AlanC9 wrote...
Terror_K wrote...
The "Mission Complete" screens are jarring and sudden, serving to ruin the glow of the narrative and gameplay, reminding you that this is a game and taking you out of it not just by appearing suddenly, but by chopping the game into mini chunklets and making it feel less like a living, breathing world and more like a game with levels or zones.
Meaning that they break an illusion, I guess.
I think the reason I prefer the mission complete screens is that I started with PnP RPGs. Doing a handwave over miscellaneous maintenance tasks at the end of an adventure is pretty much the standard method.
As much of a PnP RPG fan I am, when it comes to Mass Effect it's as much about trying to lose yourself in a great sci-fi universe that's presented in a cinematic way, and that's why I feel the "mission complete" screens horribly jar, and why I said earlier that it's more because of the cinematic nature of Mass Effect that they're an issue rather than an old school RPG factor (after somebody in here started accusing those of us who didn't like it of doing so simply because it clashes with our RPG love, or some such nonsense). To me, when you're trying to make something as immersive as possible, you don't go throwing unnecessary things like that in there that get in the way and ruin that. And it
is unneccessary, when one considers the first game avoided it and other (even more hardcore) RPGs such as Dragon Age: Origins, KotOR and Fallout don't do it.
The thing is, when you've set up something that's supposed to be more than just another game and be something a little more you can lose yourself in it's a bad move to be doing stuff like this, and there are generally other alternatives to getting the information across. Mass Effect was always supposed to be very cinematic, and kind of be not so much a game as it was an interactive epic sci-fi space opera you could control and delve into, and so while it was like an interactive movie it was also a little deeper and let you explore the world a little more beyond the confines of cinematic standards, so that rather than experiencing just the narrative and story and characters you experienced the universe as a whole and actually got to penetrate the outer layer a little more.
The game and RPG was always there, but it kind of floated on the surface and was only really there where it needed to be and when the user wanted it to be. The devs did such a fantastic job in the first game of balancing the game, the interactive cinema and the extra freedom the player had. The game only really appeared when you needed or wanted it to, and was rather subtle when it didn't, and never obtrusive. They did a good job of trying to keep the flow with things like elevators and decontamination zones, the loading screens that existed were few and contextual with what happened and the whole thing just kept a really good flow that wasn't interrupted. It's as if they were doing their best to make sure the strings weren't showing where they could and how they could.
ME2 just didn't seem to care about this as much, despite claims from the devs of trying to make it more immersive by removing more of the game from the experience. The loading screens are pretty much just that now: loading screens, and don't do enough to hide what they are. The areas are more limited, smaller and level-like. The information pop-ups are no longer subtle and small, instead now with large pictures that are impossible to miss. When you're close to death big veins streak across the entire screen. Squaddies run around in silly, Hollywood-esque get-ups all the time. And the "Mission Complete" screens are another example of this, and just completely halt any form of flow or build-up and immersion that may have been formed up until then.
It's as if in their attempt to "not worry about labels, and just make a good game" they've just turned the whole thing into that: a game. Where the first tried it's best to be more of an interactive experience, the second just tries too hard to be a game, and it's like the focus has shifted and thanks to all these changes we've got more of a game that's less immersive than the first. Again, despite claims that they wanted to go for more immersion by having the game get in the way less. It hasn't worked at all and has had the opposite effect. Not only do these screens suddenly halt the action, but they take what was once supposed to be a big, living, breathing universe that felt vast and as if you were in there experiencing it and turns it into little chunklets and levels. Rather than a big open universe we've gone back to visiting Illium as if it's the original Sonic the Hedgehog game to do Star Light Zone 1, 2 and 3 when doing Miranda' Loyalty Mission, getting Samara and getting Thane.
How can you immerse yourself into a movie properly when it's constantly broken up by ads on television, there's a one-minute intermission every 10 minutes or so or you're watching it on a DVD but the phone keeps ringing? It's the same thing.
Modifié par Terror_K, 09 décembre 2010 - 09:02 .
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