588 réponses à ce sujet

[AmstradHero]

This maturity discussion is way off-topic, but to weigh in with an alternative viewpoint...

I haven't played enough of Witcher 2 to make a judgement call on its overall level of maturity, but so far it's devoid of the rampant immaturity I found prevalent in The Witcher.

However, I'll happily stand by my appraisal that Witcher 1 was lamentably immature. It was constantly trying to be "mature" by throwing in sex, swearing, "nudity" and violence, but did so with no context nor any additional narrative value whatsoever. It's particularly prevalent in the first few chapters, but it does pervade the entire game to a lesser degree. Yes, the game does legitimately deal with adult issues, but these felt so overshadowed by the adolescent attempts at maturity that it weakened the overall narrative.

[sympathy4sarenreturns]

The Witcher 2 was amazing.

[Meltemph]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Travie wrote...

Have we really got to the point that even developers don't take gaming journalists very seriously?

Eh, my dislike of gaming journalism is probably more tied to "Allan the discerning human being" than "Allan the BioWare employee."

THere are aspects of it, such as the gratuitous chain linking (that often help to only spread rumors) as well as the recent article outlying how easy it is to get them to run with something (which is exacerbated by the chain linking) despite the "leak" later demonstrating that it was all just a ruse.  Though that's symptomatic of an audience that wants to just gobble it all up and it's a race for clicks.

But that's neither here nor there for this thread.

Ya, I pretty much agree, game journalism, outside of getting news ahead of the consumers doesnt really have much more validity in game critisism then a gamer in terms of any sort of authority.  There isnt any real reason to hold up their opinion more so then any random forum poster, for the most part.  Although I think a lot of this can get traced back to the publsihers and more specifcally, PR and their dealings with the industry, but that is a whole other can of worms.

As it stands, I dont understand how anyone could get their imies in a wad with what you said, it isnt like 2012 was a great year for game jorunalisms track record.

[Dutchess]

MissOuJ wrote...

Dave of Canada wrote...

Also, the kiss between Philippa and Saskia is an important plot point; the dwarf in the background making comments about "lesbomancy"... not so much.

This scene ruined the game?

No, nor have I in any shape or form argued that it did. I pointed out it highlights the less than mature attitude the game has towards sex and sexuality.

So the inclusion of an immature person makes the whole game immature? People sometimes make silly jokes. I make silly jokes. Don't you? Don't your friends? That dwarf obviously knows nothing about magic, so he comments on the only part he recognizes: a woman pressing a rose pettle against another woman's mouth with her lips. And what do we learn later? That Philippa actually used that rose and that kiss to cast a spell on Saskia that made her believe she was in love with Philippa and made her obey in everything. So that silly dwarf with his silly comment was actually very close to the truth! Sometimes things aren't what they seem, and sometimes they are exactly what they look like. 

DA2 had plenty of childish jokes as well. And if you compare the Philippa/Cynthia scene to what you walk into in Sebastian's quest ("the feather! Use the feather!")... then be so kind to tell me which of those two scenes served no other purpose than giggles and OMG NAUGHTY. Perhaps you can enlighten me about that moment of deep and meaningful characterization in DA2?

Modifié par renjility, 19 février 2013 - 09:22 .

[cindercatz]

Just a quick couple comments..

@AmstradHero
The AC3 thing, the comment about AC3 being better than Brotherhood and Revelations.. that's not bad journalism. It's an honest opinion, and to support that I offer my agreement with that particular reviewer. I even rate it just slightly better than AC2, though I find the storytelling somewhat lacking. But as a game overall? Yeah.

Sex in videogames vis a vis Witcher 2:
So I haven't gotten very far in that game, but just commenting on the descriptions a page and two back, I gotta say those scenes sound very much like the kind of thing that Penny Arcade video is talking about as the goal, not the problem. I haven't seen either scene, but I have seen two nude scenes so far, and from what I've seen.. the depiction of sex is in line with everything else in the game.

That's to say, they have purpose, including the nudity, including the accessory, including the "lesbomancy", but the gratuitousness of the actual depiction veers into sexploitation territory.. which is perfectly in line with every other aspect of the game. The callousness of that entire world, which is actually more realistic than people like to admit, is a defining trait of the setting and its characters. It's not melodrama. It's not high drama. It's down and dirty gorilla style cinema verite, with an exploitation excess. Every aspect of it, from the prevalence and depiction of its moral themes, to the language and violence, to the motivating factors in the world. We don't have a gaming term to describe that, or even a hybrid descriptor, which is telling for the art of videogames and its stage of development. So I'll say right now it's good that it exists, whether you like it or not, and it has an important place, challenging and pushing at our culture, just like its cousins in film, literature, and graphic art.

Those scenes as described? I'm glad they exist. If you tone it down for sex, you ghettoize sex, you reinforce those controlling, demonizing forces in society that all but demand conformity, and then use that to enforce agendas along far right (and far left) paths. Social stigmas are invented and utilized to control populations in the favor of fear mongers. Art like that exists to challenge and tear down those social systems, to ask its audience to look in the mirror and think about the box they live in and the way they view their world. It has its very important place.

So when the article makes the wish that DA3 would be 'more mature' and takes the example of Witcher 2, that's really what it means. Great art and great drama don't pull punches to gratify any prevailing taboo, and that includes sex and nudity. Personally, I don't think DA3 should mirror TW2's model, but that's because of the tonal difference. Where TW2 veers into exploitation, DA is supposed to be hard drama (with comic relief, sure). Unfortunately, DA2 in particular broke its own rules and its own tone when it came to sexuality, setting it aside and mocking it through dialogue routinely, while shying away from any mature depiction of it whatsoever. So yes, TW2 is actually mature in how it deals with sexuality, while DA2 was not. DA3 could take from that and benefit, while avoiding the exploitational tone of TW2. Then it would maintain DA's tone and place as a work, but step up on the maturity scale to what it otherwise attempts to be. DA would as a result do a much better job of presenting a consistent, coherent work, without at least one of its current major caveats.

edit: sorry, not so short as I originally intended :-)

Also, I completely agree with what Lucy_Glitter said last page. Absolutely.

Modifié par cindercatz, 19 février 2013 - 11:31 .

[AmstradHero]

cindercatz wrote...
@AmstradHero
The AC3 thing, the comment about AC3 being better than Brotherhood and Revelations.. that's not bad journalism. It's an honest opinion, and to support that I offer my agreement with that particular reviewer. I even rate it just slightly better than AC2, though I find the storytelling somewhat lacking. But as a game overall? Yeah.

Consider me stunned.  You liked not being able to run along rooftops for very long before having to jump down because of massive unbridgeable gaps? You liked the on-rails parkour of the wilderness? You liked lengthy sequences of non-interactive cutscenes interspersed by riveting gameplay like... walking? You liked fetch quests? You liked the predictable and completely unchallenging quicktime combat against animals? You liked one of the blandest protagonists in a AAA title in the past few years in the form of Connor? You like being forced down a single path to complete missions on many occasions, despite it being an open world game?

Maybe if you're American and you find the postcard tour of the revolution interesting, it could be a passable experience. In terms of actual gameplay that provides the player with active reasons to get involved and care about the storyline and give them interesting things to do and make the mechanics of playing interesting... it's really terrible.

For my money, it's the most boring and repetitive game in the series... I don't understand how it's worse than the first one, but it is. If you compare AC2 to AC3, the former has more freedom in its mechanics, more tools at the player's disposal, more variety in core gameplay, more flexibility to complete tasks as the player wishes, and it's a better written and delivered story to boot.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 19 février 2013 - 12:31 .

[Firky]

With The Witcher and sexism, though, is it inconsistent to be able to both enjoy the games and appreciate that an argument for sexism could be made? People seem to be, generally, either, a) The Witcher is great and not sexist at all, or I hate The Witcher and it's sexist.

I really enjoyed both Witchers. The Witcher 2 irked me more from a sexism angle, oddly enough, for comments like, "She must be on her period." Or whatever. And the fact that there was no key to free the woman threatened with rape, etc. But, I'm a mature gal and I can differentiate between tongue in cheek, badly done and restrictions of game mechanics. (I think TW2 was some of each, but I still loved it.)

Like with A song of Ice and Fire. I can absolutely understand why someone wouldn't like to read it because it comes across as sexist. I found some of the initial Daenerys chapters very confronting, but I also really enjoy being challenged like that.

I think my point is, it's OK to like The Witcher or whatever but also entertain the argument that its sexist. (And, also, it's totally understandable to not like it for literally any reason.)

PS. I've never given incest a lot of thought. (Or any.) But, I was extremely surprised to find myself rooting for "that relationship" by about the 3rd book of Song of Ice and Fire. To my mind, that's good writing.

Modifié par Firky, 19 février 2013 - 01:10 .

[cindercatz]

I think it's personally reasonable, yes, and I also think the sexploitative parts of the game are kind of intrinsic to fully realizing that game. They are meant to shock you a little bit, like a lot of elements of that game, and then drag you through. If it's sexist, it's only superficially so, and the goal and result is not a sexist product as I see it. I also think it bears considering that sex is psychologically messy, which is kinda the point of using it, and if you're going to push a lot of those buttons, sometimes the immediate personal response is negative to some people, and maybe it's supposed to be. Sometimes that's the point.

You can be downright sexually provocative, a lot more than Witcher, and not be even close to sexist.

AmstradHero wrote...

cindercatz wrote...
@AmstradHero
The AC3 thing, the comment about AC3 being better than Brotherhood and Revelations.. that's not bad journalism. It's an honest opinion, and to support that I offer my agreement with that particular reviewer. I even rate it just slightly better than AC2, though I find the storytelling somewhat lacking. But as a game overall? Yeah.

Consider me stunned.  You liked not being able to run along rooftops for very long before having to jump down because of massive unbridgeable gaps? You liked the on-rails parkour of the wilderness? You liked lengthy sequences of non-interactive cutscenes interspersed by riveting gameplay like... walking? You liked fetch quests? You liked the predictable and completely unchallenging quicktime combat against animals? You liked one of the blandest protagonists in a AAA title in the past few years in the form of Connor? You like being forced down a single path to complete missions on many occasions, despite it being an open world game?

Maybe if you're American and you find the postcard tour of the revolution interesting, it could be a passable experience. In terms of actual gameplay that provides the player with active reasons to get involved and care about the storyline and give them interesting things to do and make the mechanics of playing interesting... it's really terrible.

For my money, it's the most boring and repetitive game in the series... I don't understand how it's worse than the first one, but it is. If you compare AC2 to AC3, the former has more freedom in its mechanics, more tools at the player's disposal, more variety in core gameplay, more flexibility to complete tasks as the player wishes, and it's a better written and delivered story to boot.

Point by point?
I didn't find much more inability to freerun than in previous games, and I thought it was a lot more natural. I loved climbing cliffs, for instance. I also loved the seasons with the deep snow, seriously loved it.

I loved the freerunning, yes. I don't see it as any more on rails than any of the rest of it, considering you could veer off in any direction at practically any point in the heavily forested areas, and we had new combat abilities to go along with it, and grass/bush cover, etc. But hey, I grew up for a good many years in the country, so I liked climbing trees and sneaking through bushes.

I never mind cutscenes. I've yet to encounter a game where the cutscenes were so jarring or so interminable as to dampen my enjoyment of the game at all. I actually thought there was too much non-cutscene walk along dialogue, which goes back to AC2.

There were very few fetch quests. But I did prefer chasing down pages through the air to the old foot races, yes. And I enjoyed the hunting quests, each one different, and the tall tales wilderness rumor stuff, which gave a little bit of investagative gameplay, as did tracking, also mostly new.

The QTEs were short and only one of many ways you could approach those encounters. Personally, my only problem was with how aggressive the predators behaved, since they really do get bad raps and need to be protected now.

I loved the protagonist. I'm 1/8 Native American myself, as much as I am anything else, and 1/16 Mohawk, so that was a great thrill for me. I actually learned a lot, as we really do get a severely slanted, very sparse version of our own history over here. I know a lot more about ancient Greece and Rome and Britain and France and Germany than I do about my own tribal history, and what I know about colonials that's worth anything I didn't learn in text books. So I thought he was great. I do think they needed to do a lot more with his story and get away from the American Revolution more. That's one of my problems with the storytelling. But the protagonist is beautiful.

I don't see that I was forced down a single path any more often than the other games.

Gameplay is where AC3 is the best of the series, though. The combat is the best yet, with two caveats. I really wanted to throw weapons like I could in AC2-B-R. And a double assassination was way too difficult to get to target and execute. Other than that, I had more options, not less. Poison was still there. Smoke was still there. The melee was more fluid than ever. I could use human shields against firearms. The running moves, attacks and vaults, were still there. I loved the rope darts. He lost the hookblade, but he gained so much else I wasn't bothered. The recruits and their assassin abilities were the best yet, and all had faces and names and stories and dialogue this time out. I thought the 'assassinate' ability itself took a step back, but then the rest of their options were great, so I hardly used old faithful. All of the hiding areas were there, plus moving carts, though more difficult to use. And there was a lot more variety in the environment, which meant I had a different experience in different areas, which kept it more fresh. Horses were still there, though granted there's less ability to just ride them all the way between destinations in the wilderness. And ship combat blows the water out of any other AC side content to date. I loved the naval combat. I missed Da Vinci's inventions, but not as much as I loved the ships. The forts were great. The underground puzzles were great.

I did not like the endless enemies if your notoriety got too high. And I thought there weren't enough scenes with the modern day group. And the actual mansion was buggy. But that's not a relative lot to complain about.

So yeah, gameplay wise, I don't know what you're talking about. It's the best yet, by far. The story left some to be desired compared to AC2 and Brotherhood, especially AC2, but wasn't bad enough that it sunk the game for me. And old Boston's not much to look at compared to Firenze or Constantinople or Milan or Rome or the other Italian towns, I'll give you that. I love Italy (not to exclude Turkey). But the wilderness and the ocean and the homestead were beautiful too.

Modifié par cindercatz, 19 février 2013 - 03:07 .

[nightscrawl]

Since many of the replies in this thread are about it, if anyone wants to talk about gaming journalism specifically, I made a thread about it in Off-Topic.

[Huyna]

Interesting article, thanks for the link. 

Dragon Age 2, as much as it wanted to explore darker themes

Eh, like what?

with its attempts to do more – Hawke’s mother for instance

Yeah, Hawke's mother - an unavoidable tear-jerker, drama-that-scripted and no matter How Hard You Try She Will Still Die. Awesome attmept "to do more". Anyone among developers rememebers BG2 and "i just killed myt LI cause she turned into vampyre " story  line? No? Okay.


Geralt’s controversy-shrugging adventures make it look like a cartoon in comparison, and without coming across as gratuitous.

"Witchers" were awesome, true. But they did have a huge support cause of books Geralt's world and realitys based on. Oh, and developers were not into "artistic integrity" and political correct crap.

No More Deep Roads. Dullest. Location. Ever.

So. Wrong.

No Main Character Voice. For the above reasons, really.

So true.

Return Of The God Baby.

Hell yeah!

Action/RPG Choices.

A quests/side quests that can be resolved through conversation and application of grey matter MUST be around in DA3. 

Modifié par Huyna, 19 février 2013 - 06:33 .

[intellego]

 I agree with many points made in the article and I strongly support the following:

• Different race/ origin backgrounds like in DAO
• No voice over for the main character or a choice of many different voice types like in DAO (very important imo)
• Less redundancy in encounters/ terrain reuse
• A more open world in which the player can explore thereby allowing the story to unfold in a more organic way
• More role-playing and story interaction with party characters like in DAO (more gradually unfolding romances as well so they don't feel as rushed)
• Designing the game for the PC first and not for a console (a major mistake of DAII in my opinion
• Not making multiplayer crucial to the success of the single player campaign

Honestly I hope the team returns to most of the design decisions they made in DAO (Dragon Age Origins). I enjoyed that game thoroughly and replayed it many times.

In contrast I only played Dragon Age II once and abandoned my second attempt to play it through. For me Dragon Age II just didn't have the richness and variation that I enjoyed in DAO. Hopefully the team will recapture the winning elements that made Origins my favorite game of the last ten years! 

[cJohnOne]

@intellago: I'm only addressing the idea of designing for PC first. They didn't do that just to do that. They designed for consoles first because it works much better than trying to port over the PC version into consoles.

After the next generation of consoles releases this shouldn't hold back the visuals of new games any futher so it's a moot point, I think.

[AmstradHero]

@Firky
There were plenty of gameplay/design reasons I didn't like Witcher 1 as well. The immaturity of the game was one thing, but it was hardly the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

cindercatz wrote...
I didn't find much more inability to freerun than in previous games, and I thought it was a lot more natural. I loved climbing cliffs, for instance. I also loved the seasons with the deep snow, seriously loved it.

Climbing was now mostly "push up" - it was rare you needed to do anything, and after removing the leap ability, there was nothing you could do to short cut. The snow looked great aesthetically.... but far out, going ANYWHERE that wasn't on a path (ground or tree branch) was painful. I think this is part of where we're differing in our opinion. For you, the aesthetics of the game - the outdoors, the redone animations, the combat moves - outweigh the clunky and boring mechanics. I think this is what happened with a lot of reviewers too - I lost count of the times where reviewers said it was "fun to leap off treetrops to assassinate a hare." No. It wasn't. It was boring. You're killing a defenseless, completely unaware small animal... with a single button press. What's more unfortunate is that it isn't the most boring thing in the game.
I don't deny that the game looks and feels great in terms of its fluidity most of the time... but it's still boring to play.

cindercatz wrote...
I loved the protagonist. I'm 1/8 Native American myself, as much as I am anything else, and 1/16 Mohawk, so that was a great thrill for me. I actually learned a lot, as we really do get a severely slanted, very sparse version of our own history over here. 
...
So I thought he was great. I do think they needed to do a lot more with his story and get away from the American Revolution more. That's one of my problems with the storytelling. But the protagonist is beautiful.

Again, I think this is why we've got irreconcilable differences. You care about the protagonist because you feel you relate to him. I never cared for the protagonist because the game never gave me a reason to care about him. Basically the game's best effort was "your village was burned and your mother died. Okay player, now you can be sympathetic to our protagonist." Sorry, that's not good enough. Connor was never made into a complete character. He's like a slightly more judgemental version of Ezio at the VERY beginning of AC2... and he never changes. Connor never displays any character development throughout the entire game - Haytham is a more rounded and complex character, and we only got to play him for a few hours.

These are the types of things I expect reviewers to be aware of. I expect them to see how shallow the characterisation of Connor is, and how the game doesn't really have a story so much as a "American revolution greatest hits". By all means, they can like the game. I have no problem with that. They just have to be aware of the biases that are causing them to like it and acknowledge them.

[BrookerT]

Huyna wrote...

Interesting article, thanks for the link. 

Dragon Age 2, as much as it wanted to explore darker themes

Eh, like what?

with its attempts to do more – Hawke’s mother for instance

Yeah, Hawke's mother - an unavoidable tear-jerker, drama-that-scripted and no matter How Hard You Try She Will Still Die. Awesome attmept "to do more". Anyone among developers rememebers BG2 and "i just killed myt LI cause she turned into vampyre " story  line? No? Okay.


Geralt’s controversy-shrugging adventures make it look like a cartoon in comparison, and without coming across as gratuitous.

"Witchers" were awesome, true. But they did have a huge support cause of books Geralt's world and realitys based on. Oh, and developers were not into "artistic integrity" and political correct crap.

No More Deep Roads. Dullest. Location. Ever.

So. Wrong.

No Main Character Voice. For the above reasons, really.

So true.

Return Of The God Baby.

Hell yeah!

Action/RPG Choices.

A quests/side quests that can be resolved through conversation and application of grey matter MUST be around in DA3. 

Well no http://www.gamefront...mpromising-art/

[shodiswe]

I do think that Richard has a few points, like wanting a more open world. Less reused areas. I don't mind reusing soem areas now and then but when too many weird things from thives, cultists, necromances, undead, elves, slavers and what not seems to be crawling the same area... Why don't they just kill each other so we don't have to deal with it?
I liked DA:O's travel across a map and the existance of local communities with different types of people, events and a story that evovled and affected those communities.
Like helping that little community fight of the horde or whatever it was, it's starting to slip from my mind by now.
Exploration, new areas, a good story, weaving in the characters, characters having motives for tagging along or getting involved.
I did enjoy a lot of DA2 even though it did feel a little claustrophobic inside Kirwall.
I did everything I could to try and keep the mages in line and stop bad things from happening but it looks like the local mages were a secret cult of bloodmages and necromances all along so it was a hopeless cause, trying to weed them out and save the good ones.. I found that slightly dissapointing.
Seeing as that was a setup for the next game I guess it was requiered no matter how dissapointing it may have been.

Character Vault: sounds like a good idea actualy.

Actualy.. I think I'll reinstal DA:2 and see if Ican get another game going, I was going for it a few months ago but I didn't get far before giving up on the project. Lack of time was part of it. mabe soem lack of motivation. I do think there was some truth about the many comments about several parts of the graphics being boring and repetitive. Probably due to reuse of areas in the city and the "walls".

It also had good parts ofcourse! and then the middle gound stuff. Some of the fetch quests feelt a little weird, trying to find the owners of hats and minor trinkets.

[MissOuJ]

Hey thanks to the person who took my comments and posted them into the Escapist magazine forum instead of engaging me here.

Really ****ing mature of you.

[The Hierophant]

lol

[BrookerT]

MissOuJ wrote...

Hey thanks to the person who took my comments and posted them into the Escapist magazine forum instead of engaging me here.

Really ****ing mature of you.

What a bastard, massively taking the conversation out of context and  dismissing our pints because apparantly were fanboys.

dick 

[Renmiri1]

MissOuJ wrote...

Hey thanks to the person who took my comments and posted them into the Escapist magazine forum instead of engaging me here.

Really ****ing mature of you.

Ewww.. someone did this ? Where ? 

[MissOuJ]

BrookerT wrote...

MissOuJ wrote...

Hey thanks to the person who took my comments and posted them into the Escapist magazine forum instead of engaging me here.

Really ****ing mature of you.

What a bastard, massively taking the conversation out of context and  dismissing our pints because apparantly were fanboys.

dick 

Isn't it sad I'm actually glad they are dismissing me as a fanboy because as long as they are unaware I'm a woman I actually have a smaller risk of getting doxed or getting hatemail and hatePMs?

[Chris Priestly]

MissOuJ wrote...

Hey thanks to the person who took my comments and posted them into the Escapist magazine forum instead of engaging me here.

Really XXX mature of you.

Almost as mature as swearing on a forum where swearing isn't allowed?

To everyone: We all have different levels of maturity. Try to respect everyone here. If you want to quote someone, it is polite to ask. However, it is not required to get permission. This is a public forum and if you post publicly, you may be quoted. Trust me, I know.

[chuckles471]

MissOuJ wrote...

Hey thanks to the person who took my comments and posted them into the Escapist magazine forum instead of engaging me here.

Really ****ing mature of you.

Don't feel bad about the Escapist people talking ****.
I got a ban for asking a MOD to give me the personal information of everyone on topic called "having sex with children should be legal"(most people on it were serious), so I could pass it on to the police.

[MissOuJ]

Chris Priestly wrote...

MissOuJ wrote...

Hey thanks to the person who took my comments and posted them into the Escapist magazine forum instead of engaging me here.

Really XXX mature of you.

Almost as mature as swearing on a forum where swearing isn't allowed?

To everyone: We all have different levels of maturity. Try to respect everyone here. If you want to quote someone, it is polite to ask. However, it is not required to get permission. This is a public forum and if you post publicly, you may be quoted. Trust me, I know.

FYI, I censored myself there, just four asterists in a row.

Also working for BW puts you into a much different situation than myself, and comparing the two is really disingenuous. Also, as a guy you don't have to deal with the internet backlash for being a woman and having the audacity to have an opinion and express it online. The Escapist gaming forum is a pretty big community - the fear that someone there blows a casket over this and decides to "put me on my place" by cyberbullying me is very real for me.

Modifié par MissOuJ, 19 février 2013 - 09:16 .

[Chris Priestly]

MissOuJ wrote...

FYI, I censored myself there, just four asterists in a row.

FYI, if you had actually censored yourself, you wouldn't have needed to swear.

[MissOuJ]

Chris Priestly wrote...

FYI, if you had actually censored yourself, you wouldn't have needed to swear.

... And I didn't. If I'd used clever spelling to get around the filters, then yes. But since when has the illusion of swearing been banned? Because then your banhammer is getting a real workout in this thead alone.

You still mad I called you out on that rape joke two months ago? Because that's a long time to hold a grudge.