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GetWellGamers posted:I think we're arguing the same position from different definitions because that's basically my entire point. Things can exist just to flesh out the world of the narrative while having jack-all to do with the protagonist. Checkoving every little thing that shows up plotwise is what I'm against. I think the distinction lies in the common usage of Chekhov's Gun which has come to mean something akin to: even most insignificant object will be of extreme significance later. The original quote: quote:Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there. The story / narrative is key, the protagonist is never mentioned. Every little thing should have a point to it (including red herrings), whether it be defining the setting, characterizing the villain, or entertaining the reader/player. But you don't add things in just to have them. What you seem to be against is lazy writing that foreshadows things poorly and limited budgets that prevent worlds from being fleshed out rather than Chekhov's gun.
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May 2, 2014 16:40
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If I ever write a story, I'm gonna hang a gun on every single wall and never fire any of them. VVV But I just said the guns wouldn't be fired. Mymla fucked around with this message at 17:45 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 17:01
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Mymla posted:If I ever write a story, I'm gonna hang a gun on every single wall and never fire any of them. "Lives of the average suburban Texan" e: That's why I specified "suburban", the ones who are totally safe anyways but lust after the idea of blowing away a home intruder, wherever they happen to be. GetWellGamers fucked around with this message at 18:16 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 17:14
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Mymla posted:If I ever write a story, I'm gonna hang a gun on every single wall and never fire any of them. "He had dozens of rifles hanging on his walls. It was very peculiar and foreboding."
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May 2, 2014 17:51
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Some conventions can easily cross media but even short stories and plays (two media in which Checkhov wrote) have different approaches to how the author (director, for plays) can highlight elements. In written stories, there is only the text (okay, sometimes illustrations, but that's rare and generally not under the direct and full control of the text's author). In The Seagull, when Konstantin enters with the titular bird, Chekhov specifies that Konstantin is carrying a gun. However, the audience doesn't know that (in fact, many play authors are extremely sparse with prop and staging directions out of the spoken lines; compare Shakespeare and Arthur Miller); it could just as easily have been the director's specification, as could any other element held or worn by the characters or seen in the environment. Props in plays and films often give actors a focus for character demonstration while occupied with other activities. A character carrying a gun in a play, an environment where the audience is free to move their eyes across the entire stage, is different than framing a character carrying a gun in a film, which is also different from a writer describing the character carrying the gun. This is also true in a game like Pillars of Eternity, where there is a great deal outside of the spoken/descriptive text and in which pacing and even quantity/routes of selected writing varies from player to player.
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May 2, 2014 18:30
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Sawyer's Arquebus: Sometimes an arquebus is just an arquebus.
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May 2, 2014 19:44
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I would say, a modern interpretation of Chekhov's is that you don't mention something unless it is important to the narrative in some way, whether it is a direct part of the plot or important to a characterization or building the world. It is one of those things you can quickly pick out as bad writing, especially with all the amateur stuff you see on the net. They'll mention a lot of things that are irrelevant to the world and characters because they thought it was cool or it was an idea they had but didn't end up fleshing it out and didn't bother to edit it out in some later pass. It's less about restricting yourself and more about a helping yourself build a coherent narrative. As with most "rules" of writing, it can be broken or bent but should be only with specific intent. Someone mentioned keeping a list of everything you've mentioned so that you can cross it off later. Editors actually do this.
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May 2, 2014 21:17
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I would say that PoE's arquebuses are on a different storytelling layer than the gun in Konstantin's hand. Individual characters having arquebuses are not necessary to tell our specific story in PoE, but arquebuses existing at all and being used by certain groups of people does help characterize the world. Most communities in Fallout: New Vegas have a nearby water tower that sits somewhere nearby. I don't think there are many (any?) quests that discuss the water towers or make you interact with them, but they help characterize those communities and what it means to live in the Mojave Wasteland. Many of the lit signs in the wilderness have wired batteries or gas generators next to them. Broadly, the story of F:NV is about water and power. The design of the world helps reinforce why this matters, but in an open world setting, the player has to at least subconsciously pick up on those elements for it to work, so as a result we repeated those elements (water towers and wired batteries) as much as we could.
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May 2, 2014 21:17
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Roger Ebert coined the critical concept of a "Law of Economy of Characters", which applies (in a sense) to something like a Chekhov's Gun. The idea in a nutshell is that when you're working in a visual medium, your time is usually very limited and thus telling a story presents a sort of zero-sum game - all that time you pointlessly spend with James and his yellow-toothed femme fatale in counties beyond is time that could have gone into integral plotlines actually taking place in the town of Twin Peaks. You devote time to pointless bullshit and the whole shows suffers. This is why a show like Law & Order very rarely works as mystery - you've got an hour of screen time to tell a coherent story, good storytelling dictates that you don't pin your climax on a character the viewers haven't seen before, and by the Law of Economy of Characters, the number of non-recurring characters with spoken lines in a given episode is going to be very small. It's always pretty easy to guess who the murderer is (you could probably just guess "the second witness the detectives interview" and be right a good amount of the time). Obvs you've got more leeway with just text - what's an extra 3 pages to a chapter for detail? - but one would think, given constraints of budget and asset production, and general quest structure, that modern games are more akin to film and television that literary fiction. You end up with a game like VtM Bloodlines, in which nearly every speaking character who isn't a blood doll or the Asylum bartender functions in one quest or another even if they serve to dispense information and flesh out the setting in all other contexts. That's economy of characters. IE-style games, being largely unvoiced, aren't so restricted. As long as quest progression is clear and coherent, populating the world with unaffiliated characters shouldn't be a problem. Rendered objects and areas are a little different. Spend some time figuring out how to mod BG2 and you realize how few areas in that game are truly superfluous. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is a warehouse in the Bridge district. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 21:29 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 21:26
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Basic Chunnel posted:
Though I haven't got past chapter 3 I think there are a few empty wilderness areas added to the map when you exit the Underdark, but otherwise BG2 is a lot more economical than BG1 while being far greater in depth and scope. An advantage of video games is that they can afford to have more narrative filigree than movies. What makes the world of Deus Ex feel grounded is all the incidental detail like the newspapers, emails, posters, graffiti and the cryptic-speaking hobos. The information you look into may have no bearing on your quest but helps set the mood and build the atmosphere. The player is allowed to invest as much or as little time as they wish engaging their surroundings. Movies and TV can't take the same liberties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtQNULEudss
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May 2, 2014 22:08
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Inspector Gesicht posted:An advantage of video games is that they can afford to have more narrative filigree than movies. What makes the world of Deus Ex feel grounded is all the incidental detail like the newspapers, emails, posters, graffiti and the cryptic-speaking hobos. The information you look into may have no bearing on your quest but helps set the mood and build the atmosphere. The player is allowed to invest as much or as little time as they wish engaging their surroundings. Movies and TV can't take the same liberties: Yes, movies can never hope to match that level of narrative complication. 
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May 2, 2014 22:23
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I know people who are annoyed that so many of the small, probably-never-to-be-solved mysteries in A Song of Ice & Fire (the lost Lannister brother, Tansy and the Blood, Ned Stark's promise, etc) are never referenced in Game of Thrones, but I don't really know what they expect. Kind of reminds me of how many people were frustrated by the non-ending of the Circus Twins quest in Arcanum, now that I think about it. I thought it perfect, personally.
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May 2, 2014 22:23
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Wasn't the whole Tansy thing because he regretted forcing Lysa to abort Littlefinger's child using a tansy flower?
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May 2, 2014 22:28
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Steve2911 posted:Wasn't the whole Tansy thing because he regretted forcing Lysa to abort Littlefinger's child using a tansy flower? Exactly
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May 2, 2014 22:34
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Every time I read "animancer" I read it as "Animaniacs". I would pay a backer increase to get a musical number in game based on that. It's old enough that the demographic of most of the backers are familiar with it. As far as music from BG is concerned, I always though Gorion's Battle was pretty awesome.
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May 3, 2014 03:04
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Look, all I'm saying is, if you find a potion in a chest in a cave in the first dungeon and it doesn't turn out to be the key to the entire endgame, I'm gonna be loving pissed. Actually, didn't one of the Dark Souls games have some kind of Chekhov's Gun situation, some starting item that did nothing and had no value beyond being unique?
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May 3, 2014 17:57
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Wolfsheim posted:Actually, didn't one of the Dark Souls games have some kind of Chekhov's Gun situation, some starting item that did nothing and had no value beyond being unique? The pendant in Dark Souls was completely useless, but people tried desperately to give it meaning for years because the project lead recommended players to get it as a starting gift.
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May 3, 2014 18:26
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Drifter posted:Yes, movies can never hope to match that level of narrative complication. That's not remotely what he said.
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May 3, 2014 18:42
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Videogames clearly have more room for nonessential plot elements due to their nonlinear (in the strictest sense of the word) nature. Time spent exploring a room for lore or talking to random NPCs isn't a roadblock that you have to sit through like it would be in a book or a film, it's an optional extra that can be sought out at the player's leisure.
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May 3, 2014 18:47
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Periodiko posted:That's not remotely what he said. I distilled it down. Nothing stopping you from pausing a movie. Same as standing still in a game.
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May 3, 2014 18:58
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Drifter posted:Nothing stopping you from pausing a movie. All the other people in the cinema probably wouldn't be to happy about it.
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May 3, 2014 19:19
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Clever Spambot posted:All the other people in the cinema probably wouldn't be to happy about it.  The only way to watch a movie is in a theater, I forgot. Sorry.If games are being popularized by having group-watchings/participatings through stuff like Twitch - which would prevent a single person from standing around and observing a single thing, then you can take the converse with a movie, and say that you can also watch it in your home where you have control over the process of watching that movie.
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May 3, 2014 19:31
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Holy poo poo i just realized you are being serious, my bad.
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May 3, 2014 19:35
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Drifter posted:
Oh my loving god who cares.
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May 3, 2014 19:36
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I can't parse that post for the life of me.
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May 3, 2014 19:38
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If you can watch someone else play a game like it's a movie, then you can play a movie by yourself like it's a game. It's so simple people
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May 3, 2014 20:05
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RentACop posted:If you can watch someone else play a game like it's a movie, then you can play a movie by yourself like it's a game. It's so simple people I want to shoot whizards with my gunbarian who has a skull on top of his skull, pillars of eternity makes that possible.
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May 3, 2014 20:12
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rope kid posted:I would say that PoE's arquebuses are on a different storytelling layer than the gun in Konstantin's hand. Individual characters having arquebuses are not necessary to tell our specific story in PoE, but arquebuses existing at all and being used by certain groups of people does help characterize the world. Most communities in Fallout: New Vegas have a nearby water tower that sits somewhere nearby. I don't think there are many (any?) quests that discuss the water towers or make you interact with them, but they help characterize those communities and what it means to live in the Mojave Wasteland. Many of the lit signs in the wilderness have wired batteries or gas generators next to them. Broadly, the story of F:NV is about water and power. The design of the world helps reinforce why this matters, but in an open world setting, the player has to at least subconsciously pick up on those elements for it to work, so as a result we repeated those elements (water towers and wired batteries) as much as we could. This was pointed out in a really great youtube series about why someone felt NV had a more "lived-in" feeling than Fallout 3, and hence made it more appealing. Something I can agree with.
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May 3, 2014 20:18
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evilmiera posted:This was pointed out in a really great youtube series about why someone felt NV had a more "lived-in" feeling than Fallout 3, and hence made it more appealing. Something I can agree with. That was by MrBtongue. I really like his videos, even if I wish he did them more often.
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May 3, 2014 20:24
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It always annoyed me in RPG worlds when there aren't useless houses for people to live in. The only visible and accessible things are game driven. That makes a lot of sense from development cost standpoint, why make those virtually useless assets. I don't begrudge developers that, but it's a part of world building that would be cool to see.
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May 3, 2014 20:48
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Play Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 3. The former has character houses, the latter have common flophouses
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May 3, 2014 21:06
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I liked how in morrowind you could just kill someone and steal their house with no repercussions as long as no one saw you do it.
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May 3, 2014 21:56
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Clever Spambot posted:I liked how in morrowind you could just kill someone and steal their house with no repercussions as long as no one saw you do it. Nerevarine moving in right next to you should be driving up your property value, due to all of those imported daedric artifacts.
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May 3, 2014 21:59
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:I want to shoot whizards with my gunbarian who has a skull on top of his skull, pillars of eternity makes that possible. Have you tried playing Persona? It is my favorite of Ingmar Bergman's RPG's.
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May 3, 2014 22:19
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rope kid posted:I would say that PoE's arquebuses are on a different storytelling layer than the gun in Konstantin's hand. Individual characters having arquebuses are not necessary to tell our specific story in PoE, but arquebuses existing at all and being used by certain groups of people does help characterize the world. Most communities in Fallout: New Vegas have a nearby water tower that sits somewhere nearby. I don't think there are many (any?) quests that discuss the water towers or make you interact with them, but they help characterize those communities and what it means to live in the Mojave Wasteland. Many of the lit signs in the wilderness have wired batteries or gas generators next to them. Broadly, the story of F:NV is about water and power. The design of the world helps reinforce why this matters, but in an open world setting, the player has to at least subconsciously pick up on those elements for it to work, so as a result we repeated those elements (water towers and wired batteries) as much as we could. This is why NV is great, among other reasons.
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May 3, 2014 23:46
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Ropekid make a game of pansexual god-people from the 70s scifi era. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Couch_of_Silistra
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May 3, 2014 23:50
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evilmiera posted:This was pointed out in a really great youtube series about why someone felt NV had a more "lived-in" feeling than Fallout 3, and hence made it more appealing. Something I can agree with. Got a link? Searching for anything specific on YouTube is like wading through a landfill looking for intact video games. (  )
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May 4, 2014 00:40
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GetWellGamers posted:Got a link? Searching for anything specific on YouTube is like wading through a landfill looking for intact video games. ( Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwlt4FqmS0. Parenthesis fucked around with this message at 01:09 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 00:56
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Clever Spambot posted:I liked how in morrowind you could just kill someone and steal their house with no repercussions as long as no one saw you do it. Better yet, you could kill and steal someone's poo poo with no repercussions if you provoke them into assaulting you before you murder them.
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May 4, 2014 05:31
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Not exactly poe and I'd guess the rights are all over the place, but ropekid: has the ever been any talk of doing a sort of EE-version of the icewind dales?
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May 5, 2014 22:58
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