5087 réponses à ce sujet

[delta_vee]

@KitaSaturnyne:

If the possibility of the best friend living exists, though, who will choose to continue with their death? The loss is devalued after a fashion and to some degree, since its avoidance is a quickload away. And if the friend's death is ensured in all branches (or there is no branching at all, for that matter), the player retains a certain distance, as this is a game and the player is ostensibly in control, thus rebelling against the authorial imposition.

Edit: noooooo! I'm finally cursed with merely a snippet to lead off a page. Bah.

Modifié par delta_vee, 22 mai 2012 - 06:25 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

@delta_vee

Isn't the value of the best friend's death left up to each individual player, rather than decided by a ratio of who chose either way? And if all the player is doing is guiding the narrative at turning points, aren't they still subject to authorial imposition simply by participating in the game?

Is the solution then to make all stories linear with no choice left up to the player at any point?

PS - Seems you tempted fate one too many times. Now you must suffer like the rest of us.

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 22 mai 2012 - 06:35 .

[delta_vee]

@Kita:

How many players, though, will accept the tragedy if they're emotionally invested in the friend's character? We hear tales of those who kill off the more annoying of Ashley or Kaidan on Virmire, simply to be rid of them, but how many reloaded the decision point on Rannoch because they couldn't bear Tali dying?

And of course the player is subject to the narrative branches provided by the author. This forces the author to create no-win scenarios of some sort in order to convey tragedy, which a) usually suffer some resistance from the player, because of the common completion/win-state association, and encourage things like ME3's final choice, which too easily appear artificial and limiting.

No, I don't think the solution is strictly linear narrative, either. The per-case solution is highly dependent on game structure. I don't think there's any one single answer which fits all games.

Edit: to bed now, so apologies. I'll catch up in the morning.

Modifié par delta_vee, 22 mai 2012 - 06:40 .

[frypan]

I lack the terminology to really add to the art idea, but would like to explore the idea of the possibility space as a tool to understanding the game and the ending. Ray Muzyka referred to it in this article, in regards to the ME universe, but I think it bears some more examination.

http://au.pc.gamespy.../1219559p1.html

The possibility space (and my knowledge of this is as sketchy as my understandng of art) would allow players to perform all the things they see as logically possible within the gaming environment. Instead of thinking of the ending as a narrative failure, should we be concentrating more on the failure to define and create the possibility space?

I ask this as while narrative and environment coexist and complement each other, it seems that our issues with the ending may stem more from the failure to define the possibility space which led to a change right at the end.

An environment was created specifically for the course and ending of the first two games, in which the player would normally make a few key decisions related to the themes.While these arose from previous gameplay and were limited choices, they centred on establishing the players relationship with the world in which they were playing.

In ME1, this was the decision to save the council - not directly related to the fight with Saren but related to the co-operative and multispecies universe in which the game was set. Similarly, in ME2 the decison was based on the place of humanity in that universe, but specifically related to a rejection or affirmation of Cerberus' view of where humanity was placed.

At the ending of ME3, the decision seems less clear in that the space in which the player experiences the game changes somewhat. We have a darker world in ME3, so already the space in which the player engages with the game has a different feel, but the actions have also changed, specifically the interaction with crewmates, the engagement with the Universe (through limited sidequests), and the linear approach which removed the feeling of majesty and a universe of possibilities, where the player can go where they want in an order of their choosing.

These limitations to play culminate in the final choices, which narrow down the feeling of interaction even further. In contrast to the first two games, the decision has less of relevance to how the player interacted with the game, for all the various reasons put forth by others in this thread.

In doing so it changed the rules regarding endgame choices, most notably in the manner blue and red were switched from their previous roles, but also in the dissociation of endgame choice from previous gampley decisions. A paragon player was given a choice dissociated from everything they had chosen previously, as the gaming environment had changed its rules of play.

I am not proficient in the idea of possibility spaces, and have really only read one article on the topic. Any clarification here might be helpful. Personally, I have not had an issue with other bad endings even if narratively they have been poor, and am looking elsewhere for the confusion I felt at the end.

It feels a bit like Blazing Saddles, when the 4th wall was broken at the end. However that movie was being consistent in its style and the end was a natural progression of the silliness.

And with that, this thread reaches into new territory, with the works of Mel Brooks weighing in. 

EDIT: Me spell bad

Modifié par frypan, 22 mai 2012 - 06:53 .

[drayfish]

Just to throw this into the mix:

Would not the game Heavy Rain offer a fitting example in this very fruitful discussion? I've not played the game (I am without a ps3), but from what I understand, it employs an autosave function that prevents the player from reloading, and character deaths are always possible, with the story continuing on regardless. Such design choices were intentionally employed to compel players to experience a text in a singular, controlled, although fluid pathway, because this was ultimately the developer's intent for the player experience: to emulate life in all its tedium, fright and regret.

Perhaps for other designers, their decisions not to impose such strict guidelines of experience might indicate that this capacity to test branching paths is not (in their opinion) detrimental to the way in which their narratives their communicate their meaning, allowing the player, should they wish, the grace of making momentary missteps, and to ultimately overwrite their recollection of the experience (like the save file itself).

Modifié par drayfish, 23 mai 2012 - 11:08 .

[edisnooM]

It seems to me that the divergent paths of a video game, such as a happy ending in Romeo and Juliet, are part of the strengths of the medium as opposed to a curse. When you read Romeo and Juliet or watch the movie version, the ending is always the same. But with video games it can twist, turn, change into something new, a different experience.

Sure it might be up to the player how it goes, and whether it ends happy or sad, but isn't that sort of true for all mediums? What the audience of any story walks away with is up to each person, whether happy, sad, outraged, the reaction and takeaway are subject to individual personalities. Try though they might no author can force people to feel a way they simply do not feel. Mr. Ebert might not like a happy ending to Romeo and Juliet, but maybe some would, and they would more enjoy and be affected by the story as a result.

Does enjoying something limit it's value as art?

[frypan]

drayfish wrote...

Just to throw this into the mix:

Would not the game Heavy Rain offer a fitting example in this very fruitful discussion? I've not played the game (I am without a ps3), but from what I understand, it employs an autosave function that prevents the player from reloading, and character deaths are always possible, with the story continuing on regardless. Such design choices were intentionally employed to compel players to experience a text in a singular, controlled, although fluid pathway, because this was ultimately the developer's intent for the player experience: to emulate life in all its tedium, fright and regret.

Perhaps for other designers, their decisions not to impose such strict guidelines of experience might indicate that this capacity to test branching paths is not (in their opinion) detrimental to the way in which their narratives their communicate their meaning, allowing the player, should they wish, the grace of making momentary missteps, and to ultimataely overwrite their recollection of the experience (like the save file itself) should they wish.

Alternatively there is Dark Souls (a game seared into my consciousness) in which death and restart come constantly and are part of a player's expectation. 

The fear and frustration is attenuated by the loss of hard earned in game currency, and the sudden ease in which death comes from a simple slip up. Following such a mistake,  a player may doggedly continue the path they originally chose or look to another path through the game.

It is not a narrative per se, except that the player advances through an environment witha rudimentary story, but it does provide an interesting example of  a complelling game environment based on the restart - maybe because such restarts are tied into the cause-consequence dynamic.

EDIT: To fix formatting

Modifié par frypan, 22 mai 2012 - 07:03 .

[edisnooM]

@frypan

In regards to your first post I don't think I have much to add, but I think it's interesting that they seem to have gone against their philosophy on the possibility space in the final moments of the game.

And for your second post you might add Bioshock, where it is essentially impossible to die, you just go back to the most recent Vita-Chamber. Another game is Destroy All Humans, a tongue in cheek game where if you die you just come back as a new clone of the alien character.

[Hawk227]

drayfish wrote...

Just to throw this into the mix:

Would not the game Heavy Rain offer a fitting example in this very fruitful discussion? I've not played the game (I am without a ps3), but from what I understand, it employs an autosave function that prevents the player from reloading, and character deaths are always possible, with the story continuing on regardless. Such design choices were intentionally employed to compel players to experience a text in a singular, controlled, although fluid pathway, because this was ultimately the developer's intent for the player experience: to emulate life in all its tedium, fright and regret.

Perhaps for other designers, their decisions not to impose such strict guidelines of experience might indicate that this capacity to test branching paths is not (in their opinion) detrimental to the way in which their narratives their communicate their meaning, allowing the player, should they wish, the grace of making momentary missteps, and to ultimataely overwrite their recollection of the experience (like the save file itself) should they wish.

This ties in with how I read Kita's questions regarding the issue. If the authors are intentionally allowing for reloads that impact the narrative, isn't that authorial intent? Bioware could have gone the direction that the Heavy Rain developers did, but they chose not to. My feeling is that if the game allows for something within the possibility space (particularly simple mechanics), that that should signify intent. Heavy Rain wanted you feel the consequences of your choices, whereas Mass Effect chose to leave it up to the player how strictly choices were adhered to.

[M0keys]

Hawk227 wrote...

drayfish wrote...

Just to throw this into the mix:

Would not the game Heavy Rain offer a fitting example in this very fruitful discussion? I've not played the game (I am without a ps3), but from what I understand, it employs an autosave function that prevents the player from reloading, and character deaths are always possible, with the story continuing on regardless. Such design choices were intentionally employed to compel players to experience a text in a singular, controlled, although fluid pathway, because this was ultimately the developer's intent for the player experience: to emulate life in all its tedium, fright and regret.

Perhaps for other designers, their decisions not to impose such strict guidelines of experience might indicate that this capacity to test branching paths is not (in their opinion) detrimental to the way in which their narratives their communicate their meaning, allowing the player, should they wish, the grace of making momentary missteps, and to ultimataely overwrite their recollection of the experience (like the save file itself) should they wish.

This ties in with how I read Kita's questions regarding the issue. If the authors are intentionally allowing for reloads that impact the narrative, isn't that authorial intent? Bioware could have gone the direction that the Heavy Rain developers did, but they chose not to. My feeling is that if the game allows for something within the possibility space (particularly simple mechanics), that that should signify intent. Heavy Rain wanted you feel the consequences of your choices, whereas Mass Effect chose to leave it up to the player how strictly choices were adhered to.

"Perhaps one could conlude that Bioware intends to present a fantasy world that suits the whims of a player, whereas Quantic developed Heavy Rain to affect the player in a way they wanted the player to be affected, just in a multitude of fashions."

[KitaSaturnyne]

@frypan

The idea of the possibility space is intriguing. For some reason, it made me think of this:

Catalyst: You can wipe out all synthetic life if you want. Including the Geth.

Me: But I just want to wipe out the Reapers. Can we put it on the Reaper-only setting?

@hawk227

You have just hit my question square on the head. As I've said so much throughout the course of this thread, I wish I could have articulated it so well. Thank you.

[edisnooM]

@KitaSaturnyne

That's something I've wondered about actually, Control only affects Reapers, and Synthesis has to differentiate between organics and synthetics somehow to know to give what to whom. Only Destroy is presented as being a blanket effect, hitting every synthetic.

Edit:

Catalyst: Well I guess we could turn it on Reaper only. If you really want to.

Shepard: Yeah, let's do that.

Catalyst: You know, if you're sure.

Shepard: Flip the switch Glow-boy.

Modifié par edisnooM, 22 mai 2012 - 07:32 .

[drayfish]

@ frypan - nice example with Dark Souls (a game I must say scares me, and my inept thumbs away). 
 
Part of my delight in engaging with videogames is that each text invites new structural and semantic rules with which we must play along. There's a nice malleability to the way in which games communicate consequence to the player. Neither death nor decision-making need have the same implications from game to game. I can be gunned down in the streets in GTA4 only to saunter out of hospital moments later under the guise of some miracle restoration; in Skyrim multiple save files guard against the permanence of death (and crippling bugs); while in a game like the relatively recent reboot of Prince of Persia contrivances of salvation can dismiss the threat of mortal end altogether.
 
As Hawk227 nicely stated, none of these choices are less valid than any other, they simply shift the values that are placed upon certain experiences for the player.

Modifié par drayfish, 22 mai 2012 - 07:32 .

[MrFob]

Hello everyone, how are you going? Hard to catch up on this vibrant thread so I apologize in advance if I missed something and repeat a point, already made (in which case you should simply dismiss my post). However, I find the way the discussion has turned really interesting and I'd like to throw a few more chunks into the pot.
The fact that narratives can change and twist according to player actions is IMO one of the greatest strength of the medium. Games are interactive and so it is one of the great challenges to provide meaningful interactivity in the narrative, possibly with great rewards.
While promising in the beginning, ultimately the Mass Effect series has disappointed me in this regard. Sure, the narrative does change in certain situations according to your actions but as people have pointed out, it is all short term. It would be easy to see most of it with a simple reload of the save 1 minute before a decision is made. It's a nice gimmick but it doesn't really make the player feel a responsibility of the plot that goes beyond trial and error. Players get instant feedback and thus don't have to think ahead.
So IMO, the true potential of narrative changes lies in long term delayed consequences and this is where ME falls flat. Despite the save game imports, most changes due to player decisions are merely aesthetic in nature. Do you get this guy as a companion or another? Which texture will you see in the background or will Fist mumble a few half-hearted insults to you on Omega? These are the issues you decide, rather then the fate of a galaxy. And in the end, you get three buttons to decide the fate of the galaxy - even if the consequences would go beyond color selection again, you get instant feedback and it really doesn't make much difference if you can save after the heaven elevator or not.
There were two games in the last year that really disappointed me because I had high hopes in terms of the effect of my decisions. One was ME3, the other was Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I love this game, I really do. The mechanics are great and you have an impact throughout the story that should have repercussions. Then I come to the end (obvious spoiler warning) and what do I get? 4 frigging buttons again! I could have screened at that moment.
I am still waiting for the game that takes my decisions throughout the plot and weaves them together to provide truly different outcomes. I am not even asking for many of those (of course the permutations increase at a rate of n!). But how about 4-5? If the number of 16 endings would be real rather then a cheap marketing induced half-truth, that would be manageable.
The Witcher series started out in the right direction. They let me wait to see my consequences, up to a point where I can no longer reload without having to replay a significant portion of the game and in the middle, they show very different outcomes but in the end, even those games all railroad you into the same direction,
Another example is Alpha Protocol. Here you get checkpoints which means without very frequent manual saves, you were forced to live with your decisions. And at least with one of them you really could significantly change the outcome of the game but again, that decision was basically placed right before the last level of the game. The many others again amount to nothing but either aesthetics or the instant feedback
Which brings me inevitably to the point where I have to show my age because there is one candidate out there which IMO did a really great job on branching narratives with meaningful varied consequences and which actually succeeded to make the player think about his actions beyond the question of how best to survive. The game I am talking about is the Blade Runner adventure from 1997, one of the only really worthy movie adaptations in the history of video games. Here you get it all. Different endings and plot, Characters that will interact with the protagonist according to their choices and morally ambiguous gray scaled decisions that are anchored deep within the plot line. Try it out if you have the chance, I hope they'll release it on gog.com one of these days. I personally can't think of a better example to incorporate decision and consequence into an interactive structure to date and that is quite incredible, given that we are talking about a game which will see it's 15th anniversary by the end of the year.

The industry has really let us down on that one but if anything, I think it is threads like this one that can convince developers and publishers that there is a target audience for efforts in that direction.

Sorry for the rant and the wall of text. Going back to silent (and work) mode...

[frypan]

edisnooM wrote...

@frypan

In regards to your first post I don't think I have much to add, but I think it's interesting that they seem to have gone against their philosophy on the possibility space in the final moments of the game.

And for your second post you might add Bioshock, where it is essentially impossible to die, you just go back to the most recent Vita-Chamber. Another game is Destroy All Humans, a tongue in cheek game where if you die you just come back as a new clone of the alien character.

Good point about Bioshock as it is an interesting example. I found the vita chambers too much and switched them off - it took away any feeling of failure even though usually (except for Dark Souls) I have no qualms about firing up a savegame. In that case, it detracted from the experience as it seemed so arbitrary. I'd be interested to know if you kept them in, and how it affected your experience of the game.

I actually see the possibility space issue as gamewide, not just endgame, but that may be my interpretation of the concept. When I saw turrets in game, with no ingame reason for the addition, the inclusion raised serious questions beyond the "its been dumbed down" one.

These gameplay decisions changed the way I interacted with the world, and required a reason for them being in there beyond making the game appealing to new players. I was accustomed to close combat, which is why the omniblade inclusion worked (and saved me a couple of times) but the turrets were too jarring. There was no ingame reason for turrets to pop up everywhere in ME3, which momentarily took me out of the game similar to the manner the Mcrucible did. The continuity and development of story in ME3 was not matched with a similar continuity of gameplay conditions.

A good contrast was the change in weapon dynamics in ME2 from ME1, which as I remember was explained in game, even if there were a few slips ups such as Jacob;s loyalty mission.  Even the explanation why the seocnd Normandy could not land was an attempt to explain why the missions in ME2 were differently done. 
 
If I can give an example, the sidequests in ME3 serve as a good case in point. The devs had a perfect explanation for removing them if they  wanted, including the need for much of the expository speech, due to the urgency of the war. The fetch quests could have been presented in a manner that rammed home the urgency of the situation and why Shepherd was not casually strolling from planet to planet.

A bit more communication in game as he dropped off assets or picked them up, working from orbit as he rushed to the next mission, might have made more sense. Without creating a time limit, he could have had choices as to which of these to take, rather than the ability to do all of them as was the case.
 
Imagine if you had to choose whether to save the Elcor or Hanar as there was simply not enough time for both. Sophies Choices I know, but they could be tied in with Shpeherds renegade or paragon philosphy to make the choice easier. Save Omega if renegade, save Elcor if you like big loveable Shakespeare buffs.

It should be said that not all gameplay changes require explanation, but I felt some needed more work. I suspect again that time got away form the devs and that such details were not feasible in the timeframe given.

[frypan]

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

@frypan

The idea of the possibility space is intriguing. For some reason, it made me think of this:

Catalyst: You can wipe out all synthetic life if you want. Including the Geth.

Me: But I just want to wipe out the Reapers. Can we put it on the Reaper-only setting?

@hawk227

You have just hit my question square on the head. As I've said so much throughout the course of this thread, I wish I could have articulated it so well. Thank you.

Ha, I love the idea of a reaper only setting. Shep accidentally stumbles and oops, how did it get set there!

[edisnooM]

@MrFob

I would suggest checking out the Fallout games if you have a chance. While they all essentially have one ending (with the exception of New Vegas which had four, and #1 had a give in to the enemy ending) and a main quest you must follow, they take all your actions throughout the game and the ending narration changes accordingly, the effects that your character had on places and people and so on.

Fallout 1&2 can be found on gog.com for fairly cheap if you don't mind older isometric turn-based RPGs, and are excellent examples of letting the player chart their own path.

Edit: Also Chrono Trigger, an awesome SNES game it had I think 13 different endings depending on when you beat the final boss. It's on Nintendo DS, Wii virtual console, and I think iTunes.

Modifié par edisnooM, 22 mai 2012 - 08:31 .

[edisnooM]

@frypan

Actually my first (and actually only) playthrough I didn't even know you could turn them off. What I thought was interesting about them though was that it wasn't an autosave, or a checkpoint, it was actually a part of the story, another piece of this world where you fling fire from your fingers and fight giant men in dive suits. Also the twist about why you can use them was pretty nifty.

And I can see what you mean about the possibility space in regards to the rest of the game, I suppose it comes back to the fact that until the ending I was still enthralled in my suspension of disbelief and tended to glaze over the flaws or quirks that presented themselves.

Modifié par edisnooM, 22 mai 2012 - 08:39 .

[frypan]

edisnooM wrote...

And I can see what you mean about the possibility space in regards to the rest of the game, I suppose it comes back to the fact that until the ending I was still enthralled in my suspension of disbelief and tended to glaze over the flaws or quirks that presented themselves.

I did the same and only registered the issues as mild imperfections - the game still had me overall until the end.

What I find interesting is in the fallout afterwards. I'd never considered offering alternative gameplay or narrative choices in a game and always either enjoyed or stopped playing a game. This is the only instance I have ever tried to come up witha better experience than what was given - and clearly plenty of other folks are doing the same. Must be the feeling of ownership.. Yet another instance of Bioware's exemplary nature.

Good point about the vita chambers too - I'd forgotten how they were brought into the story.

[edisnooM]

@frypan

Agreed, I've never felt this strongly about a game or story before, to the point that I want, perhaps need, to talk about it in some form or another, to work out what went wrong and why. It's not just a matter of not liking the ending or it not being "Happy" enough, I've been through some pretty awful endings before and just shrugged and walked away. This is the first time when I've been struck by a desire to try and figure out a way to fix it.

BioWare did too good a job making this universe and drawing us all in. :-)

[CARL_DF90]

Agreed. Then in one fell swoop, they up and p***** it all away.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I've been away a bit, so I hope you don't mind me responding to an earlier post. Also, preliminary clarification: the ire in this isn't directed towards any particular person, but the idea in general that video games aren't art due to the participatory nature of their genre. Ok... maybe it's directed towards Ebert a little bit.

osbornep wrote...
 
Ebert had this argument that video games couldn't be art because of participation (it's probably been discussed in this thread earlier, but I'm not sure). The analogy he used is that if you could re-read Romeo and Juliet a second time, this time altering the story so that Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after, wouldn't this cheapen the story and deprive it of anything like genuine tragedy? It's a huge leap to go from this to "Games aren't art!", but I have to admit this argument always bothered me, and something like the considerations Ebert gives conditioned my experience of the various deaths in ME. Perhaps this experience is simply due to my own limitations; if anyone can persuade me that I'm simply not appreciating the massive conceptual shift in story telling that video games present us with, I'm certainly open to it.

If you see the possibility of participation as a downside to video games, as something that makes them less than other forms of art, then stay away. Stay the **** away from my medium, you're too old and set in your ways to be of any benefit to us here. Sorry if that's a little harsh, but I think that's a point of view that is going to do nothing for this art form but limit it and imbue it with unnecessary self-hatred and engender an art movement that seeks to eliminate its strengths.

There was a great talk at GDC a couple years ago about "the player-shaped hole." It pointed out that when people were describing what they did in games, they will often say "I" rather than the name of the character. Whey describing gameplay actions, they'll say  "then I decided to jump them, and I took out one with the hidden blade" instead of "then Ezio decided to jump them." You are Ezio's volition, his will. If you aren't him, you're at least living through him, which is why the metaphor of Desmond is so interesting.

The fascinating thing about Mass Effect was how it iterated on this paradigm. Commander Shepard was, prior to ME3, my favorite female science fiction character of all time, in any medium. This was due in large part to respectful art and marvelous voice acting, but it was also about who Shepard allowed me to be.

Every child is an artist or a storyteller. Maybe we call it pretending, or doodling, but every child dreams and imagines and has spiderman riding a dinosaur to candy island to learn witchcraft. But at some point that becomes "not ok." There's a point where we, as a society say "NO! GIVE UP YOUR DREAMS. THEY BELONG TO WRITERS AND IMPORTANT PEOPLE WHO HAVE BETTER IDEAS THAN YOU DO." Anyone who persists after this is labeled a "fanficcer" and dismissed as a pathetic fringe case deserving of ridicule. But why is an 11-year-old pretending they're at Hogwarts cute, and a 13-year-old doing the same thing pathetic? And what about the amorphous nether-realm we call "being twelve," when you know you're about to start having to be grown up but don't know what it means yet. Well we as a society tell you: it means you aren't allowed to be a part of the story anymore.

This is the period of time when most girls suffer a profound break with their past selves, a period of time when they begin to hate everything they once were, to abandon the language of aspiration and dreams for the language of reality.

From Reviving Ophelia:

Mary Pipher wrote...
Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves. They crash and burn in a social and developmental Bermuda Triangle. In early adolescence, studies show that girls' IQ scores drop and their math and science scores plummet. They lose their resiliency and optimism and become less curious and inclined to take risks. They lose their assertive, energetic and "tomboyish" personalities and become more deferential, self-critical and depressed. They report great unhappiness with their own bodies.

Psychology documents but does not explain the crashes. Girls who rushed to drink in experiences in enormous gulps sit quietly in the corner. Writers such as Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood and Olive Schreiner have described the wreckage. Diderot, in writing to his young friend Sophie Volland, described his observations harshly: "You all die at 15."

Now, I'm not linking the revocation of "permission to pretend" directly with the adolescent crash, but I can't help but think they may be related. I do know girls who have managed to mostly escape this trap, and they have done so largely through the use of avatars and avataristic art. Whether it be cosplay, roleplay, fanfiction, writing, drawing, or even video games, they refuse to stop dreaming, and with those dreams they maintain a connection to their past selves.

I think games have an ability that no other art has: they can allow a person to keep up the kind of participatory pretending we all did as children. They enable pretending, encourage it, identify it as something of value, something that need not be discarded when one reaches adolescence. They allow us to clad ourselves in the armor of an avatar and reach untold heights of dreams and self-actualization. They allow us not to just see the hero, but to be the hero.

And if you think that's not art, then you have died. You let the part of yourself that is capable of dreaming die a long, long time ago, and I mourn him.

My favorite artist of all time in any medium had a very different view of the purpose of narrative.

"Life's like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending.
We've done just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you."
-Jim Henson

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 22 mai 2012 - 03:05 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

frypan wrote...

Good point about Bioshock as it is an interesting example. I found the vita chambers too much and switched them off - it took away any feeling of failure even though usually (except for Dark Souls) I have no qualms about firing up a savegame. In that case, it detracted from the experience as it seemed so arbitrary. I'd be interested to know if you kept them in, and how it affected your experience of the game.

I just thought of it as a conceit of gameplay. Games like BioShock tell compelling stories which are a large part of the experience overall, but it need not be to the exclusion of mechanics that help the gameplay portion, remain engaging and fun. I find a game less fun, personally, when I have to hit replay, wait 20 seconds for the world to load, then start all over again from the last checkpoint. In other words, the game half of things has to be fun to play. And of course, as you mentioned, you can just turn them off if you prefer.

frypan wrote...

Imagine if you had to choose whether to save the Elcor or Hanar as there was simply not enough time for both. Sophies Choices I know, but they could be tied in with Shpeherds renegade or paragon philosphy to make the choice easier. Save Omega if renegade, save Elcor if you like big loveable Shakespeare buffs.

Shh! I'm still working on my course outline for dray!

[delta_vee]

Ah, I go to bed and good things happen. You guys are great. (And then it takes me the better part of the day to cobble this together in the nooks and crannies of the working day. So it goes.)

It's actually easier for me to reply to games, instead of
people, so bear with me:

Heavy Rain

Blech. I know what it was trying to accomplish, but like David Cage's previous work (Indigo Prophecy, nee Farenheit), its narrative rapidly putrefied once it hit the second act. And its twist managed to be both insulting and nonsensical.

I'll also note that it kept true branching to a minium, mostly clustered in the third act, for the same reasons of resource constraints which afflict every fully-voiced game, and hit fully-animated ones doubly hard. Most of the alternate versions of scenes were of the closed-choice-consequence loop type, whereby the manner of traversal between major plot nodes can vary, but the end result is largely the same. Mass Effect does this itself repeatedly, as well - see the multiple paths through Noveria (especialy Peak 15) in ME1, which allow different routes which all end at the same point. This is not a bad thing in itself, as it encourages replay while constraining the
overall progression of the plot (to better keep costs from spiraling out of control in exponential fashion).

The fascinating thing (and questionable, for me) was Heavy Rain's use of situational controls to complete mundane actions, often seemingly to maintain the bare minimum of interaction while moving the story along in a single direction. This makes for an interesting demarcation of the boundaries of a videogame - does the mere act of pressing a button or waggling a stick to continue the game constitute true player complicity?

Fallout

Ah, the Good Old Days, at least by prevalent opinion amongst older fans of the RPG genre. While I'm certainly not going to knock the game, I will point out that a) divergence is easier when voiceovers and animation aren't required, and much of the variance of the epilogue was constructed from orthogonal conflicts which didn't overlap or interact.

It was also old-school in that it didn't shy away from punishing the player for earlier failures. But there's that loaded term, again: "failure", and its cousin "punishment". There are critics who yearn for a return to this adversarial concept, while the industry moves ever further towards a more inclusive, forgiving model of gaming.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I'm quite fond of the game myself, despite the Ending-O-Tron 9000, but its implementation of choice and possibility space was far less tied to overarching plot, which didn't branch at all, and more concerned with closed-choice-consequence loops in the gameplay itself. Decisions were matters of approach and playstyle, mostly, with a few smaller-scale ethical decisions which were linked to the conversation-as-combat system, and the "right" choice would open up additional options in the primary gameplay (which for DXHR was the shooting and sneaking and poking around, not the conversation wheel which was ME's main focus).

Also, as I alluded to earlier but didn't go into depth, the ethical concerns in DXHR were incorporated into the gameplay itself, with nonlethal options available for everything but boss-fights, but often less efficient and more difficult to pull off than simply lining up a silenced headshot. This gave a more continuous, granular feel to the decision-making process, despite none of the choices branching the overall plot in any significant way.

Bioshock

The vita-chambers so badly short-circuited any weight to death and resulting tension that they patched in an option to disable them relatively shortly after release. It wasn't so much that they served as checkpoints, so much as they did nothing to revitalize the enemies you'd recently been fighting. But while Bioshock used random spawns of splicers to keep players from ever fully clearing an area, which should have worked in principle with the vita-chambers, the Big Daddies retained their current status, thus giving rise to the attrition-by-wrench tactic. It was a failed design choice, I think, and the devs seemed to agree in the end.

Dark Souls

Gods, I love this game. Such a beautiful thing; such a triumph of design. But despite the label of "old-school" which everyone seems to apply to it, I think its sensibilities are far more modern than it's given credit for. Despite the infamous difficulty, for example, the game doesn't "punish" the player for death in combat so much as discipline them. That didn't work, go back and try it again, and do it better next time. (DS' bonfires are a similar system of instantiated checkpoints as Bioshock's vita chambers, but DS resurrects dead enemies, so you cannot suicide-run your way through, which is key to avoiding a degredation of difficutly.) But the player only loses what currency they carry (enough to give a risk-reward investment model), but not their level, their inventory, their shorcuts, their defeated bosses, their progress - and since Dark Souls uses the single-savegame persistent model, despite the relative infrequency of plot-impacting decisions, once they are made they cannot be reversed except by way of another full playthrough. 

Modifié par delta_vee, 22 mai 2012 - 06:40 .

[Hawk227]

MrFob wrote...


There were two games in the last year that really disappointed me because I had high hopes in terms of the effect of my decisions. One was ME3, the other was Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I love this game, I really do. The mechanics are great and you have an impact throughout the story that should have repercussions. Then I come to the end (obvious spoiler warning) and what do I get? 4 frigging buttons again! I could have screened at that moment.
I am still waiting for the game that takes my decisions throughout the plot and weaves them together to provide truly different outcomes. I am not even asking for many of those (of course the permutations increase at a rate of n!). But how about 4-5? If the number of 16 endings would be real rather then a cheap marketing induced half-truth, that would be manageable.

I really like DX:HR, although in my original playthrough I was rather put off by the ending-o-matic, probably because I didn't really agree with any of the 4 options. I'm curious which choices you were expecting to play out in the end, because I'm having trouble remembering more than a couple choices, and one of those (Upgrading the Chip) did have a big impact. I guess this ties in to something we've talked about in the past, which is that your satisfaction with the game is strongly tied to how you interacted with it.

For me, DX:HR's narrative was about exploring this world and the ethical issues tied into augmentation. None of the villains (save for Belltower) were especially villainous, Taggart and especially Sandoval were even sympathetic. For me it was a 20 hour exploration of an ethical debate that happened to feature a lot of gameplay along the way. In that sense, I think the ending-o-matic actually fit. After working your way through the story, each side made their final argument and you got to agree with one of them, or none of them.

I agree completely with ME3 failure to payoff on decisions. There were a number of things brought up in ME1 and ME2 whose only impact was a 100 point contribution to your EMS meter. Considering the relative stakes of these decisions (Rachni Queen, Collector Base!) that was largely inexcusable. The one that gets me is the Collector base. There's essentially no difference in ME3 based on your decision. It doesn't empower Cerberus if you kept it, it doesn't weaken them if you didn't. There is only a 10 point swing in EMS one way or the other! It was the biggest decision in ME2, and saving Maelon's data had substantially bigger repercussions (reapercussions) than the base did.

This topic has actually reminded me of one of my favorite games ever: Tachyon: The Fringe. For those that never played it, you play a contract space pilot (voiced by Bruce Campbell) exiled to the frontier of space (think Terminus Systems) and find yourself in the middle of a dispute between a large mining corporation and some colonists who own the rights to the asteroid field. Early in the game, you get to choose which side to join up with, and the game does a good job of handling the divergent pathways. You often end up in the same skirmishes, but based on which side your on, and your success at accomplishing previous tasks, they can play out quite differently. The possibility space is much smaller than ME3's, but I think it did a really good job of illustrating the consequences of your choices/successes. There is never the feeling like you aren't actually having an impact on the universe. Even visually, the final battle is dramatically different depending on your allegiances.

Modifié par Hawk227, 22 mai 2012 - 06:56 .