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I liked the part where you exit the cave and get the gun, right after AREA 51 and you get to shoot the aliens with the gun. This game was good though well see ya.
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Feb 22, 2016 10:13
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Firewatch was a better game than that article #TeamBucket
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Feb 22, 2016 14:11
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I skimmed the article and saw the word "sexualized" so im gonna guess he spent most of his time jo'ing to delilah's voice like the game was a $20 phone sex line. just like me 
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Feb 22, 2016 14:32
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CharlestonJew posted:I skimmed the article and saw the word "sexualized" so im gonna guess he spent most of his time jo'ing to delilah's voice like the game was a $20 phone sex line. its weird that a man and a woman who are emotionally unstable and isolated for a long period and basically only have each other to talk to sort of get attracted to each other hmm very odd I also didn't read the article though
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Feb 22, 2016 14:39
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:You could look around while rappelling hth Look at what? More low-poly rocks?
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Feb 22, 2016 14:48
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Well you made it sound like your only option was to stare at your feet. I personally always looked back up at the tie-off because I was convinced mr. Mysterious was gonna come cut the line mid-rappel of course that didn't happen
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Feb 22, 2016 15:45
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Ahundredbux posted:I liked the part where you exit the cave and get the gun, right after AREA 51 and you get to shoot the aliens with the gun. That segment might as well have been on rails.
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Feb 22, 2016 15:48
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Speaking of rails, that mine cart segment was super weird.
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Feb 22, 2016 15:56
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Yeah the difficulty spike really came out of nowhere but it's cool because collecting all of the bananas feels like a huge accomplishment.
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Feb 22, 2016 16:25
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Any one of those things would have made this a good game. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't awful at all. I think it was he best interactive fiction I've enjoyed. But a game it wasn't. Funso Banjo fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Feb 22, 2016 |
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Feb 22, 2016 22:23
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Funso Banjo posted:But a game it wasn't. Oooooooooh I play mobile games, am I a fake gamer?
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Feb 22, 2016 22:38
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Funso Banjo posted:Any one of those things would have made this a good game. Interactive fiction is a genre of gaming.
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Feb 22, 2016 22:46
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Funso Banjo posted:Any one of those things would have made this a good game. Don't do this, just tell us what you thought was missing instead of denying its existence as a game. Hell I didn't even like it that much and I still think it's a game.
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Feb 22, 2016 22:48
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Well, I liked it. Won't say I didn't. Enjoyed my time with it. But I never felt like there was a goal, other than hearing the last line of dialogue. I never felt There was a puzzle or obstacle to overcome. And I had no meaningful decisions to make. At least they didn't feel meaningful. There was a mild mystery to hear and read about, though. There were characters in the mix. The dialogue was read well and the acting felt convincing to me. Like I say. I liked it. But perhaps it was less than interactive fiction. More fiction with an interactive camera. Funso Banjo fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Feb 22, 2016 |
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Feb 22, 2016 22:55
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The best discussions are if a video game is really a video game or whether it's something like a video game but not actually a video game even though everyone is just going to call it a video game anyway. Let's have that discussion for twenty pages until they close this thread. Edit: Besides it had that sweet bass fishing segment. Very nostalgic. Fans fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Feb 22, 2016 |
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Feb 22, 2016 23:08
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Instead of arguing whether Firewatch is a game or not, would it help to rephrase the question as "Was the gameplay of Firewatch good?" Honestly, the gameplay in Firewatch wasn't very exciting by itself, but that doesn't make it a bad game in the slightest. I really enjoyed it, but I definitely didn't buy it for the gameplay. In similar vein, I am not going to buy Doom for the plot, but I will probably enjoy the gameplay.
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Feb 22, 2016 23:14
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"Is this a game" is the most boring video game analysis possible. It's like "what is art" with a GED. Are there any other games with the same kind of atmosphere and mystery feel as Firewatch? Searching for paranoia-inducing games just brings up poo poo jump-scary horror games.
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Feb 22, 2016 23:15
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Petr posted:"Is this a game" is the most boring video game analysis possible. It's like "what is art" with a GED. Gone Home is the obvious one. Not the big outdoors but lots of environmental storytelling and a bit of mystery. Life is Strange is weird paranormal time traveling teen stuff with a healthy dose of being a teen hipster. It's in the "Better than it sounds, no really! But the ending may be poo poo for you" category this is in. Miasmata is a janky wilderness exploration game that is reasonably pretty even for dated graphics, controls badly and has a poo poo monster. If you want to explore more wilderness it's a good game, with a rough start and barely any story. It's hard to recommend but it's cheap as gently caress and I enjoyed it for a few hours. Seriously though, poo poo monster. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is probably the best one for "Yes more of this!" and looks real pretty while having a good mystery story. The best of the lot here, you should just go play that. Edit for more: Oh and there's Alan Wake if you wanted the Conspiracy plot to not only be true, but wasn't weird enough for you. Lot of wandering around in the woods and Twin Peaks style "What even is this?" It's not terrible? Birds may eat you. If you really wanted to explore the wilderness and survive like a manly man (Or lady) you might enjoy The Long Dark. Which has gently caress all story, but a pretty snow covered Canadian Wasteland to gawp at, before you get eaten by wolves. And if you want an excellent story combined with some nice visuals and about a different setting for it as possible, then SOMA is your underwater atmospheric mystery game in which you .... I can't even explain it really without spoiling it. It features the required sassy women on the radio who knows more than you do and dopey male character who has to do everything and can't take a hint, but ends up going pretty weird places pretty darn fast. It's also got some monster dodging horror segments, so if you hate those don't bother. It's really good though. Fans fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Feb 22, 2016 |
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Feb 22, 2016 23:19
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Fans posted:Gone Home is the obvious one. Not the big outdoors but lots of environmental storytelling and a bit of mystery. Thanks! already tried a few of these (Miasmata was pretty terrible) but I haven't tried Vanishing of Ethan Carter or Alan Wake yet so I might give those a go.
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Feb 22, 2016 23:39
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The PS4 patch is really good. Played the game again last night and didn't run into any hitching or framerate issues at all. Wish it was like this for my first playthrough but its fine.
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Feb 22, 2016 23:44
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Fans posted:The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is probably the best one for "Yes more of this!" and looks real pretty while having a good mystery story. The best of the lot here, you should just go play that. Life is Strange is one of the best games. I thought the ending was fine for it too. I loved Alan Wake, though it probably would have been better if the combat wasn't poo poo and super repetitive (play it on the easiest setting on PC) But Vanishing of Ethan Carter.. oh boy. Gorgeous game, and some cool stuff but god drat the last 1/6th of that game really really sucked and I retroactively disliked the game after it.
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Feb 22, 2016 23:49
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Actually I think it's a fair criticism of Firewatch to ask if it really needed to be a game. I feel it could have been a short story or a film and not really lost anything. If you compare it to other IF games you generally either find lengthier content with major decisions that alter future content, if only superficially (Telltale episodic games) or honest-to-god legit puzzles (most text adventures).
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Feb 23, 2016 00:05
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I don't really think it "needed" to be a game any more than a book needed to be a book and not a movie, or somesuch. But, it certainly utilizes its medium to its advantage. I also think that it's very similar to the walking dead, in that the decisions don't exist to create alternate pathlines, but so that the player believes that their decisions have consequences, allowing them to better embody the mindset of the character.
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Feb 23, 2016 02:45
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Please stop trolling by implying that the ending of Ethan Carter wasn't terrible Edit: Alan Wake is loving great except the combat sucks.
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Feb 23, 2016 07:11
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Petr posted:"Is this a game" is the most boring video game analysis possible. It's like "what is art" with a GED.
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Feb 23, 2016 07:27
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Dr. Stab posted:I don't really think it "needed" to be a game any more than a book needed to be a book and not a movie, or somesuch. But, it certainly utilizes its medium to its advantage. I don't think it does - about the only thing it has over a book or movie is the exploration aspect, and I can't say I ever felt like there was much reason or reward to explore. Maybe I missed something. Again, with Walking Dead-style games you get major decision points that do change the narrative in important ways, even if there's still only one narrative, and over an extended period of time. Many of those decision points are interesting dilemmas in their own right. With Firewatch you can only make low-impact decisions about whether Henry is nice or moody or silent. Maybe this leads to significant changes late in the game but I doubt it. I suspect the game still ends with Delilah patiently explaining the 'point' of the story over the radio regardless of what you do. Firewatch is about as long as one episode of an episodic storygame, and costs half as much as a full season. I really got burned on this game, pun unintended.
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Feb 23, 2016 08:58
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Macaluso posted:Please stop trolling by implying that the ending of Ethan Carter wasn't terrible It is a good companion piece to Firewatch in that "pretends really hard to be a genre story, WHOOP TRICKED U it's just actually very mundane" sort of way
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Feb 23, 2016 10:45
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I don't really see the problem, the game presents you with a mystery then at the end it all wraps up nicely
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Feb 23, 2016 10:53
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Ahundredbux posted:I don't really see the problem, the game presents you with a mystery then at the end it all wraps up nicely I would have much preferred if they just completely rolled with the vaguely twinpeaks/alanwakey creepy ancient mind-controlling evil as the mystery instead of.. that.
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Feb 23, 2016 11:25
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No I'm talking about Firewatch ethan carter seems too abstract for me so I've never played it
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Feb 23, 2016 11:42
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To say that Ethan Carter's ending is "it was all a dream" is, while not factually incorrect, still an extremely shallow interpretation. That fact does not nullify the events of the game (such as they are) but recontextualises it. The story is not that some ancient evil got loose and then killed this guy and then killed that guy and then killed that guy, the story is that Ethan's imagination got him so ruthlessly bullied that when trapped in a burning basement and faced with his imminent death, his second to last act of consciousness was to fantasise an ancient evil slaughtering his entire family before being stopped by Ethan and Ed at the cost of their own lives (for an idea of how much Ethan loved Ed, see how he imagined Ed's death in contrast to the others'), and his final act of consciousness was to invent a complete outsider whose sole purpose was to discover all this and then have one shred of sympathy for Ethan. One thing Ethan Carter has in common with Firewatch is that the game part is largely incidental to the larger plot but still well leveraged for that plot's purposes. Firewatch drags you through the wilderness and has you choose how Henry perceives events to encourage you to empathise with him (to what extent any of this succeeds is subjective, however), while Ethan Carter has you piecing together murders using the protagonist's supernatural powers in order to set the story in place for its eventual recontextualisation.
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Feb 23, 2016 12:15
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Fedule posted:To say that Ethan Carter's ending is "it was all a dream" is, while not factually incorrect, still an extremely shallow interpretation. That fact does not nullify the events of the game (such as they are) but recontextualises it. The story is not that some ancient evil got loose and then killed this guy and then killed that guy and then killed that guy, the story is that Ethan's imagination got him so ruthlessly bullied that when trapped in a burning basement and faced with his imminent death, his second to last act of consciousness was to fantasise an ancient evil slaughtering his entire family before being stopped by Ethan and Ed at the cost of their own lives (for an idea of how much Ethan loved Ed, see how he imagined Ed's death in contrast to the others'), and his final act of consciousness was to invent a complete outsider whose sole purpose was to discover all this and then have one shred of sympathy for Ethan. Yeah, it's better to say "it was all a dead kid's dream". The ending sucked. I was totally about being this dude who had this like ghostly super power to solve a mystery in this gorgeous empty town. And the ending comes and just completely deflated that feeling. At least Firewatch, despite the ending being boring, didn't end with "it was all a dream"
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Feb 23, 2016 14:02
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Macaluso posted:Yeah, it's better to say "it was all a dead kid's dream". The ending sucked. Do you earnestly believe that the fact that the story of Paul Prospero isn't literally true in the canon of this video game completely robs that story of all meaning? Do you not think that the knowledge that that story is fantasised by a dying child adds meaning to it that was not there otherwise? I don't mean to argue, but ask.
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Feb 23, 2016 15:00
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Fedule posted:Do you earnestly believe that the fact that the story of Paul Prospero isn't literally true in the canon of this video game completely robs that story of all meaning? Do you not think that the knowledge that that story is fantasised by a dying child adds meaning to it that was not there otherwise? It does for me, yes. Obviously it's gonna be different for everyone, but for me I don't find the "it was all a dream" or "it was all inside someone's head" or "they were dead the whole time" an interesting or satisfying ending. Lost didn't have a satisfying ending for a lot of people but to me if the ending had actually been "the island is purgatory and they were dead the whole time" I would've been so annoyed. The ending is a big part of a story and if a game doesn't nail it, it makes the story as a whole less interesting to me. Murdered: Soul Suspect for instance had some gameplay problems, and the ending was kind of weak, but it had a similar "ghost detective" idea and it was all "real" so the ending wasn't as big of a let down to me.
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Feb 23, 2016 15:35
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Fedule posted:Do you earnestly believe that the fact that the story of Paul Prospero isn't literally true in the canon of this video game completely robs that story of all meaning? Do you not think that the knowledge that that story is fantasised by a dying child adds meaning to it that was not there otherwise? That said, there's a difference between "it was all a dream (and thus there are no concequences whatsoever)," and "it was all the dream of someone on the verge of death, so while the events didn't happen, the story is still meaningful as an exploration of the dying character's psyche." I don't know that there are too many people who would say that An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge sucks because it was all a dream.
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Feb 23, 2016 16:32
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Lt. Danger posted:I don't think it does - about the only thing it has over a book or movie is the exploration aspect, and I can't say I ever felt like there was much reason or reward to explore. Maybe I missed something. Just because the decisions in this game have lower stakes doesn't mean that they don't do what I said. The walking dead is a game about zombies, and this is a game about a man dealing with his problems. The fact that this is a game with dialogue choices engages the player in how henry deals with his feelings about his situation, and how that affects his relationship with others. It sounds to me like you didn't really enjoy the game, which is cool and fine, but that doesn't change what the game is trying to do. e: Whether the decisions have different consequences or not is not actually important to what the game is doing with its interactivity. It's about selling the player on this concept. Different consequences for decisions only matter insofar as they sell the illusion that the decisions have consequences. Though, on this front, I think the game delivers better than the walking dead, simply because the consequences of decisions are internal to the character, and thus don't need tons of external responses to feel effectual. Dr. Stab fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Feb 23, 2016 |
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Feb 23, 2016 16:46
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I'm going ot agree with Fedule here and say that I liked the ending to Ethan Carter vastly more than the one to Firewatch. Ethan Carter uses the twist to recontextualize the game in a way that makes everything take on new significance, whereas Firewatch just pulls the rug out from under you and doesn't so much recontextualize events as shine a light on how goddamn little sense Ned's motivations make. What's more, they seem to want you to care about two side characters (Ned and his kid) that the game seriously hasn't built up enough investment in, unlike Ethan Carter, where you've spent literally the entire game exploring the kid's interpretations of the world. After finishing Ethan Carter, I enjoyed re-evaluating all the things I had seen and putting them into the new context. With Firewatch, I just felt annoyed and the story deflated. As for what constitutes a game... I'm a fan of the interpretation that a game requires 1) a goal, and 2) obstacles to the goal that can be overcome through proficiency. In that sense, Firewatch veers dangerously close to the edge, since the only real obstacles you can overcome amount to "can you read a map Y/N". On that alone, it gets a pass. But it doesn't have a lot more to offer in terms of gameplay. Walking around and looking at things is not an obstacle. Dialogue choices in this game are not an obstacle, since the game ends in exactly the same way no matter what you choose, and the only difference is which voice clips you hear on the way. Just because something isn't a game doesn't mean it lacks merit, mind you. I might well enjoy a well-written story being told interactively. There's no reason to throw a hissy fit just because something might not be a game.
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Feb 23, 2016 18:10
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This goes against my better judgement to participate in this line of discussion, but the reason people are dismissive of "not a game" arguments is that the distinction is not useful in a meaningful way, unless you want to tell people they aren't fans of "real games". We can add arbitratry systems or restrictions to any of the debated titles to fit practically any personal definition of what a game is without changing the overall experience.
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Feb 23, 2016 18:33
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Dr. Stab posted:Just because the decisions in this game have lower stakes doesn't mean that they don't do what I said. The walking dead is a game about zombies, and this is a game about a man dealing with his problems. The fact that this is a game with dialogue choices engages the player in how henry deals with his feelings about his situation, and how that affects his relationship with others. Your answer seems to be kinda tautological. I'm asking if this game really needs to be a game with choices, consequences, interactivity and such. Your response seems to be "well, it's got choices in it, so yeah". Why are those choices there? I am very happy with different choices dovetailing into the same consequence. That's exactly what happens with many other storygames - Walking Dead, Life is Strange, Tales from the Borderlands et al. But in all of those games the choices are interesting. Sometimes the choices flavour how events pan out over several episodes. Sometimes their choices don't have consequences at all, but they still provoke thought and discussion. Sometimes the choices are simply low-key dialogue options that let you present the character a certain way, and that's cool because you get to see your spin on this character unfold, develop and possibly change over the course of ten hours. These are good reasons for these choices to exist - good reasons for these storygames to be games. The Firewatch choices are basic happy/angry/silent options that play out over about three hours maximum. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt the tone of the story differs significantly depending on whether Henry is friendly, moody or aloof. Even if it does, it's still only three hours. Why are we making these choices? You seem to be suggesting that we should make these choices for the sake of making choices - to trick ourselves into believing our input is significant somehow. I don't think that's sufficient. Firewatch would be a fine short story, or a fine film. As a game, it's overpriced - on both consumer and producer ends, I imagine.
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Feb 23, 2016 18:41
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Ethan Carter's ending was terrible because it just felt like a twist for the sake of one and had like zero emotional impact. I was just like, "Really?  " the whole time.Firewatch's is thematically appropriate, supported by a bunch of evidence if you take your time and look for it, has emotional impact, and actually leads to character development. Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Feb 23, 2016 |
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Feb 23, 2016 18:42
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