Collective Guilt and Beauty in Games

[Darth_Payn]

I wouldn't have gone with the beauty angle. I'd have gone with the "Yahtzee never likes JRPGs" angle.

Except for Earthbound, the first few Paper Mario games. Even Final Fantasy VI.

Paper Mario is weird, and barely even an RPG at times. Probably explains it.

Yahtzee said he stopped playing by the time FF VII rolled around, when they flipped the switch from "Substance" to "Style", then broke it.

Who is they? There ARE other JRPGs besides Final Fantasy.

"they" = "Squaresoft", now Square-Enix, then just about every other Japanese game dev that makes RPG's following suit.

 

[evilnancyreagan]

It's all fun and games until TEH YAHTZ burns something that YOU, personally, were emotionally invested in.

All is fair in love and war and game reviews.

 

[Callate]

What stuck with me about the editorial was the comment that there were places Yahtzee had been that he found beautiful, but that he didn't think he got more out of it than he would have from sticking a picture of the scene close to his face.

It's funny; there are places that have been like that for me. I remember being underwhelmed by the Grand Canyon when I was a kid (I might feel differently, now.) I spent a week in Utah's national parks in my twenties, and by the end of the week I just wanted to scream, "Yes, it's another big freaking rock, now can we go someplace cool and shady and drink margaritas?!"

But I also remember feeling a sort of awe at Joshua Tree National park. And I remember thinking that the Eifel Tower was just another big man-made structure, smaller than many modern skyscrapers, and what was the big deal... And then standing underneath its legs, looking up, and feeling dizzy with appreciation.

I suppose I want to say a utilitarian view of beauty might just not have found a particular instance where beauty was worth it for beauty's sake. But I honestly don't know it that's true. Yahtzee's view of, understanding of, and appreciation of beauty might just be very different from mine, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

In video games, there's beauty that draws you in- a quality I've heard more than once ascribed to Dark Souls- and then there's beauty that just makes for pretty screen shots or feeds certain game makers' secret wishes that they were actually working in cinema rather than video games. I can certainly appreciate a utilitarian view of beauty in video games, especially now as bullshots and resolution actually seem increasingly in conflict with function, both in terms of the amount of system resources devoted to each and the amount of developer time spent on each.

 

[Adam_Sherman]

Hey, first timer here, where would I go if I wanted discuss Yahtzee's opinions on stuff outside of games, like The Avengers (which was written by Joss Whedon)?

Just finding my way around this area right now.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

Whoa. A column that's only one page long. That threw me for a loop. I kept looking for the next-page button, wondering if they'd moved it again.

i did the same thing. in fact, i only scoured the comments to find someone else to confirm it was only a single page long. i feel like page two is missing. where is the "british born, currently australian based hat" blurb? i thought my browser was up to some shenanigans.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

Hey, first timer here, where would I go if I wanted discuss Yahtzee's opinions on stuff outside of games, like The Avengers (which was written by Joss Whedon)?

Just finding my way around this area right now.

non-gaming yahtzee forum topics go in the political and religious sub-section. that's where all the Yahtzafarians hang out.

 

[srpilha]

Gorgeous last paragraph.

Also, Thomas Was Alone looks gorgeous and is a pretty good game in many aspects/dimensions. Of course, "looking gorgeous" is here taken slightly out of the meaning it received in the article...

 

[Kekkonen1]

I actually played through Child of Light together with my girlfriend last week (I knew she would like to control the little flying ball of light as she usually doesn't like to play games unless her control of the game is very minimal, but she usually likes to just watch me play). As soon as the game was done we both erupted in a series of complaints we both had apparently been holding back during the time we played the game. These were some of the complaints:

The dialogue was not very good and often did not rhyme at all.
The story was pretty boring.
For an incredibly short RPG that would only let you use two characters at a time, it introduced more playable characters than most 100+ hour RPG's do. I dont know the exact number but I'm pretty certain it had more playable characters than any Final Fantasy-game.
The battles were quite frankly not very fun.

All in all we agreed that it was a nice-enough game that got many things wrong but due to it being very short it didn't really outstay its welcome.

 

[Thanatos2k]

I wouldn't have gone with the beauty angle. I'd have gone with the "Yahtzee never likes JRPGs" angle.

Except for Earthbound, the first few Paper Mario games. Even Final Fantasy VI.

Paper Mario is weird, and barely even an RPG at times. Probably explains it.

Yahtzee said he stopped playing by the time FF VII rolled around, when they flipped the switch from "Substance" to "Style", then broke it.

Who is they? There ARE other JRPGs besides Final Fantasy.

"they" = "Squaresoft", now Square-Enix, then just about every other Japanese game dev that makes RPG's following suit.

Not sure what you're talking about. The PS1/PS2 era was the golden age for quality JRPGs.

 

[Adam_Sherman]

Hey, first timer here, where would I go if I wanted discuss Yahtzee's opinions on stuff outside of games, like The Avengers (which was written by Joss Whedon)?

Just finding my way around this area right now.

non-gaming yahtzee forum topics go in the political and religious sub-section. that's where all the Yahtzafarians hang out.

Thank you!

 

[A.K.B.]

I think this topic will have a continuation after he reviews Transistor ...
at least that's what I hope so ...

 

[sageoftruth]

Really interesting piece, especially when you talked about what makes a game beautiful. I can appreciate enjoying the beauty of mechanics over style when it comes to video games since that is a big part of what makes the medium special.

I guess that just makes me superficial since I'm a huge sucker for unique art style in games. I mean I will actually go out of my way to buy a game that has a pretty ecstatic, Bastion, Limbo, Journey, Puppeteer, Broken Age, Dust: An Elysian Tale, Fez, Shadow of the colossus, the recent Rayman games, and yes even Child of Light were all impulse purchases.
Heck, my favorite game is Okami and that certainly had its fair share of issues in both the gameplay and story.

In that case, you'd better watch you wallet the next time you stumble across a Vanillaware game.

 

[briankoontz]

I think you may be onto something with the idea of games that deliberately eliminate sexuality being given undue praise. I remember seeing reviews of Tomb Raider when it came out calling the game feminist just for having its protagonist not dressed in fetish gear. I think overall though it's less of a symptom of general fear of sexuality (although that is present, given that these games are usually made in the states after all), but a desire to oppose what are considered immature elements of gaming culture such as ridiculous oversexualisation of women (I personally see no similar counterpart with men, muscles like watermelons are the stuff of power fantasies, not sexual ones) in an attempt to present themselves as mature and artistic.

It's counterproductive to present this argument in such narrow terms. The larger problem with Tomb Raider has never been Lara Croft's breast size or leering camera angles - it's that the gameplay is inventory management, acrobatics, and gunplay. The GAMEPLAY isn't emotionally mature. There's no relationships besides occasionally shallow ones that fuel the plot. There's no real meaning between the characters or deep characterization of Croft or anyone else in the games. That's why when games are made where some effort is put into the characters, like the Walking Dead series, they seem to have come from Neptune.

The entire gaming culture, from developers to gamers, constantly fail to discuss important issues, focusing far too much on body proportions or the precise degree of worn clothing. Gameplay itself is almost never discussed as the problem.

In real life sexuality and body proportions or degree of worn clothing are completely separate. All humans, regardless of details of clothing and physique, are sexual. A game isn't sexual because it depicts women with tight or scant clothing - that makes the game sleazy. A truly sexual game respects it's characters and treats their sexuality as real people would have themselves treated if they were made into video game characters.

 

[Story]

Snippy

In that case, you'd better watch you wallet the next time you stumble across a Vanillaware game.

Too true, though I've managed to avoid them so far because I don't own a Vita or a PS3. I'm currently in the same dilemma with Transistor, which makes me cry.

 

[sageoftruth]

Snippy

In that case, you'd better watch you wallet the next time you stumble across a Vanillaware game.

Too true, though I've managed to avoid them so far because I don't own a Vita or a PS3. I'm currently in the same dilemma with Transistor, which makes me cry.

How about a PS2 (Odin Sphere or Grim Grimoire) or a Wii (Muramasa Demon Blade)? I feel bad mentioning those while you're in your dilemma, but I wanted to leave the door open, just in case.