Extra Punctuation: Game Stories Demand Focus

[Insideout Ink Demon]

hmmm, after this, i may buy Bastion on Steam come pay day.
are you on comission?

 

[manic_depressive13]

For as cutscene-happy as Square Enix is, I really feel the ending of CRISIS CORE pulled off narrative-through-gameplay well.

Spoiler

After the confrontation with what amounts to Zack's Sephiroth, he's making the final break to Midgar, to start a new life. However, he's tracked down by his former employer's military force, and starts his impossible showdown with innumerable grunts. What you have to understand is the battle system. Namely, aside from your typical slash things and whatever magics you've got on hand, there's the Digital Mind Wave, a slots in the upper corner representing your mind and the bonds you've made in your adventure. Summons, level-ups and special attacks are handled by this quasi-random reel. And when this final battle starts, everything's fine. You're trucking along, handling bullets and even rockets. But as your health goes down, you start moving more sluggishly. And the D.M.W. starts fritxing out. The slots line up, but instead of the special moves that usually result, scrambled memories of your friends flash before your eyes, and their image on the reels frizzes out. This keeps happening, even as you should have GAME OVER'd, and it all leads to, as the heart-rending music cuts out, the final slots lining up, barely connecting, and the memories of the girl he...you?...promised to come back to, finally, weakly comes forth. Your struggle against the horde ends, as only a few stand against you, and gun you down, even as you're straining against the buttons to move your limp body to stop what you damn well know is coming. They gun you down, you fall, and everything plays out as you knew it would going into this game.

It was damn BEAUTIFUL, and what really hits it home is that, as the player, it feels like you're in that situation, all because you retain control of your character just as you had in the hours before then, playing through what the game was now forcing on you.

Spoiler: I'd agree.

Initially that shitty reel system pissed me off because it happened when I didn't need it, and I felt like the game was unnecessarily holding my hand. But the scene you're refering to was really touching, and I think that the slot machine going schitzo and burning out added an extra tragic element to the ending. The sluggish movements cause a sense of desperation as you smush the buttons, trying vainly to survive the final encounter. You feel really relieved when the slot machine thingy kicks in, thinking you could actually use the power up for once, but then it burns out, offering an insight into how exhausted Zack is, while showing how much he still has to live for, and it's really fucking beautiful and sad.

So ultimately I forgave a slightly annoying gameplay mechanic for the emotion it contributed to the game's finale.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

...it occurred to me that virtually every game I consider well-written demonstrates good focus in the story department...

Captain Obvious...

On topic: the most problems in video game storytelling stem from the fact that most game devs don't quite realize that working in a different medium invokes different set rules. Valve and Irrational Games understood this well and apparently so did the creators of "Bastion". I should definitely play this game: I'm such an indie whore.

 

[ImprovizoR]

I find it interesting that all of the stuff Yahtzee was talking about for the last 3-4 weeks is in The Witcher 2. A title he didn't bother playing past the first chapter.

 

[Jack Rascal]

...okay. Y'know what? I think I'm going to be buying Bastion on Steam tonight, or at least sometime this week. Why? For the simple reason that a scene as powerful as the one Yahtzee describes at the end of this EP is something I want to see for myself.

Reading about that scene made me want this game. So bad actually, that I'm thinking of buying an Xbox just for this... Who needs savings anyway? I'm no good at playing games on computer and I doubt my laptop would be overjoyed, so Steam is not an option...

Well, honestly, I have thought about buying an Xbox before, but so far I haven't had a reason good enough . The games that I have wanted to play have also been released on PS3. Why did I ever read this article...

 

[blindthrall]

You mentioned Halo in there, that is a great example of amazing epic spectacle plus interesting character(s).

Halo wouldn't know an interesting character if one ran up and teabagged its face off.

I guess you either never played Halo: Reach, read the books or are just being a hater because you felt that Halo let you down at some point.

Or your possibly a PC elitist and hate all console exclusives.

Never mind it doesn't matter any way.

[sub]PS: I'm not a fanboy, I just enjoyed learning more about every Halo Character I've ever heard of, which makes them interesting in my opinion.[/sub]

One game does not make up for a series worth of bland characters ripped straight from Aliens. And if a game requires you to read a novel to get a full appreciation for the story, then it didn't have a good story to begin with. Halo let me down because it wasn't even a pale imitation of Marathon, Bungie's original scifi story that Microsoft retardified for the mass market. I may come off as a PC elitist, but I haven't used my computer for gaming since Mass Effect came out. The only time I regret it is when I miss a headshot and grumble "With a mouse that would have gone in his eye."

Really compare any Halo character to a person from a truly great scifi series like Dune, and you'll find they come up lacking.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

The original Halo actually had a pretty tight narrative that only covers maybe a few days. You start by trying to assemble a defense and strike back, and it ends with you just trying to get out of there alive. The grand epic gestures only happen at the very end. It wasn't until 2, 3 and beyond that it became a sprawling epic (that's pretty much when I lost interest as well, alarmingly fast actually).

 

[TJF588]

So ultimately I forgave a slightly annoying gameplay mechanic for the emotion it contributed to the game's finale.

That's the payoff I want my friend to experience, if he'd only get past his animosity for the PSP system. He doesn't like the randomness, and I have to bite my tongue so hard because of it.

 

[Strazdas]

Is this ACTUALLY true? People have been saying that developers sacrifice story and gameplay for the sake of graphics for years, but I haven't seen any evidence in support of the idea. It just seems to be people going for graphics whores as the easy scapegoat because they happen to be annoying.

Silent hill 5, far cry 2, mirrors edge, stronghold 2, settlers >5, spore, crysis, overlord, fear, should i continue....

 

[existentia]

"Hydrophobia" is the medical term for rabies.

Someone honestly ought to make a game where the protagonist is rabid. If the player does well, the cure is delivered in time, and if they fail, they get to see "Ol' Yeller" from the dog's perspective.