simfamSP wrote...
Wait, you are telling that The Walking Dead has story-driven gameplay? Good, because The Walking Dead is a regular game that is probably the closest to interactive movie gameplay standards right now. But, unfortunately, this good story has too poor visual part to be called an interactive movie or just a great modern game.
I'm telling you that The Walking Dead is a *good* example of compromise. What is lacks in gameplay, it makes up for in the depth of interaction. Choosing dialogue and making choices have a significant effect.
Now, I take offence at that. The visuals in The Walking Dead are beautiful, just as the visuals in Planescape Torment are.
Perhaps you should watch the video on aesthetics and graphics.
Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate... There was almost no gameplay in these games. Just point and click. Point and click everywhere: combat, dialogues, "exploration". Compared to that Beyond: Two Souls has the most rich and advanced regular gameplay in the history of game development.
You're making it very hard for me to take you seriously. How on earth do you define gameplay then? If you're going to twist the control scheme into something as shallow and empty as that and then compare it to Beyond, where it's essentially "choose a button" then we're at a stalemate here. You did the same thing for third-person shooters and other games too.
Or is Dues Ex just a 'click point and shoot' thing now?
Choose any story-driven game, and try to play it skipping each and every cutscene and dialogue. What remains of the game will bore you in matter of hours. There will be no story left.
Dialogue existed before cutscenes; or do you put them in the same category? If I were to play the game in mute, that'd might **** it up too.
It seems you either haven't understood, or haven't read all that I've written. Objectively, games do not need cut-scenes in order to tell a story. I used these old games as good examples, in which cutscenes amount to almost nothing of the game experience. When a game falls off balance and tries to create a movie, it loses its identity within the medium. There always needs to be a compromise.
If you want me to be fair, I can. Look at a game which is purely gameplay, or in fact, very little of it, but still presented in a non-cinematic manner. Dear Esther. Well written, sophisticated yada yada yada... yet its main flaw is that lack of interactivity which makes the medium so special. Dear Esther is essentially a walk through a pretty island whilst someone narrates a bunch of monologues relevant to the plot, where you, the player, must find out what happened through a bunch of clues in the walk.
There is no exploration, no puzzles, not even dialogue where the game could have benefited from these things.
When someone is trying to "share his Shepard story" on Youtube, is he placing Mass Effect gameplay videos there? No, he is placing videos with cutscenes and dialogues. The same goes for Dragon Age or any other story driven game.
Of course. Videos are meant to be cinematic. It'd be stupid to add gameplay when your goal is for cinematic purposes.
When point of a game is to tell a story, gameplay becomes secondary. But the gameplay has to be rich enough to provide interactivity.
Define 'rich.' You're using words that make no sense in the context.
As for gameplay: it doesn't have to. Dark Souls is my perfect example. It tells a rich and vibrant Tolkien-esque gothic story entirely through gameplay. It's a secondary objective, and it makes you work for it. But hell, is it worth it.
Not all games need to be like that. Simply using gameplay to tell the story or to give flare, immersion or impact to the story is good enough.
The Last of Us is a good example. I played it first time on hard, and it was an amazing experience. The fights felt risky, supplies were low, annumition scarce and I was very easy to kill.
Tension was high, I felt more vulnerable and as a player, much more connected to Joel and Ellie. This wasn't a game, it was a brutal world that wanted to kick my ass anywhere I went.
Do you know what impact that had on the plot? Narrative is EVERYTHING! It's basic literary technique. From themes, setting, drama, significance, emotion, coherency, development... there are so many factors that go into it other than just characters. You don't just slap in good dialogue and some pretentious horse**** and pseudo-psychology and say "great plot."
This is where visuals, music, gameplay come in. They can replace what books give so much of.
Pathetic Fallacy: The Walking Dead episode 2, the clouds before the storm mimics the ever growing tension within the farm.
Setting: Dark Souls, The Last Of Us... basically any game with a gripping atmosphere.
Foreshadowing: The Witcher's ending cutscene where the Assassin fails to kill Foltest.
It's all there to look at, it doesn't mean the writing is any less when it's done through gameplay. I can give you an other example: Alan Wake! The entire story is based on you...living a story. Every enemy you fight, every obstacle you go through, every oddity you come across... it all connects via the gameplay!
I'm not condemning cinematics. Don't get me wrong there because I know I sound that I am. I love cutscenes, they give me great joy. But what I don't like is a medium losing its entire appeal by trying to be something its not and giving nothing back to balance out the imbalance.
. Beyond gameplay is not just button smashing, it's a large number of logical and intuitive interactions.
You are sugar coating an idea that has been used before. QTEs are not that. I have nothing against them though, I love Heavy Rain, but as I said. When this interaction leads to the same outcome, you take away agency. And agency is perhaps the most important thing in a game. Whether its how you chose to kill your enemy, or if you want to pick option a, or whether you want to carry out your character's development in a certain direction... it all counts to something.
And I'm telling that Beyond is much better example of the compromise between gameplay and storytelling than The Walking Dead. Gameplay-wise The Walkig Dead looks more like a mix of old-school quest and "hit the right button" part of an interactive movie. Unlike Beyond, TWD doesn't use the entire gamepad for different interactions.
I can explain why I find TWD graphics part poor. I know that the game is based on a comic with the same name, and what artists in TWD game was trying to achieve was comic style. But just look at all these sharp dark lines and shapes used in each and every texture. Such lines are good for a comic, because they are needed to create volume on a flat paper surface. But The Walking Dead uses 3D engine. Those lines are looking completely out of place.
Another example on the matter. Appleseed movie. First part. Deunan Knewt (rendered 3D model). And the same problem as in TWD:
And now let's see how they fixed that in Appleseed 2 (also rendered 3D model):
See the difference?
TWD devs could research what problems did artists involved in Appleseed movie creation have. In this case, TWD would look much better. But they prefered the simple path, and made really poor picture. Add to that poor animations, and see one of the worst games possible in terms of graphics.
Even DE:HR gameplay is quite primitive. "Line of sight play" against scripted enemies is not hard or fun. The same actions over and over again. And if you don't wanna hide, just aim, shoot, and move forwards. Personally, I find Beyond gameplay much more exciting. So, I guess you can extrapolate my point of view on any other game without excess discussions on the matter.
Yes, story can be told without cutscenes, and even without games
Do you prefer books or text RPGs over the AAA story driven games?
By rich gameplay I mean how controls are used. Beyond: Two Souls gameplay uses all gamepad buttons in different ways (press-and-hold, press rapidly, press once), both sticks (for movement, dodging, melee attacks, and very specific actions), and gyroscope plus accelerometer (for even more specific actions). Jodie and Aiden gameplays are completely different. Compared to all of that DE:HR has old and completely outdated gameplay.
Interactions leading to the same outcome through different paths are not bad, and not only Beyond is a good example of that. Games like Mass Effect Trilogy or DE:HR are also good example of that. This is just one of ways to tell a story that will look differently in each different playthrough.
And again, I'm not telling that interactive movie is the only way to tell a story. I'm telling that interactive movie is the best format for telling a story. Other formats are really good for something less story-driven.
Modifié par Seival, 28 octobre 2013 - 08:56 .
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