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Mr Phillby posted:It is interesting that the white phosphorus scene upset people enough that they all collectively decided that a linear 3rd person shooter game should have had an unprecidented branching narrative so that they can avoid engaging with the core premise and theme of the game they're playing. Unprecedented? That kind of choice system exists in the game, multiple times! There's at least half a dozen points where you get to make kill/spare or save/sacrifice choices where your two AI companions argue for alternate options. What makes the White Phosphorus scene so bad is that it follows this established style including having your AI companions arguing for the two choices, then not only makes it a fake choice where there's only one possible option but does it in a completely immersion breaking way.
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Jul 2, 2020 15:10
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 13:01 |
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Yes it is unprecidented because unlike earlier choices the story of the game would actually have to branch from that point. Sorry the game set up a pattern and then subverted your expectations, stories should only ever be told in a way thats 100% consistent and should never seek to suprise.
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Jul 2, 2020 15:27
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Groovelord Neato posted:Correct. A lot people (mostly game critics) seem to have no issue with games being half movies and I'll never understand it. It's like making a movie and half the plot is given via text scrolls. There's actually a huge difference
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Jul 2, 2020 15:52
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JustaDamnFool posted:I always used to feel bad about killing all those Italian guards in AC2 as a kid. I remember beating up some guard on a rooftop to avoid killing him, only for him to slide off the edge of the building and feeling kinda bad. I tend to play stealth games on story context; If I'm just sneaking into somewhere where the guards are just shift-workers not expecting to see some rear end in a top hat dressed in black roaming the halls, they get avoided or KO'ed if need be. If it's like a terrorist cell's outpost everyone gets a bullet. Everyone in The Last of Us Part II gets a bullet or a blade to the throat, because the more of them I kill now, the less can hunt me later through this goddamn awful city  .
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Jul 2, 2020 16:05
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Arist posted:There's actually a huge difference Nope.
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Jul 2, 2020 16:19
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Modern Warfare 1 should have given the player the option to tell the gunship to let them sneak through the field.
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Jul 2, 2020 16:21
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I like games that are like half movies, and also I love walking sims where there's little to not real gameplay, but just going through a story. Fight me
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Jul 2, 2020 16:22
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So aside from the current argument, I'm honestly shocked there are people who are upset or surprised by Joel dying in the Last of Us 2. Given the way the first game ended any sequel would have to kill him either very early on or even between games.
Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Jul 2, 2020 |
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Jul 2, 2020 16:22
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Macaluso posted:I like games that are like half movies, and also I love walking sims where there's little to not real gameplay, but just going through a story. Fight me Oh there's no problem liking it. Some people enjoy movies with unnecessary text scrolls and voice over narration. People like poorly made things all the time.
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Jul 2, 2020 16:23
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Groovelord Neato posted:Nope. Text scrolls are bad because they don't even properly simulate reading, an action that you are generally able to do at your own pace instead of one imposed upon you. Games are cool in part because they are able to use elements of other mediums in addition to their own. There's times when the characters in your game are going to need to be able to do things the player cannot control. There's going to be times the developers might want to use techniques like montage or cutting across time that won't be viable as gameplay. You're reflexively shouting "cutscenes bad!" and limiting tools to tell a story for no good reason.
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Jul 2, 2020 16:26
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Game's been out for twelve days, dude
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Jul 2, 2020 16:27
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No not really.
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Jul 2, 2020 16:27
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Games don't need to have fully reactive stories, they can have linear stories where the player has to do something. This is fine. If they do this they probably shouldn't berate the player for doing something they didn't choose to do though.
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Jul 2, 2020 16:34
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Arist posted:Game's been out for twelve days, dude
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Jul 2, 2020 16:34
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You're Being A Prescriptivistic Idiot And Unnecessarily Limiting The Types of Language Games Can Use vs. No I'm Not
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Jul 2, 2020 16:35
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Terrible Opinions posted:It's something that happens in the game's first act and is more or less narratively required to have a sequel to the Last of Us. I can go back and spoiler tag, but it's akin to spoilering the dog bit in John Wick. I mean it's a pretty big shock that is happens so early, not that it happens at all. The trailers go out of their way to hide it. Just use the spoiler tags, especially for a game that's been out for so little time. If I had that spoiled for me ahead of time it would've really killed a lot of the impact it had for me
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Jul 2, 2020 16:37
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A Sometimes Food posted:Games don't need to have fully reactive stories, they can have linear stories where the player has to do something. This is fine. This is exactly what people have been saying over and over only to be met with "you're just mad" or "you just don't get it", yes.
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Jul 2, 2020 16:38
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Arist posted:You're Being A Prescriptivistic Idiot And Unnecessarily Limiting The Types of Language Games Can Use vs. No I'm Not
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Jul 2, 2020 16:38
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Macaluso posted:I mean it's a pretty big shock that is happens so early, not that it happens at all. The trailers go out of their way to hide it. Just use the spoiler tags, especially for a game that's been out for so little time. If I had that spoiled for me ahead of time it would've really killed a lot of the impact it had for me
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Jul 2, 2020 16:40
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Arist posted:You're Being A Prescriptivistic Idiot And Unnecessarily Limiting The Types of Language Games Can Use vs. No I'm Not It's limiting to say movies shouldn't have text scrolls to explain things or have voiceovers like Blade Runner to ensure the audience understands.
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Jul 2, 2020 16:42
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John Murdoch posted:To hearken back to a point made upthread about TLOU2, the scene failed to put me into Walker's shoes. There is no grand sense of desperation, no sense of "kill or be killed, don't think, just act", nothing to help justify why this is the only action to be taken. You start looming over your enemies, high up above them such that they're small figures in the distance, totally unaware of your existence. There's a lack of foundation to why things need to play out the way they do and the developers chose to enforce their desired outcome not by making the scene more coherent but instead by creating additional contrivances to box you in. Not only has it been done better elsewhere, it's done better within the same drat game. this is a much more understandable criticism than the trite "don't force me to do bad things!!" whining
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Jul 2, 2020 16:47
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A Sometimes Food posted:Games don't need to have fully reactive stories, they can have linear stories where the player has to do something. This is fine. good thing they don’t then. i mean unless you paused the game to literally go out and commit war crimes for the US military, then i can understand feeling like the game is berating you for it. you kinda deserves it in that case tho tbh
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Jul 2, 2020 16:51
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sometimes i do wonder what the crossover is between people who hate "movie games" and people who love story heavy JRPGs or even better, visual novels
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Jul 2, 2020 16:58
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Complaining that video games have too many cutscenes is about as interesting a take as complaining that video games rely on violence as their primary mode of interaction.
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Jul 2, 2020 17:10
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Alaois posted:sometimes i do wonder what the crossover is between people who hate "movie games" and people who love story heavy JRPGs or even better, visual novels
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Jul 2, 2020 17:17
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Seemlar posted:Unprecedented? That kind of choice system exists in the game, multiple times! There's at least half a dozen points where you get to make kill/spare or save/sacrifice choices where your two AI companions argue for alternate options. The choices you get before that usually have the same outcome. The WP scene is the game starting to take the mask off and mock your illusions of choice and control, because you're stuck on the shoulder of a professional killer with a Messiah complex. You only fully get control back at the end of the game, when you can use it to pass your own judgment on Walker.
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Jul 2, 2020 17:20
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a fresh nightmare from civvie11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMzAjixbXMk
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Jul 2, 2020 17:24
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Where did this idea that Spec Ops: The Line is a game about trying to induce guilt in the player come from? It's quite unambiguously about the interactive limitations of violent video games and the way in which this mirrors the US Army's auto-image of being bringers of peace exclusively through violence. To let the player walk away from the white phosphorous would undermine the point of the scene: that army violence is so heavily ingrained in Walker that he is unable to consider any option other than the most obvious, violent one. The scene's biggest failing is that the game isn't quite mind-numbing and one-track enough to make the player careless about what their actions mean. Most players hesitate to use the white phoshorous in Spec Ops: The Line in ways they most likely don't when committing some heinous war crime in a Call of Duty campaign, which is a failure in terms of the tone of interactivity on the game's part.
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Jul 2, 2020 17:29
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my favorite thing about Spec Ops The Line is probably the art direction. it is incredibly visually striking and well-directed. It hits you up front with a generically good-looking, clean Modern Warfare 2 art style but then it becomes so much more grimy and the characters keep getting more bloodied and disfigured and it throws in the surreal blends of color and by the end it you're just marching through a horrible nightmarescape. There's more than a little dream logic to the way the fictionalized Dubai is laid out that makes it so that you are almost constantly moving downwards as you progress through the game.
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Jul 2, 2020 17:35
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watho posted:good thing they don’t then. i mean unless you paused the game to literally go out and commit war crimes for the US military, then i can understand feeling like the game is berating you for it. you kinda deserves it in that case tho tbh Spec Ops was fine but there have been plenty of other games that screwed it up.
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Jul 2, 2020 17:38
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JordanKai posted:Where did this idea that Spec Ops: The Line is a game about trying to induce guilt in the player come from? The further you get in the game, the generic loading screen tips and factoids start being replaced with passive aggressive swipes at the player
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Jul 2, 2020 17:39
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Zetsubou-san posted:a fresh nightmare from civvie11 poo poo yeah i was wondering if he was ever gonna play that thing
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Jul 2, 2020 17:40
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JordanKai posted:Where did this idea that Spec Ops: The Line is a game about trying to induce guilt in the player come from? It's quite unambiguously about the interactive limitations of violent video games and the way in which this mirrors the US Army's auto-image of being bringers of peace exclusively through violence. Yeah, I never got that impression either but I feel that way about all video games aside from Undertale. I don't really feel like I'm the topic of conversation when people keep having conversations in the game and using the fake character's name that I'm controlling.
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Jul 2, 2020 17:45
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Seemlar posted:The further you get in the game, the generic loading screen tips and factoids start being replaced with passive aggressive swipes at the player unironically one of my favorite tropes
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Jul 2, 2020 17:46
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Seemlar posted:The further you get in the game, the generic loading screen tips and factoids start being replaced with passive aggressive swipes at the player I think maybe this one is but otherwise I disagree. 
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Jul 2, 2020 17:54
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I like the idea behind Spec Ops more than I do the actual execution. Wish someone else would take a crack at it. Not like the Call of Duty games have disappeared.Alaois posted:sometimes i do wonder what the crossover is between people who hate "movie games" and people who love story heavy JRPGs or even better, visual novels I would think like myself they'd dislike both since they have kinda the same problem but in different ways. Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jul 2, 2020 |
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Jul 2, 2020 17:57
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When you break it down and go through the more grounded aspects of it Killer7 has pretty similar themes to Spec Ops when you broaden those themes from the military specifically to governments, especially in regards to the question "what is terrorism, exactly?"
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Jul 2, 2020 18:03
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Groovelord Neato posted:I like the idea behind Spec Ops more than I do the actual execution. Wish someone else would take a crack at it. Not like the Call of Duty games have disappeared. do you really not understand how a visual novel or a JRPG might benefit from their format/medium, dude
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Jul 2, 2020 18:04
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What if I think the genre is bad.
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Jul 2, 2020 18:06
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RareAcumen posted:
In the moment, I can see how a player would think this is aimed literally at *you*, the player. But at the end, it makes it more apparent that 99% of the loading screen messages were aimed at Walker in particular. I guess the meta answer is "you could have stopped playing!" but Walker himself set forth those objectives, and you as a player are just along for the ride like any protagonist that makes bad decisions in game.
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Jul 2, 2020 18:07
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