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Gatac posted:Gonna go out on a limb and say every unwinnable boss fight is dumb. The ones that don't signal their unwinnableness, the ones that make you waste consumables and the ones that Game Over you if you lose too early are extra dumb. But then if you make it a battle you just lose in a cutscene people will complain about this random Gary Stu/Mary Sue who's so much better than you in every way and can kick your rear end one-handed too.
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Sep 9, 2016 16:06
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RareAcumen posted:But then if you make it a battle you just lose in a cutscene people will complain about this random Gary Stu/Mary Sue who's so much better than you in every way and can kick your rear end one-handed too. They'll do that anyway until the proper boss battle, where they will either be vindicated (the boss was easy as piss) or humbled (the boss was super hard and no they probably couldn't have beat them earlier.) Honestly the worst kinds of unwinnable bosses are the ones you never beat, because while your narrative may work better on the premise that yes, sometimes there's just someone better than you are, deal with it, well... Video Games are an inherently player driven experience. One that is predicated on the idea that your rewards are a result of your hard work. so you must either ascend and take out a challenge so powerful that the boss you never beat became irrelevant in the end (God usually) or you must defeat them, otherwise, the victory at the end is hollow, because it's always predicated under the knowledge of "Except if the unbeatable boss had been there I would have lost." Then again there are justifiable reasons for that, an overarching antagonist you plan for another game hardly gets helped by being defeated by you, but that brings up the question if playing a game with that's created on the knowledge that a villain within it will be resolved later in another piece of $60 hardware that you'll have to pay for if you want the conclusion. I mean we just finished a game series LP with that kind of antagonist Anubis is unbeatable at the end of ZoE 1 and in ZoE 2 he kicks your rear end until the final battle. But at the same time even at the final bout he can easily trash you, despite all the upgrades. Ergo, the player is justified in their loss to Anubis, since upon fighting him in a real fight they were humbled. Then again is that a satisfying end to ZoE 1? To get stuck in a boss battle you can't win and must survive to beat the game? I mean thematically yes but I remember people in the thread complaining. It's a very complex issue. Story telling in video games isn't like story telling in other media, there's an inherently higher buy in for the experience and due to the money involved a genuinely expected feeling of satisfaction. In short, an unwinnable boss you never defeat can feel like the director and writers are just jacking off right in your face, "Look at our cool character aren't they a badass and they can clown the player character no matter what."
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Sep 9, 2016 17:00
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Onmi posted:I mean thematically yes then it's a good ending
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Sep 9, 2016 17:02
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I think unwinnable boss fights are okay if you go back and fight them later and win. The said Beatrix fights in FF9 are loving awful because at no point do you feel like you're making progress with her. She just pulls out that instawin no matter what, and even in the third and final fight you never actually beat her. Compare this to Anubis in ZOE/ZOE2. Yes, okay, it takes an entire other game to actually get there, but it feels really good when you do beat Anubis, because you were given a clear power level and a clear progression. "Hey, this guy kicked my rear end last time, but this time I'm holding my own" and then "Hey now I'm winning, I'm awesome." This is the first time we've met Nadine, and right now we've been given a clear example of what she is capable of. Give it time, maybe in another half dozen videos or so we'll see exactly how far we've gone (i say like i havent played this game and know whats about to happen). From a gameplay perspective, yes, unwinnable boss fights can be annoying and seems like it's just the director going "Nah nah I have a SUPER AWESOME character", but from a cinematic standpoint they work pretty well. Uncharted is, if nothing else, an homage and modernization of Indiana Jones, which was itself an homage and modernization of old adventure serials. So of course they're going to bring in some fights you're not designed to win. There's at least one fight per movie Indy struggles with. What I think is dumb is the whole reason why they're fighting. All Drake has to do is pull out his pockets and show that he doesn't have the cross. I guess it's to show that he's getting back into the whole adventuring life, but once you've been getting your rear end kicked for a minute straight I think even then he'd just go "I DON'T HAVE IT PLEASE STOP HITTING MY FACE".
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Sep 9, 2016 17:13
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MrAristocrates posted:then it's a good ending Sure for a movie or a book or a television serial drama. But I remember that when I played ZoE1, ZoE2 wasn't in stores anymore, so at the end of my session with the game I was just SoL when it came to fighting Anubis. My only way to experience the ending was watching someone else do it. From the perspective of that younger me, ZoE1 had a terrible ending and that was not okay. Another example, Final Fantasy X. It's thematic that in the end Yu Yevon was nothing but a soul sucking tick that couldn't actually fight for itself and was pathetically weak ignoring the players auto-life inability to die. But considering the amount of complaints that Yu Yevon was a "Pathetic" final boss because of this thematic lameness, it's hard to argue they're wrong. I mean I would argue they're wrong because Braska's Final Aeon is basically the Real final boss and everything after that is the cast taking a bow before going off the stage... Which leads into the next example, XCom - Enemy Unknown. The final mission on the Temple ship is ridiculously easy, to the point in JadeStar's thread someone proved the mission could be done singlehandedly. The mission isn't meant as the final challenge but once more, the cast giving their farewells before the game is over. Mission is very thematic, showing each alien race encountered and scaling to the Ethereal's themselves, but it's still considered a bad final mission. This isn't to say an ending shouldn't try to be thematic, just that being Thematic while also allowing the player to feel they've achieved is important. Video Games are a predominantly interactive artform, thus a good ending is not simply one that is thematic and well written but also one that is enjoyable. kalonZombie posted:What I think is dumb is the whole reason why they're fighting. All Drake has to do is pull out his pockets and show that he doesn't have the cross. I guess it's to show that he's getting back into the whole adventuring life, but once you've been getting your rear end kicked for a minute straight I think even then he'd just go "I DON'T HAVE IT PLEASE STOP HITTING MY FACE". Actually, yes, this is a more pressing issue. For having dialog options we didn't have one for Nate to beg off, and then for Nadine to keep hitting him anyway (Because if he doesn't have it, his friends will, and they'll either want him back, or he'll rat them out, she has ways of making people talk) And then bam, fight continues. EDIT: Although this fight did remind me of one of my favorite Atomic Robo lines "My flippant responses are supposed to trick you into making a mistake, not trick you into beating me senseless." Onmi fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 17:13
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"Achievement" is nothing. It's pointless. If you're trying to tell a story, themes are everything. Stories do not need to be and should not always be about feeling accomplishment or strength. Just because a lot of people complain doesn't mean they're right.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:17
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MrAristocrates posted:"Achievement" is nothing. It's pointless. Not for a predominantly interactive art form. You want to tell a story free from the greasy manipulations of the consumer, write a book, shoot a movie, make a TV serial, but don't make it a game. By changing the nature of how the media is digested you change the inherent nature of how the story is perceived. Two scenario's framed exactly the same will elicit different feelings depending on what form it's presented in. Hell it goes right back up to the top with the "Make it a cutscene then." That changes how it is fundamentally perceived entirely, the experience is different, the message is different.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:24
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Onmi posted:Not for a predominantly interactive art form. You want to tell a story free from the greasy manipulations of the consumer, write a book, shoot a movie, make a TV serial, but don't make it a game. By changing the nature of how the media is digested you change the inherent nature of how the story is perceived. Two scenario's framed exactly the same will elicit different feelings depending on what form it's presented in. Hell it goes right back up to the top with the "Make it a cutscene then." That changes how it is fundamentally perceived entirely, the experience is different, the message is different. You're saying it's the developer's responsibility to make the player feel good, which is bullshit. I've experienced tons of media in other formats that made me feel like total poo poo, and what you're suggesting is that games by nature of their interactivity are incompatible with that. You're essentially saying that games are far more limited in their ability to express complex themes or elicit emotion than other art forms, which is ridiculous.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:29
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MrAristocrates posted:You're saying it's the developer's responsibility to make the player feel good, which is bullshit. I've experienced tons of media in other formats that made me feel like total poo poo, and what you're suggesting is that games by nature of their interactivity are incompatible with that. You're essentially saying that games are far more limited in their ability to express complex themes or elicit emotion than other art forms, which is ridiculous. No what I'm saying is that the same storytelling methods used in those other formatted media are not compatible with the storytelling formats used in video games. Guess what, a lot of video games story telling methods are also not compatible with any other format. They are their own thing. And another thing it's an inherently higher cost of entry for video games than it is for film, books or television. They have different storytelling formats they have different barriers of entry and they have different methods of making the player experience something. In counter, to make a player feel sad because of a film is simple (to a degree, the statement very much undermines the difficulty in creative writing which isn't the intent.), just write something horrible happening to someone likable and the audience who is along for this story will likely feel the emotions. But look at Nate and Elana in the house, would you feel anywhere close to what many people felt when they played the game if not for all the detail, nooks and crannies. It didn't just look realistic or sound good, it felt different. To make a player feel is different than making a viewer feel. To get back on point, ultimately an Unwinnable Boss Battle may not be the wrong choice, but you're very much risking failing to get your message across. If the message after losing to Nadine is supposed to be "wow I got my poo poo wrecked." Then that risks getting muddled with apathy or disgust for the game itself. And if you are trying to essentially say that players who come away with that experience are "Wrong" then quite frankly, it's not the players job to curtail their emotions and feelings to the whims of the creator. That's like saying if you don't cry at a sad scene then you've done it "Wrong." You just didn't find it sad, or you found it hokey. Or maybe you're just not the type to get sad when consuming media.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:42
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Cost is completely irrelevant. It may affect how you react to the story but it honestly probably shouldn't. The two have basically nothing to do with each other and those decisions are made entirely separately. I don't get mad I paid money for a game unless I feel like it actively wasted my time or was bad enough to legitimately offend my sensibilities. What you're saying is that video games can't properly convey emotions like hopelessness or dissatisfaction outside of cutscenes or without later undermining them with triumph. It's a pointless insistence on tying one hand behind your back, for what? To make sure the player doesn't feel bad? That just makes it sound like games are a lovely medium to tell a story. I don't believe that, and I don't think you do either, but that's the logical extension of your argument. Lots of good endings are "controversial" because they make the audience feel negative. Changing the story to fix that is the wrong move. This is gonna sound kinda harsh but I think in a lot of cases the kinds of people who get upset at these kinds of things don't really understand the purpose of stories.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:54
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Achievement is everything in a video game, except weird experimental ones. Every thing in almost every video game is based around a feeling of achievement. Uncharted does this by giving you a platforming challenge or a room full of dudes to shoot / stab / punch to death. Tetris does this by giving you a score to beat. Animal Crossing does this by giving you bigger houses. Minecraft does this with better digging and building materials. There's always some carrot dangling in front of you to keep going until the end, and if there's no end then to just keep playing the game. People who enjoy games tend to put more investment into them, not saying "Kratos got killed" but "I died". To pull this achievement out from a player is basically the game cheating, which tends to put a lot of people off. This may or may not have a thematic or narrative reason, either. It certainly doesn't in FF9 with Beatrix, who is simply there to go "Haha look these guys lost AGAIN" essentially. But since a player is playing for a sense of achievement, unwinnable boss fights can be very annoying. I don't find them too bad if, like I said, I go back to that boss and get to see my power progression throughout the game, but I understand why people don't think like this. You've invested all this knowledge about a game, all these skills, and the game basically says "They're useless now, you can't win because we're essentially cheating". That isn't fun in a medium that's entirely dedicated to testing these skills and this knowledge you've accumulated over the course of several hours in order to accomplish a goal you're working towards.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:56
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kalonZombie posted:Achievement is everything in a video game, except weird experimental ones. What I'm fundamentally asking is, "why do story-driven games need to be fun at all times?" I'm not saying they shouldn't or can't be, I'm saying that it's really strange and probably detrimental that we've been trained to expect that and get angry when it's not true. This isn't some "games shouldn't be fun" bullshit, but I think that constant need is probably holding the medium back.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:59
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MrAristocrates posted:You're saying it's the developer's responsibility to make the player feel good, which is bullshit. I've experienced tons of media in other formats that made me feel like total poo poo, and what you're suggesting is that games by nature of their interactivity are incompatible with that. You're essentially saying that games are far more limited in their ability to express complex themes or elicit emotion than other art forms, which is ridiculous. I think it's the developer's responsibility to keep you engaged with the game, and part of that is using the language of interactivity in a way that makes that interactivity matter. An unwinnable boss fight is like an RPG dialogue encounter that makes you choose from several different options, none of which chance the NPC's lines or reaction or anything, and end with the conversation going badly for you. That game is quite literally wasting the player's interaction. It's not that you need to make the player feel good about things constantly. It's matching effort put into playing the game to a pay-off of some sort. Did it matter what dialogue lines I chose? Did it matter how well I fought this boss battle? No? Then gently caress off and make it a cutscene so I know that things are gonna happen that I don't have any control over, or better yet, rethink why player interaction doesn't matter in your design and how your design can be changed for that interaction to matter. I've already outlined a few ideas for how an "unbeatable" boss fight could give you objectives orthogonal to conventional victory, and I think the designers should have the courtesy to reward my interaction with the game somehow by making the game reactive to that interaction. Now whether that outcome makes me laugh or cry or think about the fragility of life, man, doesn't really matter to me. But it ought to make me care about the consequences of my interaction.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:02
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I think the first stages of Armstrong from Metal Gear Revengeance was a good way to handle a boss fight. You can connect some hits, but the damage bar barely goes down as compared to what happens when he hits you. It's an unwinnable bossfight masquerading as an extremely hard normal fight that continues the story when you inevitably lose. The trouble in this case is that Drake has one specific way to connect that isn't a normal attack, and the only other way to fight back is through the cutscene QTEs.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:05
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This wouldn't be a problem if we were playing as Jackie Chan instead.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:08
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Gatac posted:I think it's the developer's responsibility to keep you engaged with the game, and part of that is using the language of interactivity in a way that makes that interactivity matter. An unwinnable boss fight is like an RPG dialogue encounter that makes you choose from several different options, none of which chance the NPC's lines or reaction or anything, and end with the conversation going badly for you. That game is quite literally wasting the player's interaction. I think that they should use every tool at their disposal to tell the story in the best possible way, so if interactivity helps them convey what they need to, why not? But more to the point, having a fight in a loving Uncharted game take place in a cutscene would be absurd.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:10
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RareAcumen posted:This wouldn't be a problem if we were playing as Jackie Chan instead. press x to bad day
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Sep 9, 2016 18:11
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I think it does have the opposite effect of what they were intending, in a way. You're supposed to go, "man that Nadine is badass, she took her shoes off and beat Drake up crazy hard with kung-fu", but they had to make it an unwinnable sequence in order for her to beat you in gameplay, whereas if it were just a cutscene they could just show her beating Drake. It does have the intended effect of making her look cool, but it also feels a bit cheap. The act of letting you try to fight her and fail has its upsides and downsides but it wasn't really worth it imo.  MrAristocrates posted:I think that they should use every tool at their disposal to tell the story in the best possible way, so if interactivity helps them convey what they need to, why not? The point is that it doesn't help them convey it.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:11
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MrAristocrates posted:What I'm fundamentally asking is, "why do story-driven games need to be fun at all times?" I'm not saying they shouldn't or can't be, I'm saying that it's really strange and probably detrimental that we've been trained to expect that and get angry when it's not true. This isn't some "games shouldn't be fun" bullshit, but I think that constant need is probably holding the medium back. I think its less about feeling good and more about the sudden loss of agency inherent in an unwinnable battle. Spec Ops: The Line is a good example for a game giving you agency and making you feel like complete poo poo over your choice with it. One of my favorite RPGs also had some unwinnable battles, but they had both sides. One of them, you fight the boss, lose, progress 20 more levels, still lose, then meet him 10 minutes later and win. Then later, you fight three of the final bosses at once and get stomped, but after a bunch of levels and taking them on one by one, you narrowly beat them. But they at least give you the option to fight, whereas a cutscene isn't an option. No control or agency, just a show. And that goes against the amount of control a game is supposed to give you. Edit: beaten bad.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:12
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MrAristocrates posted:I think that they should use every tool at their disposal to tell the story in the best possible way, so if interactivity helps them convey what they need to, why not? Begging the question, is interactivity the best way to tell the story in this instance?
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Sep 9, 2016 18:16
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CJacobs posted:The point is that it doesn't help them convey it. CJacobs posted:It does have the intended effect of making her look cool, but it also feels a bit cheap. Then it worked. And again, this is an Uncharted game, one of the selling points is "we let you do all the cool poo poo in-gameplay," so putting even a relatively rote fight in a cutscene would be jarring. J.A.B.C. posted:One of my favorite RPGs also had some unwinnable battles, but they had both sides. One of them, you fight the boss, lose, progress 20 more levels, still lose, then meet him 10 minutes later and win. Then later, you fight three of the final bosses at once and get stomped, but after a bunch of levels and taking them on one by one, you narrowly beat them. The issue I have with this is the argument that it's necessary to really counteract past failure with triumph.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:17
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MrAristocrates posted:Then it worked. It doesn't help them convey it better than a cutscene would, is what I was trying to say.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:18
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Shoeless posted:Begging the question, is interactivity the best way to tell the story in this instance? I've not played Uncharted 4 and obviously speaking of which would be spoilers. Do we fight Nadine again and is it unwinnable? If it we do and it is... I'm not sure interactivity is the best way to do this, at the same time there's the question of should the sequence go that way in the first place? Then again perhaps the story will shift in a way to align us with Nadine rather than against, Rafe is a psychopath and Nadine seems to be more interested on working for pay rather than working for glory.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:20
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CJacobs posted:It doesn't help them convey it better than a cutscene would, is what I was trying to say. My argument here is that even if putting it in-gameplay doesn't add much, it's better than what would be lost having the same scene play out in a cutscene, because this is an Uncharted game and putting fights in cutscenes would be weird. Shoeless posted:Begging the question, is interactivity the best way to tell the story in this instance? I should clarify that I was not specifically referring to Uncharted in that instance.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:20
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you cant win either way in a cutscene people would complain that you wouldnt have lost if you actually got to fight her
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Sep 9, 2016 18:21
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If only there was a simple word or phrase to refer to when the demands of the story and narrative conflict with the needs of the gameplay. Maybe some kind of academic-sounding thing with a latin rootword.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:22
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SlothfulCobra posted:If only there was a simple word or phrase to refer to when the demands of the story and narrative conflict with the needs of the gameplay. Maybe some kind of academic-sounding thing with a latin rootword. maybe make it a chievo
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Sep 9, 2016 18:44
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Sep 9, 2016 18:59
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triangle
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Sep 9, 2016 19:02
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Can we talk more about ~narrative dissonance~
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Sep 9, 2016 19:02
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Frantically mashes X
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Sep 9, 2016 19:19
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That flying monkey fist move, though.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:26
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jyrque posted:Can we talk more about ~narrative dissonance~ Only if it's ludonarrative. EDIT: IT'S TAIL TIME! Gex Stream just uploaded onto the lp channel. All 24 videos. J.A.B.C. fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 20:38
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jyrque posted:Can we talk more about ~narrative dissonance~ Boy howdy, what a psycho that Nathan Drake is, he gives one-liners as he murders people like he's Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z abridged or something, it's nuts. Really, what they needed in that homelife section was a bit where Elena drives Nathan to his psychologist and tries to sneak away because psychology and therapy are for crazy people and I'M NOT CRAZY!
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Sep 9, 2016 20:45
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I don't have time to update the website, but we've got a playlist up with all 24 hours of Gextra Life! Please watch it and find out where Jane Fonda is for me, we couldn't find her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgfFdwIFjyA Gextra Life 2016 Playlist
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Sep 9, 2016 20:45
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Easy way to fix it would be for the fight to end with her pulling a gun and you diving through the window. The illusion of agency can also work.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:03
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*gif of Nate looking wistfully to an unknown distances* That's your NECK *SNAP *nate sighs and a happy tear rolls down his cheek before getting forked by Elena* Hey, where were you?
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Sep 9, 2016 21:33
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On a side note this game is loving gorgeous, I honestly am impressed at how good Naughty Dog is at taking systems to their absolute limit. Crash had a ton of poo poo that they did with it that was stretching that console too, iirc.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:54
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Grapplejack posted:On a side note this game is loving gorgeous, I honestly am impressed at how good Naughty Dog is at taking systems to their absolute limit. Crash had a ton of poo poo that they did with it that was stretching that console too, iirc. i dread the day where naughty dog is bought out by a megapublisher and destroyed
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Sep 9, 2016 22:09
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Tashilicious posted:i dread the day where naughty dog is bought out by a megapublisher and destroyed They were brought by a megapublisher, they're owned by Sony.
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Sep 9, 2016 22:15
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