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Post by Ex on May 18, 2020 21:39:08 GMT -5
Video game writing is its own medium, just as removed from novels and short stories as they are to cinema. I agree with you wholeheartedly. It's important to remember video games are a conglomerate of disparate mediums, interwoven by a thread of interactivity, which ultimately culminates in a subjective experience per player. Crafting an overarching narrative that compels the player, is usually only necessary as a conduit by which the player accepts the design scenario as it unravels. In short; stories are rarely "the point" of a video game, rather they're usually just a necessary evil. As a result the video game's story's inherent quality is routinely of low value in and of itself. The player is likely playing the game for its gameplay and graphics ultimately. A novel on the other hand, absolutely has to be written well, or it fails in every regard. So to compare video game writing versus novel writing, is a bit apples to oranges in a holistic sense. That said, I do think a lot of video gamers who praise video game writing... probably lack much of a frame of reference. So I get where @rhomaios was coming from with his students. Most gamers have probably not read great fictional literature or heralded works of non-fiction. (I say that based on adult reading metrics.) But even for those of us who have a refine palate, we don't normally step into a McDonald's and expect fine cuisine. We're there for the delicious junk food. Which is what the majority of video games are meant to be, if we're being honest. Also we had a thread on video game writing once: hardcoreretrogaming.boards.net/thread/210/video-games-legitimately-good-writing?page=1With most JRPGs, I tend to find the majority of their writing to fall under something in the vein of "Junior Teen Novel" level of craftsmanship. Which makes complete sense actually, considering most JRPGs are created with Japanese high school students as the target demographic. That said, I do not want to infer I've never played a JRPG with good writing. I have played JRPGs with good writing, they just tend to be more the exception than the rule in my experience. As for Xenogears, I've never played through that particular JRPG, so I remain neutral on that one. This made me snicker because it's so true. Rarely do people change deeply within their personal psyche. And when they do, it's because they want to, not because of some external event. Character arcs are indeed cheap lies. As is the good guys always win rainbow happy ending trope. I don't begrudge you that opinion in regards to the overall plot of the game. However, it is the intercommunication between characters in Hotel Dusk that is amazing. The malleable conversations the player has with NPCs, and the depth of those conversations, are really outstanding. Over time those characters seem to be real people, not cardboard cutout information dispensers. The best NPC dialogues I've had in any video game, has been in Hotel Dusk and its sequel Last Window. If you're looking for classic hard boiled detective stuff, yeah Sarge nailed it. The Jake Hunter games are very Mickey Spillane-esque. The only issue I have with the JH games, is that they are straight up visual novels, with hardly any interactivity or real puzzle solving. Sometimes that's just fine. If you simply want to relax with a linear story with scarce player involvement, it works. So if From Games, to use a belligerent example, thinks they can make more money by including an easy mode, why should I care? It would appear FromSoftware realizes they make more money by sticking to their existing framework, because they continue to do so with each successive iteration. But sometimes I do want to play the equivalent of a young teen novel, knowing that's exactly what it is. I alluded to this earlier, but I don't think you're wrong here in a general sense. The majority of JRPGs (not all) are created with Japanese teenagers in mind. So it makes sense their writing would target that level of mental/emotional development. (It's no accident that Persona constantly stars high schoolers right?) But I think we've all read a few good books, that were good, despite being teen fiction.
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2020 21:44:12 GMT -5
But sometimes I do want to play the equivalent of a young teen novel, knowing that's exactly what it is. I alluded to this earlier, but I don't think you're wrong here in a general sense. The majority of JRPGs (not all) are created with Japanese teenagers in mind. So it makes sense their writing would target that level of mental/emotional development. (It's no accident that Persona constantly stars high schoolers right?) But I think we've all read a few good books, that were good, despite being teen fiction. Yep. I like the McDonald's comparison. Too many people praise their equivalent to McDonald's, whether it's a game, singer/album, movie, whatever. It's fine to eat at McDonald's, just don't start comparing it to high quality steakhouses.
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Post by Ex on May 18, 2020 21:57:11 GMT -5
Too many people praise their equivalent to McDonald's, whether it's a game, singer/album, movie, whatever. It's fine to eat at McDonald's, just don't start comparing it to high quality steakhouses. I'm glad we're in agreement there.
What I wouldn't agree to, is that no steakhouses exist in the video game medium. There are a few here and there, even if at this stage in the medium's development, those few remain the exceptions. Exceptions bring me hope that the video game medium can someday enjoy the cumulative breadth of novels and films in this regard. We must keep in mind though, that novels and films have had much more time to develop their potential compared to video games.
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2020 22:00:13 GMT -5
Too many people praise their equivalent to McDonald's, whether it's a game, singer/album, movie, whatever. It's fine to eat at McDonald's, just don't start comparing it to high quality steakhouses. I'm glad we're in agreement there.
What I wouldn't agree to, is that no steakhouses exist in the video game medium. There are a few here and there, even if at this stage in the medium's development, those few remain the exceptions. Exceptions bring me hope that the video game medium can someday enjoy the cumulative breadth of novels and films in this regard. We must keep in mind though, that novels and films have had much more time to develop their potential compared to video games.
If I really wanted to be controversial, I'd say that games like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus are just burgers from quality sit-down restaurants rather than fast food joints, and Dark Souls is a burger from a truck behind a hipster bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I can't vouch for that burger truck, but cool that you like them.
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Post by Ex on May 18, 2020 22:10:52 GMT -5
f I really wanted to be controversial, I'd say that games like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus are just burgers from quality sit-down restaurants rather than fast food joints, and Dark Souls is a burger from a truck behind a hipster bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I can't vouch for that burger truck, but cool that you like them. If those are the games your students are proclaiming, I can understand why you become irritated. I wasn't thinking of those games at all. I was thinking more of games such as Miasmata, Cosmology of Kyoto, Salammbo: Battle for Carthage, The Lost Crown, and Dear Esther as a few examples. Although the quality of any given steakhouse is surely up to the taste buds of the beholder.
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2020 22:16:28 GMT -5
f I really wanted to be controversial, I'd say that games like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus are just burgers from quality sit-down restaurants rather than fast food joints, and Dark Souls is a burger from a truck behind a hipster bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I can't vouch for that burger truck, but cool that you like them. If those are the games your students are proclaiming, I can understand why you become irritated. I wasn't thinking of those games at all. I was thinking more of games such as Miasmata, Cosmology of Kyoto, Salammbo: Battle for Carthage, The Lost Crown, and Dear Esther as a few examples. Although the quality of any given steakhouse is surely up to the taste buds of the beholder.
I'll give the last a chance at some point, but it's the only one I have and have heard of. And nah, my students weren't ever as sophisticated. These are the same kids who got all their knowledge of Greek myth from 2004's Troy and the God of War series. I still remember being surprised when one said that God of War was "a super old and classic game" on the PS2 and talked about his childhood playing Halo 2 on his first console. This was a few years ago now, and now there are college students whose first console was the 360/PS3/Wii.
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Post by Sarge on May 18, 2020 22:32:16 GMT -5
Now I feel old. Again.
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Post by Ex on May 18, 2020 22:49:59 GMT -5
I'll give the last a chance at some point, but it's the only one I have and have heard of. I very much enjoyed Dear Esther. But it is definitely not an experience that everyone would enjoy. Certainly not a dopamine dispenser. I recommend playing the game alone at night. Not because it's scary, but because it's somber. I told you we were old now Sarge !
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Post by anayo on May 21, 2020 15:19:52 GMT -5
Video game writing is its own medium, just as removed from novels and short stories as they are to cinema. In fact, a further degree removed, since you add the visual presentation of cinema and television, and then add interactivity. In that sense, a lot of things that are considered bad writing in other forms, such as blatant exposition, are perfectly fine to me, because I can separate what's there for the game's inside world, and what's there purely to help me as a player, and I don't need to pretend that I'm not playing a video game in order to get into the story. Actually, I'm generally pro-exposition for the same reason (provided it's interesting). I loved Xenogears, and the story was absolutely a big part of it. Not so much its depth, but the sum of its atmosphere and every event that took place in it, every character met, every locale visited. That's what RPGs are good at. People who want to deride RPGs or criticize their writing usually look only at the premise - "a amnesic child defeats a villain to save the world". That's not actually what any RPG I've ever played was about. The premise only exists to set you on an adventure, and the endgame - typically the most boring part, story-wise - is there because the game needs to end at some point. But what matters is what happens along the way. When RPGs started to leave that aspect behind - the Dragon Quest-style, every-town-has-its-story approach - they became less and less interesting, to a point where I couldn't care less about modern RPGs. But I absolutely think that lots of older RPGs have fine writing. Also, character arcs as they are commonly understood are almost always bad writing. People do not just commonly improve remarkably as human beings in some permanent, clear-cut manner as a result of some specific event. That's not how human nature works. I hate having to put up with that contrived nonsense all the time because writers think they're supposed to force it into every story. Character arcs are cheap lies. EDIT - Ex from my point of view, Hotel Dusk was a tepid, milquetoast detective story. I didn't find one exciting idea in there, one truly interesting bit of psychological insight, one moving moment. I wouldn't say it's a bad game. It's okay. I can see how its more grounded tone would be a relief after something like Phoenix Wright and its half-assed zaniness (at least that describes the one I played). But I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how such a banal story could the pinnacle of anything. Maybe I was just disappointed because I was hoping for something a little more hard-boiled, I don't know. Did you know the dialog in the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sounds super awkward to people who speak Mandarin Chinese? There’s an article on cracked.com about it: Keep [Arnold Schwarzenegger] in mind when you consider how American audiences raved about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, while Chinese audiences winced as they watched Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, Cantonese speakers, stumble through their Mandarin lines. To non-Chinese speakers, the dialogue comes across as nuanced and flowing, while to a Chinese speaker, it is like watching Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice come out of a Chinese martial artist.I don’t speak Mandarin, so I can’t hear what makes Chow Yun Fat’s delivery sound so unnatural. But my inability to perceive that doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with his performance. If I told someone who spoke Mandarin, “Chow Yun-Fat’s dialog sounds just fine to me, therefore you don’t know what you’re talking about when you say he sounds bad.” then my Mandarin speaking friend would conclude that I was a dullard and diplomatically change the subject. The opening scene of Half Life: Opposing Force takes place on a personnel carrier with some soldiers flying into a mission. To my ear, the soldiers’ dialog does not sound like the words of actual soldiers. It sounds like something that was made up by civilian writers who hadn’t spent any time around enlisted people. Why I feel that way is hard to encapsulate. I can throw around adjectives like “contrived” or “hackneyed” but ultimately I’m not much better off than a Chinese person trying to impart to me why Chow Yun Fat sounds so weird when speaking Mandarin. However one red flag is that soldiers in Opposing Force call non-commissioned officers “sir”. In real life, service members are only supposed to use that title with commissioned officers, not NCOs. It would be as weird as calling a registered nurse “Doctor”. A gamer with no military background probably won’t care about such minutiae. But to someone who knows anything about that world, it robs the game of credibility and comes across as phony. Hollywood movies seem to be capable of adhering to higher writing standards than this, such as the space marines in James Cameron’s “Aliens”. Everything about those guys rang true to me, from their chemistry, to their asinine antics, to Michael Bien falling asleep in the middle of a mission. To my surprise, all the actors were just civilians in real life. However their fictitious NCOIC was a real-life Army Green Beret who doubled as the film’s military advisor. He even bitched at the actors for their lack of trigger discipline with their fake plasma guns. I don’t want to blast Half Life Opposing Force, because as soon as aliens began teleporting into Black Mesa I was having too much fun to care about the soldiers’ wooden dialog. I suspect the writers were more passionate about the science fiction elements anyway, and that's okay. I’m not trying to pontificate about the finer points of military subculture, either, rather what I’m trying to convey is that this is just one area where video game writing falters, and games seem to do this all the time, no matter the setting or subject matter. It stupefies me that video game artists embark on exhaustive field studies for their games’ animations, textures, and models, yet somehow writing and acting don’t merit the same attention to detail. People - gamers, even - will often say "It's just a game." To hell with that, games should have higher standards. This would never happen in a novel by Stephen King, Tom Wolfe, or Orson Scott Card. Those writers go to great lengths to get to know their subjects before portraying them, depicting people from all kinds of walks of life with harrowing authenticity. Why can’t video games do that, too? "Although improving all the time, there is still a lack of focus on story and character in games," says Andy Emery creative director at Side, a leading provider of casting, directing and recording services to the videogame and movie sectors. "This has to be an integral part of the project from start to finish. We see problems with poor scripts all the time. A professional scriptwriter is an essential part of modern game development but still we get 'developer written' scripts with alarming regularity. Even with the best Hollywood actors on board, a poor script can result in poor voice acting." (link)I think this issue is partially to blame for why there’s still any debate as to whether video games qualify as real art in the first place. Slipshod craftsmanship in the areas of writing and acting provide ammunition to those who criticize the legitimacy of video games as a medium. It’s a given that “programmer artwork” doesn’t belong in a finished product. Artists without some cross-disciplinary background in coding shouldn’t write software. So where does this idea come from that people without a background in writing have any business writing the script for their game? I only feel so strongly about this because I regard video games as a wonderful medium worthy of this status.
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Post by toei on May 21, 2020 15:44:45 GMT -5
I've heard that anecdote about that movie before.
I'm sure the dialogue in Half-Life is bad, but I don't see how that establishes that videogame writing is generally bad. I certainly agree that most AAA productions have awful stories, and I've also wondered why they invest so much time and money into researching the minute details of clothing styles in some historical period or the exact physics of 15th century wind sails or whatever, all in the service of some dumbass comic book story (a question that also applies to most recent blockbusters). But there are many games with good writing, and contrary to what you seem to believe, tons and tons and tons and tons and also tons and I'll add TONS of novels with completely awful dialogue, or bad writing in general. You brought up Stephen King - bad dialogue in novels is a topic he's brought up several times in his nonfiction writing, including in On Writing.
I do agree with this: "People - gamers, even - will often say "It's just a game." To hell with that, games should have higher standards." This is also a thing with movies and TV series. Whenever I saw someone point out that House of Cards, for example, was kind of a bullshit cartoon representation of politics, someone would make sure to answer that it's "just a TV show". Maybe they're really trying to argue that they enjoy a dark cartoon version of politics, and that's fine, but "it's just a..." is never a good reply.
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