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Bonaventure posted:all I know about the game-feel of tlou 1 is that I felt empowered in any given encounter whenever I, as Joel, successfully managed to slit the throats* of 6 dudes in a row without being seen, then got up in the faces of those that were left and blasted them away You stab them in the neck with homemade shanks! 
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May 9, 2020 18:36
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Stux posted:people seem to feel that the detailed violence, the dogs and the stuff where the enemies act distraught wont be fun. And some people like giallo films
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May 9, 2020 18:36
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just realized what this poo poo reminds me of. it's "press F to pay your respects" press the touchpad in to think about the lives your campaign for revenge has consumed
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May 9, 2020 18:37
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grieving for Gandalf posted:it will be fun to survive against the obstacles thrown in your way to complete the video game, the stupid part is the ~ludonarrative~ stuff they want you to feel as you press R2 to brain someone with a brick do you believe that nds approach in particular will be stupid or that trying that approach in and of itself is flawed wrt removing the sanitation from the violence
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May 9, 2020 18:38
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Hypothetically, it could be done well. The way it's talked about in that interview definitely bodes ill.
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May 9, 2020 18:42
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Stux posted:do you believe that nds approach in particular will be stupid or that trying that approach in and of itself is flawed wrt removing the sanitation from the violence my Video Games As Art opinion is that what makes games special is the agency you have in gameplay. it being interactive is something no other form of media one consumes does, and I think Naughty Dog or Druckmann or whoever is shooting for that with this stuff but the way this is being presented is very .... I don't know if "freshman" is the right word. it's facile, it's shallow, it's cheap. it's the equivalent of those Facebook posts you see now about how the Earth is healing because people are indoors and maybe HUMANS are the real virus
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May 9, 2020 18:48
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I think the word you're looking for is "sophomoric" and I agree if so
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May 9, 2020 18:57
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Stux posted:maybe the game wants you to avoid killing things by making it bad when you do If this is what they're going for then the mechanics should reinforce it. Getting attacked/injured in this game should be just as detrimental to the player character as it is for enemies if they really want to make the player squeamish of taking the violent option. It's not perfect but even Death Stranding had mechanics to dissuade players from being lethal - dead bodies create BTs that, if they interact with other human NPCs, create a voidout which creates more BTs, etc. It fit with the themes, setting, and tone even if it didn't "cost" enough mechanically imo. Ellie is basically the Predator/new Laura Croft so relishing in this kind of violence falls pretty flat even though I'll commend them on trying to make enemy NPCs more believable.
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May 9, 2020 18:57
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grieving for Gandalf posted:my Video Games As Art opinion is that what makes games special is the agency you have in gameplay. it being interactive is something no other form of media one consumes does, and I think Naughty Dog or Druckmann or whoever is shooting for that with this stuff i think thats fair and how i feel about it as well wrt to the freshman comment. i dont know about it being shallow or cheap necessarily until i see it in context personally, but i also think with the freshman description given this is still a AAA game from a major studio, against its contemporaries even a basic and simple approach like this is already above most of them. i personally think its good if there are AAA games "raising the bar" even if that is in effect just picking it up off the floor and holding it one centimetre up because thats the point we've gotten to. of course its just as likely the actual game ends up stomping the bar down into the floor but given the first one i can believe that its going to be at least somewhat competent until i find out otherwise. i think the humans are the real virus thing is just part and parcel with a zombie setting, thats basically the entire point of them, i dont know if i can fault them too hard on that beyond the choice to make a zombie thing. theyre definitely not reaching up at what games can do as a medium when compared with what indie games do but their approach also doesnt sound as completely brain dead as what most other AAA games do, which is basically where tlou1 was for me as well. you mentioned mgs a lot but mgs itself is a huge standout for a big budget title. i dont think its going to be kojima level of commentary at all but those kinds of games are exceptional already and not a fair yardstick of where larger games currently are imo.
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May 9, 2020 19:02
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MeatwadIsGod posted:If this is what they're going for then the mechanics should reinforce it. Getting attacked/injured in this game should be just as detrimental to the player character as it is for enemies if they really want to make the player squeamish of taking the violent option. It's not perfect but even Death Stranding had mechanics to dissuade players from being lethal - dead bodies create BTs that, if they interact with other human NPCs, create a voidout which creates more BTs, etc. It fit with the themes, setting, and tone even if it didn't "cost" enough mechanically imo. Ellie is basically the Predator/new Laura Croft so relishing in this kind of violence falls pretty flat even though I'll commend them on trying to make enemy NPCs more believable. I didn't want to kill the MULEs not just because of the in-game consequences but also because they were established as mostly being guys who'd gone goofy for packages because of the state of the world. they didn't deserve death even if they were in my way Zongerian posted:I think the word you're looking for is "sophomoric" and I agree if so oh yeah duh
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May 9, 2020 19:05
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Stux posted:i think thats fair and how i feel about it as well wrt to the freshman comment. i dont know about it being shallow or cheap necessarily until i see it in context personally, but i also think with the freshman description given this is still a AAA game from a major studio, against its contemporaries even a basic and simple approach like this is already above most of them. i personally think its good if there are AAA games "raising the bar" even if that is in effect just picking it up off the floor and holding it one centimetre up because thats the point we've gotten to. of course its just as likely the actual game ends up stomping the bar down into the floor but given the first one i can believe that its going to be at least somewhat competent until i find out otherwise. Iawtp, I'm enjoying making fun of ND for their reach exceeding their grasp(and being corny in general) and I have low expectations but I'm glad they're trying something different and ambitious compared to most triple a stuff
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May 9, 2020 19:07
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The worst I’ve ever felt about killing anything in a video game is when I accidentally shot a cute little repair drone with t-rex arms in Metroid Prime 3 he wasn’t hurting anybody and I melted him
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May 9, 2020 19:08
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grieving for Gandalf posted:I didn't want to kill the MULEs not just because of the in-game consequences but also because they were established as mostly being guys who'd gone goofy for packages because of the state of the world. they didn't deserve death even if they were in my way I never used a lethal weapon against humans in the entire game because I was too invested in it, but I appreciated that the game gave you the option of lethality but it came with an admittedly weak disadvantage beyond the bog-standard one of "now you have less ammunition." I don't really have a problem with the game shooting for realistically graphic depictions of violence. The problem is that it's only applicable to enemies (and maybe the player character in a cutscene or two). Everyone harped on Uncharted having a ludonarrative dissonance problem but it doesn't. Last of Us does because mechanically it basically is Uncharted.
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May 9, 2020 19:12
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Wading upriver as the shades of departed cacodemons and barons of hell curse me
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May 9, 2020 19:12
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Zongerian posted:Iawtp, I'm enjoying making fun of ND for their reach exceeding their grasp(and being corny in general) and I have low expectations but I'm glad they're trying something different and ambitious compared to most triple a stuff ND may be a lots of good and bad things. Being creative is not one of those things
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May 9, 2020 19:14
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Stux posted:i think thats fair and how i feel about it as well wrt to the freshman comment. i dont know about it being shallow or cheap necessarily until i see it in context personally, but i also think with the freshman description given this is still a AAA game from a major studio, against its contemporaries even a basic and simple approach like this is already above most of them. i personally think its good if there are AAA games "raising the bar" even if that is in effect just picking it up off the floor and holding it one centimetre up because thats the point we've gotten to. of course its just as likely the actual game ends up stomping the bar down into the floor but given the first one i can believe that its going to be at least somewhat competent until i find out otherwise. I get the idea of wanting to elevate the medium, but I can't give Naughty Dog the benefit of the doubt that they're not going to botch this in terms of giving this concept, a good one, the respect it deserves. they have already shown they're not capable in my opinion with the press they've released so far where they're absolutely jerking themselves off about this, yeah, sophomoric approach to the idea that maybe you're not doing the right thing in the game where a regular objective is to fight your way through a wave of bad guys. I understand if I'm coming across really hostile to ND, but these interviews are really poor showings of the thought process behind the game's themes and development. what's more and the reason why we're really talking about it so much now, these leaks came out and now we see the narrative is just as heavy-handed. like I wrote before, I can practically hear someone in my ear, going, "do you get it? do you see why violence is bad? isn't this senseless? maybe the gameplay you engaged in where you killed people was unnecessary too! don't you see??"
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May 9, 2020 19:19
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MeatwadIsGod posted:I never used a lethal weapon against humans in the entire game because I was too invested in it, but I appreciated that the game gave you the option of lethality but it came with an admittedly weak disadvantage beyond the bog-standard one of "now you have less ammunition." I don't really have a problem with the game shooting for realistically graphic depictions of violence. The problem is that it's only applicable to enemies (and maybe the player character in a cutscene or two). Everyone harped on Uncharted having a ludonarrative dissonance problem but it doesn't. Last of Us does because mechanically it basically is Uncharted. Yeah Death Stranding shot itself in the foot a lot- DS is definitely trying to be commentary on violence and video games and its casualness but it falls on its face a lot, whereas I don't really care that much that Uncharted had a lot of violence because lots of violence is sort of part and parcel of rip-roaring adventure stories. DS gives you lethal weapons at a mid point in the game but, much like in Kojima's other games, aren't really superior to non lethal weapons in any way- there's no temptation to be a killer unless you actively decide to. Kojima also put in a bunch of sequences where all you can really do is shoot mans just like the games he's trying to criticize, but then that's part and parcel of the AAA 'violence is bad' bylines in stories for games that heavily feature violence. (see: farcry 3)
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May 9, 2020 19:20
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The lethal weapons in MGS are way better than the non lethal ones
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May 9, 2020 19:24
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Panzeh posted:Yeah Death Stranding shot itself in the foot a lot- DS is definitely trying to be commentary on violence and video games and its casualness but it falls on its face a lot, whereas I don't really care that much that Uncharted had a lot of violence because lots of violence is sort of part and parcel of rip-roaring adventure stories. I loved DS but the boss fights against the Veteran and the giant monsters and the weapons they necessitate are really antithetical to the theme. it felt like they weren't confident enough in the gameplay without having these more comfortable actions segments. if it had been limited to using tricks and tools to avoid capture by MULES and terrorists and then you have to use what you learned against Troy Baker in the end, that'd be perfect
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May 9, 2020 19:26
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Zongerian posted:The lethal weapons in MGS are way better than the non lethal ones The tranq guns are the best. Also the most fun weapon in any of them is a rocket powered fist that knocks people out and doesn't kill them.
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May 9, 2020 19:30
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Try using a tranq gun against Metal Gear
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May 9, 2020 19:31
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Zongerian posted:The lethal weapons in MGS are way better than the non lethal ones Past 1 that is not true in the slightest- pretty much any time you use a lethal weapon you actually then have to consider the body at the very least. Lethal weapons are more advantaged as MGS goes on and their action controls get better, but it's still almost always better to use non lethal means because they're much more effective in stealth situations.
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May 9, 2020 19:31
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Mgs1 has no tranq gun and bodies disappear
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May 9, 2020 19:32
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grieving for Gandalf posted:I get the idea of wanting to elevate the medium, but I can't give Naughty Dog the benefit of the doubt that they're not going to botch this in terms of giving this concept, a good one, the respect it deserves. i feel like being heavy handed is partially justified though when most big budget games are explicitly "the violence is good" and games that try subtlety in the big budget space then have issues themselves. i never thought tlou1 was particularly subtle but ive been shocked by how much was blanked out for some people, games like DS being insanely polarising, people either getting mad with or ignoring what spec ops was doing etc. i think part of why tlou2 prerelease stuff is looking so heavy handed might in fact be a direct reaction to how people read tlou1 even. i mean being hostile to nd is like who cares, the studio sucks its run by trash people who treat their devs like garbage, the studio deserves scorn. but i guess for me its more like im insanely tired with where big budget games have gone so anything that is looking to do anything else at this point is like ok, sure, lets see. again it could absolutely turn out as garbage and insanely dumb but the actual people who work on the games in ND and arent out giving interviews are generally good at what they do.
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May 9, 2020 19:41
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grieving for Gandalf posted:I loved DS but the boss fights against the Veteran and the giant monsters and the weapons they necessitate are really antithetical to the theme. it felt like they weren't confident enough in the gameplay without having these more comfortable actions segments. if it had been limited to using tricks and tools to avoid capture by MULES and terrorists and then you have to use what you learned against Troy Baker in the end, that'd be perfect I know it's anathema to a AAA publisher or AAA audience but I would have preferred DS had little or no combat or boss fights and instead let you use your tools to evade capture or deal with enemies. Like, let Sam unload a collapsible ladder from above to conk an enemy on the head or use a climbing anchor as a handheld version of the bola gun but with less range. The war beach setpieces are incredible but they feel like they belong in another game. The difficulty curve in DS should have been more laser focused on new inhospitable biomes and terrain. The mountains are a great example. You have blizzards and avalanches and slower movement because you're waist-deep in snow. That's great! It's a natural difficulty spike for the core gameplay loop. They considered lava and volcanic biomes because Shinkawa drew some concept art of it, but we really needed stuff like that. More areas where the oxygen mask was necessary, flowing lava or volcanic eruptions, etc. And even if deserts don't make a ton of sense I would have liked to see them too. It's the same kind of trap TLOU falls into. With a AAA game you need to reach the widest possible audience to recoup the expense so the player character has to be a commando who is always proficient at combat. I appreciate that DS veered away from this with traversal, just wish they could have gone all the way with combat too if the game absolutely had to have combat mechanics. Panzeh posted:Past 1 that is not true in the slightest- pretty much any time you use a lethal weapon you actually then have to consider the body at the very least. Lethal weapons are more advantaged as MGS goes on and their action controls get better, but it's still almost always better to use non lethal means because they're much more effective in stealth situations. The good thing about Peace Walker and MGSV is you have a new mechanical disadvantage to using lethal weapons - you need to fill out the roster for your clubhouse. MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 19:49 on May 9, 2020 |
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May 9, 2020 19:44
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after collecting enough scrap to use the upgrade system and blasting some guy with my newly enhanced shotgun I'm gonna feel real bad when his headless corpse hits the ground, which took an entire team of professional devs months of work to make it look & sound as detailed as possible because you see, violence bad
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May 9, 2020 19:54
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Stux posted:i feel like being heavy handed is partially justified though when most big budget games are explicitly "the violence is good" and games that try subtlety in the big budget space then have issues themselves. i never thought tlou1 was particularly subtle but ive been shocked by how much was blanked out for some people, games like DS being insanely polarising, people either getting mad with or ignoring what spec ops was doing etc. i think part of why tlou2 prerelease stuff is looking so heavy handed might in fact be a direct reaction to how people read tlou1 even. I hate to be this way but most people who buy video games are not going into it and sussing out these messages. they're gonna see Joel get killed or the character you play as almost kill a pregnant woman and go, "wow, that's crazy....." and then turn it off and never think about it again unless they're the sort that wants to talk about it online. gamers have a very basic idea of criticism or expectations for what the things they consume can be. they buy Funko pops so I don't really mind what their goals are insofar as trying to drill it into the heads of guys who saw Oldboy and had to think about it for a week. I'm gonna criticize it as it is, which is pretty facile. also I don't know if we can say the rank-and-file people working there know what they're doing considering the insane turnover between games. 70%?
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May 9, 2020 19:55
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grieving for Gandalf posted:I hate to be this way but most people who buy video games are not going into it and sussing out these messages. they're gonna see Joel get killed or the character you play as almost kill a pregnant woman and go, "wow, that's crazy....." and then turn it off and never think about it again unless they're the sort that wants to talk about it online. gamers have a very basic idea of criticism or expectations for what the things they consume can be. they buy Funko pops Also people who are interested in exploring violence and player agency in games have already played or at least know about the many other games that deal with those concepts. I feel like TLOU2 is about a decade too late to have any new or interesting ideas.
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May 9, 2020 20:03
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Stux posted:i feel like being heavy handed is partially justified though when most big budget games are explicitly "the violence is good" and games that try subtlety in the big budget space then have issues themselves. i never thought tlou1 was particularly subtle but ive been shocked by how much was blanked out for some people, games like DS being insanely polarising, people either getting mad with or ignoring what spec ops was doing etc. i think part of why tlou2 prerelease stuff is looking so heavy handed might in fact be a direct reaction to how people read tlou1 even. Sounds like the marketing is doing its job.
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May 9, 2020 20:06
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Cnidaria posted:Also people who are interested in exploring violence and player agency in games have already played or at least know about the many other games that deal with those concepts. This is the weirdest drat viewpoint. Just because one piece of fiction has explored something doesn't mean it is suddenly verboten for other pieces of fiction to do so. "Oh well, Metal Gear Solid said killing is bad and screws you up. That is the final word and no other video game is allowed to ever explore that subject." I am not sure how cynical and jaded you have to be to end up at the viewpoint of "Well, I've seen something like this before and that instant renders it invalid or useless."
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May 9, 2020 20:08
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am0kgonzo posted:after collecting enough scrap to use the upgrade system and blasting some guy with my newly enhanced shotgun I'm gonna feel real bad when his headless corpse hits the ground, which took an entire team of professional devs months of work to make it look & sound as detailed as possible you will be ashamed of your words & deeds
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May 9, 2020 20:15
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The Last of Us 2 will be revolutionary because no other game before it has explored the concept of "killing people is bad".
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May 9, 2020 20:19
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ImpAtom posted:This is the weirdest drat viewpoint. Just because one piece of fiction has explored something doesn't mean it is suddenly verboten for other pieces of fiction to do so. "Oh well, Metal Gear Solid said killing is bad and screws you up. That is the final word and no other video game is allowed to ever explore that subject." Oh I'm not saying games can't explore the subject matter anymore and in fact I hope more games do. It's just TLOU2 appears to be doing it poorly and in a way that doesn't bring any new or interesting ideas to the discussion. If it had come out a decade ago I might have been more interested but today there are far more interesting explorations of violence and player agency.
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May 9, 2020 20:19
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grieving for Gandalf posted:I hate to be this way but most people who buy video games are not going into it and sussing out these messages. they're gonna see Joel get killed or the character you play as almost kill a pregnant woman and go, "wow, that's crazy....." and then turn it off and never think about it again unless they're the sort that wants to talk about it online. gamers have a very basic idea of criticism or expectations for what the things they consume can be. they buy Funko pops sure, but i dont know if it follows that you then give up on ever trying to make people like that think about anything? i dunno thats just insanely pessimistic to me i feel like its always worth trying to get people to engage with things, and sometimes that means you have to start off at rock bottom basic stuff. someone like that isnt going to even find an indie game to play that is more complex and subtle let alone understand the themes if they genuinely have no media literacy, but a AAA game that is still as blunt as a sledgehammer but does make a point of the violence not being a completely sanitised affair might kickstart some people into thinking even a tiny bit more about it. there will also be plenty of people who go "haha knife goes brrr" but thats just going to happen with anything. i still want to see things in context before i go from "its a pretty basic idea" to "completely facile" i think things out of context are mostly useless to make a judgement on it personally. exquisite tea posted:Sounds like the marketing is doing its job. how is what i said in that post related to the marketing
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May 9, 2020 20:23
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ImpAtom posted:This is the weirdest drat viewpoint. Just because one piece of fiction has explored something doesn't mean it is suddenly verboten for other pieces of fiction to do so. "Oh well, Metal Gear Solid said killing is bad and screws you up. That is the final word and no other video game is allowed to ever explore that subject." I hope other games do follow up on mgs3. maybe even one day one of them will be good other games are allowed to iterate on the themes of others; I'd argue that's even how art works, if we're going there. these games are all a part of a zeitgeist and aren't made in a vacuum. but maybe when a new work engages with this idea of player agency resulting in fictional deaths and the marriage between that and the narrative in non-interactive segments, it could try to do it better than what came before?
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May 9, 2020 20:28
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Cnidaria posted:Oh I'm not saying games can't explore the subject matter anymore and in fact I hope more games do. The fact that something doesn't necessarily bring something new to the discussion is not a bad thing. Repetition and audience reach are both important parts of creating discussions. A piece of fiction doesn't have to be the first one to say a message to help be part of the general discussion. It isn't an inherent flaw to retreat subject matters or concepts because the exact method you use in doing so might have a different impact. The Last of Us 2 putting players in control of a character who murdered the protagonist of a previous story, for example, could potentially have a deeper reach by trying to force you to empathize with someone who would normally be a villain. Other games have done something similar but rarely quite to that level for the blatant reason that it takes a LOT of effort to make you empathize with someone who did something terrible to someone people liked. The fact that people begin to empathize with a protagonist is arguably one of the only ways to effectively do that. ' This does not mean I think the TLOU2 is a success but even if it isn't say anything new that isn't inherently a flaw. A conversation involves multiple voices even if those voices are in agreement and that is also true of fiction that is having a conversation. As long as it is different people approaching the subject matter then it has value, even if that value is in how it fails or what unintentionally wrong messages it sends grieving for Gandalf posted:I hope other games do follow up on mgs3. maybe even one day one of them will be good I mean presumably they are trying to do better than what came before. Nobody here has played the game. The game isn't out yet and the leaked footage is a random selection of desperate segments that give little to no idea of the actual context of what is around them. That doesn't mean they will succeed but absolutely nothing we've seen before suggests they aren't at least trying even if they end up failing. There is a good chance they won't be as successful as what came before but if your argument is "you must do better than the best thing ever or else don't even try" that is pretty limiting, not in the least because you can have 'lesser' works which convey messages strongly in a different fashion. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 20:39 on May 9, 2020 |
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May 9, 2020 20:34
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very weird view that the only correct path for media and art is an ever upwards ramp. even within that view, things going backwards from stand out pieces of media would alone justify retreading the same discussion.
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May 9, 2020 20:37
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The completely implausible and unthinkable idea of looking at previous work and trying to stand out by having artistic value of its own or fun gameplay, instead of relying on cheap shock value.
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May 9, 2020 20:40
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qnqnx posted:The completely implausible and unthinkable idea of looking at previous work and trying to stand out by having artistic value of its own or fun gameplay, instead of relying on cheap shock value. Again, you are assuming that they both A) Do not have that and B) Have not at least attempted to do that. Neither of which is particularly backed up by anything we've seen so far. There is a significant chance they will fail hard but it isn't because of lack of effort or desire to do more.
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May 9, 2020 20:44
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Stux posted:very weird view that the only correct path for media and art is an ever upwards ramp. even within that view, things going backwards from stand out pieces of media would alone justify retreading the same discussion. okay, so play it. I hope you love it I just don't want there to be fluff pieces about how the author wept and put down the controller with a trembling hand after killing a level 14 doggo named Spot and how could they possibly have conceived of killing a dog in a video game? I don't even know how many dogs I've killed in video games over the course of my lifetime
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May 9, 2020 20:44
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