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What are you currently playing?; What video game are you playing right now?
Topic Started: Dec 11 2013, 10:14 AM (143,626 Views)
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All this walking dead talk reminds me I need to post this...

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NMANOZ
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It annoyed me that despite all that, you still ended up with the same ending for the episode.
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Moo
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I was browsing through my writing files and found this from two years ago. I was trying to figure out why I like Zelda a lot. It's unfinished but I don't mind it.

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The temples in Twilight Princess are mostly linear experiences. The map layouts are non-linear -- the player does go through some rooms several times -- but your pathway is largely pre-ordained. This is wholly the case in the Goron Mines and the Temple of Time, where you're directed through rooms in an exact order. Other temples branch out at points, allowing you to complete a few rooms in whatever order, but you're only barely treading away from the central path.

Some temples require almost no cognitive thinking to complete. All that's needed from the player is the ability to react accordingly to visual stimuli. If the player sees a spider on vines, shoot it with the slingshot. If he sees a torch, light it with the lantern. If he sees a blue marble surface, strap on the iron boots and continue walking. There is only one moment more involved than this: a small puzzle in the Forest Temple where the player must hit wind turbines with the boomerang in a specific order. The order is learned by observing a pattern on the ground below the turbines and drawing a connection between the two. With that exception, the player is basically moving through the temples without any cerebral challenge.

When we go through these temples we are travelling from A to B -- just as we are when we ride from Kakariko Village to Lake Hylia -- while being presented in-between with obstacles that aren't really obstacles. What's confusing me is the fact that, despite this knowledge, I still usually enjoy this. The flow of the process is endearing, which leads me to believe that there are factors in play that I haven't previously considered.

These sections, which are not unique to Twilight Princess, are not about challenge but narrative and aesthetics. In fact, these sections are only part of the whole: what I argue here is that the temple experience, the challenging and the unchallenging, has as significant an impact on the narrative as the cutscenes. There's another part of the narrative being told in the temples, more felt than understood. They work to "link" you into Link's role, making your experience with the temples' gradually increasing difficulty a part of the story itself.

Returning to those unchallenging sections, I'd define them as the illusion of gameplay: the sense that you're being challenged when you're actually just interacting with the environment. To give an example, let's say the game designers want the player to travel from one room to the next without difficulty. They could design a hallway with no distractions, but instead they design a room of platforms that the player must navigate with the hookshot. It's not challenging, but it breaks down the process of moving from A to B into more actions (running, jumping, using the hookshot), which in turn increases the player's connection to the environment. When done well, it creates a sense of immersion.

Completing the Goron Mines requires running, jumping, climbing, beating a timed obstacle course, shooting objects and enemies with arrows, and using the iron boots for no less than four reasons (walking along walls, walking underwater, applying pressure to heavy switches and defeating the temple's boss and mini-boss). The player's experience involves roughly ten kinds of action performed several dozen times, all of which is determined by the environment. So while it's not challenging, the temple is definitely engaging. There's a sense of propulsion. That isn't what makes it good -- one might argue, erroneously, that it's complexity for the sake of it -- but it's important when we begin to consider how it serves the narrative.

A popular game reviewing method critiques games through five or so separate lenses, usually something like "story", "graphics", "gameplay", "audio" and "lasting appeal". To get an idea of how limiting this in scope, consider that film reviews are never separated by "story", "cinematography", "acting" and "direction", or that book reviews are never separated into "story", "prose", "characters" and "themes". There are inherent relationships between these elements which make the work in question a cohesive whole, and which make such dissection narrow-minded. In videogames, story and gameplay shouldn't be treated as two separate things. In Zelda, gameplay is story, for reasons I'll lay out now by looking at Twilight Princess.

The first two temples, again, are more like interactive journeys than obstacle courses, neither posing anything life-threatening or mind-bending. However, they do demand a lot of action, meaning the player becomes more immersed in the surrounding environment. I want to repeat that because of this immersion there's a feeling of propulsion, a growing sense of progress that culminates in catharsis after defeating a temple boss. Because the player is immersed, they draw closer to Link in a dramatic sense. This is how he, a silent character who rarely ever expresses emotions, becomes infused with life. The player's experience becomes his own. The player is Link, or more fittingly, Link is the player's link to the Zelda world. The goal of the first two temples from a dramatic perspective is to settle the player into his shoes.

It's a contestable assumption. It's not like Zelda is the only immersive thing out there, and in fact some games are immersive for the exact same reason (because they make the player constantly adapt to the environment). The Assassin's Creed series comes to mind. It's safe to assert that while we might feel immersed in its world, Ezio Auditore is a character in the traditional sense, with his own background, relationships, personality, philosophy and agenda. Link, meanwhile, is virtually a blank slate, a parentless outsider who at the start of any Zelda game has only a tenuous connection to the world around him (though there are arguably exceptions to this). His agenda is almost always determined by outside influences. He never speaks, except for the instances where the player chooses what he says, as well as the unheard exposition he gives characters when they ask a question. His name isn't actually Link but whatever the player deems it. He's a hollow body waiting to be possessed and controlled.
Edited by Moo, May 20 2014, 03:54 PM.
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Doomguy
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Good read.
Fuck_Giver.exe has stopped working!
Does it matter how I write the truth?
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Nintendo Man
May 19 2014, 02:53 AM
It annoyed me that despite all that, you still ended up with the same ending for the episode.
I used that guide on my Vita playthrough and it became quite obvious how linear the game is. It's not to say it's not a good game at all, it just shows how it suggests that you're forging your own path when really you're not.
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jamesh
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There is a bit more to it than what that flowchart shows. Some of your decisions won't change the flow of the game, but change the flavour of some of the dialogue in the game even if they don't actively branch the story.

Having played previous Telltale games, I expected the start and end of each episode to be fixed points, so I was actually impressed at the number of instances where they managed to make decisions cross episode boundaries, even if the long term consequences were minor.
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Red Panda
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I dont think hard branching paths are all that important when it comes to choice driven dialogue/event systems. Branches merely add replay value. Which is something that I am starting to care less and less about in story driven games.

Most games that implement consequence well does it in a similar way that The Walking Dead approached it: Where Events/characters are flavoured in a way to acknowledge your actions and backed up by strong characters and events that manage to bite you later on.
What I find that carries more weight in such systems are the choices themsleves. If a choice can really manage to really put you on the spot from moment to moment, then it is a system that serves its purpose and I feel that The Walking Dead did it well.
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Derpstrom
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Time for some market research. My game is divided into four sections.

The first is an intro and will be the demo
The second introduces you to the story and everything that's going on
The third explains why everything that's happening is happening

at the end of the third you have to make a choice based on the info you've got from section 3.

I've written two completely seperate section 4s so you get a totally different game and ending based on your choice (each section is 2-3 hours long except the 1st which can be rushed in about 40 min).

Is that something you see as a plus or a negative? Gameplay is similar to early Final Fantasy games and lacks the complex combat of something like Bravely Default or the fun action styling of something like Costume Quest or Tales of Blah. Reason I mention that is that the combat isn't anything above and beyond that would make you want to play more combat. Also no new game plus as I don't know how to reset all the variables properly and can't really remember all there are :)
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I started on the Bioshock Infinite DLC last night when I realised that my parents internet connection is so shit that I can't even download a patch update properly for South Park. Yay?

So far it's great. I like the slow start and the hints at what has gone on/will go on in the future of Rapture is really great. It's so easy to get back into the flow of exploring the city and the combat. Ammo is a lot more scarce here though to begin with so it makes combat a little more interesting.
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NMANOZ
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I finally completed Duke Nukem Forever. You would have though after all those years they could have put a proper ending, not a single screen that shows a map with a crosshair with a picture beside saying KIA and Duke saying he isn't dead.
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Derpstrom
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Damn you illmatic... this shit's taking over my life. I'm up late at night, having longer than aceptible toilet breaks, neglecting Dark Souls II...

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Pickles
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Does anyone know why the guards in Dishonored have some invisible extension on their blades? It's rather annoying to find that a five foot distance can be magically reached by their butterknives. The game has a plethora of options in combat and stealth, though, so I blame myself mostly for alerting them to my presence.

Given the options you have, I like that there's a useful load game system that stores recent auto-saves.
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NMANOZ
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Sounds like Call of Duty.
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Derpstrom
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Pickles
May 21 2014, 05:14 PM
Does anyone know why the guards in Dishonored have some invisible extension on their blades? It's rather annoying to find that a five foot distance can be magically reached by their butterknives. The game has a plethora of options in combat and stealth, though, so I blame myself mostly for alerting them to my presence.

Given the options you have, I like that there's a useful load game system that stores recent auto-saves.
I don't remember that happening to me although I rarely got in open fights like that
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I only did a complete stealth playthrough and never engaged enemies so can't say for sure sorry.
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