Do you need a "complete" experience?


Afterimage

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
The best example of this is probably the CSI games. In those, you don't really have a plotline to follow as such, you more have a collection of clues and your task, more than anything else, is to find all the clues and put them together. The point of those games is to know everything there is to know, because eventually, that'll tell you the identity of the murderer, and usually his motivation and methodology, as well.
There are games based on CSI? Cool! I didn't know that.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
I never really understood what Vampire: The Masquerade actually is (either a series of books or a pen and paper RPG),
It's a pen and paper RPG. There's a series of books based on it like most RPG, wargaming, and video game properties, however. It's been replaced by the vastly inferior Vampire: The Requiem these days, but fortunately you can still find all of the old stuff on Amazon Marketplace or eBay.


 

Posted

I'm a sucker for usless information. I love easter egg drops in movies and videogames, and in general, am always up for a "complete" expearince. BUT, and this is a big BUT, i don't want all that stuff to clutter up a game needlessly.

Take games like Mass Effect. (I'm currently playing it. I was late to the party...) LOTS of needless information in the Codex, lots of stuff to read outside of the game, comics, and 2 novels i think. NONE of it nessessiry to enjoy the game. You can play either game, from start to finish, without ever cracking open the codex, and you'll do just fine, understand what's happening just fine. The extra stuff is just extra, and adds to *my* enjoyment, but YMMV.

And thats who IMO is should be. On the side so to speak. There if you want to endulge, but not a requirment to get enjoyment out of a game.


@KingSnake - Triumph Server
@PrinceSnake
My common sense is tingling... ~ Deadpool
If you can't learn to do something well... learn to enjoy doing it poorly...

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
This is the last time I'll respond to this line.



Streets of Rage is also 20 years old, if not more. Beat-em-ups these days have a solid, if vague storyline. Shank, for instance, is nothing more than a Grindhouse style violent slaughterfest focusing on a guy shanking people in a 2D side-scroller, yet that has enough of a story to make for a Hollywood blockbuster worthy of Machete. I understand that's not saying much, but story is very much there. Hell, look at Capcom's all Aliens vs. Predator arcade and you'll notice that has enough story to make up a movie, too, and that's also about 20 years old.

Way to miss my point. It's not that a beat'em'up can't have a story: It's that the game mechanis of a beat'em'up is fundamentally different from COH. (in controls, timing, etc.)



Quote:
The mission objective gives me enough information to complete a task. That's not what I'm talking about. Quite a few of the new missions don't give me enough information to understand what's happening, however, beyond the very immediate next objective. However, I can't follow the story without background information which the story doesn't provide.
Then that's part of the story.

Quote:
Easy example: When Praetorian Penelope Yin calls me, I see a picture of Metronome. Erm... Who the hell is Metronome? How do I know what he looks like? Have I met him before? Well... No, actually. Metronome is part of a Loyalist Responsibility arc where his nature is revealed, and Penelope Yin is part of a Resistance Warden arc. What's more, having run the Responsibility arc that had Metronome in it, I understood that he has no physical bodie and instead jumps between the different clockwork, therefore there there wouldn't be a picture of him to see, unless I saw a picture of a random Clockwork.
I *think* that might be bugged. There are a couple of instances where there's alternate dialogue depending on which arc you've done before. I seem to remember Metronome only being described as "Glowball" when I did my Resistance arc.

And even if not, Penny i A) Psychic and B) Insane. And she's sending you this telepathically.



Quote:
There isn't "one story" because a story assumes a beginning, a linear middle and an end.
No it does not. Where did you get that idea?

Take history, there are millions of stories, but there i also a "a" story of history (however imperfectly we can recreate it) that is, the sum total of human experience. "Was eigentlich gewesen Ist."


"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by NekoNeko View Post
There are games based on CSI? Cool! I didn't know that.
Something like seven of them, and they're actually pretty good, believe it or not. I'd shoot for the later 3D ones, though, the ones that have you solve an actual crime via actual (if fictional) forensics. The older ones are more like unrelated minigames.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

 

Posted

Long, composite reply coming. Buckle up, folks!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimo_ View Post
For me, at least, there are several things about Bloodlines that make it great. To begin with, it's got wonderful atmosphere. The voice acting is great with few exceptions, and the setting is very gritty and immersive (the graphics even still hold up pretty well). In addition, it has wonderful roleplaying options. I can try to interact with people by persuasion, intimidation or seduction, and how I treat people has an actual effect on things. There are actual choices to be made, and missions I can ignore or miss without ruining the game. It's amazingly deep. Another thing I like is no combat levels. I've never liked that, skill systems like Bloodlines has are much more realistic.

Redemption had some wonderful points to it too, but it wasn't as engaging to me because I couldn't make my OWN character, and it became all about combat (and rather repetetive combat, at that).
OK, that makes sense. I guess, as much as I claim to want to make my own characters and stories, what I REALLY want in a game (or movie, for that matter) is characters and stories I actually LIKE, be they mine or someone else's. That's why I swoon over Darksiders as much as I do - not because it's a great game (Oni is still better), but because I frikkin' love War and the way he's written. Sure, he's not MY character, but he's written exactly like I'd have liked to write him. In fact, he's written BETTER than I'd have written him, to the point where playing the game expanded my horizons ever so slightly. I know most people would find War to be a cliched, trite, over-macho caricature (and he is), but I just love the purity of his overdone nature. Complex plots are interesting, but sometimes a simple plot which earns its simplicity by brute-forcing through no-win situations can be just as interesting.

But that's neither here nor there.

I guess I just liked Redemptions' Cristoff too damn much to dislike the game. I LOVED his voice actor, and the guy - like War - was pretty much a stoic figure, and pretty powerful by the end. Love how a great sword becomes twice as strong when it becomes ancient Bloodlines, by comparison, didn't really sit well with me, and I will admit that this was because of graphics and gameplay, and probably not a little because of mood. Never was a fan of "realistic" settings replete with intrigue and politics. As it ought to be clear so far, my preferences lie in the more pure ("pure" in the sense of "simple" and "uncomplicated") concepts.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Slashman View Post
In any case, how much info is present in a game never matters as much to me as how interesting the information is.
Well stated, and it's something I keep neglecting to get into. Too much information becomes too much when it is no longer interesting enough for me to care. If the information is interesting enough to keep me wanting more, then I probably wouldn't complain. However, it seems a bit hard for me to imagine truly extraneous information being all that gripping enough. Different strokes for different folks, let's say.

Quote:
Originally Posted by NekoNeko View Post
When I read a book or watch a movie, I want all the info the writer or screenwriter wants to give me.
This actually puts one of my BIGGEST turn-offs in fiction into tangible works. Thank you, Neko As much as the author wants to give me is a very good measuring stick, and what really gets my goat is when a fandom at large starts digging so deep into a work of fiction that not only are they digging up information the author never really intended to expand on, but end up "finding" themes in his works that even he never suspected were there.

While how much information is too much can be relative, I think we can define a pretty hard line based on how much the author wanted to give out. If an author is prodigous and stuffs his work with tons and tons of lore, such as the makers of Baldur's Gate did, then I can't really complain. It's all down to personal preference. However, when an author has given out only so much and then people start writing expanded universe books and spinning elaborate theories, that's where I start to grumble. And the real problem with that is that this tends to happen OFFICIALLY. You have a good book, movie or game that does so well a sequel is greenlit. However, this sequel then features FAR more plot analyses and far more extraneous info to appease the fans and sell well, effectively turning it into a different work altogether.

I keep talking about Soul Reaver, but just look at the shift in narrative from Soul Reaver to Soul Reaver 2. In the original, there was almost no plot. Raziel is wronged, and he must kill his six (was it?) brothers and then Kain and... That's pretty much it. There's a Sarafan tomb along the way, too, but that's literally the entirety of the plot. It hints at more, but doesn't say more. It's an old game from an old age where story wasn't a big thing. Then Soul Reaver 2 opens with backstory, conversation and infodump, and there's so much background on the world my head spins. Now, that's not complain about Soul Reaver having too much story - it has just the right amount - but it's to describe how a franchise's plot tends to balloon over the span of its sequels. Hell, look at Metal Gear!

Of course, I wouldn't support the reverse, either - that being a game's plot becoming dumber and less interesting in its sequels. For instance, Dino Crisis was a derivative but good-natured Resident Evil clone with a cliched but cute plot about a research station run over with dinosaurs. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either. Then Dino Crisis 2 turned the game into challenge shooter counting your combos and scoring you at the end of each level, and I was not able to sense plot anywhere in there. While I may grumble at plots getting thicker, that, at least, is inoffensive. But when plots drop out of games between releases, that actually insults my intelligence, and THAT I could never support. I'd sooner have too much than too little.

Quote:
Originally Posted by KingSnake View Post
I'm a sucker for useless information. I love easter egg drops in movies and videogames, and in general, am always up for a "complete" experience. BUT, and this is a big BUT, I don't want all that stuff to clutter up a game needlessly.

And that's who IMO is should be. On the side so to speak. There if you want to indulge, but not a requirement to get enjoyment out of a game.
This much I can agree with, easily. I'm not really a fan of extra info, granted, but I don't actually so much mind to HAVE it in the game as a general thing. What I do mind is when it's hard to ignore, either because it keeps coming up in the main plot or because I keep tripping over it even when I want to pretend it doesn't exist. In the case of Arkham Asylum, for instance, I kept collecting Riddler maps which kept bringing me to audio reels, which kept showing me interviews with Zsaz? I don't care about that guy, but if I wanted to track down the Riddler, I had to collect his riddles to make him call me again and again. That qualifies as "in my face."

I think Mass Effect's Codex is a very good idea. It collects all of your extra info there if you really cared about it, but it doesn't actually paste the info on your screen before it saves it. If I get a codex entry, my Codex lights up to tell me I have an entry, but it doesn't pop up with the entry in my face. And, to boot, most of those entries had something to do with things in the actual game, at least.

I guess it's not so much extra info that I mind as the lack of segregation between that extra info and the main plotline I'm currently following.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

 

Posted

I love complex byzantine plots, crisscrossing agendas, unexpected turns of the narrative. I'm way too used to being able to predict where a story goes from pretty much the opening narration, and so I love whenevr a story manages to surprise me (even if in just some minor way) and that chance tends to increase with the complexity of the plot.

And for the record, Planescape: Torment is my favourite CRPG (even if BG2 is probably technically better) and Planescape my favourite setting, for these reasons precisely :P


"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."