The Story
- Thread starter Extra Consideration
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Anyone else find "extra consideration" a bit boring? I only really read it because I like yahtzee's videos and articles. It's a nice idea, and if you're really into analysing video games, then it might be for you; but I just can't get much entertainment out of it. Yahtzee is only good when he's abusing people/games/objects. And I don't know who the rest of the people are, but they seem....meh.
i was wondering why shamus, and indeed graham werent part of the first one, i think like someone else mentioned a rotation of everyone each week would be awesome, because everyone involved in extra consideration so far, is pretty much everyone who i visit the escapist for
It's not uncommon to hear people say stuff like 'stories were better ten years ago' or something similar, but they often can't put the finger on why they think that. The unreasonable will make up crazy reasons whereas the less crazy try to pick out details that appealed to them personally.
But, I think it goes deeper than that and if we focus on RPGs I have two things to suggest.
1: Voice acting sucks!
I'm not saying game voice acting is doomed to suck from now 'till eternity, but as a general rule it's just not that good for various reasons. Even if the actors are capable they're simply handed a heavy binder full of words to be read into a microphone. As long as that tasks is completely things like characterization, shifts in emotion depending on the situation and that unshakable feeling that they're not talking to you so much as reading a list to you aren't important enough to get right.
In games like Torment and the Baldur's Gates there was very little acting. Most characterization was done through text where shifts in mood and expression were described for you to imagine rather than implied and not really followed up on by the actor/character model. Basically, we remember the stories and characters as better because we were left to, for the most part, imagine them rather than have a bland performance forced upon us.
Still, I think the craziest part is the gamers of today who claim to love the acting in games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, standards fallen so low that they would be blown away by some random soap opera on tv. The procedures for voice acting need to improve a lot before they can compete with our imaginations.
2: The main character could be smart.
In the more recent BioWare games I get the feeling the people who claimed Inception could never be successful because of its complexity have a hand in the game of modern video games. Most responses in BioWare's more recent titles results in the NPC calling you a moron and disproving sort of brushing the protagonist like a dumb child. And often that's what the dialog feels like. Even the 'power'-responses that you gain through influence or good/evil-levels seem flimsy and of no higher consideration than any other words one could've chosen. But the jesus-touch of the protagonist makes even the most ineffectual argument seems Ciceronian if backed up by enough paragon points. It heals the addicts, it stops the ruthless murderers hand, it scares the fearless warrior races.
Of course there are plenty of examples of this in earlier works from various companies, but there's one thing that's slightly different. As long as there were intelligence and/or wisdom stats there was room for longer, more convincing arguments, not seldom something that extended past one exchange. The extended conversation you have with Dak'kon in Planescape Torment is a pretty good example of this, were you actually start shattering a man's perception of reality. It's not quick, it's not badly underbuilt and it's not something that has immediate effect on the character.
All in all, I think it's time to do something with the 'intelligence'-tool again, because playing as a idiot space marine or medival moron isn't really that flattering since it suggests the player isn't smart enough to figure things out past what you can put into the character's mouth. If you're constantly several steps ahead so to speak it just feels frustrating, and you can't adapt by for instance maxing out the intelligence stat
edit: As for Alpha Protocol, your choices can change the story monumentally. What is this dude talking about?
But, I think it goes deeper than that and if we focus on RPGs I have two things to suggest.
1: Voice acting sucks!
I'm not saying game voice acting is doomed to suck from now 'till eternity, but as a general rule it's just not that good for various reasons. Even if the actors are capable they're simply handed a heavy binder full of words to be read into a microphone. As long as that tasks is completely things like characterization, shifts in emotion depending on the situation and that unshakable feeling that they're not talking to you so much as reading a list to you aren't important enough to get right.
In games like Torment and the Baldur's Gates there was very little acting. Most characterization was done through text where shifts in mood and expression were described for you to imagine rather than implied and not really followed up on by the actor/character model. Basically, we remember the stories and characters as better because we were left to, for the most part, imagine them rather than have a bland performance forced upon us.
Still, I think the craziest part is the gamers of today who claim to love the acting in games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, standards fallen so low that they would be blown away by some random soap opera on tv. The procedures for voice acting need to improve a lot before they can compete with our imaginations.
2: The main character could be smart.
In the more recent BioWare games I get the feeling the people who claimed Inception could never be successful because of its complexity have a hand in the game of modern video games. Most responses in BioWare's more recent titles results in the NPC calling you a moron and disproving sort of brushing the protagonist like a dumb child. And often that's what the dialog feels like. Even the 'power'-responses that you gain through influence or good/evil-levels seem flimsy and of no higher consideration than any other words one could've chosen. But the jesus-touch of the protagonist makes even the most ineffectual argument seems Ciceronian if backed up by enough paragon points. It heals the addicts, it stops the ruthless murderers hand, it scares the fearless warrior races.
Of course there are plenty of examples of this in earlier works from various companies, but there's one thing that's slightly different. As long as there were intelligence and/or wisdom stats there was room for longer, more convincing arguments, not seldom something that extended past one exchange. The extended conversation you have with Dak'kon in Planescape Torment is a pretty good example of this, were you actually start shattering a man's perception of reality. It's not quick, it's not badly underbuilt and it's not something that has immediate effect on the character.
All in all, I think it's time to do something with the 'intelligence'-tool again, because playing as a idiot space marine or medival moron isn't really that flattering since it suggests the player isn't smart enough to figure things out past what you can put into the character's mouth. If you're constantly several steps ahead so to speak it just feels frustrating, and you can't adapt by for instance maxing out the intelligence stat
edit: As for Alpha Protocol, your choices can change the story monumentally. What is this dude talking about?
The average gamer US gamer is 34 years old so time is more likely to be the more limited resource than income. Your "we" still may not be most gamers.Neogeta said:
You are right, games unlock more content as you play. It still feels like it is a cheap way to make your game go further by locking out a large chunk of content on your first play through. I don't just get to drop into the remaining content on the second play through, I have to go through all of the things I've already seen and done. If we are talking Bioware then that is a lot of text and cut scene that needs to be skipped.
You said that the game design for L4D doesn't account for the replay value. I disagree. It was designed to be played through over and over again without withholding any content. It is also nice how the story is in the back ground with visual cues, messages on walls etc. If you want to take your time and drink the game in you gather the story in a much more engaging way than the mountains of cut scenes used by other games. You can also blast through it and shoot zombies if you are not interested. That, to me, is good story telling in videogames. Not unskippable monologues from super soldiers.
But how would one make turn based, more traditional RPGs more seamless in regards to story telling? Would there have to be a change in gameplay to make that happen, or would the environment tell more while dialogue became more fluid. I suppose traditional RPGs don't have that same problem, since it's an expected outcome of the genre and the narrative can be treated in a book like manner at some points, but it doesn't mean there can't be improvements. SMT does some interesting things at times with this, such as the final battles in Persona 3 and 4, but otherwise there arn't many leaps and bounds for the RPG genre.
I wish there had been a bit more exchange between everyone but it was cool to let some different people in to the discussion. Hopefully Shamus and Graham will be in this again because I both appreciate their opinions as well as thinking that adding more intelligent opinions to this is always good.
Comment to Graham about Fallout and Mass Effect arbitrary conversation options locking out things: I don't know about Fallout but I know in Mass Effect that this rarely happens (I can think of once and it is more a talk too long leads to death then anything else). I know this particularly because I was worried about missing out on cool experiences or cool characters so I looked in to it previous to my playing and found that while your choices have effects, they so far have not locked out anything (especially within the game the decision is made). These decisions probably will lock out things in the third game but what it keeps you from doing should not be surprises (such as collector base decision or geth decision)
Comment to Graham about Fallout and Mass Effect arbitrary conversation options locking out things: I don't know about Fallout but I know in Mass Effect that this rarely happens (I can think of once and it is more a talk too long leads to death then anything else). I know this particularly because I was worried about missing out on cool experiences or cool characters so I looked in to it previous to my playing and found that while your choices have effects, they so far have not locked out anything (especially within the game the decision is made). These decisions probably will lock out things in the third game but what it keeps you from doing should not be surprises (such as collector base decision or geth decision)
Couple things. First, I'm in the same boat as many others here where, if a game gives me the chance to make choices, I want those choices to mean something. I want to be locked out of certain things if I choose Option A instead of Option B. It allows the developers to tell a much richer story that rewards player interaction as opposed to laughing at it and games that offer the illusion of a choice with no impact at all are little better than old JRPGs that used the infinite YES?/NO? loop. If you feel robbed of your play experience by not "winning" the game the way you wanted then you were probably approaching the game with the wrong intention.
Secondly, I'm one of those who doesn't like the Half Life way of storytelling (or, more particularly, conversations). I don't want the NPCs to talk at me while I'm running around the room jumping on the architecture. Scenarios like that, or even the possibility of them existing should you choose to sit there and be a good boy, make me feel like the game world doesn't even care if I'm there or not. That sort of thing works for world events, but it's the complete opposite of immersion when interaction is assumed. Next time you are having a conversation with someone in real life try to run around the room and rifle through their drawers. Approximately no one in the world would just continue their conversation as normal under those circumstances.
Secondly, I'm one of those who doesn't like the Half Life way of storytelling (or, more particularly, conversations). I don't want the NPCs to talk at me while I'm running around the room jumping on the architecture. Scenarios like that, or even the possibility of them existing should you choose to sit there and be a good boy, make me feel like the game world doesn't even care if I'm there or not. That sort of thing works for world events, but it's the complete opposite of immersion when interaction is assumed. Next time you are having a conversation with someone in real life try to run around the room and rifle through their drawers. Approximately no one in the world would just continue their conversation as normal under those circumstances.
Hey look, it's Graham! Cartoon Graham! Welcome, Cartoon Graham!
I largely agree with what was discussed; most games today want to have a pretence of a story, but you shouldn't bother if you don't think you can deliver an experience like that. The problem is that most people don't think of stories the way they are presented in videogames, which is why people don't follow the HL lead - they think of stories as linear things, not exploratory things. I remember one of the Deus Ex devs talking about how his team complained when he said not all things would be available to the player depending on the path they took, because they didn't want to work on a major scenario or cutscene the player might skip; likewise, there's the railroading DM who treats her players as video game characters and merely sets up a story for them to drive through without input. Perhaps a good video game writer is not one who is otherwise a good writer, but one who is a good GM.
I largely agree with what was discussed; most games today want to have a pretence of a story, but you shouldn't bother if you don't think you can deliver an experience like that. The problem is that most people don't think of stories the way they are presented in videogames, which is why people don't follow the HL lead - they think of stories as linear things, not exploratory things. I remember one of the Deus Ex devs talking about how his team complained when he said not all things would be available to the player depending on the path they took, because they didn't want to work on a major scenario or cutscene the player might skip; likewise, there's the railroading DM who treats her players as video game characters and merely sets up a story for them to drive through without input. Perhaps a good video game writer is not one who is otherwise a good writer, but one who is a good GM.
Too true. The need to voice everything and to have HD visuals to go with it has really hurt story telling. It is so obvious that voice work and "acting" (facial expressions, body language, casually doing paper work while talking...) are done seperately. It really kills it for me. We have worlds populated by stationary, staring, socially aukward, zombies impersonating real charecters in video games. at what point will we be able to have actors controlling body movement, face, body language and voice at the same time? It will really help story telling and charecterisation... if the actors and script are good.Dectilon said:
I agree that at its core, gaming is about interactivity and player agency. It's true that the "purest" game story will be one where a player stays in control except where it's important to the story that they lose that control.
BUT
At the same time, there is no one "right" way to tell a story in games. There is only what's fun, entertaining, enjoyable. I find BioWare games to be immensely entertaining, despite their reliance on cutscenes and dialog wheels. These things are part of the experience and make it what it is.
Too often, I feel that opponents of cutscenes and cinematic storytelling in games would prefer a world in which no games tell stories in that way and I think that would be an incredibly tragic loss. There are many ways to tell a story and gaming is one medium for doing so. We shouldn't be trying to exclude certain methods just because they don't fit into our idea of a pure game.
BUT
At the same time, there is no one "right" way to tell a story in games. There is only what's fun, entertaining, enjoyable. I find BioWare games to be immensely entertaining, despite their reliance on cutscenes and dialog wheels. These things are part of the experience and make it what it is.
Too often, I feel that opponents of cutscenes and cinematic storytelling in games would prefer a world in which no games tell stories in that way and I think that would be an incredibly tragic loss. There are many ways to tell a story and gaming is one medium for doing so. We shouldn't be trying to exclude certain methods just because they don't fit into our idea of a pure game.
"I'd like an NPC to start talking to me as soon as I come close to them, rather than staring mutely at me until I hit the context-sensitive prompt flashing over their heads. I'd then like to still be in control of my character throughout the conversation, walking around,"
You've played the Darkness Yahtzee and that offers a flowing form of reralistic dialog that doesn't limit control between ingame playing... they call to you as you move towards them, they curse at you for moving away, the communication is both witty and gritty adding to the story or to the mini quest you're currently doing, the camera does switch postitions so you can see a perspective where you see yourself and you can still move as freely as you would...
Small Spoiler Alert
... Having said that besides being an awesomely layed out game... Jackie Estacado is a sort of Keanu Reeves of an actor showing as little emotion as possible... Even though he ain't a pussy and like most of us would rather rage at Paulie than cry over your girl he just murdered in front of you.
Oh and great comments about Saints Row Graham... You're right on the money!
You've played the Darkness Yahtzee and that offers a flowing form of reralistic dialog that doesn't limit control between ingame playing... they call to you as you move towards them, they curse at you for moving away, the communication is both witty and gritty adding to the story or to the mini quest you're currently doing, the camera does switch postitions so you can see a perspective where you see yourself and you can still move as freely as you would...
Small Spoiler Alert
... Having said that besides being an awesomely layed out game... Jackie Estacado is a sort of Keanu Reeves of an actor showing as little emotion as possible... Even though he ain't a pussy and like most of us would rather rage at Paulie than cry over your girl he just murdered in front of you.
Oh and great comments about Saints Row Graham... You're right on the money!
I think everyone should get the cartoon avatar treatment, Yahtzee, Bob, and James included. I really freakin' like them. Whoever drew them should get many cookies.
...or just money
...or just money
I completely disagree with this. If your choice is meaningless aside from deciding if you fill the good or evil bar, what is the point? This was one of the biggest disappointments about Mass Effect 2 for me. I played both paragon and renegade and I was rather let down by the fact that neither choice seemed to have an immediate impact on your interaction with the world. Aside from one choice about a minor character (I'm sorry but Morinth and Samara are the same character with a pallet swap), your crew accepts your decisions regardless. I found that it took the immersion quality out of the game when I realized that it didn't matter what I did, sense the journey would be the same.
An example of this choice done well is from a previous Bioware game: KOTOR. At the end of the game, if you chose the dark side, characters in your party will not accept your decision and fight you. It made the story much better when you realized that your party members would stick to their principles and you could lose them if you made the wrong decisions. It added a whole new element to the game where you not only considered game mechanics like whether decision A got you more experience than decision B but also if your decisions could lose you party members.
Well it's obviously the voice acting, not the physical acting that impresses people. A lot can be conveyed through the tone of the voice with simple visual cues in the body. What we see in recent BioWare games isn't as good as say, what we're seeing from L.A. Noire, but it does the job. Just as a person can become immersed in a classic sprite-based RPG, where simple visuals imply detail and invite the player to imagine how it might "really look," physical acting in BioWare games--when coupled with the top-notch voice acting--suggests enough of the reality of the scene to tell the story and let our mind fill in the blanks.Dectilon said:
So it's not high-quality body motion, but it's a significant step up from static NPCs and text boxes (which would feel very out of place in their games). It's a trade-off really. BioWare could probably give us much better physical acting in their characters, but at the cost of all the different dialogue options. They use a modular approach where specific clips are strung together to get the right feel instead of one continuous scene. I compare it to Red Dead Redemption, which has noticeably better character animation in its cutscenes, but nowhere near the level of choice.
I remember the bit I played through of GTA 4 being really jarring. Unlike previos games they set up this likable character who has a troubled past and who they were trying to make a fleshed out three dimensional person. The problem is that this guy who keeps saying "I don't want to kill any more people" is in a GTA game where the reason you are playing it is to drive around, cause mayhem, and slaughter vast amounts of people. And if he doesn't want to kill people any more, why can I only choose jobs that involve killing people. Personally, I felt like a dick playing it and stopped, while I had no problems with GTA 3.
To a comment graham made to Shamus at the end, I think that video games leaving more of the story to out imagination did make them better. Sure they didn't have a choice, but games today do, and more should choose it. Personally, when I played Half-life 2 I hadn't played the first one so I filled in the gaps myself and while I knew the plot I was constructing wasn't correct it was still fun. Just try playing through half-life 2 while rationalizing Freeman's muteness, I found it really fun. Every time I came to a radio in a resistance base calling for someone to respond I pictured Freeman tortured over his inability to respond and tell them that all of their friends are dead and that they should probably watch out for soldiers..
To a comment graham made to Shamus at the end, I think that video games leaving more of the story to out imagination did make them better. Sure they didn't have a choice, but games today do, and more should choose it. Personally, when I played Half-life 2 I hadn't played the first one so I filled in the gaps myself and while I knew the plot I was constructing wasn't correct it was still fun. Just try playing through half-life 2 while rationalizing Freeman's muteness, I found it really fun. Every time I came to a radio in a resistance base calling for someone to respond I pictured Freeman tortured over his inability to respond and tell them that all of their friends are dead and that they should probably watch out for soldiers..
They used that System again in the Dragon Age games didn't they?Evil Alpaca said:
and the setting of Mass Effect is different then that of KOTOR
I could never stand more then 30 second of that guys voiceMB202 said:
and if I got it right then Yahtzee complained that all they where doing was just sitting there and talk? Didn't they do that in 12 Angry Men as well?
Different stroke for different folks.
Me i love a great epic cut scene like the final confrontation in mass effect 1, i love the interactive movie aspects of the metal gear series, not just because the story is so bat crap crazy but because the parts you do play are fun to play.
Older rpgs like fallout 1 and 2 get to be more varied in their dialogue simply cause it is just text, no voice actors to hire to sit in a booth for 12 hours a day for weeks on end recutting the same lines over and over to get the proper feel for a 2 min conversation branch in a game.
Lots of people love their stories, lots of people just want to shoot things and blow things up. It is very hard to please both camps.
Hence to put it in a mmo perspective many people do not even bother to read or listen to the quests, many of them do not want to sit through a cutscene no matter how well done it is, why tor could be sink or swim depending how they handle the dialogue and cutscenes since some people are not going to want to be arsed about them while other will want to listen and watch and pick their choices carefully. Granted many mmos standard dialogues boil down to go kill XX x, y, and zs for XXXX reward and X plus x. TOR better be a tad more creative in their quests if each and every quest giver is going to be spoken and in cutscene form.
Half life 2 in and of itself was just pure epic because the gameplay and the story are great. Not many games nail one or the other or both. Bioware does a decent job in many of it's games of lest giving us characters and events that seem to matter and therefore your choices matter.
ANd yea for your 50 to 60 dollars do you want a wholly linear rpg that lasts 25 to 40 hours and then your done with it or would you rather have the option to play things out a different way, bring different characters to your side, make events happen differently. Sadly the one thing that does fail pretty hard in those cases is those branching events do not mean a ton to the overall story. Picking dragon age and the like where the choice events seem to have a tiny bit to do with the story especuially since bioware has an official canon story for the outcome no matter if you do everything differently from what they want you to do.
Like you can piss all over the ashes of andraste in dao and kill leandria right then and there but by da2 she is a fairly key is background figure in the da2 story. Half tempted to go back to dao and kill here just to see what the hell happens in da2 if she is dead.
But it does fly in the face of choices matter when there is an official canon ending rather than the canon ending of the games is what you make of it. And if they do have a canon ending why even allow you options to kill certain npcs and etc.
Me i love a great epic cut scene like the final confrontation in mass effect 1, i love the interactive movie aspects of the metal gear series, not just because the story is so bat crap crazy but because the parts you do play are fun to play.
Older rpgs like fallout 1 and 2 get to be more varied in their dialogue simply cause it is just text, no voice actors to hire to sit in a booth for 12 hours a day for weeks on end recutting the same lines over and over to get the proper feel for a 2 min conversation branch in a game.
Lots of people love their stories, lots of people just want to shoot things and blow things up. It is very hard to please both camps.
Hence to put it in a mmo perspective many people do not even bother to read or listen to the quests, many of them do not want to sit through a cutscene no matter how well done it is, why tor could be sink or swim depending how they handle the dialogue and cutscenes since some people are not going to want to be arsed about them while other will want to listen and watch and pick their choices carefully. Granted many mmos standard dialogues boil down to go kill XX x, y, and zs for XXXX reward and X plus x. TOR better be a tad more creative in their quests if each and every quest giver is going to be spoken and in cutscene form.
Half life 2 in and of itself was just pure epic because the gameplay and the story are great. Not many games nail one or the other or both. Bioware does a decent job in many of it's games of lest giving us characters and events that seem to matter and therefore your choices matter.
ANd yea for your 50 to 60 dollars do you want a wholly linear rpg that lasts 25 to 40 hours and then your done with it or would you rather have the option to play things out a different way, bring different characters to your side, make events happen differently. Sadly the one thing that does fail pretty hard in those cases is those branching events do not mean a ton to the overall story. Picking dragon age and the like where the choice events seem to have a tiny bit to do with the story especuially since bioware has an official canon story for the outcome no matter if you do everything differently from what they want you to do.
Like you can piss all over the ashes of andraste in dao and kill leandria right then and there but by da2 she is a fairly key is background figure in the da2 story. Half tempted to go back to dao and kill here just to see what the hell happens in da2 if she is dead.
But it does fly in the face of choices matter when there is an official canon ending rather than the canon ending of the games is what you make of it. And if they do have a canon ending why even allow you options to kill certain npcs and etc.