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You cannot be serious.
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Dec 22, 2013 01:49
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Zombies' Downfall posted:EDIT: And another thing I'll grant you is that it's always kinda funny to see someone harp about the self-evident terribleness of something like FF7 and then prove through their own posts that they actually didn't understand really simple high school reading level things in the game There's a ton of detail in the game's story that is obscured by the translation or just by missable sidequests. It's really rich to accuse people of having bad reading comprehension when they have to parse through bad writing to get there. ZenMasterBullshit posted:You're right, It's a terrible story. Jesus, it's nowhere near as interesting or well written as Milton's "Paradise Lost" or Rabelais's "Gargantua and Pantagruel". Jesus Square Enix are you even loving trying? Those texts are hundreds of years old, are you really going to go there? Also no, when people say "I love <genre film X> they usually do mean they think it's one of the best films ever. For example, people love the poo poo out of the Lord of the Rings despite them being overwrought and paced real badly. Schwartzcough posted:We're already getting to the point where game characters are providing more powerful performances than you see in a lot of films citation needed Schwartzcough posted:Eh, gamers seem to have a sort of self-loathing outlook on the medium, where it is a given that games are toys and cannot ever come close to "real" mediums of expression like books or films.  this is mostly because most games are bad.I think a problem with AAA game development in particular is the fact that they want to make an interactive film real bad, but their frames of reference are usually Hollywood blockbusters, e.g. bad lovely cinema. I think I enjoy casual gaming a lot more these days because they're not trying to tell a complicated dumb story and are focusing on games that are actually enjoyable to play.
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Dec 22, 2013 01:58
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Schwartzcough posted:We're already getting to the point where game characters are providing more powerful performances than you see in a lot of films, with games like The Last of Us. Hahahahaha, oh man.
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Dec 22, 2013 02:24
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My favorite video game story is Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Protagonist's town is destroyed before the beginning, gives no fucks, then gets told by some random flying old guy to save the world. Then it's just a bunch of random stuff and blowing things up for ten hours until you win by spamming Cure on the final boss.
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Dec 22, 2013 03:10
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Schwartzcough posted:Eh, gamers seem to have a sort of self-loathing outlook on the medium, where it is a given that games are toys and cannot ever come close to "real" mediums of expression like books or films. Creative storytelling conceits and characters that have human flaws and don't fit into comfortable archetypes in something like FF7 are written off as unintended flukes because the game is full of ugly cartoonish characters and clunky dialogue. And there's no doubt that games are a more complicated medium to "do right" than books or films. But I think the "game stories lol" outlook is going to have to start changing eventually, as game developers both get more comfortable with the whole "interactive story" aspect of games, as well as having more powerful technology capable of rendering nuanced characters that can express meaning and emotion through body language and facial expression. We're already getting to the point where game characters are providing more powerful performances than you see in a lot of films, with games like The Last of Us. It'll start to change when there are games that actually CAN be compared to those more 'serious' types of stories. Video games are still a really really really young medium and something completely different from any other form of story telling medium, there's not a lot of like, hard and fast rules for how to tell a story when the player themselves are a major factor in the tone of the experience, how and when the content is scene, and HOW to events play out. It's a pretty crazy thing when you think about it. Also honestly those games like The Last of Us and other members this recent trend of Games Emulating Movies just aren't great experiences as video games. Most of them are leaning a lot more on the mechanics and tropes of movies then actually blending gameplay with the narrative in a structural way which, since itss what makes video games so unique and interesting, is kind of uninteresting and only hurts the idea of Video Games eventually being something that can be a great medium for actual Stories. Video games at the moment are just trying to emulate how Big Brother Movies does things without really making it their own. 1st AD posted:Those texts are hundreds of years old, are you really going to go there? I'm saying they're betting works of fiction than literally every FF game and saying comparing most video games (Which ARE largely genre fiction) to anything that's an actual serious work of literature is really loving pointless and stupid so bitching that people like them and think they're good even though they're only good when you aren't comparing to them to classical works is kind of dumb Also I really doubt outside of the internet, where Hyperbole is the MO of every post every, when people say "I love [Genre Work]" they serious mean it's better than any serious work. Like I love a lot of Shlock-y films. Like a lot of them. They're some of my favorite movies. That doesn't mean they're the best movies, just ones I enjoyed more. It's possible to enjoy something and be aware of its technical problems or that it's not some real intellectual piece. Just because a book can't compare with The Divine Comedy doesn't mean it's a bad book. Just because a movie can't compare to Seven Samurai or The Godfather doesn't mean they're bad movies. ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Dec 22, 2013 |
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Dec 22, 2013 03:12
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Mega64 posted:My favorite video game story is Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Protagonist's town is destroyed before the beginning, gives no fucks, then gets told by some random flying old guy to save the world. Then it's just a bunch of random stuff and blowing things up for ten hours until you win by spamming Cure on the final boss.
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Dec 22, 2013 03:23
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If someone goes into a video game expecting a kind of decent story, they might find FF7 to have exceeded expectations because it plays around with familiar storytelling devices and has a few cool themes. The same sort of thing could be said for Shadow of the Colossus, Nier, or hell, Chrono Trigger. Different kinds of good. But, just because your expectations are exceeded doesn't mean it's a brilliant timeless work of art. At the same time, if you were expecting a brilliant work of art and didn't get one when you played a video game, doesn't make the video game (or it's story) "bad".
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Dec 22, 2013 03:32
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I think it's okay to emulate films if you're going to use the medium of gaming to present some bog standard story in a different way that film is unable by having the narrative blend into the gameplay better or allowing a lot more branching storylines, but in the majority of cases all they do is make a summer action movie with some gameplay sprinkled in between scenes. It's going to be a long ways before you get the gaming equivalent of a Jim Jarmusch or Alexander Payne. Basically I want to play an RPG version of Sideways where you go on crazy adventures and at the end you lose but learn Important Life Lessons™. ZenMasterBullshit posted:I'm saying they're betting works of fiction than literally every FF game and saying comparing most video games (Which ARE largely genre fiction) to anything that's an actual serious work of literature is really loving pointless and stupid so bitching that people like them and think they're good even though they're only good when you aren't comparing to them to classical works is kind of dumb Was anyone here comparing Final Fantasy's narrative to classical fiction other than you? Like a better starting point would be mid-90's fiction novels, and in that comparison I think FF7 is worse than the cookie cutter Tom Clancy novel.
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Dec 22, 2013 03:33
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The White Dragon posted:There's also all kinds of hidden messages in the text, such as GOONKID. Truly a masterpiece of its era. Real talk. I owned Mystic Quest as a Kid but I've never actually played it. I was given it and Secrets of Evermore at the same time and Evermore took up so much of my time it was crazy.
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Dec 22, 2013 03:33
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1st AD posted:I think it's okay to emulate films if you're going to use the medium of gaming to present some bog standard story in a different way that film is unable by having the narrative blend into the gameplay better or allowing a lot more branching storylines, but in the majority of cases all they do is make a summer action movie with some gameplay sprinkled in between scenes. I wouldn't even call most of them Summer action movies. They're more like the ones released in Januray. The ones with no real script writing, no set ups, no real pay offs, just a lot of tropes happening because 'that's the way these things are done'. I mean a competently put together script for a summer action movie actually sets up jokes and action scenes and how they beat the villain ahead of time. Most of these Set Piece focused Action games/'Cinematic Experiences' go on long for that kind of thing or just don't care enough to set things up and will pull out plot points and setting details out of nowhere to just justify the next stretch of shoot outs. Uncharted was the worst for this kind of thing, especially with the Backstab tango that happens in 1 and 2 (Haven't played 3 but I'd bet money it happens there too!) ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Dec 22, 2013 |
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Dec 22, 2013 03:39
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I don't compare one medium to another unless it's in regards to an adaptation. Like, the Harry Potter films are garbage and don't do the books justice. LOTR isn't half as bad but it still undermines a lot of what made the books great. But hey, people at the time of their publishing and now still insist LOTR is terrible. Point is you can't please everyone. You should like what you like. No one is qualified to say "this is one of the greatest books ever" because to say that honestly you'd need to have read a majority of the books ever written in every language known to humankind. Same for movies - though the task is much less daunting, it's still rather impossible so you can't say "this is the greatest or one of the greatest films ever" truthfully because you simply don't know. Everyone should just start saying "this is my favorite story" because then they're being honest. Xenogears is one of my favorite stories but I'm not saying it's a classic and I certainly won't compare it to my favorite books. They're just too different. It is an interesting point thougha bout how "games with better stories" sacrifice gameplay to get them. My beloved Xenogears is a good example but has anyone here played the Legacy of Kain games? I often view LoK as the perfect antithesis of Xenogears s it's storytelling aim is much, much smaller but at the same time it's actual storytelling and writing is infinitely better. But the gmeplay? Outside of the two Blood Omen titles I don't mind it but God knows it's unpopular. The kindest word I've seen for it is "generic". But I still love them anyway. I guess by the mere fact I value stories more than gameplay in video games I am a perfect example of why writing in games won't evolve beyond the Cutscene-fests people so despise. I just don't mind Cutscne-fests as long as they're interesting. (this is why i loathe MGS4 and love the first three games)
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Dec 22, 2013 03:52
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What is this genre fiction versus "serious" art poo poo? If you are stratifying art based on whether something is a western or a detective story or whatever, you are severely limiting yourself.
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Dec 22, 2013 04:36
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1st AD posted:citation needed People seem to interpret "better than a lot of films" as "better than good films," or even "better than classic films." There are a lot of films out there with truly poor or flat acting, working with scripts that give characters no real personality (see, e.g. half of the action movies put out, or almost every B-movie). You end up with movies where the characters are unrealistic and have zero charisma, and the audience is never invested in them. Meanwhile, some of the triple-A games use motion capture on decent actors, where they are performing their lines in person instead of alone in a sound studio, and it doesn't come off half bad. That's enough to put them above "a lot of films." As to games just using gameplay as a way to fill space between cutscenes, that's what makes games a tough medium to deal with- integrating gameplay and story in a meaningful way is hard. That's why I give FF7 credit at points- when Cloud is handing over the black materia, you're controlling a ghostly version of child-Cloud. You can move around and slow down the adult Cloud a bit, but you can't stop him. It's a way to make the audience feel involved in what's happening in the story, and personally frustrated at their powerlessness to stop it. The gameplay gives you insight into what Cloud is feeling in his head in a way that can't be done effectively with movies, or even books. Similarly when Cloud comes up behind Aeris as she prays in the Ancient City, pressing buttons causes him to pull out his sword, lift it over his head slowly, and prepare to strike. You can move his arms around and try to stop it, but in the end it's your input that is causing this to happen. Once again, the player is involved in the story and feeling personal frustration due to the gameplay itself. To a lesser extent, games like The Last of Us have other characters actually come to your aid during combat (and don't require you to constantly rescue them) as a way to make the player have positive feelings towards the characters the developers want you to like. They're not just performing heroics on a screen; they're saving YOU. So game makers are learning some tricks here and there.
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Dec 22, 2013 04:57
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Schwartzcough posted:People seem to interpret "better than a lot of films" as "better than good films," or even "better than classic films." There are a lot of films out there with truly poor or flat acting, working with scripts that give characters no real personality (see, e.g. half of the action movies put out, or almost every B-movie). You end up with movies where the characters are unrealistic and have zero charisma, and the audience is never invested in them. Meanwhile, some of the triple-A games use motion capture on decent actors, where they are performing their lines in person instead of alone in a sound studio, and it doesn't come off half bad. That's enough to put them above "a lot of films."  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 22, 2013 05:03
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WOW that poster used several words and examples to clarify and explain their position; it's like they expected a thoughtful conversation!
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Dec 22, 2013 05:16
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Stop trying to one-for-one compare video games to other media. Video games don't even follow the same genre rules as other fictional works. Dark Souls is an absolutely brilliant video game. Les Miserables is an absolutely brilliant book. It's also a fantastic musical, but not good the same way that the book is. If they made a Dark Souls musical, it sure as hell wouldn't be great the same way the game was, but it could still be pretty drat great. Final Fantasy VII was an excellent game, better than many! Final Fantasy VII would make a kind of lovely novel. It could probably make a good musical though.
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Dec 22, 2013 05:19
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How could you possibly adapt Dark Souls to a musical? You'd have to, among other things, invent a new style of dance involving copious amounts of rolling.
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Dec 22, 2013 05:26
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Awaiting Tetsuya Nomura's FFXV-2, the Broadway musical. Featuring Gackt as Lightning.
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Dec 22, 2013 05:28
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Gologle posted:How could you possibly adapt Dark Souls to a musical? You'd have to, among other things, invent a new style of dance involving copious amounts of rolling.
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Dec 22, 2013 05:29
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Okay, maybe no Dark Souls musical. A Dark Souls ballet. I still wish FFXV was going to be a musical like in what was clearly Nomura's original vision.
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Dec 22, 2013 05:45
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Dude the story of Final Fantasy VII is overwhelmingly concerned with pointless epic bullshit and setting up reasons for you to kill your way through glossy corridors full of random encounters. It has some nice character moments but I mean look at your own description, it's still in the context of The City of The Ancients and The Black Materia and a kid with a focus-tested haircut wielding a giant sword, which are ultimately there to justify some normal-type RPG gameplay. I think it's very successful as a game, the same way the original Star Wars is as a movie. It's not a deeply human or deeply meaningful story, but that's okay! It's its own kind of thing. So don't even worry whether some loving motion captured dude going "but Natalie we have to get to Shangri-La before Colonel Folkov unearths the Time Distorter!" looks as good as a lovely movie. Like even if it does, who cares? There's no need to justify the stuff you like by claiming it's almost mediocre by irrelevant standards!
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Dec 22, 2013 05:54
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Mustach posted:WOW that poster used several words and examples to clarify and explain their position; it's like they expected a thoughtful conversation! Please tell me more about how a lot of films are inferior art to The Last Of Us Game Of The Year 2013. Remember to talk about how Mocap allows for superior emoting to the weak flesh.
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Dec 22, 2013 06:04
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swamp waste posted:I think it's very successful as a game, the same way the original Star Wars is as a movie. It's not a deeply human or deeply meaningful story, but that's okay! It's its own kind of thing. As a massive Star Wars fan, I think comparing it to FFVII might be a bridge too far.
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Dec 22, 2013 07:16
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1st AD posted:There's a ton of detail in the game's story that is obscured by the translation or just by missable sidequests. It's really rich to accuse people of having bad reading comprehension when they have to parse through bad writing to get there. This is absolutely fair and I sort of said in my post that I think where FF7 succeeds narratively is in the "big picture", while the actual dialogue and poo poo is loving terrible (and the translation is probably a factor in that, I've only played the original English script, but I'm sure it's no great shakes in Japanese) I was talking more about poo poo like not understanding that the "flowers in Midgar" thing Aeris is on about also refers to the beat-down and broken characters with their failed aspirations finding new reasons within and without to continue living and striving, which is pretty straightforward highschool lit crit stuff, but which a shitload of people who've played the game seem to not actually have parsed at all whether they think the story is fantastic or laughably terrible. It's not uncommon for people to do that with things in every medium, but gamers are particularly bad about it, partially because they're discussing a lot of this stuff based on what they remember of it from childhood and partially because they're either ill-read or at the other end of the scale have such a negative attitude about storytelling in games that they never bother to give game stories a second thought.
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Dec 22, 2013 07:24
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Zombies' Downfall posted:
For example, see basically every discussion about a narrative plot point in this thread. Or the current FF7 LP. There's always 2 to 3 posts saying some combination of "I didn't remember that?' and "I never even thought about that!".
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Dec 22, 2013 07:30
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The problem with a lot of discussions is "this thing has themes" is viewed as something beyond a basic element of a story. Games, even lovely, stupid and purile games, have themes, imagery, motivations, character arcs, and other such things. This is a basic element of almost any form of fiction. Being able to point out and discuss those themes is the basic element of reading anything. That doesn't also suddenly mean they are super deep, incredibly meaningful, or timeless classics. To use non video game examples, there's a lot to discuss thematically and structurally in Terminator or Aliens or The Hunger Games or Harry Potter or whatever. This isn't because they are super deep works that redefine the genre but because that is the basic element of crafting an even moderately well made fictional work. Something like Harry Potter is the story of a boy wizard who battles an evil snake man. It's also about racism and discrimination and political corruption and the ineffeciency of government and all sorts of other poo poo. The fact that it is a children's book series about an evil snake man doesn't mean that poo poo doesn't exist. (It also, for the record, doesn't mean it isn't also fairly childish genre fiction. The two are not incompatible and even basic child fiction has themes and depth if the creators put even an iota of effort into it.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Dec 22, 2013 |
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Dec 22, 2013 07:35
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Except Alien is a deep work that redefined its genre?
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Dec 22, 2013 07:38
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Mr. Maltose posted:Except Alien is a deep work that redefined its genre? I love Alien. It is a fantastically well made movie and it is indeed deeper than a lot of lovely horror movies, but calling it a 'deep work' is stretching it. The themes, concepts and ideas it presents are extremely near the surface and what makes it stand out is that it presented those themes, ideas and concepts in a memorable and visually distinctive way. This is not insulting Alien because "deep" is not synonymous with "good." It did redefine the genre but a lot of that was how it handled things visually and structurally as much as the story itself. (And in that way FFVII also redefined a genre no matter what you think of the story.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Dec 22, 2013 |
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Dec 22, 2013 07:42
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Not sure I totally agree, but I understand what you're getting at.
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Dec 22, 2013 07:51
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I picked up the steam version of FF7 because it's been so long since I played this game, and every single time I play this game I always recruit Yuffie but never use her. So this time I decided that I'd actually use her, almost 2 hours later I'm still in this loving forest fighting random encounters. She actually can appear before Junon, right? The guides I looked at are saying she can and I remember getting her here before but I dunno, I never remember it taking this long
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Dec 22, 2013 07:59
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Red Red Blue posted:I picked up the steam version of FF7 because it's been so long since I played this game, and every single time I play this game I always recruit Yuffie but never use her. So this time I decided that I'd actually use her, almost 2 hours later I'm still in this loving forest fighting random encounters. She actually can appear before Junon, right? The guides I looked at are saying she can and I remember getting her here before but I dunno, I never remember it taking this long Just before Junon, in the forest north of the Condor Fort if memory serves.
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Dec 22, 2013 08:41
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Yeah, that's where I've been fighting. Guess I just started getting unlucky
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Dec 22, 2013 09:05
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Red Red Blue posted:Yeah, that's where I've been fighting. Guess I just started getting unlucky Yuffie's encounter rate in the Junon forests isn't really the greatest. Her highest chance to occur is right around Rocket Town - if you don't have her yet I think she has a 15/16 chance of appearing or something.
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Dec 22, 2013 15:32
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:As a massive Star Wars fan, I think comparing it to FFVII might be a bridge too far. Are you saying Star Wars has a better story than FFVII? I don't like Star Wars. Well, the movies anyway. I'd probably take any FF game over them in terms of story and characters.
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Dec 22, 2013 17:09
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I wonder how everyone in this thread feels about Ice-Pick Lodge's games
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Dec 22, 2013 17:12
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Better than most of Square's output, certainly.
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Dec 22, 2013 17:17
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NikkolasKing posted:Are you saying Star Wars has a better story than FFVII? As far as the original trilogy is concerned? It's not an original story, but it's well-told. I dunno. This argument might be too nerdy for me. :P
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Dec 22, 2013 17:20
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NikkolasKing posted:Are you saying Star Wars has a better story than FFVII? 
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Dec 22, 2013 17:39
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Your smilie tells me you are joking, which is good. Because God knows it irritates me when people say FFXII is a Star Wars clone. That was one of the many criticisms I heard before I played it and after actually going through the game and discovering it is absolutely nothing like SW, I was not pleased. And I appreciate the fact that millions of people like Star Wars and I've heard the justification of "it's a simple story but well told" many, many times. But I just can't find the films interesting anymore. Loved them when I was younger but the story and its characters have just lost any impact on me whatsoever.
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Dec 22, 2013 17:45
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| # ? May 25, 2024 21:39 |
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Mr. Maltose posted:Better than most of Square's output, certainly. Yes, but I mean as it pertains to the "all video game stories are trash" discussion. I will agree that video game stories are almost entirely garbage, but Pathologic exists as a game which I would recommend to other people entirely because of the strength of its narrative, and I would call it "well written."
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Dec 22, 2013 18:27
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