Overwatch and ludonarrative dissonance

[Elijin]

I always thought the Overwatch gameplay was an elaborate training sim to get everyone back to scratch since the opening cutscene recalls inactive agents. Which sort of implies they're not necessarily all in tip top combat shape. So....combat training in simulated battles against the greatest soldiers they know....each other.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Id rather gameplay trump story whenever they clash anyway. If you worry about ludohoodoo discobiscuits then just roleplay or something...

 

[Redryhno]

I always thought the Overwatch gameplay was an elaborate training sim to get everyone back to scratch since the opening cutscene recalls inactive agents. Which sort of implies they're not necessarily all in tip top combat shape. So....combat training in simulated battles against the greatest soldiers they know....each other.

Could also just as easily be a bunch of kids screwing around in the museum from the first animation too fucking around with the computers and holo-models.

I really don't get the uproar about it here. It's a multiplayer only title, and the backstory, while interesting, isn't all that important to anything in the game, and honestly shouldn't be because it was designed for an MMO, not a shooter.

 

[SirSullymore]

Well obviously Blizz can't let the story affect gameplay or every match would be Reaper, Widow, Junkrat and Roadhog vs everyone else. Torbjorn and Zarya could never be on a team with Zenyatta or Bastion, same with Symmetra and Lucio. Hell, Winston's entire opening monologue is completely antithetical to the gameplay.

 

[1981]

I've played two kinds of multiplayer games.

Game A: I run around the same few maps shooting everything that moves.

Game B: Cold, tired, hungry and thirsty, I stumble upon a lovely cabin that probably once served as a hunting lodge or ski resort. Knowing that these once-inhabited places tend to be infested with the undead, I prepare for a fight. I manage to retake the cabin. I'm quite pleased with how good a fighter I've become. I set up base there. Then a guy asks to team up. I tell him where to find me, knowing that it probably won't end well. The next day I go outside to collect some snow to melt and boil for drinking water. I come back to find my couches gone. Someone, most likely the guy who wanted to team up, comes running at me with a stone axe in his hand. Just before he reaches me, I fire my SMG, killing him. He's upset. He claims the stone axe was a peace offering and proceeds to curse me and my couches. I decide it's not worth the trouble and relocate somewhere warm. One thing I learn from this is to ask questions first. The next time someone comes running at me, I wait for them to smack me with their stone axe before emptying a clip on them.

The concept of emergent gameplay/narrative is by no means new, and I'm not saying it's an answer to the issue raised here, but I think developers could learn something from the way multiplayer survival games are played.

Capturing a flag feels meaningless after you've been ready to die and kill for a few potato seeds.

ps. I'm not sure where I'm going with this either.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

So basically you're complaining that people in-game don't roleplay?

How sloppily did you read my post? Because I was pretty explicit about what I was saying. Let me try again:
The problem is that Blizzard made a game with a certain kind of gameplay, but designed characters with personalities that don't mesh with the gameplay. As the player you can't play the game "wrong", short of cheating in multiplayer games, since the way you play will always be dictated by the games design.

Let's take the classical Uncharted example as a parallel here: In all cutscenes Nate is shown as a casual, good hearted, everyday guy who's in it for the treasure. But the "good hearted adventurer"-archtype gets strained to the breaking point when the protagonist casually murders dozens of people and the game never even acknowledges just how much of a killing machine Drake is. The player is not at fault for shooting animated dudes, it is what the game demands you do to win, but the way it is never addressed has cased numerous people to be taken out of their suspension of disbelief.

Overwatch has the same problem for those people that are interested in the lore. If you play it and don't have a problem with it, that's great! More power to you for enjoying the game on your own terms. It does not mean that the people who see this as a problem doesn't have a valid point however.

And how can you be so sure that the animation/writing team would've changed up their stories if they'd known about gameplay? Blizz is alot of things, but uncommunicative with their in-house projects and personnel isn't one of them. I'm honestly just going to go with them just being marketing. Not to mention the damn game's a bunch of unused assets and lore, I'm pretty sure they know exactly what they're doing.

Sure, maybe they are just marketing. But if they are "only" marketing, that also makes them fucking deceiving marketing. Imagine if someone watches the Bastion short, gets all hyped to explore the ways that Bastion can be non-aggressive in game (the whole short is about Bastion trying to change its' ways, after all), buys the game and then realizes that nope, the only way you can play is as Bastion-as-Murderbot.

The problem is that the shorts are both not indicative of the actual game content (the same could be said about the "Meet the Team"-movies, but they all took care to show the character in actual action) and clashes wildly in mood and theme from the game they are supposed to market. For someone who's been all about the "ethics" in gaming journalism, I find it really odd that you'd chose to defend obviously deceiving marketing now.

 

[Redryhno]

So basically you're complaining that people in-game don't roleplay?

How sloppily did you read my post? Because I was pretty explicit about what I was saying. Let me try again:
The problem is that Blizzard made a game with a certain kind of gameplay, but designed characters with personalities that don't mesh with the gameplay. As the player you can't play the game "wrong", short of cheating in multiplayer games, since the way you play will always be dictated by the games design.

Let's take the classical Uncharted example as a parallel here: In all cutscenes Nate is shown as a casual, good hearted, everyday guy who's in it for the treasure. But the "good hearted adventurer"-archtype gets strained to the breaking point when the protagonist casually murders dozens of people and the game never even acknowledges just how much of a killing machine Drake is. The player is not at fault for shooting animated dudes, it is what the game demands you do to win, but the way it is never addressed has cased numerous people to be taken out of their suspension of disbelief.

Overwatch has the same problem for those people that are interested in the lore. If you play it and don't have a problem with it, that's great! More power to you for enjoying the game on your own terms. It does not mean that the people who see this as a problem doesn't have a valid point however.

How sloppily did you read mine? You're complaining about a game not fitting the lore, which I've yet to see a game where gameplay doesn't clash with narrative at some point in some glaring way as you go through it. Why is it such a terrible thing here? The game itself isn't dependent on narrative to go through, the characters are true to their ideals through quotes and mannerisms, why is it such a travesty here?

Don't think I've played Uncharted, or was one of those forgettable series for me, so I really can't talk about it beyond pointing out that you're - by transitive bullshittery - complaining about Indiana Jones movies not taking the time to point out how capable he is considering he's always shown as just a school teacher compared to people much more trained than himself. Or the movies not addressing how he doesn't go insane with the things he's been a witness to on a somewhat regular basis.

Also I don't particularly like the game, I'm honestly only interested in the world, shooters haven't been my thing since like Halo3.

The problem is that the shorts are both not indicative of the actual game content (the same could be said about the "Meet the Team"-movies, but they all took care to show the character in actual action) and clashes wildly in mood and theme from the game they are supposed to market. For someone who's been all about the "ethics" in gaming journalism, I find it really odd that you'd chose to defend obviously deceiving marketing now.

The shorts never claimed to be indicative of actual game content either, if I remember right they're all pretty explicitly labelled as character pieces and world-building at the absolute most. And every short pretty explicitly states it's taking place before the game, with varying degrees of time between the two points. So guess what? Maybe Bastion stopped being a recluse, since the short is before he meets Zenyatta obviously when he came to terms with what the purpose of his creation was. Maybe the "inconsistency" is that people haven't been paying attention to the lore before watching them?

As for the rest there...you're looking for literally anything so you can rack up those bullshit game points with aren't you? I mean, grats on pointing out and remembering my views and all, I do feel special that I'm that memorable, but c'mon, Blizz aren't exactly game journos, and the shorts are a bit from false advertising unless you also still believe your toys come to life in cartoon form when you pull them out of the box. Also you did see the first three shorts right? They all had the characters in action...

 

[Saetha]

I'd want to see a character like Bastion in a game where his goal isn't to camp and farm kills. Gaming is unique in that it can tell a story through it's mechanics. I'd like to see more of that, and not a contrast between gameplay and story.

The short explanation to this is "Because people complain when devs try to make a story-heavy game."

The longer explanation: I think gaming in general is suffering from a divide. Well, it is suffering from a LOT of divides, but on this matter in particular there's a pretty big one. There are people who like stories in their games, and people who do not. People who are fine with walking simulators and exploration games if a neat story is to be found, and people who want the story to wrap up as quick as possible so that they can get to the game. Gaming in general doesn't seem to recognize this divide, so devs and fans are constantly caught between these two desires. If your game is, like Overwatch, plotless and dissonant, people will complain about the lack of story and depth. If you game is, like all the walking simulators, light on gameplay in order to tell a good story, people will complain about how it's "not really a game." If you don't have a plot, people complain about mindless violence. If you do, people complain about cut scenes and linearity. There are two camps in gaming which don't seem to recognize that they are separate entities, so when a game comes along that does not meet their desires, instead of recognizing "Hey, this isn't the game for me" (The same way a horror movie fan might recognize that romcoms won't appeal to them.) they call it a bad game in general. As such, the qualifications for what "makes" a good game are confusing and contradictory. Do we have cutscenes, to tell the story? Do we get rid of them, for people who just want to play? Do we consign the story to item descriptions and non-canon shorts? How do we convey intense action and emotion that way, though?

Basically, in most games the story and gameplay are constantly at war with each other for emphasis and attention, and no one can seem to agree on just what the right combination is.

Now, in an ideal world, we'd be able to merge story and gameplay. I think some of the best examples of game stories probably come from such things. But, this is a rather difficult thing to do, and we haven't figured out how precisely to communicate things properly that way. Games are young, and we're still figuring out how to do things well.

 

[Vigormortis]

Moments like this are sad because it tells me that, for all of its evolution, gaming is still stunted in a lot of ways.

Or maybe that Blizzard is just really, really bad at telling stories, and that they are less interested in building a cohesive narrative for their game than they are in building a meme-generating waifu/husbando simulator.

Would you say film is stunted because narrative trainwrecks like Batman v Superman exist? Or that literature is stunted because of the abundance of romance novels and tween post-apoc sci-fi?

Sure there are genres that don't do it, visual novels, puzzle games, simulation games, but huge swathes of gaming create interesting and vast worlds and don't give you very few ways to interact with it outside of killing things.

And, again, the movie world is filled with an overabundance of 'popcorn' entertainment, most of which feature copious amounts of mindless action and bad writing. Would you say film suffers from the same 'systemic problem' as video games? Or that neither can tell compelling stories with that action and violence?

Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't. That's not really the point. What I mean is, just because a lot of games do these sorts of things it doesn't mean it's an inherent problem with the medium.

I'd want to see a character like Bastion in a game where his goal isn't to camp and farm kills. Gaming is unique in that it can tell a story through it's mechanics. I'd like to see more of that, and not a contrast between gameplay and story.

So then maybe venture away from Overwatch and find games that do those things. I mean, there are at least several hundred thousand games out there. Surely a few will meet your criteria.

Don't get me wrong. I understand what you're saying. And more to the point, I understand what you're trying to imply. I even agree in some regards. But to be blunt: It sounds like griping for the sake of griping. Or rather, taking an issue with one game and making it seem like it's a systemic problem for the medium as a whole.

Yes, there are a LOT of games with ludo-narrative dissonance. But it isn't something that's either inherent in the medium nor indicative of the medium as a whole.

 

[Redryhno]

I'd want to see a character like Bastion in a game where his goal isn't to camp and farm kills. Gaming is unique in that it can tell a story through it's mechanics. I'd like to see more of that, and not a contrast between gameplay and story.

The short explanation to this is "Because people complain when devs try to make a story-heavy game."

Eh, I'd argue that most story-heavy games these days just don't realize they're using gaming as a medium and so turn it into a DVD when they were just starting to be recognized as a legitimate/affordable/replacement media device and started putting in games and interactive menus on them if you needed to kill some time before watching the movie for whatever reason.

I mean, most classic horror games are story-heavy, but they recognize that you don't build atmosphere just by putting up an equivalent of a "BE SCARED" card on the screen. War- and Star-craft before WoW were especially story-heavy for RTS and made people get invested in the narrative. Elder Scrolls in general have always been story-heavy, it's just you can easily ignore it and just screw around in the game instead if you wanted. Or you can go full-in on the lore and roleplay through it.

There's so many ways you can make a story-heavy game without turning it into something like LiS or a TellTale game that gives you "choices" that all lead to the exact same place at the exact same pace.

 

[Saetha]

I'd want to see a character like Bastion in a game where his goal isn't to camp and farm kills. Gaming is unique in that it can tell a story through it's mechanics. I'd like to see more of that, and not a contrast between gameplay and story.

The short explanation to this is "Because people complain when devs try to make a story-heavy game."

There's so many ways you can make a story-heavy game without turning it into something like LiS or a TellTale game that gives you "choices" that all lead to the exact same place at the exact same pace.

See, none of those games have what I'd call good stories. Well, I can't really speak to Starcraft or WOW, but Elder Scrolls, in my opinion, always had a damn awful story. The only good writing to be found in ES is in the lore and worldbuilding - but that's not precisely the same as story. I don't think I've seen a game that still has a good story to be found in the game itself, but none-the-less lets you ignore it entirely and lets you mess around as you please. Mostly because, to make a good story, you have to invest resources into it. The "Put it all in items descriptions and background dialogue" routes of games like Dark Souls does not lend itself to telling a complex, powerful story very well.

I also disagree that walking simulators are just DVDs that forgot they're games. There's a subtle difference between simply watching someone do something and, in some simulated way, doing it yourself. Yes, walking simulators might not offer much choice or interactivity, but at the same time I feel like a movie about a guy killing people will offer a different experience from a walking simulator where you're the guy killing people - even if killing is done by hitting a single button and you're not given a choice to do otherwise. A walking simulator still requires audience activity - not to the same degree that, say, Doom does, but still more than a simply watching a movie, which is an entirely passive activity. As such, it conveys a subtly different experience, and that shouldn't be knocked simply because it's not as interactive as your typical game.

And yes, there are different ways you can make a story-heavy game without copying Telltale or LiS. I never said otherwise, nor do I think that's the be-all end-all of story-heavy games.

 

[Redryhno]

I'd want to see a character like Bastion in a game where his goal isn't to camp and farm kills. Gaming is unique in that it can tell a story through it's mechanics. I'd like to see more of that, and not a contrast between gameplay and story.

The short explanation to this is "Because people complain when devs try to make a story-heavy game."

There's so many ways you can make a story-heavy game without turning it into something like LiS or a TellTale game that gives you "choices" that all lead to the exact same place at the exact same pace.

See, none of those games have what I'd call good stories. Well, I can't really speak to Starcraft or WOW, but Elder Scrolls, in my opinion, always had a damn awful story. The only good writing to be found in ES is in the lore and worldbuilding - but that's not precisely the same as story. I don't think I've seen a game that still has a good story to be found in the game itself, but none-the-less lets you ignore it entirely and lets you mess around as you please. Mostly because, to make a good story, you have to invest resources into it. The "Put it all in items descriptions and background dialogue" routes of games like Dark Souls does not lend itself to telling a complex, powerful story very well.

I also disagree that walking simulators are just DVDs that forgot they're games. There's a subtle difference between simply watching someone do something and, in some simulated way, doing it yourself. Yes, walking simulators might not offer much choice or interactivity, but at the same time I feel like a movie about a guy killing people will offer a different experience from a walking simulator where you're the guy killing people - even if killing is done by hitting a single button and you're not given a choice to do otherwise. A walking simulator still requires audience activity - not to the same degree that, say, Doom does, but still more than a simply watching a movie, which is an entirely passive activity. As such, it conveys a subtly different experience, and that shouldn't be knocked simply because it's not as interactive as your typical game.

And yes, there are different ways you can make a story-heavy game without copying Telltale or LiS. I never said otherwise, nor do I think that's the be-all end-all of story-heavy games.

Now you're saying that a story has to be good to qualify as story-heavy? Bit of bias there dude.

And your next paragraph is stupidly subjective as well. ES, the main story, sure, never been all that good, but the lore is what makes the game and lets you be able to role-play, which is the defining point of the games. You say that a movie is a purely passive event, but I have to ask what you watch if you seriously believe that. Mysteries and horror both often engage with the audience and makes the audience wonder and guess what's coming next and half the fun of them is getting it right. Dark Souls follows that formula, the story is there, but it's up to you to piece it together with the item descriptions, how is that bad storytelling? It gives you the information, you just have to go looking for it.

When was the last time a walking sim did something other than preach or exposition you to death with twists that don't work with the "real-life" settings they often take place in?

And I'm not knocking them for not being as interactive, I'm knocking them for calling a low level of interactivity ground breaking when they're a graphical upgrade to DOS-age type'n'puzzles except with a tedious amount of hand-holding and railroading. I'm knocking them for adding in unnecessary mechanics when they could just as easily just be light novels. I'm knocking them for constantly overpricing themselves and puffing their chests out and screaming "ART!" as explanation.

 

[Saetha]

Now you're saying that a story has to be good to qualify as story-heavy? Bit of bias there dude.

Well, yes, generally the aim of having a story is for it to be a good story. If a game has a story just to have a story, or worse, just to excuse getting from point A to point B, well, that just what's wrong with story-telling in games : It's regarded as an afterthought, something that has no meaning or quality in and of itself.

But besides, if we expand the definition to mean anything that can be construed as a story, than nearly every game has a story. Pong has a story - the story of two players struggling to outscore one another.

And your next paragraph is stupidly subjective as well. ES, the main story, sure, never been all that good, but the lore is what makes the game and lets you be able to role-play, which is the defining point of the games. You say that a movie is a purely passive event, but I have to ask what you watch if you seriously believe that. Mysteries and horror both often engage with the audience and makes the audience wonder and guess what's coming next and half the fun of them is getting it right. Dark Souls follows that formula, the story is there, but it's up to you to piece it together with the item descriptions, how is that bad storytelling? It gives you the information, you just have to go looking for it.

A movie IS a purely passive event. Engagement =/= interactivity. Horror movies may ask the audience to guess at who the monster is, but it does not require that they do. It does not actually even require an audience at all - you can get up and leave the room and the movie will continue to play, unaffected. Walking simulators, at least, need someone to play them. And that small degree of interactivity can make for a different experience.

And I'm not saying that Dark Souls' way of story-telling is bad, inherently. But it severely limits the type of stories that can be told. It's the difference between a movie and a book - not even, it's the difference between a movie and a series of 300-word vignettes that you have to play a rigorous game of hide-and-go-seek to find. Some stories could be told in such a format, and told well even. But not all of them.

It's conversations like these that make me wish the whole "Action difficulty" - games that offer the option to cut out the story entirely and give you nothing but gameplay - were more popular. It seems like it'd make for a happy compromise between those who want a story and those who don't care and just want to play.

When was the last time a walking sim did something other than preach or exposition you to death with twists that don't work with the "real-life" settings they often take place in?

And I'm not knocking them for not being as interactive, I'm knocking them for calling a low level of interactivity ground breaking when they're a graphical upgrade to DOS-age type'n'puzzles except with a tedious amount of hand-holding and railroading. I'm knocking them for adding in unnecessary mechanics when they could just as easily just be light novels. I'm knocking them for constantly overpricing themselves and puffing their chests out and screaming "ART!" as explanation.

Speaking of subjective? You can't tell me that I cannot dismiss something when it's just my opinion only to turn around and dismiss something based only on your opinion.

As for the rest - hate those things for being overpriced, for being pretentious, for whatever, but understand that they're the fault of specific games and the people who made them, not the genre inherently.