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hanselthecaretaker

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You and I have two very different ideas on what "fun" is.

Okay, I found the big, dying dragon, but I quit the game before doing anything (have some work to do.) But you're telling me, if I hit this thing, it's not going to fight back? Will it piss off all his little buddies in the area?
Hack away around/under his left wing area and he may grumble a bit, but that’s it. Keep away from his buddies and his mouth…or he’ll give you a preview of a dragon spell you can buy later. It'll take a while this way but bleed weapons will speed it up a bit.
 
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Dalisclock

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You and I have two very different ideas on what "fun" is.

Okay, I found the big, dying dragon, but I quit the game before doing anything (have some work to do.) But you're telling me, if I hit this thing, it's not going to fight back? Will it piss off all his little buddies in the area?
Because of the wall there, it's buddies(I think they're her kids) can't find their way around to you if you keep near the back leg. They'll stomp around and scream but at least when I did it they couldn't seem to figure out how to get back to me and since big mommy dragon can't move, you can wail away at her as long as you like.
 

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Bloodborne is a little obtuse, even by Fromsoft standards. Compare to Dark Souls. At the start of the game you get a cutscene describing all the major players in the world, then after completing the tutorial you are told to ring both bells of awakening. After you've done that you are told to collect the Lord Vessel and get all the Lord Souls. Your goal is made pretty clear and you always know what you are working towards. However, in Bloodborne, I've been playing for 30 hours and I still don't know what I'm doing. I even went back and watched the opening cutscene again to see if I missed something, but no. Obviously I want to kill all of the bosses in the game, but I have no idea why my character is doing this.

Even on a critical path level, I feel that the game is too obtuse at times. Like why does killing the Blood-Starved Beast open a door in Oedon Chapel? You get no indication that this has happened, it just does and you are supposed to intuit that a door has opened in a place you haven't been to for ages. And then there's the password to the Forbidden Woods. So after I killed the witches I realized I had no idea where to go next. I'd killed every boss I've seen and hit a dead end in every direction. There were a couple of doors that would give me a prompt to 'open' which would then helpfully state 'closed.' Yes, I understand it's closed, that's why I tried to open it. There was also a door that I needed a password to access. Imagine my surprise after wandering around for half an hour looking for whatever I'd missed that I actually had already gotten the password. I had to look up where I got it, and apparently it was from the memory I saw from the skull in the cathedral. I even rewatched the cutscene and I have no idea how I was supposed to conclude I was being given a password. It was just two people that I have no idea who they are talking cryptically for a minute. Nothing about passwords, or going to the Forbidden Forest or Bygwarthen (or whatever it's called). I just don't know how they expect anybody to realize that they can open that door now except by randomly wandering around.

I've also been continuing with the chalice dungeons and am on the third boss of the Lower Pthumeru Chalice, Rom the Vacuous Spider. It's a pretty annoying fight because you need to kill about 15 little spiders for every quarter of his health bar you take off as he mortars you the entire time. It's pretty time consuming just getting to the point that you can do him damage, and of course if I get hit by his magic I die in one hit, and when he starts thrashing about later on he does a ton of damage as well. I had him down to about 1/4 health one time, but I'm putting him on hold for now, at least until I can kill the little spiders in 2 hits instead of 3. I have a different chalice I can do that I now have enough eyeballs to start so we'll see how that goes.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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Bloodborne is a little obtuse, even by Fromsoft standards. Compare to Dark Souls. At the start of the game you get a cutscene describing all the major players in the world, then after completing the tutorial you are told to ring both bells of awakening. After you've done that you are told to collect the Lord Vessel and get all the Lord Souls. Your goal is made pretty clear and you always know what you are working towards. However, in Bloodborne, I've been playing for 30 hours and I still don't know what I'm doing. I even went back and watched the opening cutscene again to see if I missed something, but no. Obviously I want to kill all of the bosses in the game, but I have no idea why my character is doing this.

Even on a critical path level, I feel that the game is too obtuse at times. Like why does killing the Blood-Starved Beast open a door in Oedon Chapel? You get no indication that this has happened, it just does and you are supposed to intuit that a door has opened in a place you haven't been to for ages. And then there's the password to the Forbidden Woods. So after I killed the witches I realized I had no idea where to go next. I'd killed every boss I've seen and hit a dead end in every direction. There were a couple of doors that would give me a prompt to 'open' which would then helpfully state 'closed.' Yes, I understand it's closed, that's why I tried to open it. There was also a door that I needed a password to access. Imagine my surprise after wandering around for half an hour looking for whatever I'd missed that I actually had already gotten the password. I had to look up where I got it, and apparently it was from the memory I saw from the skull in the cathedral. I even rewatched the cutscene and I have no idea how I was supposed to conclude I was being given a password. It was just two people that I have no idea who they are talking cryptically for a minute. Nothing about passwords, or going to the Forbidden Forest or Bygwarthen (or whatever it's called). I just don't know how they expect anybody to realize that they can open that door now except by randomly wandering around.

I've also been continuing with the chalice dungeons and am on the third boss of the Lower Pthumeru Chalice, Rom the Vacuous Spider. It's a pretty annoying fight because you need to kill about 15 little spiders for every quarter of his health bar you take off as he mortars you the entire time. It's pretty time consuming just getting to the point that you can do him damage, and of course if I get hit by his magic I die in one hit, and when he starts thrashing about later on he does a ton of damage as well. I had him down to about 1/4 health one time, but I'm putting him on hold for now, at least until I can kill the little spiders in 2 hits instead of 3. I have a different chalice I can do that I now have enough eyeballs to start so we'll see how that goes.

Basically the whole point is to “seek the Paleblood” and survive the hunt of beasts and those afflicted by the blood disease that turns them to beasts. You traveled to Yharnam because you’re sick and heard it uses blood to heal. Desperate for a cure, you signed a contract in the beginning in exchange for the blood transfusion, but turns out it also makes your blood “special” by preventing you from the same fate as those you hunt. It also ultimately allows contact with the Moon Presence after making your way through the story and “surviving the hunt”.

As per usual, it’s difficult to piece the main story together because it is mostly told through interactions with characters, and keeping tabs on all of them while playing, exploring, upgrading stats, etc. and dying a bunch is something I’ve never been good at. Which is why there’s people like Vaati Vidya to explain it after all is said and done.
 
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Old_Hunter_77

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Frankly it blows my mind that people actually care about the "story" and lore of the Souls games. It's a dead world except for things that kill you and you gotta kill 'em to get to the end credits, while screwing around. Those are the games, all of them. I played these games for a million hours and that's all I know about them.

Edit to add what I'm actually playing, lol...

Lego Star Wars has lost its brief charm cause the "gameplay" is boring and Wo Long is hard but not fun and stupid. I got sandwiched between a too easy game and a too hard game, hahah.

I'm gonna try the Diablo 4 open beta this weekend. I haven't played a Diablo in like 20 years so I'm curious to see how this goes.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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Frankly it blows my mind that people actually care about the "story" and lore of the Souls games. It's a dead world except for things that kill you and you gotta kill 'em to get to the end credits, while screwing around. Those are the games, all of them. I played these games for a million hours and that's all I know about them.

Edit to add what I'm actually playing, lol...

Lego Star Wars has lost its brief charm cause the "gameplay" is boring and Wo Long is hard but not fun and stupid. I got sandwiched between a too easy game and a too hard game, hahah.

I'm gonna try the Diablo 4 open beta this weekend. I haven't played a Diablo in like 20 years so I'm curious to see how this goes.
I think the thing I appreciate the most about this type of storytelling is there is very little that gets in the way of actually playing the games. There’s probably a total of about ten minutes of cutscenes in any of these (maybe a bit more for ER), including intro, ending and boss sequences which disappear after the first try anyways. This is fine by me because I usually don’t recall what’s what even in traditional narratives by the time a 30-40+ hour game is done. It’s even worse when there’s cutscenes for every character interaction in big RPGs. Forbidden West I’m mostly just tapping a button to skip through all the dialog choices because fuck if I’ll remember all that shit by the end anyways lol.
 

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Frankly it blows my mind that people actually care about the "story" and lore of the Souls games. It's a dead world except for things that kill you and you gotta kill 'em to get to the end credits, while screwing around. Those are the games, all of them. I played these games for a million hours and that's all I know about them.
You shouldn't be surprised by this. I don't know why you are. It's a story that doesn't interfere with the gameplay, and leave things ambiguous enough for the players to figure out on their own. That's why so many people like diving into the lore or world of each of these games. I'm not into this franchise, but it's not hard to see why people enjoy the story in each of these games.
 

Old_Hunter_77

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I think the thing I appreciate the most about this type of storytelling is there is very little that gets in the way of actually playing the games. There’s probably a total of about ten minutes of cutscenes in any of these (maybe a bit more for ER), including intro, ending and boss sequences which disappear after the first try anyways. This is fine by me because I usually don’t recall what’s what even in traditional narratives by the time a 30-40+ hour game is done. It’s even worse when there’s cutscenes for every character interaction in big RPGs. Forbidden West I’m mostly just tapping a button to skip through all the dialog choices because fuck if I’ll remember all that shit by the end anyways lol.
Yeah that's fine. I mean I like both kinds personally if they're done well. That part that blows my mind is that folks are gonna watch a 40 minute lore-explainer video for the lore for a game they like not having to watch a 2 minute cut scene for. I'm just saying I think it's kind of funny/ironic, that's all.
 
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meiam

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Plenty of video game cutscene tend not to be that interesting and usually stick very close to tropes that the player have experience millions of times already. This is because game that put story first will try to set the story in a way that everyone playing will understand, this means making story for lowest common denominator, ie people who don't pay attention and will have trouble with anything more complex than the basic tropes. So most cutscene will be simultaneously information poor and overstuffed with information. They'll constantly have character reiterating information most players already know ("the bad guys are bad!", "I love my wife", "the forest of death is dangerous") while at the same time not providing much of substance. So for most player watching a 2 minutes cutscene feel like they're getting 5 seconds worth of information. This problem compound itself because then most player attention will drift trough the cutscene and they'll start missing the important information, so future cutscene will have to play catch up on even more stuff, or alternatively, just never really introduce anything more complex than the basic setup.

Soul game kinda upend the entire concept with their "pay attention or fuck you" approach, this mean they can have almost no cutscene and instead just give the player those 5 second worth of information here and there (mostly outside cutscene, as item description or straight in the world). This makes the world more interesting to player because every time they get information, it feel fresh and unique and so they'll feel like this is a world that's worth exploring and learning about. Another way to look at it is that the soul game have outsourced the need for the exposition/catchup cutscene to youtuber and such. Video also allow them to deliver content differently, they can say "watch this video for background information about XYZ" and move on straight to the meat, whereas that's not possible in a video game cutscene.

Another aspect is that soul game are almost entirely world building, which is very often what player prefer (even when they don't really realize it). Think of those boring side quest every RPG is stuffed with, the point of these isn't really to do the side quest (example, go to the forest and kill 10 pig). The point is to use those as an occasion to do some world building, by talking to a farmer you get to learn more about what the live of a common peasant is in this world, then by going to the forest you explore the world. A good writer will use those conversation with the peasant to make something interesting ("I was really glad when the war started, all those military guy that would sit around and do nothing disappeared. But now all the wild pig have been multiplying like crazy, turn out they would control the population. How am I suppose to take care of 30-50 wild hogs?") a bad writer will waste that opportunity and instead feed you fluff "Oh brave hero, you're so wonderful and amazing. Please go kill 10 pigs in the forest. You're the greatest because of <generic prophesy>. Reminder, go kill 10 pigs in the forest."
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Frankly it blows my mind that people actually care about the "story" and lore of the Souls games. It's a dead world except for things that kill you and you gotta kill 'em to get to the end credits, while screwing around. Those are the games, all of them. I played these games for a million hours and that's all I know about them.
How does that blow your mind? Its a giant mysterious game world with strange enemies, of course people are interested in what its all about.
 

Absent

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Plenty of video game cutscene tend not to be that interesting and usually stick very close to tropes that the player have experience millions of times already. This is because game that put story first will try to set the story in a way that everyone playing will understand, this means making story for lowest common denominator, ie people who don't pay attention and will have trouble with anything more complex than the basic tropes. So most cutscene will be simultaneously information poor and overstuffed with information. They'll constantly have character reiterating information most players already know ("the bad guys are bad!", "I love my wife", "the forest of death is dangerous") while at the same time not providing much of substance. So for most player watching a 2 minutes cutscene feel like they're getting 5 seconds worth of information. This problem compound itself because then most player attention will drift trough the cutscene and they'll start missing the important information, so future cutscene will have to play catch up on even more stuff, or alternatively, just never really introduce anything more complex than the basic setup.

Soul game kinda upend the entire concept with their "pay attention or fuck you" approach, this mean they can have almost no cutscene and instead just give the player those 5 second worth of information here and there (mostly outside cutscene, as item description or straight in the world). This makes the world more interesting to player because every time they get information, it feel fresh and unique and so they'll feel like this is a world that's worth exploring and learning about. Another way to look at it is that the soul game have outsourced the need for the exposition/catchup cutscene to youtuber and such. Video also allow them to deliver content differently, they can say "watch this video for background information about XYZ" and move on straight to the meat, whereas that's not possible in a video game cutscene.

Another aspect is that soul game are almost entirely world building, which is very often what player prefer (even when they don't really realize it). Think of those boring side quest every RPG is stuffed with, the point of these isn't really to do the side quest (example, go to the forest and kill 10 pig). The point is to use those as an occasion to do some world building, by talking to a farmer you get to learn more about what the live of a common peasant is in this world, then by going to the forest you explore the world. A good writer will use those conversation with the peasant to make something interesting ("I was really glad when the war started, all those military guy that would sit around and do nothing disappeared. But now all the wild pig have been multiplying like crazy, turn out they would control the population. How am I suppose to take care of 30-50 wild hogs?") a bad writer will waste that opportunity and instead feed you fluff "Oh brave hero, you're so wonderful and amazing. Please go kill 10 pigs in the forest. You're the greatest because of <generic prophesy>. Reminder, go kill 10 pigs in the forest."
I thought I was in the hot take thread. Anyway, I think the issue isn't that players can't understand a complex story, but that many players don't care for the story as much as for the gameplay, and see cutscenes as the interruption of it. Hence skip buttons. Stories in games are optional to the experience. So it's not worth investing too much effort in cutscene literature, and it's risky to place too crucial information in them as the skipping players would complain about it.
 

Worgen

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I thought I was in the hot take thread. Anyway, I think the issue isn't that players can't understand a complex story, but that many players don't care for the story as much as for the gameplay, and see cutscenes as the interruption of it. Hence skip buttons. Stories in games are optional to the experience. So it's not worth investing too much effort in cutscene literature, and it's risky to place too crucial information in them as the skipping players would complain about it.
Hard disagree, there are some kinds of games that can get away with no story, but those are exceedingly rare and tend to be games like tetris. Most other types of games at least need some back story for the context of the player. This also isn't even mentioning the RPG genera which is entirely propelled by story.
 
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BrawlMan

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I thought I was in the hot take thread. Anyway, I think the issue isn't that players can't understand a complex story, but that many players don't care for the story as much as for the gameplay, and see cutscenes as the interruption of it. Hence skip buttons. Stories in games are optional to the experience. So it's not worth investing too much effort in cutscene literature, and it's risky to place too crucial information in them as the skipping players would complain about it.
That depends on what it is. Most people are going to want to skip cutscenes on a second or third playthrough. Otherwise, most people are there for a story or some type of motivation their first time through.
 
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Absent

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Hard disagree, there are some kinds of games that can get away with no story, but those are exceedingly rare and tend to be games like tetris. Most other types of games at least need some back story for the context of the player. This also isn't even mentioning the RPG genera which is entirely propelled by story.
You're stating your personal tastes. But you cannot infer from it how people play in general. Including in RPGs, where the "plot" is most often as generic as possible, already known from the start to the end (mguffin hunt cause monsters everywhere cause evil wizard yadda), and a pretext to hack and also slash. A lot of people go through it on "shut up and point me to the baddies" mode. Sometimes it's unfair to the carefully crafted story and lore, sometimes it's absolutely deserved. Most of times it's neither.

But it's a thing to take in consideration when making a game.
 

Worgen

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You're stating your personal tastes. But you cannot infer from it how people play in general. Including in RPGs, where the "plot" is most often as generic as possible, already known from the start to the end (mguffin hunt cause monsters everywhere cause evil wizard yadda), and a pretext to hack and also slash. A lot of people go through it on "shut up and point me to the baddies" mode. Sometimes it's unfair to the carefully crafted story and lore, sometimes it's absolutely deserved. Most of times it's neither.

But it's a thing to take in consideration when making a game.
You're just wrong.
 

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You're just wrong.
Relax.

Sure, cool.
I get where both of you are coming from. Now @Worgen. You should know that there are people who literally played 40 hour to 100 hour plus games, and not give a crap about the story. Do you know how many kids, teens, or adults play the GTA games, and not give a rat ass about the story or character motivations at all? Billions at this point. I know that is not an RPG example, but it still applies. I have met my fair share people who literally played long hour rpgs (usually of the action variety) and didn't give a rat's ass about the story of characters. We also got it taken to account that most people don't finish a game they bought. They either stop halfway or stop early on because a loss of interests or something happening in real life.
 
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Hawki

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Yeah, you can put me in the "pro story" crowd. If a game wants my attention, it better have a good story (or at least element of story) to it, because otherwise, I'm only getting half the package. There's certainly exceptions, but even if I'm playing a multiplayer-only game, lore that exists outside the game is still highly appreciate (League of Legends, Overwatch, etc.) And while this is an appeal to authority, it seems like the industry agrees. John Carmack (of Doom fame) claimed that story in a VG was like story in a porn movie, but Doom itself has got far more story now than it once did (even if Doom 2016 treated it with contempt).

Also:

You're stating your personal tastes. But you cannot infer from it how people play in general. Including in RPGs, where the "plot" is most often as generic as possible, already known from the start to the end (mguffin hunt cause monsters everywhere cause evil wizard yadda), and a pretext to hack and also slash.
Not sure what RPGs you've been playing, but I can't think of many cases where that's true. Certainly not any RPG made since, well, the 90s, really.
 

Absent

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Not sure what RPGs you've been playing, but I can't think of many cases where that's true. Certainly not any RPG made since, well, the 90s, really.
Absolutely every diablo-like ever (Dungeon Quest, Sacred, etc). RPGs like Neverwinter Nights, the Elder Scrolls, Icewind Dale, Dragon Age, Kotor, Fable, etc... Most of them are formulaic as hell, and it doesn't matter (let's call it "classic"). Oh noes my mentor Beardaf is dead, oh noes evil is descending on the world, must find the Sword of Jewels of The Ring Of Staffs before Warlockor the Warlock, if I do it with a party let's hope Maidena won't be captured or turned to the dark side because that twist would unexpectedly raise the stakes.

Seriously, mileage may vary (if you played A LOT of them, you tend to lose interest in repeated clichés and the ability to invest yourself in them), and also games aren't homogeneous : pedestrian and creative storytelling can coexist within all the main quests and subquests.

But most importantly, that's not the point. What is, is the difference in players more than the difference in RPGs. Because you can have an excellent story that gets ignored by a player, or a ridiculous one that gets passionately followed. It depends on the people, their mood, their history, etc. Within a same game, people can be attentive or skippy depending on the quest or depending on the day. People can be thrilled by a new story, or be bored by its "yeah, been there done that", or be thrilled again by a return to a classic formula. People can find slight variations fascinating, others can simply see it as samey as a whole. The story is just a component of the game that players decide to find important or not. They can launch the game to be told a tale, they can launch the game to behead gnolls, they can launch the game to stroll in its cool environment, they can launch a game to scrutinize its lore and geek out infinitely about it. There is no rule, and there is no correct way (and even the most derivative plot is new, or new enough, to some). Games tend to maximize the spectrum of enjoyability.

And hey, we're just talking about RPGs here. In fact it even applies to adventure games (many players just solve the puzzles and skim through the dialogues, which are actually not very often as worthy of attention or laughter as the authors think). But it applies all the more to action games that try to wrap themselves in emotional drama. Some people can care, others don't and just launch them for the pew pew piff paff. Insert coin, read blurb and go.
 
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sXeth

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Well, RPG is one of those cases where the "genre" has shifted so far from the meanings of the words that it might as well just be 3 random letters. Game Genre wise you tend to either get the people who associate everything with some vague fantasy element (whether that be swords and sorcery, urban fantasy or space fantasy) to it, and another batch that that just apply anything with loot/stat/class mechanics to it.

(IE Diablo is not even vaguely an RPG, most people rationally nowadays would just call it a looter)


The concept of "Role Playing" probably shows up more often in interactive visual novels or whatever at this point.