461 réponses à ce sujet

[Dark_Caduceus]

OniTYME wrote...

Stir or no, still great discussion.

That it is.

[Seboist]

RiouHotaru wrote...

And most of Smudboy's problems arise from the fact he wanted the game to tell him every little detail.  He did the same thing back in Mass Effect 2.  He's a rather staunch (if unknowing) advocate of the removal of player agency.

Yeah, "little details" like gaping hopes in logic and character motivation such as why a Cerberus hating violent fugitive like Jack would want to stick around in a Cerberus ship after getting the data she wants(Shepard's magic charisma I guess). Smud has some nerve wanting to learn how that happened!

And I fail to see how Smud could advocate removal of player agency when the sequels have done nothing but disregard player choice(I'm looking at you Human council and human nationalist Shepard!).

[Seboist]

Maxster_ wrote...
Sure, reapers are retarded. They waited for thousands of years for lulz.
How those retarded creatures even managed to create Citadel trap, and why they even need it anyway, if they can just stomp everything without losses?
And that is even without the Catalyst. With him, everything is more retarded - he just sat on Citadel, watching Sovereign and Harbringer fails for lulz.


BW-grade z-movie level storytelling.

Speaking of Z-grade story telling, don't you just love how they fake out the audience with Shepard "dying" at the end of ME1 and then to proceed to actually kill him in the intro of ME2? That's downright comical if you play them back to back and shows how they planned absolutely nothing.

[Nimrodell]

Dark_Caduceus wrote...

First off, genre isn't a shield you can raise to defend a story. Stories are told well, or they're told badly, and there are examples of each within each genre. One doesn't even need to understand what a genre is to tell Mass Effect 3 is a terrible story, just because it contains so many broken scenes, contrivances, retcons, inconsistent tone, etc, etc.

Secondly, I don't care about your arbitrary definitions as to what "art per se" and "consumer art" is, because it doesn't matter. Again, whether a piece of fiction makes money or not is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is whether or not the story is told well. Twilight is a poorly told story, Harry Potter is a well told story. They've both made bundles of cash, the difference being the former is terrible and the latter is good.

Thirdly, please don't construct straw men. I called out your asinine opinion, and calmy explained how you were wrong. I didn't prate philosophers or patronize you (which you seem quite adept at). How am I "foaming on" your post? And even if I was, how does that influence whether or not you're right?

Then we have this gem: "...and yet again, I'm still aware that Mass Effect is a trilogy, but GAME
TRILOGY - 'cause that's what I bought, and you should see the same - A
GAME TRILOGY - and as such it shows more, but by showing more, it shows
less... Or do you want me to teach you about Phenomenology and Roman Ingarden's , oops, second link that explains more, cause, I can do that too, you know... always happy to help."

-I actually have no clue what you're trying to get at? So because it's a game you shouldn't expect it to be consistent and well told? Or it's useless to analyze and criticize the story because ultimately whether or not you like it is subjective? And then some philosopher helps explain your point for you or... what is this? You know what? Sure, teach me about phenomenology and Ingarden, and whatever else you want. Maybe then I could make heads or tails of what it is you're even getting at.

Genre is very important when we're talking about narrative and consistent story-telling. If Mass Effect trilogy was written trilogy (like those Mass Effect spin-off novels), I'd consider it as poorly written novel, but hey, that's what spin-offs are, comissioned stories to match the taste of particular type of readers/audience. I'm not strawmaning here, I'm merely pointing out that Smudboy is nitpicking something that was created and formed to entertain and earn money - meaning, Mass Effect story is designed by laws of video games (1st you have to have thrilling intro, then tutorial, then 1st squad mate/s, than bit of shooting, than a piece of puzzle discovered, than shooting again, etc.). That story doesn't have the freedom like freely told story that wasn't bound by the format of a video game. That story is even bound by technical issues, like what engine was used while creating particular game, how much resources did they have, etc. That's why I'm telling you that you need to look at a genre and than decide if it's actually worth nitpicking and making mocking reviews, being very snide in the process like we're talking about the real piece of art. True art is not bound, consumer's art is, it catters to the tastes of what is deemed majority, and that's what video games do (just look at the lore of Warcraft - it's tacky, sometimes even absurd, silly and yet people still don't mind - they'll still buy replicas of Frostmourne ).

Smudboy is smart person and I really think it's shame he's wasting his time and effort on videos like this one - ok, Mass Effect story sucks, but so what, I enjoy playing it - I won't teach that on my literature classes, not even to explain the mechanism of Deus ex Machina (for that I have ancient Greeks) - and you know I won't use it? Because it's a video game and its story is bound by statistics, engine, schedule, developer's and publisher's goals, etc.

As for phenomenology and Ingarden's layers - I didn't mean to confuse you nor to sound rude or to put another strawman in this discussion - I just wanted to show you one of the important methods we use while interpreting story (though theory of reception would work much better in Smudboy's case). And yes, story is subjective thing - there is a moment when creator stops being a creator and that role is actually assumed by consumer (and you can see that on these boards - just look at the amount of theories and interpretations of the ending - Walters was going for exploiting that phenomena and that was his hubris, because, Mass Effect is a video game... when you're trying to sit on bot chairs (art and consumer's art), you usually finish hitting the cold floor).

[LeVaughnX]

Smudboy banned me from his channel because I asked him a question which pointed out a flaw in his IT theory bashing videos.

TL;DR - he's a **********.

[Maxster_]

Seboist wrote...

Maxster_ wrote...
Sure, reapers are retarded. They waited for thousands of years for lulz.
How those retarded creatures even managed to create Citadel trap, and why they even need it anyway, if they can just stomp everything without losses?
And that is even without the Catalyst. With him, everything is more retarded - he just sat on Citadel, watching Sovereign and Harbringer fails for lulz.


BW-grade z-movie level storytelling.

Speaking of Z-grade story telling, don't you just love how they fake out the audience with Shepard "dying" at the end of ME1 and then to proceed to actually kill him in the intro of ME2? That's downright comical if you play them back to back and shows how they planned absolutely nothing.

Yeah, that was horrible.
I still don't get why they decided to kill Shepard. That makes no sense, they could use any method of time-skip, scifi is full of. Why turn good story into fairytale?
Well, knowing how they wrote ME2 story(there was one?)...

[Dark_Caduceus]

LeVaughnX wrote...

Smudboy banned me from his channel because I asked him a question which pointed out a flaw in his IT theory bashing videos.

TL;DR - he's a **********.

And what flaw was that?

[Dark_Caduceus]

Nimrodell wrote...

Dark_Caduceus wrote...

First off, genre isn't a shield you can raise to defend a story. Stories are told well, or they're told badly, and there are examples of each within each genre. One doesn't even need to understand what a genre is to tell Mass Effect 3 is a terrible story, just because it contains so many broken scenes, contrivances, retcons, inconsistent tone, etc, etc.

Secondly, I don't care about your arbitrary definitions as to what "art per se" and "consumer art" is, because it doesn't matter. Again, whether a piece of fiction makes money or not is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is whether or not the story is told well. Twilight is a poorly told story, Harry Potter is a well told story. They've both made bundles of cash, the difference being the former is terrible and the latter is good.

Thirdly, please don't construct straw men. I called out your asinine opinion, and calmy explained how you were wrong. I didn't prate philosophers or patronize you (which you seem quite adept at). How am I "foaming on" your post? And even if I was, how does that influence whether or not you're right?

Then we have this gem: "...and yet again, I'm still aware that Mass Effect is a trilogy, but GAME
TRILOGY - 'cause that's what I bought, and you should see the same - A
GAME TRILOGY - and as such it shows more, but by showing more, it shows
less... Or do you want me to teach you about Phenomenology and Roman Ingarden's , oops, second link that explains more, cause, I can do that too, you know... always happy to help."

-I actually have no clue what you're trying to get at? So because it's a game you shouldn't expect it to be consistent and well told? Or it's useless to analyze and criticize the story because ultimately whether or not you like it is subjective? And then some philosopher helps explain your point for you or... what is this? You know what? Sure, teach me about phenomenology and Ingarden, and whatever else you want. Maybe then I could make heads or tails of what it is you're even getting at.

Genre is very important when we're talking about narrative and consistent story-telling. If Mass Effect trilogy was written trilogy (like those Mass Effect spin-off novels), I'd consider it as poorly written novel, but hey, that's what spin-offs are, comissioned stories to match the taste of particular type of readers/audience. I'm not strawmaning here, I'm merely pointing out that Smudboy is nitpicking something that was created and formed to entertain and earn money - meaning, Mass Effect story is designed by laws of video games (1st you have to have thrilling intro, then tutorial, then 1st squad mate/s, than bit of shooting, than a piece of puzzle discovered, than shooting again, etc.). That story doesn't have the freedom like freely told story that wasn't bound by the format of a video game. That story is even bound by technical issues, like what engine was used while creating particular game, how much resources did they have, etc. That's why I'm telling you that you need to look at a genre and than decide if it's actually worth nitpicking and making mocking reviews, being very snide in the process like we're talking about the real piece of art. True art is not bound, consumer's art is, it catters to the tastes of what is deemed majority, and that's what video games do (just look at the lore of Warcraft - it's tacky, sometimes even absurd, silly and yet people still don't mind - they'll still buy replicas of Frostmourne ).

Smudboy is smart person and I really think it's shame he's wasting his time and effort on videos like this one - ok, Mass Effect story sucks, but so what, I enjoy playing it - I won't teach that on my literature classes, not even to explain the mechanism of Deus ex Machina (for that I have ancient Greeks) - and you know I won't use it? Because it's a video game and its story is bound by statistics, engine, schedule, developer's and publisher's goals, etc.

As for phenomenology and Ingarden's layers - I didn't mean to confuse you nor to sound rude or to put another strawman in this discussion - I just wanted to show you one of the important methods we use while interpreting story (though theory of reception would work much better in Smudboy's case). And yes, story is subjective thing - there is a moment when creator stops being a creator and that role is actually assumed by consumer (and you can see that on these boards - just look at the amount of theories and interpretations of the ending - Walters was going for exploiting that phenomena and that was his hubris, because, Mass Effect is a video game... when you're trying to sit on bot chairs (art and consumer's art), you usually finish hitting the cold floor).

Explaining that video games are bound by universal traits like statistics, gameplay engines, etc, etc doesn't actually prove anything though. You haven't explained why video games can't have well told, consistent, and/or insightful stories; only demonstrated that they're a unique medium.

Now if you could extend this further, explaining why every video game, by necessity, must be an inferior medium by which to tell a story, or can't be well told and consistent, then maybe you'd have an argument.

Every medium used to tell stories conforms to certain basic conventions and rules, and are bounded in the way they are told; what makes games so different such that they aren;t even worthy of in-depth critical analysis? Would you say the same of textual stories, or films, or paintings?

You fall back on the fact that you enjoy the game (then mention something irrelevant about some literature class, and how you illustrate the Dues Ex Machina device by invoking the ancient Greeks, I really, okay...). But we've already established that you can like or dislike anything you want; what matters is whether or not you've supported and validated that opinion. Opinions and beliefs can, to a large degree, be measured. Whether you like or dislike a story is ultimately subjective, but you can measure the strength of the story, in many ways, objectively. Compare the retcons and inconsistencies in the Mass Effect trilogy to the Song of Ice and Fire's first three volumes, for example.

Whether or not a story is silly is inconsequential, Don Quixote is a silly story, yet it's regarded as high literature. What matters isn;t the maturty of the content matter, so much as how well that content matter is expressed. Again, genre doesn't matter so long as story is well told; consistent, logical, engaging, etc. The fact that you can assign arbirtrary labels like "consumer art" and "true art" is immaterial; because these labels have no bearing on whether or not that story is good. Nothing about these labels necessitates that true art is told well, or that consumer art is invariably destined to be poorly done, just like nothing about the basic mechanics of an interactive story will lead to a story not worthy of critical analysis.

Also, you've mentioned Ingarden and phenemonology again, but still haven't explained their relevance. So it's an important method when evaluating Mass Effect... why and how?

Modifié par Dark_Caduceus, 21 novembre 2012 - 02:41 .

[Nimrodell]

Dark_Caduceus wrote...

1. Explaining that video games are bound by universal traits like statistics, gameplay engines, etc, etc doesn't actually prove anything though. You haven't explained why video games can't have well told, consistent, and/or insightful stories; only demonstrated that they're a unique medium.

Now if you could extend this further, explaining why every video game, by necessity, must be an inferior medium by which to tell a story, or can't be well told and consistent, then maybe you'd have an argument.

Every medium used to tell stories conforms to certain basic conventions and rules, and are bounded in the way they are told; what makes games so different such that they aren;t even worthy of in-depth critical analysis? Would you say the same of textual stories, or films, or paintings?

2. You fall back on the fact that you enjoy the game (then mention something irrelevant about some literature class, and how you illustrate the Dues Ex Machina device by invoking the ancient Greeks, I really, okay...). But we've already established that you can like or dislike anything you want; what matters is whether or not you've supported and validated that opinion. Opinions and beliefs can, to a large degree, be measured. Whether you like or dislike a story is ultimately subjective, but you can measure the strength of the story, in many ways, objectively. Compare the retcons and inconsistencies in the Mass Effect trilogy to the Song of Ice and Fire's first three volumes, for example.

3. Whether or not a story is silly is inconsequential, Don Quixote is a silly story, yet it's regarded as high literature. What matters isn;t the maturty of the content matter, so much as how well that content matter is expressed. Again, genre doesn't matter so long as story is well told; consistent, logical, engaging, etc. The fact that you can assign arbirtrary labels like "consumer art" and "true art" is immaterial; because these labels have no bearing on whether or not that story is good. Nothing about these labels necessitates that true art is told well, or that consumer art is invariably destined to be poorly done, just like nothing about the basic mechanics of an interactive story will lead to a story not worthy of critical analysis.

4. Also, you've mentioned Ingarden and phenemonology again, but still haven't explained their relevance. So it's an important method when evaluating Mass Effect... why and how?

1. and 4.  I did explain why every video game so far has to be an inferior medium for good story-telling - but alright, I'll be more specific and perhaps then there will be no misunderstanding. I keep mentioning phenomenology as a method we use while interpreting literature, because it explains a lot how creation of story does work and how creator and consumer react on that very creation.While telling a story (either in oral form, like folk stories, fairytales, or like an author in written form), there are boundries that are set by creator him/herself but only to one extend - stories are almost like language, alive and frequent category and as soon as they live author's nest, they actually change, their form and reception changes depending on those who are listening to them or reading them. Since they depend on listeners/readers imagination, education, experience, social status, nationality or race even, they become something unique in each individual (listener/reader) and that's the moment when creator stops being one and the listener/reader actually is starting the further creation (that's why we have so many versions of Cinderella for example - each nation, each listener than story-teller added something unique in the body of basic story, depending on their own background and thanks to fact that they had only small amount of boundries present in original version - the rest was created actually by them - Cinderella's look while she was rich, if her mother was just dead (it was stated simply), or she was turned into cow because of Cinderella's hubris, etc.)

Listener/reader doesn't see characters from the story, s/he doesn't see specific enviroment (like imposed illustration), s/he doesn't hear audio recordings of their dialogues, polilogues or monologues - s/he imagines it all and creates and re-creates those things depending on previously mentioned categories and ofc, depending on number of details or indetermination spots left by creator. For example - narrator told me that Anna Karenina had black lacy dress that misfortunate evening when she re-discovered her sexuality and femininity - but the rest was up to me to create - the form of that ballroom, the way she was moving through the crowd, the glances from other people present there, if Vronski was actually showing excitement or not... I guess that's the reason I don't like Greta Garbo in that role - in the story itself, Anna had much more warmth and naivety for me.

The video game format of story-telling has too many boundries both for the developer/creator and the player/co-creator. For developer the story can't go to such indetermination because it's not just up to the story designer but also it's up to abilities of the engine they use, programmers, schedules and timetables, nowadays even wishlists from forums, and it's up to the budget, 'cause that story is not just created to entertain or teach, to pass a message, to be 'dulce et utile'... that story is created with one more specific goal - to earn the money (meaning, the costs of developing can't go sky high) - video game story is not something that follows just inspiration pulse, that divine ray that is forcing people to create for the sake of creation no matter what - it is craft that uses certain aspects of art - but it's not art itself.

Maybe you already read certain statements from designers themselves... for instance, the basic idea for Mass Effect 3 was to have gradual indoctrination eating away Commander Shepard and they did try to implement that moment and failed, because the engine itself (as I recall) made such story development impossible for now. Or ever seen art book for Mass Effect 3, pages on development of TIM's in-game final incarnation? Even though they had truly interesting concepts of nanites changed indoctrinated TIM, they scratched those, 'cause ultimately, they felt that players would RATHER LIKE to deal with familiar nemesis, familiar face that is changed a bit. Basically, they didn't go for more risky and perhaps more interesting, but again, I repeat, risky concept - they choose what they deemed majority would like the best... And that's not how it works in literature - either oral or written. When Faramir emerged in Tolkien's mind one night, while he was still working on drafts where Eovyn is dying after she and Aragorn were together, he made him come alive according to his own vision and even gave him a parts of himself - he wasn't thinking if his British or American publishers and readers would actually like better if he kept those discarded drafts - for him, Faramir just came to be and that was it. He didn't have the boundry of having specific voice actor that costs certain amount of dollars, or the fact that certain colour design would irritate his readers. Lack of paper was a biatch in those days and he had to conform to the fact that Lord of the Rings has to be separated into three books published then consequently, but that was about it.

Unfortunatelly, video game format is more lush on the surface, but that's just shallow deception, it is limited by it's own deceptive richness - maybe some day it'll change, the engines will be perfect with no limitations on what designer can do and can't do, programs will be cheap, developers won't be dependable on publishers and the fact they need to earn their daily bread... Maybe it'll happen and they'll be able to do things like James Joyce or Marcel Proust - neither of them cared if their novels will be a business money earning miracle - and the fact is, very small number of younger people actually read Ulysses or dares reading it - doesn't matter - Joyce didn't write this novel to satisfy the taste of majority and earn money.

After all, video games are even limited by time - depending on question from both developers and players - how many hours of gameplay will it be, what pacing will it be - there are those who like action and not too much talk (they deem it boring - want skip option or action version) and there are those who crave to have the entire interactive movies... And this is hybrid RPG - how to make peace between these faction and have many copies sold? Yet again, George Martin doesn't seem worried about this things and what about Hamingway and his Old Man and the Sea - his Santiago didn't need the passages with shooting, solving puzzles, having a romance, again shooting, etc. Try making a RPG out of that one - I mean it, it's awesome story-telling, if genre, format doesn't mean anything and it's irrelevant... I can bet that majority on these boards never wanted or was tempted to even watch a movie with Spencer Tracey.

That's why I told you, the first problem we have is genre and its limitations. I hope I did manage to explain better than previous times, if I didn't, ah well, at least you know that someone out there honoured your questions and tried to be more specific.

2. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to compare Martin's Song of Ice and Fire and Mass Effect story... I think I would do diservice to both. Song of Ice and Fire is a novel in sequels, written form and for that matter, the one that is special in this sea of modern publishing garbage, especially because George Martin used the tricks from short story genre (and he mastered that one alright) and he used even some maybe forgotten techniques that were developed much earlier by William Faulkner (which is not surprising, both of them weren't strangers to writing screenplays). Try thinking like this - would it be actually possible (but I mean - try being objective on this one) to develop hybrid RPG like Mass Effect by using Song of Ice and Fire without butchering the story such as it is now? Just look at the series - how much TV respected the original story - and why it couldn't follow the true story - and then add to the equation players, their decisions, morality alignments and the fact that the costs of developing such RPG hybrid can't go over certain plausible budget... I don't think this time of comparison between genres and the fact that we're talking about different categories even is a valid one.

3. If you want for your criticism to be a valid one, then you have to take all aspects in account - selective approach such as this where we forget major divisions and the fact that we're comparing different forms of art or forgetting that something is craft before art won't do anything solid or good. First - there's art and there's craft. When I was in Greece this summer, I saw replicas of Phidias' bust of Athena - they were selling those for 5 euros (cheap plaster versions of course, though the cast scars were nicely covered)... They were neatly made, even had those cracks and patina all over them look - but their purpose wasn't to celebrate Athena Parthenos nor they were expression of a man who was trying to conquer the stone and bend it to his will even if he dies while trying to shape it - their purpose is simple, the workshop that made 'em wants to use ancient Greece heritage and earn daily living, for me - the bust looks nice on my shelf, reminds me on the day I visited that place but it's not Phidias' or his pupil version.

Anyway, I tried to explain, apologies if there's some bad English in this reply (not my mother tongue) - if this is not enough or good, ah well, that's how things go. And for the end, please, do me a favour - find old Russian fairytale from Ural 'The Stone Flower', it perfectly shows how art works and how it can be destructive even and how it's not tied by everyday's pragmatism and how craft (or how they truly call it today - consumer's art) work.

[Harorrd]

People need to realize that stupid people who cant comprehend what Casper the friendly ghost is talking, enjoy the ending, while people who has some knowledge in speech and argument find the ending a blast from a gun to the genitalia

[dorktainian]

Harorrd wrote...

People need to realize that stupid people who cant comprehend what Casper the friendly ghost is talking, enjoy the ending, while people who has some knowledge in speech and argument find the ending a blast from a gun to the genitalia

Brilliant.

[abyss-reaver]

^a painful one.

Always with a smile I remember the leaked script before releasing -and assurance of BioWare that it has nothing to the final version... Then there was posts of a guy who were told to be one of writers, saying that only Hudson and Walters were truly involved in the ending - ofc that was also neglected.
The irony is that they are kicking ppl in balls with cutting their own at the same time.