Woodsey said:
As in, you're putting him on a pedestal when he failed. I mean, his writing ability isn't anywhere near the top of what other games have.
Eh, I don't
quite see how I said that, but fair enough. I intended it to be more of a jab at his ego, but whatever.
"Is it that hard to imagine that Heavy Rain, whether or not it's a good or bad, successful in it's vision or not, also does this?"
Should we hold up Daikatana as an awesome experience because that's what the creator's vision for it was?
I didn't say anything about the creator's vision, and I'm pretty sure I said "successful in its vision
or not".
There are many things we can learn from Daikatana, and I'm thankful of its existence based on how epically its marketing failed. Something we can take from anything.
GloatingSwine said:
Quite frankly, yes. And I don't mean that all games should strive to be open world complete freedom types, but that games should not compromise the fact that they are games to try and emulate films. Which, shock motherfucking horror, was the point of this video.
Eh, this video wasn't much to my liking. It was rambly, didn't have a single main point among the ramble (as I said earlier, he said "stop giving a fuck what Ebert says" when that is a completely different topic (games as art)), and pretty unprofessional. But anyway...
I get what you're saying, and I do agree with it to a point. But I also think that games should experiment and innovate in areas where we wouldn't expect them. Whether that's trying to emulate movies in certain areas, or imposing various rhetorical devices in their scripts (and somehow into the environment), I really don't care. It's just one aspect of many.
There are other, better ways to blend narrative into games that do not sacrifice interactivity. The interrupt actions in Mass Effect 2, for instance, allow you to control cutscenes to better impose your version of Shepard onto the universe. The scene in Metal Gear Solid where Gray Fox is trapped against a wall by Metal Gear and although you can line up a shot Snake refuses to fire and kill Gray Fox along with Liquid, but you still have to pull the trigger.
And those are great examples of interactivity and narrative. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for fusing narrative and interactivity (I think Shadow of the Collosus does it phenomenally well, there's a lot of stuff in the environment that you can easily overlook), I just don't think it must be the only way.
That kind of interactivity with a narrative is what games can do that other media can't, and they do it without sacrificing the rest of the game.
And it's still one aspect of it. It's just one side of a spectrum. At least that's how I see it.
If you pare the interaction down to the absolute minimum as in Heavy Rain and it's predecessors in the interactive movie sphere (because no, it's not innovative, the old Blade Runner game did branching narrative and was still more of a game. This stuff has been done before, it didn't catch on because it turns out it's not very good), you've lost all of what makes games worthwhile and interesting, and all you've done is made a crap movie with multiple endings.
Yes Heavy Rain
is innovative, its branching narrative is much more extensive than the Blade Runner game I'm sure.
And anyway, I think we're focusing a bit too specifically on the narrative aspect of it. Other aspects of Heavy Rain, like the darker themes (fatherhood, how far you'd go to save someone you love, drugs, etc...) show off what topics games can touch upon. It doesn't go
too deep into those subjects, but I think it does them well enough (key word: well enough, not good, just okay). Whether it was successful in its message(s) to you or not I don't think matters as it still touches on those issues and it because of it, I suppose.
I dunno, I just think we can learn from anything, good or bad. Personally, I enjoyed Heavy Rain, though David Cage and his enormous ego can be a handful to say the least.
There's another reason why I'm glad Heavy Rain exists; If it didn't, many people wouldn't be motivated to prove how shit it is and one up Cage
