EPTOn May 18 2012 21:34 ZessiM wrote:
You seem to be arguing that games suck for two reasons: bad gameplay and bad drama/aesthetic/plot execution (non-gameplay stuff).
I'd say non-gameplay stuff has certainly IMPROVED in recent years. It's been slow, steady improvement. You complain about stuff like voice-acting, but a lot of these games see big name, talented actors voice-actors signed up. I think games need to make mroe effort to make better use of these talents, and create more unique and interesting characters, rather than the same old archetypes that we see again and again. But on the whole, this aspect has improved. Furthermore, even if plots remain rather predictable and dull, with the exception of a game like Bioshock (perhaps), the manner of story-telling has certainly improved. Gone are the days of text boxes and cut-scenes as the only way to tell a story. You list a number of great story-telling moments yourself:
These are great moments, and unique acheivments in the field of videogames. I think it's problematic to compare video-games to movies, as you do, (how could any videogame be remotely relatable to The Social Network? They offer entirely different experiences) but if you are criticising the quality of story-telling in videogames, I think there are clear signs of progress rather than the reverse.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with gameplay, which is the most important aspect of a game, in my opinion. Again, I think innovation continues. Portal is the stand-out example of innovation that comes to mind, but also the games that have spawned the huge wave of anonymous carbon copies should be seen as succesful, innovative contributions. Games like the first Halo and Grand Theft Auto 3. It's hard to think of them as anything other than banal, thanks to the endless waves of sequels and imitators, but those titles became influential because they were great games in the first place. Other examples that spring to mind are the Relic games like Company of Heroes and Dawn of War, which did amaaaaazzing things for the RTS genre, but didn't explode to the extent they deserved.
There is a lot of monotonous trash in videogaming, but this is also the case in mediums such as movies, music and books. On the whole, I think we can see progress, not decay. Be patient!
TL;DR innovation in gameplay is out there, and games are improving as a story-telling medium, slowly but surely
You seem to be arguing that games suck for two reasons: bad gameplay and bad drama/aesthetic/plot execution (non-gameplay stuff).
I'd say non-gameplay stuff has certainly IMPROVED in recent years. It's been slow, steady improvement. You complain about stuff like voice-acting, but a lot of these games see big name, talented actors voice-actors signed up. I think games need to make mroe effort to make better use of these talents, and create more unique and interesting characters, rather than the same old archetypes that we see again and again. But on the whole, this aspect has improved. Furthermore, even if plots remain rather predictable and dull, with the exception of a game like Bioshock (perhaps), the manner of story-telling has certainly improved. Gone are the days of text boxes and cut-scenes as the only way to tell a story. You list a number of great story-telling moments yourself:
These are great moments, and unique acheivments in the field of videogames. I think it's problematic to compare video-games to movies, as you do, (how could any videogame be remotely relatable to The Social Network? They offer entirely different experiences) but if you are criticising the quality of story-telling in videogames, I think there are clear signs of progress rather than the reverse.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with gameplay, which is the most important aspect of a game, in my opinion. Again, I think innovation continues. Portal is the stand-out example of innovation that comes to mind, but also the games that have spawned the huge wave of anonymous carbon copies should be seen as succesful, innovative contributions. Games like the first Halo and Grand Theft Auto 3. It's hard to think of them as anything other than banal, thanks to the endless waves of sequels and imitators, but those titles became influential because they were great games in the first place. Other examples that spring to mind are the Relic games like Company of Heroes and Dawn of War, which did amaaaaazzing things for the RTS genre, but didn't explode to the extent they deserved.
There is a lot of monotonous trash in videogaming, but this is also the case in mediums such as movies, music and books. On the whole, I think we can see progress, not decay. Be patient!
TL;DR innovation in gameplay is out there, and games are improving as a story-telling medium, slowly but surely
Voice acting? Having a lot of funds with a large studio of actors doesn't yield results. Voice acting became steadily worse as the gaming industry were put into mainstream. The focus lies elsewhere. Sure, there are some not so recent gems, Psychonauts for instance, but the reason why voice acting only gets worse and worse is because the voice actors are separated from the game itself. In games like Gabriel Knight 1/2 and the earlier LucasArts games - the actors were very much involved with the game itself which allowed them to make more of an effort and shaping their own dialogue to make more sense. In almost all modern games, they get a very cheesy script from terrible dialogue writers that try to cater to a wide audience. The actors are hired, record some lines, receive money and leave. Sure, this might work for movies or to some degree anime where the actors can adapt very well to different roles and stay close with the script editor, but it apparently doesn't work for games. Voice acting has steadily decayed since the 90's. That's a fact.
Some guy said that gameplay and ideas have been exhausted and that 'indie' games only go for gimmicky things that last for 15 minutes. This is just outrageously wrong, the video game industry is still in an infant stage, and there is so much to explore and innovate. The problem is that the industry goes toward a few big corporations that only release successors and safe games such as bastardization of movie IP rights (Hello EA). Daring and revolutionizing big studios such as Bullfrog, Interplay, Westwood, Looking Glass Studios are all gone and replaced by EA, Activision, Ubisoft and Betheseda which are owning almost the whole (PC) market. This is not an improvement in any way, it's a gigantic decline for PC industry as a whole and only a delusional child who haven't played games in the 90's would not understand that.
Sure, this might sound unnecessarily harsh, some things like (lifelike) graphics, animation and physics has obviously improved (although very slowly, because of the limitations of consoles... Just look at Crysis 2 vs Crysis, Dragon Age 2 vs Dragon Age for example, not much happens in the graphical area cause they want to release on a multi-platform), but these things are all unnecessary if there is no substance beneath.
I've also liked some recent games like Demons Soul/Dark Souls and The Witcher/Witcher 2. Hell, I even liked Heavy Rain despite all its issues. I'm not saying all modern games are shit. But we sure aren't advancing in terms of games that break the boundaries or games that are genuinely interesting in both concept, depth and gameplay. Almost every modern game is a poor recycle of a genre or series, and don't fucking tell me 'it was like that in the 90's too' because NO. It wasn't. A lot of amazing games were released every year. And this isn't nostalgia talking, you'd see if you played some of them now too, after getting used to the graphics.
