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GTAV is too joyless and dismal to compare to the beacon of fun and glee that is Saints Row
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Jul 18, 2016 03:34
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At least Saint's Row picked a side between silly/serious. GTA keeps trying to tell these dark gritty stories about the human condition in a world of Republican Space Rangers, computer shops called tw@ and wacky radio hosts.
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Jul 18, 2016 03:38
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ro5s posted:At least Saint's Row picked a side between silly/serious. GTA keeps trying to tell these dark gritty stories about the human condition in a world of Republican Space Rangers, computer shops called tw@ and wacky radio hosts. Haha, isn't that trevor guy wacky! Look at him now, he's driving through traffic on a stolen pink scooter how crazy is this guy? What wild antics is he going to get up to next? Oh. He's horribly torturing a man.
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Jul 18, 2016 03:46
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I for one thoroughly enjoyed torturing an innocent, cooperative man by choosing the implements of torture and then actually having a variety of little control touches to go through with it like rotating the stick or whatever.
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Jul 18, 2016 03:50
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That was a hideously unpleasant scene.
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Jul 18, 2016 04:13
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I was thinking about getting GTAV during this past Steam sale, but then I remembered that there are so many other games I could play that doesn't involve me graphically torturing someone. Also the fact that I haven't really enjoyed a Rockstar game since San Andreas. I've tried to play Red Dead Redemption three times, and each time I get tired of it about an hour in. The environment is really drab and boring, the gunplay is mediocre and unsatisfying, and I just can't bring myself to give a single gently caress about any of the characters. The game put a bounty on my head because I shot a guy who shot me first, so maybe the game just hates me.
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Jul 18, 2016 04:40
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Mister Adequate posted:I for one thoroughly enjoyed torturing an innocent, cooperative man by choosing the implements of torture and then actually having a variety of little control touches to go through with it like rotating the stick or whatever. Between GTAV and Duke Nukem Forever there's a thesis to be written about the midlife crises former young, hotshot game developers go through when they have to convince everyone that they've still got it and are as edgy and funny as they ever were.
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Jul 18, 2016 04:48
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Inco posted:I was thinking about getting GTAV during this past Steam sale, but then I remembered that there are so many other games I could play that doesn't involve me graphically torturing someone. Also the fact that I haven't really enjoyed a Rockstar game since San Andreas. The best part of GTAV is during the multiplayer heists, running so you can be the driver and then taking the longest possible route to the destination by driving over mountains and running down anyone who tries to escape.
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Jul 18, 2016 04:52
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The new doom has pretty much everything I wanted from duke nukem forever oddly enough. I didn't bother getting past the first boss in duke nukem it was so joyless.
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Jul 18, 2016 04:52
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I think the idea behind that scene was that making you do it instead of just watching it would be a one-two punch: First in helping characterize Trevor and Michael as different brands of nutcase (Trevor doing gruesome torturing while Michael is searching for the right guy to blow away with a sniper rifle), while also setting you up for the devs to swat you for doing it later. The latter is especially obvious given what Trevor says while you're driving the guy to the airport at the end, about how torture like that happens all the time and the government says it's ok and blah blah shut up dan houser. The trouble there though is that I don't really play video games for the developers to make you do bad poo poo and then poke you for it in a pithy effort to "make a statement" or whathaveyou. Most people don't.
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Jul 18, 2016 04:53
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CJacobs posted:The trouble there though is that I don't really play video games for the developers to make you do bad poo poo and then poke you for it in a pithy effort to "make a statement" or whathaveyou. Most people don't. It always just feels like they're jerking themselves off to it too. Like, everyone I know who's played it loves The Line for that sort of thing but I just can't get into it because the game makes you do poo poo then tells you you're poo poo for doing them. IIRC the developer in an interview said something along the lines of "You do have a choice, you can turn the game off" but that's not a bloody choice. That's not playing the game. Basically it's just kind of dumb for game developers to make something in a game specifically so they can gape their assholes at you and scream "This is youuuuu" to the player.
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Jul 18, 2016 04:58
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CJacobs posted:The trouble there though is that I don't really play video games for the developers to make you do bad poo poo and then poke you for it in a pithy effort to "make a statement" or whathaveyou. Most people don't. This is exactly my problem with pretty much any game that chides the player for making morally objectionable choices. If I was loving forced to do it by the structure of the gameplay and story then it isn't really a moral choice, is it? Also it's a video game and not reality so I'm going to do poo poo that is bad for personal gain, even though I wouldn't do it in real life. e: ^^ holy poo poo that is amazingly clueless.
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Jul 18, 2016 04:59
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Spec Ops is the only game I've played that I was fine with them doing that, because that was the whole point of the game, so I'm not with you on that one. When the game centers around doing that and you know they're doing it going in then that's fine. A character says outright that you don't have any choice in the matter before you are forced to do bad things for the first time, which is not very subtle, but they don't pretend it's anything else. It's much less egregious than when it happens in Grand Theft Auto, a game about stealing cars and killing gang members with your wacko buddies while the Amoeba song from the tony hawk soundtrack plays on your new stolen car's stereo. Grand Theft Auto does the poking thing and then pretends it's deeper than the 1 inch it is. Nuebot posted:IIRC the developer in an interview said something along the lines of "You do have a choice, you can turn the game off" I do disagree with this though, the writer for spec ops is way up his own rear end and his opinions really shouldn't be paid attention to even if he did write a good story. edit: To reference the Saints Row discussion that just took place, in GTA it's like the moment someone mentioned where the bad guy calls out the protagonist for killing people by the truckload just while going from point A to point B and the protagonist's response is basically "no but shut up though". Except without the self-awareness that allows them to get away with doing that. I think that's GTA 5's problem in a nutshell, really: It has absolutely no self-awareness. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 05:07 on Jul 18, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 05:00
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Nuebot posted:It always just feels like they're jerking themselves off to it too. Like, everyone I know who's played it loves The Line for that sort of thing but I just can't get into it because the game makes you do poo poo then tells you you're poo poo for doing them. IIRC the developer in an interview said something along the lines of "You do have a choice, you can turn the game off" but that's not a bloody choice. That's not playing the game. Basically it's just kind of dumb for game developers to make something in a game specifically so they can gape their assholes at you and scream "This is youuuuu" to the player. Did you take it this personally when Silent Hill 2 called you a terrible person for not doing a good enough job on an escort quest?
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Jul 18, 2016 05:07
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GTA comes off as pretentious in all the wrong ways with their Facebook parody, torture scenes and radio ads. Maybe it's because I've gotten older but these jokes come off as more preaching and complaining than funny and good natured.
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Jul 18, 2016 05:23
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That's Dan Houser in a nutshell. The Houser bros are the reason GTA's tone is so fuckin weird. They have a vendetta against the modern age and GTA 5 is their attempt to pass off stone-cold complaining as satirical comedy, and unsurprisingly, it doesn't work and is often times not funny.
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Jul 18, 2016 05:25
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I think that's the same kind of reason why a lot of people think much less of Saints Row 3 than they do 2 and 4, and it's a lesson GTA could stand to learn from: decide what kind of story and tone you're going to tell, and stick to it. Don't keep wavering back and forth.
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Jul 18, 2016 05:38
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Cythereal posted:I think that's the same kind of reason why a lot of people think much less of Saints Row 3 than they do 2 and 4, and it's a lesson GTA could stand to learn from: decide what kind of story and tone you're going to tell, and stick to it. Don't keep wavering back and forth. Exactly. Vary the tone, but know what it is, moment by moment, and hit that note as hard as possible. The Carlos scene in Saint's Row 2 was tragic and brutal and heartfelt and generally tonally inconsistent with the rest of that kooky wacky game, but entirely consistent with the shape of the increasingly bleak and cruel Maero questline at that point. That mission was deliberately not funny and the Boss spent the whole time deliberately not cracking wise, so when that scene hit it was meaningful. Likewise the secret finale mission.
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Jul 18, 2016 06:14
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Nuebot posted:It always just feels like they're jerking themselves off to it too. Like, everyone I know who's played it loves The Line for that sort of thing but I just can't get into it because the game makes you do poo poo then tells you you're poo poo for doing them. IIRC the developer in an interview said something along the lines of "You do have a choice, you can turn the game off" but that's not a bloody choice. That's not playing the game. Basically it's just kind of dumb for game developers to make something in a game specifically so they can gape their assholes at you and scream "This is youuuuu" to the player. Spec Ops The Line is the only game I've seen where the "but you can turn off the game" thing works, because it's really baked into the plot and the whole idea is that it's a choice but you just don't think of it as one. The main character accomplishes his stated mission of contacting the US troops in Dubai within like the first 15 minutes of the game, and he could just walk out of Dubai any time at any point after that and call for back-up - but he doesn't, because that's not what he's there for. He's there to ~be a hero~ and it leads him to do terrible things. So I let them get away with it.
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Jul 18, 2016 06:16
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Deceitful Penguin posted:I guess it's good that SR is doing it's own thing, but at this point it just feels so, wacky. Like the class clown, trying to make everything a joke. I'm struggling like hell to remember some game that does this and I'm coming up blank. I want to say Borderlands but I'm sure that's not right because I played up till like level 20-something until it got too annoying to do on my own with so many people shooting at me with almost perfect accuracy and even that game wasn't trying to be a high-larious joke-spree all the time.
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Jul 18, 2016 06:23
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CJacobs posted:They have a vendetta against the modern age and GTA 5 is their attempt to pass off stone-cold complaining as satirical comedy, and unsurprisingly, it doesn't work and is often times not funny. see also: Matt Stone, Trey Parker
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Jul 18, 2016 06:32
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gta and southpark and all those harsh biting satires of modern pop culture* lost all their bite when they became modern pop culture *you know what I mean
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Jul 18, 2016 06:56
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GTA is cool and good because it's not trying to remind you how wacky it is with talking velociraptors or whatever.
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Jul 18, 2016 10:04
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gohuskies posted:Spec Ops The Line is the only game I've seen where the "but you can turn off the game" thing works, because it's really baked into the plot and the whole idea is that it's a choice but you just don't think of it as one. The main character accomplishes his stated mission of contacting the US troops in Dubai within like the first 15 minutes of the game, and he could just walk out of Dubai any time at any point after that and call for back-up - but he doesn't, because that's not what he's there for. He's there to ~be a hero~ and it leads him to do terrible things. So I let them get away with it. I would have let them get away with it if you could actually leave at the point when you actually meet someone and accomplished your objectives, don't have it pop up or something but have it as a secret ending. It's not like it would have cost them that much to put in a short cutscene and roll the credits before kicking you back to the menu or the last checkpoint. There was even a story going 'round at the time of it's release that in one of the earlier version you could actually leave, but they removed the option after most of their players took that option and left.I doubt it's a true story though, it sounds too good and there hasn't been any proof. I wonder if someone have done the "Quitting is a valid option" thing for other media? Has someone said it's your fault Romeo & Juliet dies because you could have just walked out of the theater or you could have prevented a lot of deaths, but you had to keep watching that lovely horror movie.
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Jul 18, 2016 10:46
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Undertale has a weird meta relationship with its player, specifically revolving around the fact saving and loading is an in-universe thing, that does evolve into various ways of trying to get you to not play the game. The pacifist and genocide endings especially drive it home. If you boot up the game after the pacifist ending, the character directly aware of the nature of saving begs you not to overwrite it; everyone is safe and happy, and you're the only person with the power to take that away from them. The genocide ending has a LOT of fun with it. Sans, the superboss everyone's aware of at this point, knows that you can save, but can't directly observe it like Flowey. The reason that he's so balls-out hard, unfair, and breaks the rules of the game as we know them, is because he's specifically trying to push you into getting frustrated and ragequitting, because getting you to give up is the only way he can ensure anybody survives. And if you play more after genocide, it gets even worse. If you do a second or even third genocide run it'll just tell you to loving STOP ALREADY because you are clearly a lunatic, you can't even claim curiosity of what would happen at that point. It also twists and ruins the final screen of the pacifist ending if you do that again, because you traded away your happy ending for being that low of a person (there's also a fairly compelling theory I've heard that it's a play by one of the more abstract and weird characters of the game to make you stop by stressing the consequences of your behavior). Also, Saints Row IV is basically the video game equivalent of Airplane. That's not what I wanted or expected of it, but I'm happy that such a thing exists.
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Jul 18, 2016 11:15
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Hel posted:I would have let them get away with it if you could actually leave at the point when you actually meet someone and accomplished your objectives, don't have it pop up or something but have it as a secret ending. It's not like it would have cost them that much to put in a short cutscene and roll the credits before kicking you back to the menu or the last checkpoint. Difference is that you're not interacting with those and actively driving them forward.
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Jul 18, 2016 11:23
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GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:Difference is that you're not interacting with those and actively driving them forward. But it's not like you're playing The Sims or something and setting up a murder house to torture little pretend people. You have no actual control over what happens in the game. The player is effectively just along for the ride.
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Jul 18, 2016 11:32
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Nuebot posted:But it's not like you're playing The Sims or something and setting up a murder house to torture little pretend people. You have no actual control over what happens in the game. The player is effectively just along for the ride. I'm just saying that there's a distinction between "you could just walk out of the theater and not kill Juliet!" vs "You are the one who is actively controlling this situation and causing all this death." Sure, the player is to some extent along for the ride, but on the other hand you do have a choice which leads to you (as opposed to characters you have no control over) killing a bunch of people. And that choice is to not play. You know, like not joining the military and engaging in pointless wars (because that is the totally not subtle metaphor of the game).
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Jul 18, 2016 11:35
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GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:I'm just saying that there's a distinction between "you could just walk out of the theater and not kill Juliet!" vs "You are the one who is actively controlling this situation and causing all this death." Sure, the player is to some extent along for the ride, but on the other hand you do have a choice which leads to you (as opposed to characters you have no control over) killing a bunch of people. And that choice is to not play. You know, like not joining the military and engaging in pointless wars (because that is the totally not subtle metaphor of the game). My point is that you're not killing those people, and that's why making GBS threads in the player for this situation is BS. The game is already programmed, it exists and nothing will change that. There is no path in the game that stops this from happening. No matter how many times you run through the game, they're dead. Even if you quit the game, they're dead. It is a thing that exists. Just like how no matter what romeo and juliet are dead even if you walk out of the play halfway through. Blaming the player for something they have no real influence on is a cop-out.
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Jul 18, 2016 11:41
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It's just one tool in the ~games are art~ toolkit. We started out making games where YOU get to feel go because you're the hero who kicked rear end. Now we've learned that YOU can also feel bad because YOU pressed f to white phosphorous. Basically let's get over the cool new idea already and use the tools as tools rather than the focus points for game after game.
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Jul 18, 2016 12:09
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The game doesn't ever poo poo on you for playing it, though. They poo poo on the characters for doing bad poo poo- calling out their motivations. But they don't ever say that you, the player, are a bad person, and that's something I think is really really important. That loading screen tip that says "You are still a good person" is not ironically jabbing at you for killing the virtual people, it's an honest statement that's there to remind you that no matter what the characters do in the game, you didn't do any of it- the characters did. Which is why I said I disagree with the 'you could just turn off the game' thing, because involving the player in the story in that way is impossible because the game ceases to be when you turn it off and (more importantly) leave the immersion provided by its world. You are not captain Walker, you're playing as captain Walker, and that's an important distinction that I think a lot of people miss in their discussions about how the game made them do bad things. Yes, the game forces you to hit the button and drop the white phosphorus, but you only did it because Walker said you had to. You are still a good person because you genuinely didn't have any choice- Walker did, and he made the wrong one for you. When Konrad says "you could have gone home" at the end of the game, he's not talking to you. GTA 5 is different because it does poo poo on you. It takes what could've been a real heavy moment and makes you sit through it, then points at you and goes "HA HA YOU TORTURED THAT GUY" in the Nelson-from-the-Simpsons voice. And that's unfair to you in a way that Spec Ops is not, because it involves you in the story beyond you just being the person behind the wheel of the car driving the dude to the airport afterward. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 12:31 on Jul 18, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 12:27
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gohuskies posted:Spec Ops The Line is the only game I've seen where the "but you can turn off the game" thing works, because it's really baked into the plot and the whole idea is that it's a choice but you just don't think of it as one. The main character accomplishes his stated mission of contacting the US troops in Dubai within like the first 15 minutes of the game, and he could just walk out of Dubai any time at any point after that and call for back-up - but he doesn't, because that's not what he's there for. He's there to ~be a hero~ and it leads him to do terrible things. So I let them get away with it. RareAcumen posted:I'm struggling like hell to remember some game that does this and I'm coming up blank. I want to say Borderlands but I'm sure that's not right because I played up till like level 20-something until it got too annoying to do on my own with so many people shooting at me with almost perfect accuracy and even that game wasn't trying to be a high-larious joke-spree all the time. Hel posted:I would have let them get away with it if you could actually leave at the point when you actually meet someone and accomplished your objectives, don't have it pop up or something but have it as a secret ending. It's not like it would have cost them that much to put in a short cutscene and roll the credits before kicking you back to the menu or the last checkpoint. Cleretic posted:Undertale: And if you play more after genocide, it gets even worse. If you do a second or even third genocide run it'll just tell you to loving STOP ALREADY because you are clearly a lunatic, you can't even claim curiosity of what would happen at that point.  Nuebot posted:But it's not like you're playing The Sims or something and setting up a murder house to torture little pretend people. You have no actual control over what happens in the game. The player is effectively just along for the ride. GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:I'm just saying that there's a distinction between "you could just walk out of the theater and not kill Juliet!" vs "You are the one who is actively controlling this situation and causing all this death." Sure, the player is to some extent along for the ride, but on the other hand you do have a choice which leads to you (as opposed to characters you have no control over) killing a bunch of people. Strategic Tea posted:It's just one tool in the ~games are art~ toolkit. We started out making games where YOU get to feel go because you're the hero who kicked rear end. Now we've learned that YOU can also feel bad because YOU pressed f to white phosphorous. Basically let's get over the cool new idea already and use the tools as tools rather than the focus points for game after game. CJacobs posted:The game doesn't ever poo poo on you for playing it, though. They poo poo on the characters for doing bad poo poo- calling out their motivations. But they don't ever say that you, the player, are a bad person, and that's something I think is really really important. That loading screen tip that says "You are still a good person" is not ironically jabbing at you for killing the virtual people, it's an honest statement that's there to remind you that no matter what the characters do in the game, you didn't do any of it- the characters did.
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Jul 18, 2016 12:30
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GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:I'm just saying that there's a distinction between "you could just walk out of the theater and not kill Juliet!" vs "You are the one who is actively controlling this situation and causing all this death." Sure, the player is to some extent along for the ride, but on the other hand you do have a choice which leads to you (as opposed to characters you have no control over) killing a bunch of people. And that choice is to not play. You know, like not joining the military and engaging in pointless wars (because that is the totally not subtle metaphor of the game). You're not actively driving it though. If a Romeo and Juliet DVD paused every few minutes and made you hit play to continue you'd have as much control over its story as in Spec Ops. The choice is continue this on-rails story or not. You don't decide how the story plays out, only whether it plays out for you.
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Jul 18, 2016 12:40
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This is second hand info but from what I know the "lead writer" of Spec Ops: The Line actually came on board relatively late and merely made revisions to the story. Interviews with the guy make it sound (to me at least) like he was the main source of the jabs at the player, as well as the choice to not have the option to simply leave Dubai early, which was considered in development. EDIT: To clarify, the "lead writer" in question is Walt Williams (interview here). Richard Pearsey was the actual main writer for the game. HMS Boromir has a new favorite as of 14:27 on Jul 18, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 14:24
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Apparently Far Cry 4 has a trick ending but I haven't played it and I haven't watched the trick ending.
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Jul 18, 2016 14:39
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For being a fun game I'm pretty sure I enjoy, almost every aspect of Pokemon GO is broken either conceptually (getting attached to or investing in any individual Pokemon before a ridiculously high trainer level is a trap because you'll just find a better random encounter, so there's no point engaging with half the game's systems) or functionally (gym battles are serverside and unplayably laggy as a result).
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Jul 18, 2016 14:44
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im pooping! posted:Apparently Far Cry 4 has a trick ending but I haven't played it and I haven't watched the trick ending. It does, they were talking about that. At the very start of the game you're sitting at a table with the main villain. At one point he says something like "wait here, I have to take care of something, I'll be back in ten minutes." At that point you gain control of the main character and you're expected to take off and do stuff, but if you actually do wait ten minutes he comes back, says "thanks for waiting!" and then another cutscene plays out and the game ends.
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Jul 18, 2016 14:46
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HMS Boromir posted:This is second hand info but from what I know the "lead writer" of Spec Ops: The Line There's a huge amount of hearsay regarding The Line's writing process and nearly all of it is unreliable because gamers were goddamned livid at that title. There were LP threads with guys writing essays that collectively approached five-digit word counts decrying it. The closest thing I have to first-hand information is a cracked.com article of all things, but I forget if Pearsey was the one interviewed. He made it pretty clear that it was a stroke of luck that the game turned out anywhere near as good as it did because he was bashing his head against the usual bland AAA plotting demands every step of the way, and not all of his workarounds were all that successful. I don't agree with some of his takes on the plot (like how the entire last quarter of it is just a purgatory/dying dream scenario) and the "just turn the game off" thing is stupid and gets trotted out way too often, but where gamers seem to keep going wrong is in taking The Line's indictment of wargame tropes as an indictment of them personally. It's using standard videogame cliches to explore the idea that pushing too far into a bad situation means that the only decisions you can make are bad ones. It's not calling you an idiot for taking part in it. Like, Undertale was brought up earlier and that definitely is addressing you because the protagonist is a classic mute blank-slate (with some notable exceptions, but those aren't relevant right now) who's explicitly a proxy for the player's will. Walker is his own person with his own hangups and it's his decisions that are driving the story, not ours. The Line is his story, and its condemnations are mostly limited to him and the character archetype he represents. Oxxidation has a new favorite as of 14:55 on Jul 18, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 14:52
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I replayed Braid recently and hoo boy the writings (or journal entries or whatever) are much more pretentious than I'd remembered. I can't imagine The Witness's writing being any better.
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Jul 18, 2016 14:53
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The Witness thankfully has no writing so there's no story to be pretentious in the first place. The only thing kind of like that about it are the endings, each of which is a different kind of pretentious.
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Jul 18, 2016 15:00
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