David Cage is one of the worst writers in the industry

scorptatious

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captainballsack said:
I don't like Cage because he thinks the "art" of games lies in its story telling ability, then uses Ueda to back him up on it.

Shadow of the Colossus is an artistic masterpiece because it perfectly blends story, art style and game mechanics thematically. Themes of isolation, patience, loss and utilitarianism all occur simultaneously through minimalistic story/art/game design; everything in that game flows and complements itself to leave you with a literary experience that can only be accomplished through the interactive medium. Same goes for Ico; the game mechanics reflect the story and the story reflects the game mechanics equally to create something wholesome and beautiful. When you wrap that up in an art style that ALSO reflects what themes the gameplay and narrative are trying to convey, you're left with a masterpiece.
THIS. SO. MUCH. THIS.

I've stated it before, but I friggen love Team ICO's games, and this right here is the reason why. I really couldn't have said it better myself.

OT: I can't really say much about Mr. Cage himself, but from what I've seen of the playthroughs of Heavy Rain and Indigo Prohecy done by Two Best Friends, he seems to be at least an okay writer, but his stories tend to either fall apart or go absolutely bonkers.
 

Saltyk

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Well, if you don't like him, don't buy his games. Problem solved. And if enough people don't buy his games, he'll quit making games and then you'll win for real. No matter what, you don't really lose, though.

Did that have too much logic?

Also, I enjoyed Heavy Rain. I didn't overthink things like the glass in the air duct and just went with it. Also, I don't ever recall Ethan getting caught and held by the police. At least, not in my playthrough.
 

debtcollector

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Meriatressia said:
I totally agree. David Cage is a obnoxious, extremely deluded, absolutely talentless, useless, cretinous, totally and utterly incompatent, frackwit.
He thinks saying somethings emotional and wailing over how graphics don't show enough facial lines is clever.
Then throws hissy fits when he's very rightly critiscised.

He does exactly what Jim Stirling parodied in a one of Jim and yatzees poetry videos.
He goes
emotion, emotion, emotion, emotion, emotion, emotion, emotion..............
And people stupid enough to be fooled by that kind of pathetic bullcrap, fall for it.

It's the 'say it is, try to make people think it is', tactic.
It only works on the foolish and weak minded.

His games are firetrucking garbage of the lowest order. That barely count or don't count as games at all.
They're grotesquely overated, overhyped, overpromoted, garbage.

I am sick and tired of hearing about the firetrucking nonegame garbage that is beyond 2 souls!
It's total and utter, nonegame trash.
It's not a game at all. It's just a boring copy of a grotesquely overated, overhyped, overpromoted, absolutely talentless, crap, actress, in the worlds most pretentious and garbage plot posible.

I'm not swearing here, but I would be if I could. I'd turn the air blue with swearwords and insults. There ar'nt enough swearwords and insults to describe how utterly toxic and cretinous David Cage is.

That man is bad for games. He's bad for gamers. He's bad for every single thing he touches.
He is a plague on the game industry. A toxic, cretinous, plague, that gives games a bad name, that does'nt have a firetrucking clue about what games are or what a gamer is.
And he knows absolutely zero about writing in any way shape or form.
His firetrucking prescence in gaming, hurts gaming.
The time he's there, stinking it up, the more idiots in the industry may think they can push pretentious waffle and overblown graphics no one wants, and sickening and insane hype, in place of proper writing, and proper gameplay.
He needs kicking out of gaming. NOW!
I never cease to be amazed by how incoherent Internet Toughness makes people. For real, this isn't a compelling argument, this is a child ranting.

Also, throwing around "overrated, overhyped, overpromoted" does not an argument make. These are not complaints. These are buzzwords intended to appear to be complaints, but really mean very little, unless you supply context. It's a lot like the massively overused "pretentious", which I see you used as well.

In fact, after wading through this morass of insipidity a third time, I realized that you have literally no point to make here, other than "I hate David Cage, I hate his games, let me repeat myself for 8 stanzas of my weirdly formatted free-verse poem."

My apologies for not taking you seriously, but I really cannot respect your opinions when you don't respect them yourself. If you did, you would defend them in a levelheaded and rational manner. This doesn't mean you have to sanitize your arguments, though. For example, I often swear in my arguments, dropping fucks, shits, bitches, and assholes all over the place. They are good words for emphasizing parts of your argument while keeping things lighthearted, so long as you use them sparingly. They also sound infinitely less childish than "firetrucking", which, to be honest, sounds like something a 10-year-old would say.

My final point is this: while nobody can take your opinion from you, your opinion remains yours alone. That is, you cannot force your opinions upon other people, and you cannot present your opinions as fact. So don't say how David Cage is the worst person, etc., but say that you think he's the worst person and explain why you think that.

Also, don't say that his games are only for the foolish and the weak-minded, because seriously, that's making things pretty fucking personal, bro.
 

jamail77

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Ooooooh. I've been waiting for the right opportunity to use this and it just so happens the game being discussed on the forum this quote is from is one of the two main games being discussed here! Talk about lucky break!

"I've started a drinking game. Every time people use the term plot hole wrong, take a shot."- TheFirefox [http://www.gamespot.com/heavy-rain/forum/top-15-heavy-rain-plot-holes-53753623/]

Yes, I know it's from GameStop. Ignore that. I was reading a variety of articles and forums on supposed Heavy Rain plot holes a long while ago regardless of source or hate against source. The game has problems but many of the accused plot holes aren't plot holes at all (there were some, don't get me wrong).
 

shogunblade

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Casual Shinji said:
You can lambast David Cage all you like, but if there's one thing you should refrain from doing it's telling people they shouldn't like what they like. That's just all kinds of silly.

And yeah, David Cage is a horrible writer and game developer, but in a sense that has become it's own form of entertainment. For me anyway. Cage doesn't realize it himself, but he's actually a master at crafting Naked Gun-esque comedy games. I didn't notice this untill I played the demo for Beyond: Two Souls, and laughed my ass off through the whole thing. And now I'm seriously anticipating the barrel of laughs that is the full game.
YAY!, someone mirrors my opinions too.

OT: I did legitimately enjoy Indigo Prophecy Fahrenheit, even down to the stupid endings. Angelo Badalamenti's score within the game was amazing. I quite liked it. Heavy Rain soured on me after the first time I beat it, in the same way the internet soured on The Dark Knight Rises when it came out as "What a Ride, but it doesn't make sense the more I think about it", but that doesn't change the fact I have seen Dark Knight Rises two more times since then and I love it, still. My spirit hasn't changed towards it, even though I find the plot hole elements within it. The same thing with Heavy Rain.

However, I played the Demo of Beyond, and felt it was so silly (as well as nowhere near as engaging as his previous two games), and when the preview of the rest of the game came up after the demo, I saw a generic, Straight to DVD movie concept with two name actors in it, and if Straight to DVD has shown us anything, it's that it could become the new cult canon, and that makes me want to play it, because it might be silly and enjoyable in that respect.
 

briankoontz

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David Cage is hated by many gamers because he dares to do something different from within the AAA industry. If he made another CoD or WoW clone gamers wouldn't have any problems with him whatsoever.

Don't do anything different that what's been done before, because we are scared little gamers who can't deal with new things.
 

DrunkenMonkey

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The amount of pure hate Cage gets from some people is beyond me i.e. the recent Two Best Friends playthough is a good example. Indigo Prophecy had problems, I'm not going to defend the fact that it loses coherency a third of the way through. But you have to take a two or three in things in perspective.

One Cage ran out of money to continue fleshing out the plot threads in order to make your decisions vary, thus why we have a story that just molds together into a horrid soup by the end. It's partly the fault of the fact that he ran out of cash, and the fact that he wasn't a good enough writer to manage the money that he had.

Two indigo prophecy came out a while ago, it was one of the first games to do the whole cinematic angle. Not counting Shenmue, etc. So it deserves a pass on that, and cannot be compare to the likes of the walking dead. Overall it was a good attempt, and doesn't deserve the hate that some people give it. Strangely IP is very comparable with Suda 51, killer 7, but yet people don't praise it for its incoherency. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it wasn't intentional.

Finally heavy rain. Heavy rain is a major improvement from IP on the gameplay front and even does a wonderful job of being more coherent for the whole three acts in the grand scheme, no mystical mumbo jumbo, secret clans, etc. The only thing that it showed is that Cage cannot balance gameplay and storytelling effectively. The reveal of the killer for example will take a lot of people by surprise simply because the one of the pieces presented makes NO SENSE. It's like Cage forgot to review the scene that I'm talking about.

Anyway enough with the rant, I'll agree that David Cage is a mediocre writer, pretentious on the level that he's unlikable unlike Molyneux. But he is not the utter hack freaking devil and destroyer of videogames that people like in the OP make him out to be.
 

Dalisclock

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Clive Howlitzer said:
I remember when I first played it. The first segment of the game I thought, oh wow, this is going to be really interesting. I love this cool murder mystery and how this is playing out. Then abruptly everything goes off the rails and I wonder if I went off my meds partway through playing or something.
It wasn't you that went off the meds, it was cage.
 

Racecarlock

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briankoontz said:
David Cage is hated by many gamers because he dares to do something different from within the AAA industry. If he made another CoD or WoW clone gamers wouldn't have any problems with him whatsoever.

Don't do anything different that what's been done before, because we are scared little gamers who can't deal with new things.
I don't know about Warcraft, but COD is practically puppy-molesting hitler to many people on these and other forums right now. I think he would get a LOT of hate if he made a COD clone.

Also, it's not that I'm afraid, it's that I've tried his kind of games and they're really not for me. Not even the best one, walking dead. I'm glad he's around because he pleases whatever his niche crowd is, but they're just not my kind of games.
 

Compatriot Block

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Considering the constant stream of "feminism in gaming" threads on the Escapist, I would expect more people here to dislike Cage.

His portrayal of women in his games is embarrassing.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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People in this thread keep either implying, or blatantly saying that my OP says that because David Cage's writing is bad that means they have no right to enjoy those games and that I'm telling them to stop enjoying them.

This is just putting words in my mouth. I never said that you need to stop liking his games, nor did I say that only idiots like them. As far as I'm concerned anyone can like whatever the hell they like. What I said is that people need to stop defending his games.

What bugs me isn't the fact that the plots of these games are bad, but the fact that David Cage, and the people who like his games treat these stories as if they're pure gold with no flaws, and any criticism of them is met with the same hatred toward the critic that's usually reserved for people who kick your dog, followed by someone saying the phrase "but the story is soo good." The entire point of my OP was the point out that people who say that the story of any particular David Cage game is good are wrong, because the story fails at making any sense, and is more full of holes than swiss cheese.

Regardless of whether you like his games or not (I personally don't), you have to admit that his writing is sub par at best, and absolutely terrible at worst, what with his plots being nonsense, and his characters essentially being walking plot devices (especially his female characters who seem to just be there to have sex with the protagonist).

So, for the people who like David Cage's stories, no one is telling you to stop liking them, but you really need to admit that the story you like is bad. It's ok to like bad things, hell, I have a penchant for the Nightmare on Elm Street films, and they're absolute garbage, but just because you like something doesn't mean that it's good, and it especially isn't good if you can't explain WHY you like it. "Shut up, I like it" isn't a valid response to criticism.
 

JazzJack2

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briankoontz said:
David Cage is hated by many gamers because he dares to do something different from within the AAA industry. If he made another CoD or WoW clone gamers wouldn't have any problems with him whatsoever.

Don't do anything different that what's been done before, because we are scared little gamers who can't deal with new things.
Oh? and what new things has David Cage ever brought to his games?
 

Dirty Hipsters

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tehpiemaker said:
Look bud, just because his stories have plot-holes doesn't mean he's not a good writer. Whether you want to admit it or not, Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy where both atmospheric and exciting. There are stories out there that make perfect sense with absolutely no conundrums in them but are total snore fests, and really the only way to make fictional story exciting is break out of the limiting boundaries of "reality" to create something new. That's why suspension of disbelief is so important. Of course, what you're saying is that the holes are so plentiful and obvious that it takes away anything good that might be said about them moot. Well fuck you too pal. I hope someone takes your monocle and shoves so far up your nostril you'll never be able to snob again.
1. A story having plot-holes, inconsistencies, and terrible characters, and a story that is not grounded in reality are two very different things, stop conflating them. I'm not lambasting Indigo Prophecy because matrix powers and Mayan magic are unrealistic, but because David Cage uses them in an incredibly stupid and inconsistent way.

2. Suspension of disbelief is only possible if the story is consistent enough for your brain to perceive it as it's own separate world with it's own specialized rules. When you create those rules you have to abide by those rules, and when you break or change those rules without warning, and without any kind of explanation, that's when willing suspension of disbelief goes out the window. It's kind of hard to have any kind of suspension of disbelief with David Cage's writing when he just pulls stuff out of his ass at the 11th hour without any kind of foreshadowing.
 

Racecarlock

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tehpiemaker said:
Whether you want to admit it or not, Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy where both atmospheric and exciting.
Woah, what? So if I don't think they are, I'm just lying to myself?

Don't be as bad as the OP, dude.
 

Clowndoe

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briankoontz said:
David Cage is hated by many gamers because he dares to do something different from within the AAA industry.
Nope, don't read or respond to the OP or the scores of reasons people have listed for not liking the games or anything. The baseless argument you just just pulled out of the ether are probably right.
 

briankoontz

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JazzJack2 said:
briankoontz said:
David Cage is hated by many gamers because he dares to do something different from within the AAA industry. If he made another CoD or WoW clone gamers wouldn't have any problems with him whatsoever.

Don't do anything different that what's been done before, because we are scared little gamers who can't deal with new things.
Oh? and what new things has David Cage ever brought to his games?
His ambition is to engage the player emotionally. The story in Heavy Rain was really good (for a game story) and the style of gameplay in Cage's games is designed to enhance the emotional connection of the player to the game world. Cage gets rid of inventory, skills, and levels, because they take the player out of the immersive state of the gameworld. Even the adventure game genre, closest to what Cage's games are, have inventory management.

He has a vision for what he wants to accomplish in games and he follows logical steps to accomplish it. This gives his games a unique feel.

I agree with critics that Cage is not a master of executing his vision. The Walking Dead series, probably the closest to what Cage produces in the mainstream industry, is much better written with much better characters. But there's a great possibility within the vision that Cage has for something truly great to emerge.

It's similar to the way the Elder Scrolls series started. Gamers recognized that this was something different with a lot of possibility. Those possibilities peaked with Morrowind and the series has degraded since then.

Heavy Rain is David Cage's best game, and there's no reason to think his vision can't produce even better games. So why bring the hate against him? Heavy Rain is a tremendous breath of fresh air in a very stale industry.

Game developers who produce just another shooter never come under much scrutiny. But gamers love doing autopsies on Cage while he's still alive, picking over his personality, criticizing every little thing they possibly can, and all for what? To combat the argument that Cage is an auteur, a genius? Noone is saying that. He's a guy with a lot of ambition, some interesting ideas, and the ego necessary to put these things out there into the world. Cut the guy some slack.
 

The_Scrivener

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How many Cage defenders would be okay saying a movie was "still good" if it had gaping plotholes like the ones in his games?

Guarantee: these same people enjoy movies like The Life of David Gale wherein emotional weight and arbitrary twists are enough to feed the empty intellect of the people watching. "Oh man, I didn't see that coming. This is a deep film!" Never mind that the entire premise and sequence by which all the events taking place make zero sense whatsoever and that anyone with any notion of critical thinking has seen beyond the emotional weight and spotted bullshit smeared all over their television screen.

David Cage is an idiot and a hack and his inexplicable success in the games industry shows how infantile the entire business still is. He talks like he's this important artist with a great profound understanding and genius so unbound.

Horse shit. The games are sucker fuel. Technically great, terrific in promise and premise, but so flawed in narrative execution it's infuriating. There are huge teams of people working on his games. Does no one have the balls to stand up and go, "Pardon me, director sir, if there were a national monument that stood for cohesive, sensible storytelling, your fucking game would be the bomb that blew it up and ruined several family vacations."

Beyond: Two Souls spoiler: there will be a huge insulting plot point unresolved because David Cage thinks just having twists in his stories is more important than having them make any sense.
 

scorptatious

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So after watching the final part of Two Best Friends play Indigo Prophecy, I have to say... What the fuck.

Dragon Ball Z style fights. Lucas even has a kamehaheha style attack.

The Indigo Child basically being nothing but a living breathing mcguffin. She has no lines, has to be carried everywhere, (seriously, I don't she's ever taken a step by herself the entire time she was with Lucas.) and no signs of a character. Now a days, with all our Clementines, Elizabeths, and Ellies, this shit would be unacceptable.

A mayan tribe who also happen to be computer A.I.? Huh??

Lucas dying and becoming a zombie.

Carla, instantly believing Lucas about the Mayans, falling in love, and getting preggers by Lucas, who again, is a ZOMBIE, and they've only known each other for less than a day.

Mr. Cage, what the hell have you been smoking?? You have become or rather, you ARE the M Night Shyamalan of gaming!