The Time I Wasn't John Marston

[sindremaster]

I do the same thing you do, not just in RDR, but in most games. That's not a problem with the game in my opinion, it's a strength. People like me who care about story can do that, and immerse themselves fully in the character. Others who just want to run around tying nuns to train tracks can do that too.

Do we embrace that uniqueness about games and continue to struggle with the fact that they will always be inherently artless, that they'll be authorless literature written by committee? Or do we ignore that and try to keep them as linear and as focused as possible? Make them more like films and plays and other things that are actually art?

This is BS, I had to check if David Cage wrote this article. Games don't have to be like movies to be art. I think the fact that you can chose how you want to experience them is what makes them the best form of art.

 

[thatsthespirit]

It is indeed a troubling point.

I really dislike the situation you describe, I am someone who prefers a well thought, structured approach rather than a thematic/ mechanic/ tonal scattershot that we see so often today. I personally generally play games interested in the conflicts and the narrative, but more often than not today, I feel that developers are actively trying to water down their narrative and artificially extend their games by purring in all sorts of unnecessary "because maybe you'd like to do that" components.

Bethesda games have terrible problems with this, there is no structure, no purpose, so all the possibly very well designed game mechanics lose any meaning or importance. That bullet / gun / weapon crafting? yeah , no need to use it. That npc with the quest? he doesn't really have any importance, just a few hours of side quest. That cave #47b it holds nothing, just prefabricated cave N°5 space to search. Cool! Freedom! but what does it mean? What advantage does it bring to the experience?
On the other hand games such as Silent Hill 2, The unfinished Swan, Journey, Spec-Ops, Shadow of the Colossus or the first Portal, fill everything with meaning. Sure, there is a lot to explore, even some sections that exist solely to deepen and broaden the world, but the experience is not padded, it is condensed, it never loses the focus of what the game is, or the direction the experience must have. They don't shy away from taking control away from you or telling you something that you might not enjoy. But they never become too broad as to loose flavor or stop you from experiencing the universe either. These present fantastic narratives that are quite clearly not "your own", but they allow you to connect nonetheless, there is no unnecessary simulated freedom.

This rather pathologic requirement for players to "fulfill their own story" that comes out repeatedly in PR briefs today really rubs me the wrong way. Why are players incapable of empathising with a story that is not their own? Seems that whenever anything is out of their control, the experience becomes foreign and unrelatable to them. In many ways, this sense of "agency" breeds the intolerant trollish responses of extremely defensive gamers that cannot understand experiences not catered to them... It also inhibits real creative output, since players lack the actual impulse to generate real narrative themselves, they cling (and demand) this simulated freedom to do what they can't in reality (and even complain when they don't like what happened). It could even be read as the response of a disempowered lost generation, trying to fullfill their illusions of freedom in a virtual world...

Hoo boy.

The key point you're missing is the fact that, inspite of the enormous amount of artistry that goes into *building* a video game, the most important artistic contribution is the input of the player. Video games are an *expressive* medium. They are not a fixed medium like a statue or a painting. When the developer is finished and the game goes gold, it's still not done yet. (No, not even after all the patches, har har.) The game is DONE when a player FINISHES it.

That is a very silly observation, Painting and Sculpture, and any other art form require someone to experience it, as games, without the input of the spectator they don't exist. You seem to be stuck on a 1900s definition of art as a static observation, today interaction is the basis of modern art: The spectator is no longer passive, he/she is an integral part of the art itself, art only exists through this communication.

Also, an open world doesn't automatically grant a game "compelling gameplay". In fact a more focused approach to what can and can't be done often offer a better tighter gameplay experience. A jrpg or other more tightly knit games feature more structured, well designed systems that enable for well designed gameplay... you play games for gameplay or for experimentation? Assuming a more controlled narrative approach is less gameplay is just a fallacy. More options do not mean better options, in fact given the nature of design, in general it is the other way around.

It's funny that you mention Psychonauts, because as much as I enjoy the game, I feel that the platforming/exploration is profoundly at odds with the clearly more adventure game that Double Fine wanted to do.

Also it is ridiculous to compare anything to Daikatana (really? what the hell)), since Gta is a pretty good game and Daikatana is probably one of the most generally accepted Horrible games in history.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

This is why the games industry developed the idea of auto-leveling, so that people who want to rip through the central storyline for whichever reason are free to play the game like that. While people who want to investigate every nook and cranny of the game at their own pace are free to do that as well. But the heart of the matter is simply that without the economic contribution coming in from both types of players, Rockstar Games would not be able to offer the level of quality that it was able to offer.

 

[Your Gaffer]

I think you are coming at this all wrong. Your assumptions about what parts of a game are artistic and which are not is totally backwards.
"I want games to be art; I want artists to choose for me, like when they place the camera a certain way in a movie or write a certain word in a book."
The primary creative force behind a game is the designer. Sure, games wouldn't be possible without other creative people, like musicians, artists, and writers, but the essence of a game is the set of mechanics it employs. The artist IS choosing for you. He is choosing how strong the enemies are, what kind of challenges you'll face, the pacing. All those different activities and missions WERE the artist choosing for you, if those were not there the game would get boring rather quickly. Games need differences of kind and pace to keep our interest over multiple hours.
Story in a game is usually secondary to the mechanics of a game. Designers are getting better at integrating the two, I think Bioshock Infinite is a good example of this. You seem to be falling into the all to common and old trap of wanting your game to be a movie. Games don't do narrative that way.

 

[Erttheking]

Am I the only one who didn't have a hard time not starting massacres? I mean I did, but I never saved it, and come to think of it I didn't do it that often and just did it on the side. Heck, sometimes in games where I kill innocent civilians I actually feel kinda bad about it. It just feels more complicated than you make it out to be. If you want to be evil, be evil, if you want to be good, be good. If you want to fuck around for a little and break the rules, don't save. I play as a pure and utter paragon in Fallout, yet when I'm about to turn the game off I plant C4 everywhere and blow whoever is nearby up. The point is I can only be an ass and break the rules when context, consequences and....uh...cohesion are taken away? Wanted to go for 3 Cs. Whatever, I can only do it then.

 

[PoloniumFist]

What do we do with these bloody things? Anyone? Developers?

We could keep making games of all kinds.

 

[WarpZone]

I really dislike the situation you describe, I am someone who prefers a well thought, structured approach rather than a thematic/ mechanic/ tonal scattershot that we see so often today. I personally generally play games interested in the conflicts and the narrative, but more often than not today, I feel that developers are actively trying to water down their narrative and artificially extend their games by purring in all sorts of unnecessary "because maybe you'd like to do that" components.

Bethesda sucks. Fallout 3 sucks. I hate freedom in video games, therefore the few games that offer it have something wrong with them. Even if that's the main reason people play that game franchise.

On second thought, I think I've figured it out. You don't want an RPG at all. What you want is a modern corridor shooter. All the plot, narrative and story you could possibly ask for, zero choices, nothing but a linear Hero's Journey with a single predictable arc, a protagonist who won't shut the hell up, and above all, absolutely no possibility of experimentation, exploration, choices, or surprises. You're playing a role! Exactly one role, which was prefabricated by the writer, so it's more like acting in a play that role-playing, but still! It's what you say you want. A game where you can't break the story by playing it wrong.

And sorry for bringing up Daikatana. That was a stupid mistake on my part. Couldn't remember the right name. I meant to say Shenmue. GTA and Shenmue are both open-world games, but GTA made allowances for gameplay at the expense of narrative, whereas Shenmue is notable in the lengths it went in exactly the opposite direction.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

** What the hell?!! **

Hey now, don't bring me into your argument.

 

[braincore02]

You put way too much thought into this to come to such wrong conclusions.

I played Red Dead Redemption however the hell I wanted to. I found I was a lot less malevolent than I am in GTA, and way more into hunting and cheating at cards.

But I doubt I spent much time playing John Marston as he was written, and I didn't think twice about it, cause it happens, especially in sandbox games. How are you going to give the player such a vast freedom of choice and expect it to reconcile at every turn with the scripted character? You don't. So who cares? I personally wouldn't have it any other way. Sure, tell your story, sometimes I'll play that, the other time I'll muck around with all these other fun things you gave me.

I was ready to merely dismiss this as too much thought put into something not worth thinking about, then you dropped this:

"Do we embrace that uniqueness about games and continue to struggle with the fact that they will always be inherently artless, that they'll be authorless literature written by committee"

Red Dead Redemption is art. It's got a beautiful representation of a vast swath of the American Southwest, wonderful weather cycles, decently complex AI creating fairly believable patterns of human and animal activity, and a slightly clumsy story that ultimately resolves more poetically than any videogame I can recall right now.

It blows my mind that we so easily accept Andy Warhol's color-treated photocopies and Picasso's inability to draw as art, yet even videogame enthusiasts have trouble identifying games like Red Dead Redemption as art.

 

[Aitamen]

RDR obviously has a shitty writing style if you had to do this. The game should contour to the player, and make your actions make sense in the context of the character. Railroading is always a bad idea.

 

[BenFranks]

I think the true art of videogaming is to put yourself in a half-focused narrative and enjoy giving it your edge, even if the story does make your character stubbornly difficult, it becomes good practice to ignore it and shoot stuff up anyhow.