Supplementary Material

[CaptOfSerenity]

I'm alarmed at how many gamers put up with supplementary comic books, novels, or whatever to explain a game's story. Reading threads about the Mass Effect 3 demo, I see a lot of posts saying "well in this comic, this explains, this, and..." That's not why I play games. I play them for an interactive, coherent story. Halo and Dead Space have all been relying on supplementary material too much, and since that has hit my beloved Mass Effect, I'm feeling like Bioware is doing one of two things:

writing poorly or trying to chisel money out of us. Devs can't use supplementary material as a crutch.

 

[KingofMadCows]

I think it'll just continue to get worse. Just look at comics. Despite complaints about unnecessary cross over events that force people buy comics they don't read, the publishers haven't stopped or even slowed down.

 

[CaptOfSerenity]

That's one of the chief reasons I don't read comics.

 

[Zhukov]

Uh... what?

Exactly which part of what game relies on supplementary material?

 

[CaptOfSerenity]

That's not what I mean. I mean leaving details that would explain the plot and make it make sense. This just happens in a lot of story-based games. At the beginning, Shepherd is grounded. Why? DLC, comics?

 

[MrTub]

Huh?

The comics has nothing to do with shepherd, it focuses on Captain Anderson (when he was around ~30year old) and it gives some extra info on the universe but nothing that affects the plots.

(as far as I know, I've only read the first and second and about 80pages into the third novel)

 

[KingofMadCows]

That's one of the chief reasons I don't read comics.

And yet comic publishers continue to do it despite the fact that their audience has been shrinking for years and the tactic is only making it harder to get new readers.

Video game companies on the other hand, are not being hurt by all their supplementary stuff. In fact, they're making a killing off of it.

If companies that are getting hurt by this tactic are still using it then why would a company that's reaping profits from it want to stop?

 

[CaptOfSerenity]

That's not what I mean. I mean leaving details that would explain the plot and make it make sense. This just happens in a lot of story-based games. At the beginning, Shepherd is grounded. Why? DLC, comics?

The intro in the demo is not the ENTIRE intro to the game. It remains to be seen just how much info is given. IMO, they were correct to remove a trial that you went through as a character, although they should have kept snippets of flashbacks to the trial either in the start prior to the attack or throughout the game.

I'm sure it's in the game, but, how do you know?

 

[Esotera]

Games almost always stand up on their own. It's not like they don't make any sense without the books/comics, they're just there to explore the universe in greater detail. They'll usually elaborate on unimportant side stories, but that's about it.

And think about it logically. Is someone like Bioware really going to deliberately make ME3 crap so everyone buys the books instead? No. There's more of a financial incentive to have a solid game, which will make players want to learn more about the universe.

 

[KingofMadCows]

ME3 does require you to play "The Arrival" DLC.

 

[j0frenzy]

ME3 does require you to play "The Arrival" DLC.

A sequel game requiring playing through a DLC that was designed from the get-go to bridge the two games? Well is that not just offensive.
In all seriousness, I don't follow any of the tie-in stuff for anything and I don't cut any slack for games that relies on tie-ins to explain itself. I remember back when the Witcher 2 came out a lot of fans were waving off criticisms of the plot and lore because of stuff that was addressed in the books but was not explained adequately in the game (allegedly, I have yet to get the chance to play the game so I can't say for certain).

 

[skywolfblue]

How does Dead Space rely on supplementary material? None of the extra material is required to understand the games themselves.

Halo, yes, they do have a bad habit of that. The games are still reasonably understandable in their own right.

Mass Effect? The only thing that really affects the main story is Arrival, and that's not a comic or book, and it was specifically stated to be a part of the main story long before it came out so it's not really "supplementary".