I wish people didn't take this guy's word as gospel. but hey that's facepunch for ya.
[QUOTE=Lord of Boxes;48660161]I wish people didn't take this guy's word as gospel. but hey that's facepunch for ya.[/QUOTE]
well people are clearly disagreeing so that's generalizing for ya
That's just like, your opinion, man.
Imagine Bastion, Half Life, Portal, Transistor, or Batman: Arkham City without the story. They'd be far less interesting.
it feels like he's just nitpicking tbh
Normally enjoy his rants, but the past two have felt REALLY rushed.
Although I do agree that cutscenes, in particular the cinematic kind where you're not in control at all, should always be skippable. There's plenty of reasons why you might want to skip them.
While with some games I can agree because the story just sucks shit, there's tons of games with a great story that make for a way better overall experience.
I can kind of sympathize to some extent; I feel like a lot of games in recent years have shifted priorities from gameplay to using games as a vessel for telling a story. Sure, we've figured out a lot of gaming formulas so it's hard to expand on the concept of a FPS/RTS/RPG/whatever, but it seems like a lot of games now are building story first then fitting gameplay around it, not vice versa, if that makes any sense.
That said I don't hate stories one bit, all good games in recent years have had story to some extent, but it's just a part of the package. There are other things that make games good.
[QUOTE=Lord of Boxes;48660161]I wish people didn't take this guy's word as gospel. but hey that's facepunch for ya.[/QUOTE]
I'm a huge fan of Maddox and I disagree with him all the time. I posted this on his Facebook:
[quote]Alright, I'm going to have to fend off herds of people shitting on me for my video game example, but Amnesia is literally built off of the story. There is no point of playing Amnesia if you have no interest in the story.
Amnesia gets so much hate because of awful YouTube Let's Players hamming up their reactions, but if you sit there and try to immerse yourself like you're supposed to, it's a solid game and one of my absolute favorites specifically because of it's storytelling. Obviously it's not for everyone, but I'm not suggesting it is and I'm not suggesting something about the entirety of video games.
The Half-Life series would be absolute garbage without storytelling because that's all people want out of Half-Life 3 - a completion of the story arc. And I played through BioShock even though I didn't like the game specifically because I wanted to see the story end.
When a story is hamfisted into something that doesn't need it, like a side-scrolling fighting game's adventure mode or something like that, the problem is the misguided game developer. On that note you'd be correct. But you're the odd one out if you think story adds nothing to the video game. Honestly, at what point is the game no longer the problem and the problem starts being you?[/quote]
[quote]Maddox I'll add on this with where I explicitly agree:
Half-Life did it right - you were never taken out of the story and very, very rarely taken out of control. (The one exception is being stuck in a pod for the sake of the story but I thought it was fine.) I recently tried out Smash Bros. Brawl's adventure mode and dear god it was absolutely annoyingly stupid. It was a thinly veiled "Hey, this is why you're fighting!" It was garbage compared to Melee, where you're literally just walking forward, kicking the crap out of someone, walking forward, kicking the crap out of someone - it was ultimately more satisfying whereas in Brawl I always felt like winning will only ever bring me to an infinite amount of cutscenes. When the story adds nothing to my experience and is just thinly veiled so it isn't "mindless" - that's garbage, and that's a garbage excuse for a story. I don't think all games are like that though. I think games are immersive because of their story, not in spite of their story.[/quote]
Kinda mixed. Hamfisted forced stories are annoying but gaming can have great stories that greatly add to the experience. Some games even have the stories as the main attraction.
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;48660303]Kinda mixed. Hamfisted forced stories are annoying but gaming can have great stories that greatly add to the experience. Some games even have the stories as the main attraction.[/QUOTE]
The problem is that he's making a really blanket statement on the level of "no movies should use CGI ever because some movies screw it up." It's just a silly thing to generalize like that.
[QUOTE=Why485;48660240]Although I do agree that cutscenes, in particular the cinematic kind where you're not in control at all, should always be skippable. There's plenty of reasons why you might want to skip them.[/QUOTE]
I want to offer a counterpoint to this - also give me the option to pause your cutscene, or at least replay it.
Sometimes I do actually care about your story but something comes up. Games shouldn't be all demanding (except mp for obvious reasons), if I need to go do a thing a game should facilitate that, no matter what's going on.
[QUOTE=Why485;48660240]Although I do agree that cutscenes, in particular the cinematic kind where you're not in control at all, should always be skippable. There's plenty of reasons why you might want to skip them.[/QUOTE]
I feel like every game with cutscenes should let you both pause and skip them like MGS does.
So many times, I've needed to go do something while a cutscene was playing and my only options were let it keep playing and miss it, or skip it then pause and miss it.
I hate when a game has skippable cutscenes but the devs use them to hide loading screens so you can't skip them until they're nearly over anyway.
[QUOTE=Why485;48660240]Although I do agree that cutscenes, in particular the cinematic kind where you're not in control at all, should always be skippable. There's plenty of reasons why you might want to skip them.[/QUOTE]
Which is why games like Dark Souls are good in ways you may not know. They never repeat cutscenes when you return to kill a boss whose been beating your ass. Just play it once, then never show it again or let it be skippable in NG+.
This guy is wrong as fuck.
I like him and his videos, but he's dead wrong here.
[QUOTE=chunkymonkey;48660628]I hate when a game has skippable cutscenes but the devs use them to hide loading screens so you can't skip them until they're nearly over anyway.[/QUOTE]
IMO it's a good way to handle loading though. So it's not nearly as noticeable. Like the terrible ME1 elevator...
Story should inform the gameplay.
He half-way answers his own question in the first paragraph; when you start up Mario you're presented no information on why you're there and what goal you're working towards. And this is fine, because the goal of the game is literally only "reach left side of screen". In other situations, some context can help you understand the gameplay better.
In many situations no context is necessary to clarify the gameplay, and in these cases the story is just an ancillary useless hindrance.
[QUOTE=Lord of Boxes;48660161]I wish people didn't take this guy's word as gospel. but hey that's facepunch for ya.[/QUOTE]
Your name becomes more relevant with each post.
I sort of agree. There's crap loads of games that doesn't really need a ~deep story~ like Call of Duty Games, Borderlands 2 or heck, even Batman Arkham series.
[QUOTE=DiBBs27;48660673]This guy is wrong as fuck.
I like him and his videos, but he's dead wrong here.[/QUOTE]
If you listen to his podcast, you will quickly learn that maddox is an idiot, a funny idiot but still an idiot. He is wrong on a lot of shit but pushes it as if he is right. That's his game.
Nothing wrong with having a nice story in a video game. My problem is when developers prioritize story and writing over the gameplay.
I'm looking at you The Last of Us.
[QUOTE=Yummy Pie;48661125]Nothing wrong with having a nice story in a video game. My problem is when developers prioritize story and writing over the gameplay.
I'm looking at you The Last of Us.[/QUOTE]
Even less of a game than visual novels.
I actually liked The Last Of Us babble but I can see how it would get annoying.
While he is steadily declining into irrelevancy, I would like to see the pace quicken.
Never liked his style, even back when people were sucking his dick for speaking down to everyone on his so called "best page in the universe". I remember outgrowing the phase of acting better than people to be cool in grade school.
Comes off more like some retro gamer who is too old more then an actual solid argument.
He could have chosen way better examples for argument then the Pac-man cutscenes for example.
It's rather frustrating that the majority of games are still heavily dependent on cutscenes, in which the player barely has any options for interaction, rather than experiencing it through gameplay and leaving you in control. Half-Life and STALKER were near perfect examples for that kind of storytelling. I honestly can't remember any recent games doing it remotely like that, which is a shame. These kind of games made me experience epic adventures first-hand, without unnecessarily interrupting me and not forcing me to swallow every single bit of storypiece that can be possibly found and allowing me to miss out on certain details.
It's not the concept of stories he should hate, but games with shitty and lazy storytelling.
[QUOTE=RichyZ;48661384]half-life cutscenes really aren't that amazing
cool i get to jump around and throw physics objects at the actors in the scene, how fun[/QUOTE]
Don't forget you can't skip them on second playthroughs. I'd much rather have a video cutscene I can skip instead of waiting around for 10 minutes for NPCs to do their stuff.
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