative and narrative dead end and they can't get there because of the conventions they have and the expectations of their audience, that's like expecting Michael Bay film to have more philosophical story and complicated characters. Only way Cinematic AAA-games would make games further is to teach gamers and developers not to do cinematic shitty games if they expect games to have deeper narrative.

I think that's rather harsh. Sure, I look forward the same as anyone to the great AAApocalypse when the game industry, drunk on geek celebrity cameos, incremental graphical fidelity and "visceral experiences" that "do not needlessly frustrate the player", collapses under its own bloated weight, but I'm still willing to concede to the idea that games like Silent Hill II, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus - which are, structurally speaking, cinematic AAA action games - are some of the finer accomplishments of the industry so far. The (well, "a") problem with the industry now is that it has a relatively narrow design focus on AAA spectacle and accessibility, eclipsing other types of design. Which sucks, but I don't think the opposite extreme of a grimdark KKKodexian master race eugenics Mondblutian dystopia to weed out the weak from all things gaming is desirable either. There are many different design principles that can result in the creation of good games.

The problem with games being storytelling medium isn't the fact that most are in one way or another scifi, fantasy, .

It's a problem when people make unjustified comparisons to Citizen Kane. You don't get to Citizen Kane by aping 28 Days Later. And I'm not talking about technical quality either. Sure, Kane isn't what I would call deep, but it is observed of human nature and the world it expresses itself in. Guys like Welles, Kubrick, Leone, Hitchcock, Herzog, are/were able to create spectacle out of life. No need for zombies, robots, lasers, bodybuilding space marines, dragons, super spies, or aliens to get people engaged or inspired.

It's a bit frustrating that I find myself coming back to discuss a silly and overused piece of hyperbole like "Citizen Kane of video games", but I still think you gentlemen are misreading it. Citizen Kane isn't really remembered for being a sophisticated study of the human condition, it's remembered for pioneering cinematic techniques and using them extensively in a novel way, for exhibiting an unprecedented degree of "film-itude" that future films would mimic. From the list you mentioned, the films of Leone and Herzog are primarily about judicious and audacious exercise of style, too - elevating what is sometimes quite trashy source material into visions of the world that are unique and possible only through the medium of cinema.

A game might theoretically merit a comparison to Citizen Kane - or any of the above - if it managed to establish and popularise an uniquely "game-y" way of telling stories and conveying ideas that other games would then follow. Well, the joke is that games have been doing uniquely gamey things with stories and narratives for years, so the whole exercise is kind of pointless, right? I don't think there will ever be a game that would achieve a status comparable to Citizen Kane in games, simply because games in themselves do not, and hopefully never will, form a cohesive medium to the extent that films do. Having said that, trying to further develop the "language" of games and do more with it is far from pointless, though, and serves a greater purpose than game journalists' misplaced desire to occasionally feel like they are writing about a very serious, very highbrow medium.

 

[Kirtai]

Yeah, and when game developers and writers try to do anything what has more substance in it they tend to fail miserably, and with exception of couple writers (MCA etc) game writers are fucking atrocious.

That reminds me. One of the things touted for T:ToN is that they have a professional editor for the game writing. What the hell is wrong with game writing that having an editor is something to boast about? Shouldn't this be a given for any game with any pretension to telling any kind of story at all?

That’s right – the quality of writing for Torment is so important that we have a professional editor on the team.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Part of the reason AAA games have terrible stories is because melodramatic, overblown crap is what your average AAA gamer responds to.

Or perhaps it's just the people who write these stories suck.

Anybody also saw that The Order: 1886 trailer? What a waste of time and money. Publishers need start to learn to only reveal the game when there's finalized gameplay to be shown.