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Bacter posted:Quote from the discussion page: I mean, those two groups might have the same size. but they don't cover everyone. There are also those who mildly dislike it, those who hate it, those who haate it etc. and then there are those who feel a physical pain from reading that, which transcends any notion of hate, no matter how many "a"s you might add. I'd guess the last group is about 90 percent.
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Sep 2, 2018 06:59
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Oh, before I neglect: NO FATE  If you read this as VERY patronizing, well, I bet Grace does, too. ...Also, sorry, but "humans for sure have free will" isn't the guaranteed, default 'science' position. And they DO make 'yes fate' the religious position, since if you pick that, Henry brings up his Calvinist upbringing. What's that? What's Calvinism? Why, obviously a subset of Protestant Christianity, popular among Dutch-Americans (and maybe Dutch-Dutch?) What do they believe? Oh, predestination is big with them, along with the guaranteed salvation of a subset of humanity, and the guaranteed damnation of the other subset. Just remember: TULIP Total depravity (people are always bad without the intercession of the Holy Spirit - probably accurate, in Henry's case. Basically, without direct intervention by God, nobody can do or think anything truly capital-g Good. It might APPEAR so, but it's all secretly done for some bad reason, like pride.) Unconditional Election (Your salvation ("election") is pre-ordained by God. Because of Total Depravity, you could never be worthy of salvation, or do anything to merit it at all, so it's, from the perspective of humans, basically random who gets saved and who doesn't, and we have no part in it). Limited Atonement (Jesus' sacrifice on the cross doesn't cover everybody, only those preordained to be saved by God) Irresistable Grace (If you're preordained to be saved, you have no say in if it happens - your will is overwhelmed by God as he saves you and makes you better) Perseverance of the Saints (once saved, it's impossible to lose your salvation - God will continue to overwhelm your will forever). It's maybe not the CHEERIEST set of beliefs, though I'm sure a thoroughgoing Calvinist would present them in a little better light than I am. I'm really not sure how much the authors intended for us to read into Henry having a Calvinist upbringing (that he's rebelled against). I'll be honest here, I actually wouldn't rule against it. I'm going to spend all my time railing against the stupid, stupid rhymes, and how edgelord/depressionman-y the plot can get, but the plot isn't INCOMPETENT, and they certainly are capable of subtlety. Just read into it what you want! YES PIPE (We now have the pipe. No change until later, potentially!) Bacter fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Sep 3, 2018 |
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Sep 3, 2018 16:01
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It's a little hard to believe this game's writing can do subtlety intentionally when it also contains a side story about a lunch lady pooping herself while out and about so she could dig some out and offer it up to eat. Henry being raised Calvinist would in a vacuum add some good subtle edges that could serve as plot hooks, but this is also the same guy who is doing... science? to win awards rather than actually study something in particular plus forces his wife to watch fart joke comedies. He's not a smart enough character to really get into the theological or sociological dimensions of his faith past the predestination bit and maaaaybe why he rebelled against the faith, even if the writing was smart enough to make something of those dimensions. I'm pretty much expecting any scenes about why he rejected Christianity to be around the caliber of "your girlfriend is destined to go to hell, date someone in the church!" "well gently caress you and God then! I'm leaving!"
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Sep 3, 2018 21:47
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"Your girlfriend is destined for hell. To date in the church you'd do very well." "I instead choose to scream and shout. gently caress God and you. I'm out!"
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Sep 3, 2018 21:51
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It's like you're Henry himself! (sorry) And yeah, after doing this bit, I MIGHT have to take back that part about subtlety on the story's part. I swear, there are parts of this game I downright enjoy. BUT IN THE MEANTIME let's get to know the other third (really half - Henry's house is so small comparatively) of the map: THE DOWNTOWN SECTION. I thought there was going to be more time management when I first started the game, but no, not exploring and talking to everybody all the time really locks you out of choices, and there's not sections where a counter is counting down so you can only talk to who it makes sense to talk to. No, we're doing this adventure game protagonist style. As before, this is one update split into two, just so it's a manageable size.   Content Warning: Really nothin' this time. We've got quite a few polls for the thread: TAKE THE SKULL Y/N BE MEAN TO THE OCCULT STORE GUY Y/N TAKE FIRE AX Y/N CONTRIBUTE TO LIBRARY Y/N BE MEAN TO THE LIBRARIAN Y/N TAKE CINDER BLOCK Y/N TAKE FISHING POLE Y/N Feel free to answer for all or any of them - if there's one that you think is a particularly bad or good idea! Incidentally: last poll DO NOT give to Stinky Pete DO take cleaner DO take telescope Bacter's choice for worst rhyme of this chunk: When it comes to science I'm as dumb as a foetus. I'm studying for an art degree to become a poetess. Just... Bacter fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Sep 5, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 03:03
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I... just... foetus... what? 
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Sep 5, 2018 07:25
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Did they try to rhyme appear/swear??? Did no one read this poo poo aloud before okaying it? I have to wonder if the writer is from the UK and a terrible poet or merely a terrible poet. There are a lot of Britishisms and the therapist not mentioning payment could be an oversight. You'd expect Henry to be behind on payments there given his $600 tab at Doris' human flesh emporium.
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Sep 5, 2018 11:08
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TAKE THE SKULL Y/N BE MEAN TO THE OCCULT STORE GUY Y/N TAKE FIRE AX Y/N CONTRIBUTE TO LIBRARY Y/N BE MEAN TO THE LIBRARIAN Y/N TAKE CINDER BLOCK Y/N TAKE FISHING POLE Y/N
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Sep 5, 2018 11:26
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There's a lot to unpack in these updates. Effort post later. Four-alarm failure fiesta is an amazing phrase and better than this game deserves.
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Sep 5, 2018 12:13
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TAKE THE SKULL Y/N BE MEAN TO THE OCCULT STORE GUY Y/N TAKE FIRE AX Y/N CONTRIBUTE TO LIBRARY Y/N BE MEAN TO THE LIBRARIAN Y/N TAKE CINDER BLOCK Y/N TAKE FISHING POLE Y/N Let's get cursed! Also I have to second When it comes to science I'm as dumb as a foetus. I'm studying for an art degree to become a poetess. as the worst line of the update. ... this is fascinatingly ... bad? It's certainly something!
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Sep 5, 2018 14:08
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Take everything, don't give money, and be mean to everyone.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:01
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I'm pretty sure Deep Taiga, the makers of I Fell Form Grace, and by makers I mean maker, it's one guy, have got to be British. "Boot" for trunk isn't something I've heard outside of jolly 'ol (with the bizarre exception of super rural hill country appalachia), and I'm reasonably sure in my 'worst rhyme' foetus is meant to be "foe-uh-tuss" which SOUNDS like a British pronunciation. The other awful alternative is that we're meant to pronounce "poetess" as "peetus", and I'm just not ready for that. ultrafilter posted:Take everything, don't give money, and be mean to everyone. This is either the title of one of those really aggressive business seminars, or what an AI would name a rap album. Bacter fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Sep 5, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 15:02
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In editing, it's well known that Americans writing anything set in the UK (and the reverse) need their editor to pay particular attention the differences between American and British English. Then again, I suppose indie devs either can't afford to or don't see the value in even getting their game scripts professionally proofread. It just seems egregious in games where so much rides on the writing.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:12
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Bacter posted:I'm reasonably sure in my 'worst rhyme' foetus is meant to be "foe-uh-tuss" which SOUNDS like a British pronunciation. No. UK goon here, no-one in Britain pronounces it like that. It's "fee-tus" or occasionally "feh-tus".
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Sep 5, 2018 15:20
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Picayune posted:I... just... foetus... what? Look, they needed a rhyme for poetess and the only thing they found in the dictionary that looked like it ended in -etess was foetus. Who has the time to learn pronunciation marks well enough to figure out that weird spelling's not pronounced 'foe-eh-tess'? Fortunately, the pain can be alleviated a bit by laughing at the bizarro world mistake of 'pee-tess'. More generally, I believe the only real limitation the writers held themselves to was whether the last syllable or two seemed like it would kinda match in the scheme. For instance 'atoll' was assumed to be 'at-all' rather than 'a-toll'. 'there' rhymes with 'here' because they both end in 'here'. This can probably be done with everything that doesn't seem like it should rhyme because for all the work the writers did looking up words in the dictionary they had zero interest in how to actually speak them vs. just shove 'em in wherever they seemed right. Also I have to try and keep count of all the bizarre behavior (soon to be a crazy catalogue) going on in this world: * a lunch lady who hasn't gone to jail for public defecation in service of an edgy quip ... who also ran a kitchen that smelled of hobo death bad enough it's driving away people years later yet somehow did not have enough evidence splattered around for a police case or even a nosy P.I. * a protagonist who went into ill-defined science to win awards ... who also doesn't have enough self-preservation instinct to find a bar brawl dangerous rather than exciting ... who also knows or thinks he knows a lot about local criminals for some reason ... who also thinks nothing of barging into people's apartments and commenting on their furniture without their input * a 24-hour pharmacy franchise that apparently uses tunes straight from Gitmo ... run by a man who thinks he can overcome the loss of over 2/3rds his income just by waiting until business is back to what it was before he had to sign over, again, more than 2/3rds his income * a mayor whose entire staff signed off on "avoid touching this mold if you want to grow old" without raising concerns about the warning being misinterpreted ... who also runs a city that went bankrupt trying to remodel their library ... which along with the police protestors didn't warrant even a single newspaper's mention and could easily go completely unnoticed * a few people whose response to some weird jackoff literally barging into their apartments and commenting on their furniture is friendliness and/or commiseration instead of bewilderment and apprehension * a psychologist who still has their license yet thinks calling their patients loons won't damage their self-image or relationship with said psychologist ...Goddammit so much, I just got to the part with the dream Henry. One of the writers knew what natural dialog sounds like. It's not great, but it could be said out loud without giving the poor actors aneurysms or making everyone burst out laughing. There's no excuse for Solid Snake'ing the unrhymed version nor any of the previous atrocities when all they had to do to find out it sounded awful was get whoever wrote dream Henry to look at it, they did it all on purpose. TAKE THE SKULL Y/N BE MEAN TO THE OCCULT STORE GUY Y/N TAKE FIRE AX Y/N CONTRIBUTE TO LIBRARY Y/N BE MEAN TO THE LIBRARIAN Y/N TAKE CINDER BLOCK Y/N TAKE FISHING POLE Y/N A note: in the chapter 4 post, after leaving the occult store behind there's a bit of a bolding mishap. Also I forget where, but later there's a picture of dialog that's too tiny to read.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:21
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Also THERE ARE RHYMING DICTIONARIES I just. Agh. 
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Sep 5, 2018 15:53
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:A note: in the chapter 4 post, after leaving the occult store behind there's a bit of a bolding mishap. Also I forget where, but later there's a picture of dialog that's too tiny to read. Fix'd, thanks!
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Sep 5, 2018 17:21
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Like, I'm impressed by the dude who took the time to populate a freaking giant city in his indie adventure game, and to write dialogue for everyone, but.... what......????
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Sep 5, 2018 17:48
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Take everything and be an rear end in a top hat to everyone. It's only fitting. This game is like the ultimate example of bloat. The developers obviously never had anyone unrelated to the project look it over or playtest it or anything. Most everything is done to the point of excessive-ness, where it bogs everything down. They obviously wanted a touch of uncanny with everyone speaking in rhyme to make you feel unsettled, but they didn't have the chops to make it sound even passable. Instead, it's hilarious or painful. The maps are way too huge, with sheer amounts of effort for them to make and for us to traverse. Yet there's no point to it because it's shoved so full of filler content that's trying to be miserable every step of the way. Obviously, they don't know how to use contrast. And yet there's actual quality storytelling here. They obviously had a definite character in mind with Henry and his utter awfulness. I liked the psychologist bits a lot, in that they tell you pretty much all you need to know about him. If I was playing this, I would've wanted to follow Henry's story since I would've been morbidly interested to see what they have planned for him. But.... the excessive bloat would've kept me away (or stopped me from even seeing his awfulness). It's the same reason I can't play Dragon Age 3 more than once, there's way too much garbage in the way of the good stuff. Thanks for showcasing this, it's quite fascinating.
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Sep 5, 2018 22:26
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StrixNebulosa posted:
misplaced_effort.exe It's sad because good writers could do so much more with all of this. Like the bit about the city going bankrupt, that's incredibly huge news everyone should be talking about, but instead it's just the reason the local library and maybe a few cops have seen better days. Roads go unmaintained, fire/police/trash departments get slashed (not just poorly paid), and assuming this is a large city the fiasco becomes national news, but nobody talks about any of that. There's the heroin epidemic several people talk about, but apparently everyone's shooting up in their homes because Henry never sees a single person strung out, passed out, or desperate for a hit in the whole downtown area. Plot hooks are effectively strewn around willy-nilly because they reinforce the 'themes', not because anyone coming up with them thought for more than 5 seconds about their long-term consequences. ...Are you sure this was written by a single person? I'm finding it really hard to accept that idea for some reason. It's a lot more believable for all of this to come about by committee at least. e: The tiny picture is just before examining the axe in the apartment hallway. Ignatius M. Meen fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Sep 5, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 22:50
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:...Are you sure this was written by a single person? I'm finding it really hard to accept that idea for some reason. It's a lot more believable for all of this to come about by committee at least. Deep Taiga Website posted:Deep Taiga is for the moment a one-man studio brand. So I'm not GUARANTEEING that this is the whole story but...
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Sep 6, 2018 00:18
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You, sir, have just made me facepalm with that excerpt from his website. Dear lord.
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Sep 6, 2018 00:42
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Christ, this game really needed an editor. I'm going against the grain and saying take only the axe and pole, give money, be nice. Henry may be a dumb rear end in a top hat now, but maybe we can change that!
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Sep 6, 2018 00:43
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I forgot to mention earlier, but I'm just vaguely curious as to who hated Grace so badly that they set her up with a blind date with this rear end in a top hat.
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Sep 6, 2018 00:45
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It's also a PRETTY minimal credit on the IFFG page. I wonder if the art/music people didn't want their name attached too firmly to the project? They needn't have worried - as I've commented, the music and visuals are great, and real high points. I'm ASSUMING the music is by Kirk Markarian , and the art by Gerardo Quiroz. Both standouts in their respective fields. I haven't been able to find any information on the identity of the Deep Taiga guy himself.
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Sep 6, 2018 01:32
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So I didn't realize until I went back to record - there are actually a LOT of tracks! And I think you'll agree they all do their job very well. They're meant to add to the atmosphere, which is sort of a bleak existential dread. None of them really overwhelm, and they all seem kind of sad, distracted, and faded. It's a lovely touch, and the sound design for sound effects is also QUITE good. Office Theme Main Downtown Theme Convenience Store Theme (lost souls on casio keyboard) Video Store (lost souls jr.) Convenience Store Theme Liquor Store (starts about 10 s in) Bar Apartment Therapist Park (swinging sound as I get closer to the lonely kid) Police Station Henry's Dream Grace's Scream Bacter fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Sep 6, 2018 |
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Sep 6, 2018 03:12
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rudecyrus posted:Christ, this game really needed an editor. They'd end up reenacting this scene a lot. The music is indeed well done, and the pixel art is good; I wish the writing were of the same quality, but I'm not too sad about that after seeing Gerardo's page because someone else can make a (hopefully way better written) dystopic robot future game out of that. I really wouldn't have guessed from IFFG's art alone he could pull shots like that off, there's nothing wrong with IFFG's art but it's too fuzzy to pop and wow the same way.
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Sep 6, 2018 05:41
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I just read this entire thread. I have seldom regretted a choice more. I think I feel my brain struggling to escape out of my ears now. Take everything that isn't nailed down, now and forever. That is the rule of point and click games. Not going to comment on the personality choices because Henry here doesn't seem to have one.
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Sep 6, 2018 15:43
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It's probably been said, but it is driving me up a wall how the rhyming couplets don't always (or often?) have the same number of syllables in each line. Also, almost every line has 2-4 more words in them than they need. They could have cut out a ton, shortened the couplets and lost nothing other than how unwieldy everything is.
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Sep 6, 2018 17:06
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What the gently caress is this? 
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Sep 6, 2018 18:50
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SelenicMartian posted:What the gently caress is this?
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Sep 6, 2018 19:42
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JossiRossi posted:It's probably been said, but it is driving me up a wall how the rhyming couplets don't always (or often?) have the same number of syllables in each line. Also, almost every line has 2-4 more words in them than they need. They could have cut out a ton, shortened the couplets and lost nothing other than how unwieldy everything is. The writer thinks "meter" just refers to a unit of length.
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Sep 6, 2018 21:21
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SelenicMartian posted:What the gently caress is this? Self-absorbed Henry, in his dead-end job, Can't help himself and opens his gob To talk about piss and complain about junkies, To anger his boss when he won't host some monkeys, To ignore his wife who's just lost her fetus (And her gestational diabeetus), To complain to a therapist, to buy himself liquor Instead of renting a movie (booze is much quicker!) To muse about cannibals and a weird little kid (And let's again mention piss, because Henry sure did!) There's an angelic woman and her devilish son - And a million more rhymes before this VN is done.
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Sep 6, 2018 23:58
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:The writer thinks "meter" just refers to a unit of length. This got a huge guffaw out of me, thanks
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Sep 7, 2018 00:37
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Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Baxter! It's been a fun read, though I'm still going through it. But man, so much of this game screams 'I didn't bother running any of this past other people', because even looking at grind part one, there are so many ways you could have easily changed things by just getting people to playtest your game. But I think what I most want to talk about is, much like how other people in the thread have pointed out how terrible it is, the poetry. But I also want to give examples on how it could have worked, if the person who made this game genuinely knew anything about how poetry is constructed. First off, the moment I heard this is a horror game based around rhyming couplets, I immediately went 'okay, so is this supposed to be a parody of horror games, then?' Because rhyming couplets are terrible at getting across a mystifying, off atmosphere, and most likely will make your audience not take it seriously due to how they're often used - as silly jokes or light-hearted poems. There are, of course, many rhyming couplets that are able to accurately get things across in a non 'wow that's goofy' manner, but since rhyming isn't used in actual speech and no one talks in the way it takes to properly rhyme, it reads as something joke-y. When I read this game's dialogue, I'm expecting a punchline after every couplet. You could actually write a horror game with couplets that plays off of that inborn 'okay, so where's the joke?' feeling an english speaker gets when they read it, but it's clear that's not the game's intention. Secondly, people have pointed out that the meter is all off - and hell, the author appears to even mess up the scheme of the poems if there's more than two lines - sometimes, someone speaking with four is AAAA, sometimes it's AABB, sometimes it's AABA, etc. Doing that is incredibly noticeable and just. Bad. Stick to a format for more than two lines of dialogue and be done with it, jesus christ. So let's look at an example from the game, specifically the one that really stuck out to me at how close yet far it was from being passable: HENRY: Hows the fundraising going? Folks must some money be throwing? This is terrible and isn't even good english, though the meter actually matches. But through the magic of literally 2 minutes of thought, I came up with this: HENRY: So tell me, how's the fundraising going today? Surely some people must be throwing money your way? It's amateurish, but it sounds more like what someone would actually say, even if it rhymes. We lead into pete's dialogue: STINKY PETE: It's dire, man, when the weather turns to poo poo, seems it makes people's generosity take a hit. This is better than the clunker of a line before it, but it's easy to make it a little easier to read, and sound more natural: STINKY PETE: Nah man, I ain't got poo poo. The weather's bad, so my profits take a hit. Because, as mentioned earlier in the scene, this is a dude who is probably growing and selling weed, so he probably panhandles to get more money. He's crude, so it'd make sense for him to get directly to the point, and he's clearly been doing this long enough to state that people are less giving in the rain, so we don't need the 'seems' in there. Even with the tight constraints of the poetry style the author's chosen, it's possible to put in personality and still be clever with your rhyming choices. Stinky Pete is blunt and to the point, Henry would word things a little longer and pretentiously/evasive, because he clearly thinks he's better than everyone else, Grace could be more noticeably passive aggressive on how Henry just loving ignored what she wanted to watch in favor of something he wanted to see(and thus make us have hints he's inherently selfish), etc etc. As this is now, I get the hints of those, but it feels much more accidental than on purpose. Sorry if this is boring or anything! It's just frustrating, because the potential for interesting dialogue is there - but you would have to write out the normal dialogue first in order to know what you want to get across (in my case, I asked what normal dialogue would be in this situation and changed the sentences to fit), and then not gently caress up the actual poetry part, or at least get someone else to run through and say 'hey, this doesn't work' or 'what are you trying to get across here?' I'm not a Poet by any means, but you really don't have to be one to know when you're churning out garbage.
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Sep 7, 2018 00:51
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In part 4, there's an image that's too small to read. Gotta see 'em all, for some reason.
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Sep 7, 2018 01:57
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Well done! Thanks to you both for demonstrating how the script could've been done! Now the game will seem so much worse by comparison.  I think what Bacter's shown so far demonstrates two points about writing: 1. The utility of reading aloud what you've written. If Taiga had, he would've heard failed rhymes, the arhythmic couplets, and the awkward poo poo even dorky rhymesters probably wouldn't dare utter aloud. Likewise, after the hundredth useless line, he might've realized that the game's bloat is a liability, not an asset. You know he looked at poetess/foetus and thought "close enough!" and patted himself on the back, and that "money be throwing" poo poo probably felt extremely clever. Use a rhyming dictionary! Using references isn't cheating! ...I'll feel like a jerk if we learn he's hearing impaired. 2. The importance of a second (or even more) set of eyes on your writing. An editor or copyeditor really could have kicked this into better shape. Hell, even some mildly interested beta readers would have been quite helpful. Writing is also a process of revision, and it doesn't generally happen (well) in a vacuum. Ask for others' opinions. Ask for help.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:12
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Eh you're basically just talking about tools the writer could've been using. Plus its very noticeable he completely ignored the 2nd option since there's immediate problems in the game out the gate.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:33
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Yes, that's my point -- use tools when you write.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:45
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Sorry about the too-small pic! No idea what happened there. .... *squint* You that the... door... have... knocked? Somehow, I'm always surprised.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:52
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