That mashable review is really well written and damning. This is what I don't get about video games. How can that person be writing about the same game as these positive reviews. Is it that the mashable reviewer is over sensitive or are games reviewers in general willing to overlook such blatant failures in story and tone because, you know ...pretty graphics. How can someone aim to make a game with this story and seemingly pull it off so badly yet still receive praise from the majority of outlets. I just don't get it.
Video games, comparative to most art forms out there, is still a medium that's in it's infancy. Because of that, it's easy to want to prop games that are exceptionally transparent about their mature storytelling. In a sense, presentation is extremely important, but often acts as a double edged sword, if not a crutch at times, because it can easily distract a product from it's narrative failings. It's a shame, because there are a bunch of video games out there that have some incredibly fantastic stories and writing, but they fall to the wayside in favor of the ones that can manage to have bigger dollar signs behind them... even if a lot of them are extremely perfunctory in a lot of ways.
I could probably name a bunch of games that have stories, characters and themes better realized than the new God of War for instance. That's a game that's following an extremely tried-and-tested formula, with some overall predictable character beats. But it's the presentation that makes it something people are drawn to. It's overall a nice spectacle to experience.
In contrast movies can come in all different genres and forms, but they're not necessarily thought any lesser for it when it comes to their narrative heft because we've had decades of cinema that has matured enough for all of it to get it's fair share of dues. Sure, there's always your standard "Oscar season" movie. But in a narrative sense, even something like The Lego Movie comes to mind in regards to a film that isn't necessarily "high brow entertainment", but was extremely resonant with people and critics alike, not just for it's entertainment value but for it's nuanced takes and deconstructions of narrative trappings pertaining to the often-reused hero's journey model.
That said all of this isn't necessarily a problem that's unique to just video games and even movies go through this from time to time. In a blockbuster landscape you have some instances like Jurassic World and Star Trek: Into Darkness that were honestly pretty terrible under the surface in a lot of subtle and devious ways, which were generally still hailed for multiple reasons. But then you have the more overt cases.
Remember Crash? That movie has not aged well at all when time came to re-evaluate it. It was critically hailed on release, won a bunch of awards, but nowadays a lot more people are of the mind that it did not deserve said praise. The movie was just a bunch of manipulative smoke and mirrors when you get down to it.
As another piece of medium dealing with racial allegory an societal commentary I can't help but wonder how revisits of Detroit will be like.
