• [VIDEO] Ted Talk with David Cage on story telling
    45 replies, posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XowcxCYbug0 Not going to lie, only posting it since David Cage is a meme of a person.
Too bad detroit was his best game, and the most he was reeled in.
No explanations on requiring a rape/shower scene in practically every game he's made? Lame.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211198/de1bc14d-190a-4b1d-a80e-66b5a0d8528c/image.png
So instead of giving us insight on his approach to interactive storytelling he treats Ted like it's his own personal E3. Dude's a piece of work I swear...
Just a reminder that Connor waking Hank with the shower counts.
He's rather pompous, but I gotta respect this guy for something: he has ambition and he truly believes in video games as an art medium. Usually, devs who truly envision games as art and want to make the medium progress in that direction are indie and they lack the funds to get a lot of coverage. AAA games are often made more as business products that pretend to be art rather then art pieces per se. David Cage makes fair games: no DLCs, no early access, you pay the fair price and you have the full experience, 100%. And you gotta admit that has become a very rare thing for big-budget productions.
Now only if his art had actual merit.
"Sir, sir! You can't put your fetishes in a TEDTalk presentation."
It really does. You can shit on the writing all you want, but as a director, he has a lot of talent and manages to fulfill his narrative visions.
Nah none of that is really true IMO. He doesn't respect games as art, he respects movies as art and doesn't have the artistic integrity to make them so he settles for something with less of a wall of entry that is less publicly criticized. He takes a game, and inserts his story into it, taking much of the control away from the player and just making them sit for the ride he desperately wants to show you, not caring for what makes gaming unique in media, and not taking advantage of the medium, just using it as a mask for a wish to make a film. What's respectable about that? Also I never really understand "games as art" as a debate point TBH, all games are art. The Witcher series is art in how it marries an incredibly immersive world with a set character you play yet always feeling that you have important choices within the plot. Dark Souls is art with how it deigns to tell it's story to players in an optional yet immersive way, allowing players to guide themselves via an incredibly flexible set of RPG mechanics so that they all come out different. Smash Bros. is art in how it combines so many different pieces of gaming media together and is still not only cohesive but a genuinely respectful tribute to every fragment it takes, with characters, stages and music playing their roles in bringing the shards together to a complete experience. Gaming is an art form unique in (and because of) its interactivity, I don't personally respect people coming in and wringing the skin of what looks like a game over their storyline that must be told in a very strict, direct way and completely ignoring everything that makes this medium NOT film, unique, and dare I say, artistic.
Truth to be told he does rely on traditional storytelling more than anything, but I wouldn't discredit the amount of narrative branches in his works. Directing games isn't just coming up with ideas, it involves a lot of people and asset management. While this is true, and very true, some see the potential more than others. Some still treat games as nothing more as past times, or un-evocative escapism trapped by game-y inspirations. Maybe games are more than just pushing buttons and wasting afternoons, not all games offer that. Especially not games favored by the mainstream audience.
If David Cage made an actual movie it'd be a complete joke because every crutch he's had immediately falls away.
I agree with everything you said about art, but I don't know why people say David Cage "hates video games so that's why he makes movies out of them". The same could be said about Hideo Kojima, and that's what he was criticized for 20 years ago. Of course, Kojima has a lot more merit, but it's just silly to say Cage hates games. Telltale built their entire studio on the same game concepts as Cage, yet only Cage gets shit despite being better at them.
I basically love anything Ellen Page is in, but Beyond Two Souls looked kinda crappy. Ellen Page has a very intelligent, sincere voice. Shame that she's not in more films.
You are talking about a developer who, up to this very day, staunchly believes that the next step in the evolution of the videogame medium is basically about transphorming games into full-blown movies, hence losing everything that qualifies videogames as an unique artistic medium capable of delivering stories, emotions and such with its unique means (look at Undertale/Deltarune and Doki Doki Literature Club, just to quote the most recent/popular examples). And mind you, this remark isn't accounting for the atrocious level of Cage's writing, which is basically all topical and emotional scenes and no rationale and organicity whatsoever. Also, your remark about a videogame being "fair" as a product if it's devoid of predatory business tacticts like DLC (debatable, however), early access and such says a lot about the current conditiong of the videogame market and the dignity of gamers as costumers
ladies and gentlemen, a talented director: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-L-G1q_0L8
I would absolutely watch a Jackie Chan-esque action-comedy directed by David Cage.
honestly so would I, the best part of the mediocrity that was Detroit was easily Hank and Connor's sections it makes me feel like David Cage could make decently fun action-comedy stuff if he wasnt so busy sniffing his own farts and making innocent characters suffer for little reason other than the fact that artistic movies are often tragedies with suffering
There is nothing wrong with that scene and I don't know why people keep bringing it up. And if you were gonna say "because failing all the QTE's doesn't change anything", that's wrong. If you fail a few, the guy gets away immediately. That video is a montage.
Fuck no it couldn't. Kojima's game have increasingly allowed the player to express themselves with indepth systems. Cage takes control away from players at every turn. Kojima and Cage both love movies, but the difference is Kojima tries to use his love for movies to enhance his games, Cage uses games as a substitute for making movies because he knows he wouldn't make it as a C list film director.
no, the point is it's just an awful chase sequence. everybody in it acts like a weird alien to facilitate things Cage saw in movies. actually the video of it being done perfectly better serves my point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xESyQa6m7qM because as the guy stops to throw fruit and live chickens (????) at Nahman, it doesn't do anything and the guy just looks like a weird alien who only exists to give you prompts to push. nobody would do this if they were getting chased. and then the guy decides that he doesn't want to escape the cops anymore so that they could have an awful fight scene, featuring a bunch of extremely awkward 180 degree rule-breaking cuts after every prompt, making for a weird disjointed battle that thus has no real impact or tension. it just highlights that without the prompts, this is just a bad movie. if this came out of Hollywood, if people actually paid money to see a gritty murder mystery and wound up with 30 jump-cuts of a detective fighting a chicken and some ice cubes on the big screen, it would've been savaged.
The best parts in Heavy Rain were the Norman Jaden parts. The best parts in Detroit were the Hank and Connor parts. David Cage should make a detective game where it's not about your choices but instead about how well you investigate.
Even beyond exploitative shower scenes and such, each of Cage’s games have some awful final act twist that is, at best, out of nowhere and hard to take seriously, or at worst, forces the writing and camera to lie to the player’s face. They’re gambles to see if the player can either mentally backtrack to justify the twist’s existence, or buy it at face value if they’re invested enough, but become a total joke if they miss the mark. Funnily enough too, the quality of Cage’s twists is always in inverse proportion to the quality of their respective game. Hack writers often have the problem of writing too much for too long, failing to justify their big twist because it lives in their head already and survives untouched through editing, because it was always the endgame and changing that would take an entire rewrite. Plus, in a big budget video game touting player decision and scene variation, the muddiness is doubled or worse.
You're nitpicking. Heavy Rain isn't centered on this chase scene, just like The Dark Knight Rises isn't centered on that one scene where a bunch of thugs assaulting Batman drop dead without getting hit. It's a bad scene and that's not why the entire game is bad.
He says he thinks games are art but I remember very clearly when he would berate the medium saying it wasn't "mature" enough. Only to go and make a bunch of high budget adventure games and act as if he was pushing literally any boundaries.
He's right about the mature comment though.
At least its real ted and not ted x.
If we're referring to how old the medium is yes, but in terms of the subject matters that games can/have dealt with (which is what he implied) then that's a whole other argument.
Yeah, and him stealing pictures of Ellen page to use as wanking material, and putting her face on a nude model so he can have his perverted shower scene with Ellen nude wasn't creepy and immature at all. Dude is a massive hack, and the only reason detroit was somewhat decent was because he was reeled in by sony so people wouldn't mock it to the end of time like beyond/heavy was. Whats even better is that you can easily tell the david cage parts are so smelly that its a total tonal shift compared to others. Just look at the spooky god mansion part vs parts with the detective/resistance. And even then you can see the david leaks into the game by way of the cringy resistance messages, or horrid plot elements dealing with supernatural nonsense or ROBO-ZOMBIES.
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