How come when I make a topic about this I get people saying that they are not needed anymore, but when you guys do it you get actual people talking?
Silent Hill 1, Origins and SH3 all share the same story and continue it...Rednog said:Oh rose tinted nostalgia glasses how you rear your ugly head over and over. Maybe 1 in a hundred manuals were actually interesting/amazing as you described. But the sad truth is that a majority of them were just warning, legal information, basic set of "moves", and on screen information.
Also, where does Downpour fit into the Silent Hill universe...? I'm sorry but do the silent hill games really tie into each other besides them all taking place in Silent Hill? Silent Hill is a story about one's personal hell and coming to grips with why they are tormented. There is no set time line between the games and there is no connecting story. Hell one could even argue that all the Silent Hill games are taking place at the same time. You see the character from 2 running across your screen in downpour at one point, and you can sneak into the room from 4. That's the whole reason why Silent Hill is a scary place you don't know that much about it. Do you really want someone to sit down and be like ok this is why this is such an evil place, this is the character's complete and whole past and why he is in Silent Hill. No! That is the whole reason you play the game, it's to be brought into the narrative by the game and not having to rely on a leaflet.
Really? I just bought a new copy of Fallout 3: GOTY on PS3 from Gamestop a few weeks ago, and whilst the cover of the "manual" fits the game's visual aesthetic, the whole manual itself is just a tri-folded sheet with the EULA and Warranty Information on it, plus a small bit telling you how to start a game with your PS3. They have a link on the bottom of one part where you can get the full manual online. Either you are sorely mistaken, or they cheaped out on the manuals for the GOTY version.Al-Bundy-da-G said:Go buy Fallout 3 right right now. It has the greatest game manual to have ever existed. It's designed so that it looks like it came straight out of the game world. I even have an extra copy of in stored away.
Wow I really shouldn't be this excited about a game manual...
I think that's the problem. Back then, you often couldn't put a compelling backstory, character bios, and all of that info in the game itself, which was why manuals were so large, ornate, and detailed back then, but now? Just look at the Mass Effect codex; it's like one of those manuals, but it's in the game. It just seems kinda redundant to put anything but the controls in a manual, even though we'd want that.immortalfrieza said:I think the reason that manuals have become pretty pitiful these days is because they aren't really needed anymore. In the 8-16 bit era they didn't have the means to really put all that much backstory and such into the games themselves, or putting a lot of tutorials either, or at least they weren't used for that purpose very often.
Now, they can easily put how to control the game and it's backstory directly into the game itself, which actually works quite well a lot of the time because learning by doing is more effective than by reading a manual, and they can slowly reveal the backstory of the game as the game progresses to give you a deeper understanding of the game than telling you "this guy did this" and trying to imagine it in your head, instead of having it right in front of you; Show, don't tell. not to mention that they can use this to create surprises that revealing in the manual would ruin.