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Sleep of Bronze posted:Plato prefers not to concern himself with poetry. Aristotle is the proponent of catharsis. My mistake; it's been a while since I read up on the subject.  Either way, I do think you could do a game where you lose, not just a high-cost win like in Planescape, but an actual all out loss where you watched everything you built up to that point burn down and couldn't do anything about it, but watch. But the game would need to build to that, rather than just dropping an enormous "gently caress you" right at the end. You'd need to be able to see where poo poo was going a good halfway to 2/3rds of the way into the story. Maybe even earlier.
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May 21, 2014 01:10
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It was mentioned before, but Spec Ops: The Line, is the best example I've ever played of a character doing all the wrong things for the best intentions. I don't think it would ever work in PoE, but maybe a spin off game. Err...isn't Torment supposed to be that game coming soon?
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May 21, 2014 02:29
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I never actually played it, but apparently the King Kong tie in game for the Peter Jackson film has you play the entire time as King Kong, so you die at the end. (I'm not putting spoiler tags around King Kong, if you cared about any of the 3 versions of the film you would have seen at least one of them by now)
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May 21, 2014 03:10
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Shadow Of The Colossus is another game where you lose at the end. You lose big time. It was a pretty clear inspiration for POP 08's ending, though I liked how POP did it better. edit: Scorchy posted:I mostly read a lot of mainstream people complaining about how the ending was 'unfinished', so much so they put out an epilogue DLC. I couldn't play it but I read was kinda pointless. When I heard about that epilogue DLC I finally understood how people who liked Mass Effect 3's ending must have felt about the extended cut. 2house2fly fucked around with this message at 03:21 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 03:18
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2house2fly posted:
What, both of them?
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May 21, 2014 03:31
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I'm not a huge fan of downer endings, especially in games. I rather have, a RPG, an ending that is the sum of my actions rather than some edgy downer ending that makes me feel like crap. If it's a linear story-driven game then I rather have a nice ending that makes me feel good and happy about my experience. The real world is depressing enough, so I rather not have it bleed into my electronic entertainment. For example, net neutrality is dead and everything on the net will be subject to the greedy whims of select corporations, namely your ISP because they spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying the government to rule as such. That's the real world and is actually happen right now. I want to play a game to escape that fact for a few hours.
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May 21, 2014 03:40
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SurrealityCheck posted:I thought people disliked the game for its simplistic gameplay rather than the ending - I heard a lot of praise for the ending specifically. Or is that unusual? If I'm getting my PoP's right, the complaint I mostly heard about that game was that the main character specifically undoes all the hard work you spent the game doing and the heroine died to make sure succeeded, and the only way to not do that was to not play anymore. Which stuck in a lot of craws, as I saw it.
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May 21, 2014 03:42
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:There were TWO companions who not only were immune to radiation but actually benefited from it and if you talked to them they'd just say, "Nah, you go in there and die instead." Three characters, actually; you're forgetting the robot. Worth noting though that one of the companions in question, the ghoul, had a backstory wherein he specifically followed every command held by anyone who holds his contract, no matter how immoral or unconscionable. In the end, you ask him to help you out and he just goes "Nah, I'm not helping you this time. Do it yourself." Fallout 3 really is the worst.
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May 21, 2014 04:37
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Lotish posted:If I'm getting my PoP's right, the complaint I mostly heard about that game was that the main character specifically undoes all the hard work you spent the game doing and the heroine died to make sure succeeded, and the only way to not do that was to not play anymore. Which stuck in a lot of craws, as I saw it.
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May 21, 2014 04:40
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Jimbot posted:I'm not a huge fan of downer endings, especially in games. I rather have, a RPG, an ending that is the sum of my actions rather than some edgy downer ending that makes me feel like crap. If it's a linear story-driven game then I rather have a nice ending that makes me feel good and happy about my experience. The real world is depressing enough, so I rather not have it bleed into my electronic entertainment. For example, net neutrality is dead and everything on the net will be subject to the greedy whims of select corporations, namely your ISP because they spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying the government to rule as such. That's the real world and is actually happen right now. I want to play a game to escape that fact for a few hours. See, I disagree because a nice ending that makes me feel good rarely feels like it really is the culmination of everything I've done in the game. It feels cheap and unearned and it takes me right out of it. That's part of why I like the Fallout games so much, especially 2 and New Vegas. The endings actually feel like they reflect what happened in the game because they're a bit complicated and sometimes bittersweet. Wolfsheim posted:Three characters, actually; you're forgetting the robot. Worth noting though that one of the companions in question, the ghoul, had a backstory wherein he specifically followed every command held by anyone who holds his contract, no matter how immoral or unconscionable. In the end, you ask him to help you out and he just goes "Nah, I'm not helping you this time. Do it yourself." Fallout 3's companions were, IIRC, added ludicrously late in development after there was a lot of fan backlash. Hence pretty much all of them using Bethesda's 'generic' voice actors and so on.
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May 21, 2014 04:40
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I remember hearing that the companions in the original Fallout were added late in development, so it's kind of fitting that the same thing would happen in the reboot.
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May 21, 2014 04:45
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2house2fly posted:I remember hearing that the companions in the original Fallout were added late in development, so it's kind of fitting that the same thing would happen in the reboot. Aren't companions always added late in development because they are complicated?
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May 21, 2014 05:49
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VanSandman posted:Aren't companions always added late in development because they are complicated? Well, this is the Pillars of Eternity thread, where we knew exactly how many companions there were going to be by the end of the Kickstarter, not always. And since most RPGs incorporate NPCs into the story not as a rule in general. Some get cut or added as budget allows, but what people are talking about is designing a game with no NPCs and then adding them in the 11th hour.
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May 21, 2014 05:58
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VanSandman posted:Aren't companions always added late in development because they are complicated? In this case, they are being added last to allow the companions to react to as much of the world & plot as possible. Kind of hard to do if you write them before you finish world building and / or plotting.
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May 21, 2014 06:02
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VanSandman posted:Aren't companions always added late in development because they are complicated? Specific companions, yes, but generally you plan for the fact that companions will exist early on. So you don't, for example, come up with the epithet "the Lone Wanderer" for your player character, and then they spend the entire game accompanied by a dog and a rough-talking ex-raider.
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May 21, 2014 06:27
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Male Man posted:Specific companions, yes, but generally you plan for the fact that companions will exist early on. He's alone...on the inside. 
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May 21, 2014 06:31
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The PE narrative team came onto the project "later than expected" according to Brandon Adler in an Obsidian forum post. Kind of an odd statement considering they've had Chris and Josh for the duration and Eric moved to PE full time during the VS. Might be referring to taking a while to fill their extra writing spot.quote:Normally we would be farther along in our writing, but, as with everything else, sometimes there are things out of your control. Our narrative designers came onto the project later than expected, but they are making really great progress. It isn't an ideal situation, but it has worked out for us.
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May 21, 2014 07:10
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South Park was delayed multiple times which probably affected Fenstermaker moving onto the project.
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May 21, 2014 07:26
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Comstar posted:It was mentioned before, but Spec Ops: The Line, is the best example I've ever played of a character doing all the wrong things for the best intentions. I don't think it would ever work in PoE, but maybe a spin off game.
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May 21, 2014 07:34
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Lotish posted:If I'm getting my PoP's right, the complaint I mostly heard about that game was that the main character specifically undoes all the hard work you spent the game doing and the heroine died to make sure succeeded, and the only way to not do that was to not play anymore. Which stuck in a lot of craws, as I saw it. I remember loving that ending because I felt like it was what I would do and I felt like my previous actions were just stringing along with what an NPC told me to do because it had to be done and undoing all of my work somehow felt really refreshing, like painting a beautiful painting and thne applying a carving knife to it. Liberation.
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May 21, 2014 07:35
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Bettik posted:In this case, they are being added last to allow the companions to react to as much of the world & plot as possible. Kind of hard to do if you write them before you finish world building and / or plotting. Writing the companions later makes it easier for them to react to the world, but does it also make it harder for the world to react to them? I mean more in the sense of NPCs in the world reacting to the characters you have in the party.
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May 21, 2014 07:37
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Scorchy posted:South Park was delayed multiple times which probably affected Fenstermaker moving onto the project. Good point
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May 21, 2014 07:52
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Sensuki posted:The PE narrative team came onto the project "later than expected" according to Brandon Adler in an Obsidian forum post. Kind of an odd statement considering they've had Chris and Josh for the duration and Eric moved to PE full time during the VS. Might be referring to taking a while to fill their extra writing spot. Josh isn't allowed to write narrative because he just writes "~*elves*~" and "magic" on two cards and just rearranges them to generate plot 
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May 21, 2014 12:40
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Skwirl posted:I never actually played it, but apparently the King Kong tie in game for the Peter Jackson film has you play the entire time as King Kong, so you die at the end. (I'm not putting spoiler tags around King Kong, if you cared about any of the 3 versions of the film you would have seen at least one of them by now) You don't play as Kong much in that game and the bits where you do play as him are the least interesting thing about it. It doesn't really fit the idea of the downer ending except in one way: the majority of the game is focused on surviving by the skin of your teeth as the group of humans on Skull Island and is honestly pretty rad, but then you leave the island and the final level is all just mediocre King Kong beat-em-up stuff.
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May 21, 2014 13:36
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There's always been tensions about endings. The most played version of King Lear for over a hundred years was a revised version which replaced Shakespeare's tragic ending to the play with one where everything ends up working out after all for one of the main characters. I do prefer endings where Republican Vampire posted:See, I disagree because a nice ending that makes me feel good rarely feels like it really is the culmination of everything I've done in the game. It feels cheap and unearned and it takes me right out of it. That's part of why I like the Fallout games so much, especially 2 and New Vegas. The endings actually feel like they reflect what happened in the game because they're a bit complicated and sometimes bittersweet. Well, that really depends on your definition of a "nice ending". In general these should not feel cheap or unearned and if it turns out otherwise then it is more a sign of bad plotting or writing than anything else. I would also strongly contrast the endings to Fallout 2 and New Vegas, which I would definitely class on the "nice ending" end of the scale to the endings of King Lear or Nier and other tragedies. I, in general, am not to partial to tragedies as the staple of my entertainment for much the same reason Jimbot isn't. I do like tragedies and the likes, the aforementioned ones or stuff like "La Haine" or "Brazil", but in general it needs to be far better executed for me to enjoy it whilst less well plotted stuff with happier endings I can enjoy as comfort food even if it doesn't engage me much beyond that. For me an example of the equivalent of the feeling you describe for good endings is when a writer kills of characters in their story just to make it darker and grittier or to try (and often fail) to induce a "shits getting real now" effect. As a whole a lot of the "darker and grittier" drive falls under that for me where a token gloss and or unhappy ending is tacked on.
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May 21, 2014 13:50
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I really prefer endings that are open and subject to interpretation over the kind where every loose thread gets nicely tied up with a neat little bow. TV-show example: I really liked True Detective's ending, but Breaking Bad was too neat for me. Like, it's a good ending, but not the kind I personally find most satisfying. I really like stories that leave me with some unanswered questions to think about in the end.
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May 21, 2014 14:21
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Reading this thread reminds me of the focus testing scene in the poochie episode of the simpsons. edit: Also what the guy above me said only the exact opposite, not that there is necessarily anything wrong with letting the audience figure things out for themselves but it can sometimes feel really cheap when you missed a vital piece of story telling because you looked away during the shot that was framed to heavily imply X or whatever. Clever Spambot fucked around with this message at 14:37 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 14:33
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Clever Spambot posted:Reading this thread reminds me of the focus testing scene in the poochie episode of the simpsons. Yeah, I hate reading books because when I skip past a few pages I get totally lost.
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May 21, 2014 14:53
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Drifter posted:Yeah, I hate reading books because when I skip past a few pages I get totally lost. I meant more that the subtleties of visual storytelling can be easily missed or not be picked up on immediately rather then meaning literally looking away from a scene and while i am on the subject i feel the need to point out that films are inherently different from books because they are consumed passively rather than actively which
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May 21, 2014 15:18
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verybad posted:I really prefer endings that are open and subject to interpretation over the kind where every loose thread gets nicely tied up with a neat little bow. TV-show example: I really liked True Detective's ending, but Breaking Bad was too neat for me. Like, it's a good ending, but not the kind I personally find most satisfying. I really like stories that leave me with some unanswered questions to think about in the end. I on the other hand didn't like True Detective's ending. I think it's kind of funny that the final scene was like the original concept Nic Pizzolatto had in mind, but it was one of the show's worst moments IMO (and I don't seem to be alone in thinking that either). Not only that but the final segments suffered a bit from Lord of the Rings Return of the King syndrome where the episode could have ended like 5 times but kept going. They could have ended with Rust and Marty looking up at the Flare in the sky, they could have ended with Marty crying once he saw his family .. etc - those would have been better endings in my opinion. And as to what Clever Spambot said about subtle moments, I actually like those. In regards to True Detective there was one shot that they really went overboard with though, at the end of Episode 6 when they had the camera stuck to Rust's truck showing the broken indicator light, at first I thought hey, smart shot, but then the episode kept going ... have you noticed yet? have you noticed yet? have you noticed yet? how about now? how about now? how about now? look how smart we are! for about 10 seconds. I was like what the hell, that's bad editing.
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May 21, 2014 15:22
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Sensuki posted:The PE narrative team came onto the project "later than expected" according to Brandon Adler in an Obsidian forum post. Kind of an odd statement considering they've had Chris and Josh for the duration and Eric moved to PE full time during the VS. Might be referring to taking a while to fill their extra writing spot.
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May 21, 2014 18:17
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SurrealityCheck posted:Josh isn't allowed to write narrative because he just writes "~*elves*~" and "magic" on two cards and just rearranges them to generate plot rope kid posted:I have too much system design and director work to do to drive the crit path. At most I have time for a couple of companions and side-characters. So you're going to be writing the elf companion and the wizard companion?
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May 21, 2014 21:24
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pun pundit posted:So you're going to be writing the elf companion and the wizard companion? He has no time. So it's an elven wizard companion.
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May 21, 2014 21:39
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verybad posted:I really prefer endings that are open and subject to interpretation over the kind where every loose thread gets nicely tied up with a neat little bow. TV-show example: I really liked True Detective's ending, but Breaking Bad was too neat for me. Like, it's a good ending, but not the kind I personally find most satisfying. I really like stories that leave me with some unanswered questions to think about in the end. Open ends are the worst. Seriously, you're telling a story. Tell the whole story. What happened, not some ambiguous crap.
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May 21, 2014 22:52
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Mymla posted:Open ends are the worst. Seriously, you're telling a story. Tell the whole story. What happened, not some ambiguous crap. So you didn't like New Vegas then?  It becomes a question of where you draw the line, and what the ending of a story "means". New Vegas is the end of the Courier's story, but not the end of the Mojave's story. Some things, we can't know the full consequences of. Otherwise it becomes black and white, a mathematical formula for the best outcome. The world doesn't work that way. People can always gently caress up the best laid plans.
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May 21, 2014 22:54
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Captain Oblivious posted:So you didn't like New Vegas then? Unless you kill everyone. Then it's the end of the Mojave's story.
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May 21, 2014 22:56
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VanSandman posted:Unless you kill everyone. Then it's the end of the Mojave's story.  NewVegas.jpg
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May 21, 2014 22:57
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Captain Oblivious posted:So you didn't like New Vegas then? It's a bit different in a game with a player created protagonist, you can't really write an ending well for a character like that, it's an inherent flaw of the medium. New vegas was pretty good, though, with wrapping up most of the side characters/locations' stories if I recall. And the main story was pretty clear cut, wasn't it? "NCR/Legion/House/Courier wins, wohoo".
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May 21, 2014 23:36
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Mymla posted:It's a bit different in a game with a player created protagonist, you can't really write an ending well for a character like that, it's an inherent flaw of the medium. New vegas was pretty good, though, with wrapping up most of the side characters/locations' stories if I recall. And the main story was pretty clear cut, wasn't it? "NCR/Legion/House/Courier wins, wohoo". Not really. The ramifications of those victories are still deeply unclear. And again, I wouldn't even call it a flaw. See also: Watchmen, as in the above image. History marches on, usually without us. That's the point.
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May 21, 2014 23:38
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rope kid posted:I think it's a bad idea to define the critical path/spine of the story without the creative lead being on the project. Yeah I forgot about the multiple South Park delays. I thought he might have been referring to something more recent than that. Sensuki fucked around with this message at 03:50 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 03:31
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