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On the topic of whether the Last of Us "pushed boundaries in storytelling..." No, it didn't. It's just a really good game, but the story telling is fairly parochial, straight forward. It's well told and a great game but it didn't "push boundaries." It told the story like how movies tell a story: You're the viewer of a story and it plays out like a movie in front of you; your expectations of the story are fulfilled, there's nothing that's "pushing boundaries" it's just good.
An example of a mainstream game pushing boundaries in storytelling is something like the original Portal. "But the story is so basic compared to the Last of Us!" Sure, kind of, but that's something that pushed boundaries in videogame storytelling because it's a subversive narrative that does not fulfill the original expectation, it subverts your expectation. The game presents itself as a simple, straight forward puzzler, and most people went into it pretty much blind because there's was basically no pre-release hype for it or setup... It's just a puzzler. Within 2 or 3 levels, you realize the AI that's telling you to go through this puzzle has... kind of got a sense of humor, but you're not totally sure yet.
The game then introduces "companion cube," and it's a little subversive, like a tiny joke like .. "oh maybe things aren't as they seem..." ... "Does this game have a sense of humor...??" and then the AI robot narrator makes that great joke at the end of level 4 or something when you murder your companion cube at their instruction. That's the first real confirmation that the game writers are in on the joke, that the game is a subversive story... But it doesn't give in right away or do a 180 right away. It's a tease.
The more you play if you pay attention you start to see that the game world and story is much more than it is. It's not just a puzzler anymore, there's something else going on. "The Cake is a Lie" is such a meme now that it means basically nothing, but that's a really well told subversion from the story in the game. If the LAst of Us or Uncharted or Call of Duty was telling you this story, they would have done it by having another test subject fall out of a vent and stumble up to you, bloody and screaming and say "THE CAKE IS A LIE! SHE IS CRAZY! DON'T LISTEN TO HER!" Another game would have beat you over the fucking head with the story twist -- but Portal does not do that. The first hint that something's wrong is hidden away and you have to look for it -- it's in a panel pulled back from the wall that you can easily ignore (but most players probably won't).
Finally, the true subversion of the story happens for both the player and the character. The Test Subject is asked to emulsify herself... You've done everything that the AI has asked you to do before in every puzzle from start to finish, and now you're told to kill yourself. Will you do it? Or do you notice that you can escape? I'll be honest, the first time I played it -- I killed myself, I rode the elevator into the firey abyss, because I was so used to doing what I was told in the game. This is pushing the boundaries of storytelling in videogames. The game is telling you to kill yourself, and you do it, even though you've been given some small hints along the way that the AI instructing you is not really looking out for your intentions ... You, the player, are a test subject who is following the nefarious instructions of your previously benevolent but actually malevolent guide. You're not a human being holding a controller with free will, you're a stupid robot who kills herself because an AI guide has told you that there's cake if you kill yourself. That is subversive storytelling in a videogame and videogames are one of the few mediums where you can really explore subversive storytelling.
But, if you don't do it, or you're like me and you replay it and don't kill yourself the second time, you escape the test chamber and ... holy shit ... Now you're in on the subversion, and the game story dramatically changes. The AI whose been guiding you along is now, clearly, the bad guy. If you pay attention you realize the AI is tied into the rest of the Half-Life universe, a competing research institute to Black Mesa trying to get government funding for their projects. You can completely miss almost all of this. Finally, the true reality of the world doesn't introduce itself until the very end: You've defeated the AI, you've been blown out of the research facility, and you've made it into the real world ... with birds and trees and ... a parking lot. Everything you've experienced was, truly, a test chamber.
And then, of course, you get the wonderfully self-aware song at the end that hilarious wraps it all up.
Portal pushes the boundaries of videogame storytelling.
It's kind of interesting how Portal dropped the same year / same time as Bioshock, but just did subversive storytelling so much better than Bioshock's main narative. Bioshock is basically telling the same story to the player: You're following orders from someone who you think is a benevolent guide, but ends up being the bad guy. But that key moment in Bioshock and Portal is where Portal takes a chance and elevates storytelling to something new, and where Bioshock goes safe. In Portal you -- the player -- decide to escape the test chamber even though your benevolent (secretly malevolent) guide is telling you to kill yourself. In BIoshock, the game takes control away from you the player and forces you to beat the head in of the target at the instruction of the malevolent guide... The guide has revealed himself as malevolent... and yet, the game takes control away. It sucks. It's ruins the entire setup to that moment and I Can't believe that they did it that way, that they couldn't think of some other way to compel you to beat the head in of your target other than taking over the controls and forcing you to do it... There are very few other narrative let downs in gaming for me as much as Bioshock was a letdown.
Aside from Bioshock being a massive disappointment for me in trying to push a boundary in storytelling, the last major game to disappoint me this way was Grand Theft Auto V. I've written about this at length before, but I'll shorten it, GTAV had a huge opportunity to tell a subversive story in a videogame and they didn't take the opportunity... THey missed their chance and it's probably going to be impossible to do it again. Rockstar will probably never have this opportunity to set your expectations one way and then subvert them like they had in Grand Theft Auto V, and they just didn't take it, or couldn't figure out how to do it. I've gone into depth about this before, relating it to the season finale/penultimate episode of Sopranos season 5 (or w/e season it is) when the Chrissy / Adriana / Tony story reaches its climax. The climax of that story in the Sopranos is the perfect example of subverting the viewers expectations, and I thought GTAV had an opportunity to do this by making you -- the player -- unknowingly be "The bad guy" by using one of the characters to undermine the other two characters, but to trick the player into knowing that you're doing that until a specific "big reveal." Basically my idea was that Michael is actually working for the FIB against Trevor, and Franklin is the one that discovers it, but all along, you -- the player -- are tricked into thinking it's a parochial story, but if you go back and study the cut scenes -- when the camera cuts into Michael, when you taake over control of Michael, and so on -- that you can spot subtle hints... a black unmarked car driving away from the scene as the satelite cam goes and zooms in on him; a person who is supposed to look like a burnout druggie actually being the FBI agent whose working Michael as an asset against Trevor, etc... Eventually when it's discovered (by Franklin with Trevor present) the game flashed back to those scenes but reveals the con: The bum sitting on the park bench gets up and leaves a $5,000 envelop and Michael picks it up; the car driving away from Michael's house as Trevor pulls up has two FBI agents sitting in the front seat; etc. I was so bummed when GTAV didn't do this.
But the game never did it, and it missed the chance. They have a chance with GTAVI, but they won't.
An example of a mainstream game pushing boundaries in storytelling is something like the original Portal. "But the story is so basic compared to the Last of Us!" Sure, kind of, but that's something that pushed boundaries in videogame storytelling because it's a subversive narrative that does not fulfill the original expectation, it subverts your expectation. The game presents itself as a simple, straight forward puzzler, and most people went into it pretty much blind because there's was basically no pre-release hype for it or setup... It's just a puzzler. Within 2 or 3 levels, you realize the AI that's telling you to go through this puzzle has... kind of got a sense of humor, but you're not totally sure yet.
The game then introduces "companion cube," and it's a little subversive, like a tiny joke like .. "oh maybe things aren't as they seem..." ... "Does this game have a sense of humor...??" and then the AI robot narrator makes that great joke at the end of level 4 or something when you murder your companion cube at their instruction. That's the first real confirmation that the game writers are in on the joke, that the game is a subversive story... But it doesn't give in right away or do a 180 right away. It's a tease.
The more you play if you pay attention you start to see that the game world and story is much more than it is. It's not just a puzzler anymore, there's something else going on. "The Cake is a Lie" is such a meme now that it means basically nothing, but that's a really well told subversion from the story in the game. If the LAst of Us or Uncharted or Call of Duty was telling you this story, they would have done it by having another test subject fall out of a vent and stumble up to you, bloody and screaming and say "THE CAKE IS A LIE! SHE IS CRAZY! DON'T LISTEN TO HER!" Another game would have beat you over the fucking head with the story twist -- but Portal does not do that. The first hint that something's wrong is hidden away and you have to look for it -- it's in a panel pulled back from the wall that you can easily ignore (but most players probably won't).
Finally, the true subversion of the story happens for both the player and the character. The Test Subject is asked to emulsify herself... You've done everything that the AI has asked you to do before in every puzzle from start to finish, and now you're told to kill yourself. Will you do it? Or do you notice that you can escape? I'll be honest, the first time I played it -- I killed myself, I rode the elevator into the firey abyss, because I was so used to doing what I was told in the game. This is pushing the boundaries of storytelling in videogames. The game is telling you to kill yourself, and you do it, even though you've been given some small hints along the way that the AI instructing you is not really looking out for your intentions ... You, the player, are a test subject who is following the nefarious instructions of your previously benevolent but actually malevolent guide. You're not a human being holding a controller with free will, you're a stupid robot who kills herself because an AI guide has told you that there's cake if you kill yourself. That is subversive storytelling in a videogame and videogames are one of the few mediums where you can really explore subversive storytelling.
But, if you don't do it, or you're like me and you replay it and don't kill yourself the second time, you escape the test chamber and ... holy shit ... Now you're in on the subversion, and the game story dramatically changes. The AI whose been guiding you along is now, clearly, the bad guy. If you pay attention you realize the AI is tied into the rest of the Half-Life universe, a competing research institute to Black Mesa trying to get government funding for their projects. You can completely miss almost all of this. Finally, the true reality of the world doesn't introduce itself until the very end: You've defeated the AI, you've been blown out of the research facility, and you've made it into the real world ... with birds and trees and ... a parking lot. Everything you've experienced was, truly, a test chamber.
And then, of course, you get the wonderfully self-aware song at the end that hilarious wraps it all up.
Portal pushes the boundaries of videogame storytelling.
It's kind of interesting how Portal dropped the same year / same time as Bioshock, but just did subversive storytelling so much better than Bioshock's main narative. Bioshock is basically telling the same story to the player: You're following orders from someone who you think is a benevolent guide, but ends up being the bad guy. But that key moment in Bioshock and Portal is where Portal takes a chance and elevates storytelling to something new, and where Bioshock goes safe. In Portal you -- the player -- decide to escape the test chamber even though your benevolent (secretly malevolent) guide is telling you to kill yourself. In BIoshock, the game takes control away from you the player and forces you to beat the head in of the target at the instruction of the malevolent guide... The guide has revealed himself as malevolent... and yet, the game takes control away. It sucks. It's ruins the entire setup to that moment and I Can't believe that they did it that way, that they couldn't think of some other way to compel you to beat the head in of your target other than taking over the controls and forcing you to do it... There are very few other narrative let downs in gaming for me as much as Bioshock was a letdown.
Aside from Bioshock being a massive disappointment for me in trying to push a boundary in storytelling, the last major game to disappoint me this way was Grand Theft Auto V. I've written about this at length before, but I'll shorten it, GTAV had a huge opportunity to tell a subversive story in a videogame and they didn't take the opportunity... THey missed their chance and it's probably going to be impossible to do it again. Rockstar will probably never have this opportunity to set your expectations one way and then subvert them like they had in Grand Theft Auto V, and they just didn't take it, or couldn't figure out how to do it. I've gone into depth about this before, relating it to the season finale/penultimate episode of Sopranos season 5 (or w/e season it is) when the Chrissy / Adriana / Tony story reaches its climax. The climax of that story in the Sopranos is the perfect example of subverting the viewers expectations, and I thought GTAV had an opportunity to do this by making you -- the player -- unknowingly be "The bad guy" by using one of the characters to undermine the other two characters, but to trick the player into knowing that you're doing that until a specific "big reveal." Basically my idea was that Michael is actually working for the FIB against Trevor, and Franklin is the one that discovers it, but all along, you -- the player -- are tricked into thinking it's a parochial story, but if you go back and study the cut scenes -- when the camera cuts into Michael, when you taake over control of Michael, and so on -- that you can spot subtle hints... a black unmarked car driving away from the scene as the satelite cam goes and zooms in on him; a person who is supposed to look like a burnout druggie actually being the FBI agent whose working Michael as an asset against Trevor, etc... Eventually when it's discovered (by Franklin with Trevor present) the game flashed back to those scenes but reveals the con: The bum sitting on the park bench gets up and leaves a $5,000 envelop and Michael picks it up; the car driving away from Michael's house as Trevor pulls up has two FBI agents sitting in the front seat; etc. I was so bummed when GTAV didn't do this.
But the game never did it, and it missed the chance. They have a chance with GTAVI, but they won't.
Complains about tags in thinly-veiled jealous rage because own profile only says Member.
False argumentation about a single line of your post to make you think it completely decredibilize your entire argumentation.
Post that ignores raft of parochial off-topic comments in futile attempt to bring discussion back on track.
I've thought a lot about this because sports games have always been a passion of mine.
Traditionally, there's two or three core aspects of most "simulation" sports games:
- Experience on the field / in play (think, a boss battle in Dark Souls)
- Franchise / Owner / Team Builder / Player Builder mode (think, the character development in an RPG)
- Competitive, player v. player modes (PvP in a fighting game)
In #1 Experience on the field, this dictates player behavior, CPU opponent AI (e.g., the behavior of the NPCs that the videogame player is not controlling), strategy of NPCs (e.g., the other team that the videogame player is not controlling), graphics, sound, presentation, and everything that would go into a match, game, or single event sports contest.
There is a huge amount of improvement that can be done in all of these areas, in every sports game. Some games replicate some aspects very well, like baseball games. Baseball games are one of the best games at replicating the behavior of NPCs in play, because baseball is a sport that is limited in the functionality of specific players. A catcher, for the most part, will never play 2nd base. An outfielder, for the most part, will never play 3rd base. A base runner will never run from 3rd base back to 1st base, or go back to the batters box and hit the ball again once its on the ground. There is a very sequential nature to baseball: A ball that is out of play will never suddenly return to play unexpectedly; a ball thrown will never be thrown by the pitcher to an outfielder.
This is one reason why a lot of baseball games from 10-15+ years ago are still considered really good (High Heat 2002 and MVP Baseball 2005 are still considered among the best baseball games), because once you nail down the majority of scenarios, you can have a good playing baseball game, and then you can focus on refining those scenarios to perfection. Sure, advanced AI will be difficult to pin down, like logic on when outfielders should throw to specific bases, but a lot of the most difficult logic in baseball games is in forcing NPCs to make logical mistakes, instead of be logically perfect. I'm not talking about errors (an aspect of baseball where a player makes a mistake executing a routine play on the field), but more... "Does outfielder Z have enough arm strength to throw out baserunner A while baserunner A is trying to advance from 2nd base to 3rd base; Does baserunner A have enough speed to run faster than the speed and accuracy of the ball; Does infielder Y have enough fielding ability to catch the ball thrown by outfielder Z and tag out baserunner A?" These are all logical math operations that a computer can calculate, and then it's "just" a measure of replicating that visually on the screen and ensuring that what you see visually matches up to what the computer has calculated. The challenge, with baseball games in this case, is making them play realistically: IF outfielder Z makes that throw 100% of the time, or if baserunner A beats out the throw 100% of the time, then it removes the variability of what makes baseball an enjoyable pasttime.
Sports videogames are unique in that you have to simulate mistakes, fatigue, and thousands of other aspects because that's what makes it special. James Harden, the NBA basketball star and reigning MVP, was known for most of his career as being a lazy defender. He took plays off, watched his opponents score, didn't even try to stop them sometimes. It's part of the joy and madness of a star like Harden, one of the most talented guards in the NBA who could play great defense, but for specific reasons, often chose not to. Think about that in terms of a videogame. What if you had a challenging boss in a game like Dark Souls, one of the hardest bosses of the game, the proverbial "MVP-candidate boss of Dark Souls," but, like, 5% of the time he make a conscious decision to not bother trying to defend your attacks... but 95% of the time he was incredibly effective. This would get reported as a bug or if it happened often and was intentional, it would be frustrating for players -- "I can't find the pattern, this boss is completely random... 90% of the time he defends himself as I expect he will, but 10% of the time he stands there and lets me attack him!"
AI is difficult in sports videogames because if every player makes the right decision 100% of the time, then it feels scripted and robotic. In older versions of Madden and NCAA Football there was a name for this, "Robo-QB (Robotic Quarterback)." It's debated whether RoboQB ever truly existed, but there's a decent body of evidence that suggested that in mostly older versions of EA developed football videogames, that in specific scenarios in the game, the NPC offense would trigger an AI setting that would, for the most part, make them choose the perfect play for your defense and make the NPC quarterback make the perfect decisions, perfect throws, and perfect play execution. In the old NCAA Football games (R.I.P.), this would result in mostly bad QB's having these unstoppable streaks of amazing performance virtually no matter what you, the player playing defense, did. It was natural: This is a computer trying to be a person, and the sport of football is designed in a way that there is -- basically -- always a designed play that will always succeed against another designed play, as long as the play is executed by the players on the field.
SImulating mistakes (or fatigue, lapses in judgement, split second decisions etc) is very difficult, and if it feels arbitrary in a game, then fans will hate it. Tom BRady, the greatest quarterback of all time, throws interceptions, sometimes inexplicably. He throws fewer of these than every other player in the game, but, sometimes he does throw a bad pass that is intercepted. In videogame world, the game will sometimes compensate for this and throw a bad pass inexplicably -- sports devs/gamers usually refer to this as "a dice roll" mechanic, it's common in all sports games because simulating mistakes/imperfection is harder to do than calculating perfection, so they rely on a calculation of randomness in specific scenarios -- and this feels random in a bad way, like the game scripted a bad pass from you the player even though you did exactly the same mechanic you've always done. Imagine this in another game like, say, Street Fighter 2, where you execute the perfect button combination to throw a fireball, you've done it 50 times already perfectly, but this time the 51st time, the dice roll mechanic takes effect and instead of throwing a fireball at your opponent, Ken throws nothing and leaves himself open to a devastating, match losing counter-attack... For the player, this would feel cheap and that game would quickly be shoved off of the competitive circuit because elements like that should have no place in a fighting videogame.
Realism, in sports games, is very difficult to achieve on the field without it feeling arbitrary and random.
Another aspect of gameplay on the field is that you want to simulate the events of a sports game, but it's bad when you take control out of the players hand. I feel this is the biggest problem with the NBA 2K or WWE 2K games. Now, WWE 2K is widely panned, the game is horrible and I'm a big critic of it, I could write pages on how terrible it is. But, NBA 2K is a game that is still -- mostly -- praised. But, personally, I think that basketball games started to lose something around the move to 3D rendered players, because in an effort to simulate what you see on TV, they have to take control out of the players' hand. In a basketball game like NBA 2K, when you're advancing the ball down the court, if you hold a trigger and then perform a motion on the analog stick, your athlete -- based on his attributes -- will perform a maneuver to try to shake his opponent. On defense, the opponent will be able to hold a trigger and then perform a counter move at the same time which will try to defend the play. The game will then "play this out" in a short animation, taking control away from the player almost like a quick time event, until the next opportunity to do something else. Attributes will go into the calculation, an athlete with poor handling skills might collapse on his face or lose the ball, a defender with poor defending ability to make a paultry attempt to swipe at the ball and "break his ankles" (basketball lingo for getting your feet tied up while trying to defend a ball carrier), but this isn't the sport of basketball. THis is a videogame fighting mechanic implemented in a basketball game, and as basketball games increasingly rely on animations trying to replicate what you see on television, and they map those to button presses, it makes the animations feel cheap and unrewarding. In real life, if Lebron James is advancing the ball, does a cross-over to a spinmove, breaks the ankles of a defending James Harden, and follows it up with a monstrous slam over another player who gets posterized, that will be one of the seminal moments of the year... a 5-second play that will go down in the annals of the basketball season. If, in a videogame, you hit LT + right stick waggle -> X ... and Lebron does that every time, and James Harden's ankles break every time, it feels cheap, it loses the effect, it feels routine, and you don't feel like you just made this devastating play, you feel more like you're playing a Tomb Raider escape sequence and you just "pressed X for amazing."
Simulating sports games is hard.
Post that completely ignores your arguments and instead opts for a personal attack due to disagreeing with what is perceived to be your opinion.
Congratulates without a single hint of ill-intent.
you owe me one
Scrolls through the thread looking for problematic users to add to ignore list, receives notification that the 1000 user ignore limit has been reached, goes into ignore list to remove ignored users that have already been permanently banned to make room for new ignored users, then tries to find new way to passive aggressively call them idiots without being moderated for hostility.
OP
OP
OP
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Quoting myself because I mistook broad disinterest in my previous post as a lack of visibility on my brilliance.
Writes a large, detailed post, deliberates posting it.
Leaves it in drafts. Returns later and deletes most it. Posts acciden
Leaves it in drafts. Returns later and deletes most it. Posts acciden
TL;DR
Still TL; Still DR
Series of lower case acronyms indicating amusement, disbelief, accented with emjois.
Leaves comment that only internalizes how I feel about the subject. It adds nothing to the conversation and never gets quoted.
OP
OP
Post that politely requests link to Discord in public instead of DMing you for it.
whining about how this place is an echo chamber because everyone shut down my attempt to defend a shitty Trump policy
Reasonable concern regarding pandemic.
Expresses passive-aggressive attitude about how cool people who get tags are.