Escapist News Network: West Washing

[Xhoyl]

However, video games are not about telling stories the way books do, but by giving the player control over the story and it's presumed outcome. The player is the one who decides how the protaganist(s) go about things, and in many case what motivates them, especially in RPGs.

Being given an iconic or pre-defined character lowers the immersion and feel that the player is somehow in control of making desicians. Ideally in an RPG, or computer game, it's the player who should define the character as much as possible, and the storyteller that sets the overreacing objective, and sets the stage with everything else.

I'm not saying that it should be done all the time. Certain games do benefit from not having predefined characters if the story isn't extremely important. But a game with a good story and characters CAN also have good gameplay and still be immersing. A great example is Beyond Good and Evil, if you ever played that, a cookie cutter protagonist would not have sufficed. And the game is still fun and immersing. It does not have to detract from a game. It often does however, especially when the writers aren't very good. In which case they should stick to the character creation stuff. As for me, I'll write good stories and characters for games that people can care about.

 

[OceanRunner]

I HATE YOU NINTENDO!!!

 

[WOPR]

Well I'm in favor of "West Washing". The East and the West have been influencing each other for generations, but the East still seems to make video games on completely different standards(and if not games, their characters).

There's nothing wrong with Japan's culture or Korea's MMOs, but I think that the silent majority is taking a stand against the weeaboos. World of Goo showed us that blobs do make effective characters if the plot stays simple, so maybe it's worth a try.

We can settle the problem of East vs West once and for all

MARVEL VS CAPCOM 3

anyways, now that THAT'S out of my system, I take offense to "west washing" westerners don't suck at games... okay most westerners do... BUT! I'd like to see someone else! (as in- other then me) beat Contra NES without the Konami code... or beat City Escape in less then 2:17, or actually I'd like to see anyone beat me at anything that isn't Halo/CoD (I hate modern shooters)