response to interview

[Rostere]

Why, what do you find so great about the source material?

 

 

I'm of the same mindset as you on this. I've read quite a few of Lovecraft's stories, and never once did I find his writing scary/disturbing etc., as it was no doubt meant to be back in the twenties. Add to that the overly verbose and obtuse writing style that was so prominent back then and yeah...just never did anything for me.

 

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, though, did an exceptional job at conveying the creepiness that should have been apparent to me when reading the story it is based off of (The Shadow over Innsmouth).

 

I've gotten much more enjoyment out of Dark Corners of the Earth, and the Call of Cthulhu pen and paper game, than I ever did the source material.

 

I think we might have had a bit different expectations. I read his books before I played the game, and if I hadn't liked them, it is very likely that I never would have bothered about the game. While it is true that Lovecraft's stories might not be very scary, I don't think that's their only purpose. Your choice to only judge the books from this point of view further proves that we simply have different expectations. I think Lovecraft handles the concept of the unknown very well, and I think that you could also approach his booksas science fiction/ fantasy.

 

On a side note, I must add that I don't usually read what's classified as "horror novels" and the like... So even if we were to discuss Lovecraft from your point of view, I don't know any "scary" novelists to compare him with.

[Wrath of Dagon]

I'm not saying Lovecraft's writing is bad, in fact I started reading him after I played the game, then lost the book and just bought a new one, I'm just saying I found the game to be a more powerful experience. For example, in the escape from the hotel, it really feels like you're trying to escape, you're in danger yourself, you're not just reading about someone else's experience, although that can be gripping too. When you're firing the cannon at Dagon, it really feels like you're there, the game is so imaginative and well made. In other words, the game felt like a book come to life, with me as the protagonist, what can be cooler than that!?

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, it tells a story better than it's source material

 

DCotE's story is actually on par with the source material; characters and situations are similar to ones we find in The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

 

I'm just saying I found the game to be a more powerful experience. For example, in the escape from the hotel, it really feels like you're trying to escape, you're in danger yourself, you're not just reading about someone else's experience, although that can be gripping too.

 

That can be applied to almost every game in existence, ie, the feeling of being there. DCotE isn't particularly special about that, although it's an interesting game all the same. I disagree with it's "powerful storytelling", nonetheless. An example is the loss of sanity when encountering abnormal situations in the gameworld - the loss of control by Jack going mental is clearly about the characters as much as the books are, and not something that affects the player as a person (momentarily lapse of control notwithstanding, of course).

[Calax]

I've noticed that as the gaming market increases the story of a game generally decreases. Why do they do this? Best guess is it's a tool to allow for the production times to go down as more time is now spent on creating the scenery and animations and models and whatnot over implementing a story. Imagine if we were to take oh lets say Deus Ex and put it in the Cry engine. While this would be awesomness on wheels pulled by chuck Norris, I think that it would take nearly double the time to put together because of how much of remodeling you'd have to do, And it'd take forever just to render the sucker.

 

Also in order to cut down on Development time, At least in FPS's, Gameplay has become almost a set piece. Controls are almost always WSAD for movement, space for jump, ctrl for crouch Mouse 2 for aim shift for run... and the only major difference being the inevitable "gimmick" (that if it's in a third rate game its generally mapped to Mouse 3). while key mapping consistancy is a good thing, you don't see the old I for inventory or any of the function buttons being used to bring up a morecomplex character screen. Generally because FPS's have followed the Halo and COD model. You can only carry two guns, one sidarm and a melee weapon. This realism allows for simplification of the controls. Then theres regenerating health meters.

 

Anyway it seems like the better graphics get the more time the dev house spends trying to get them EVEN BETTER! often at the expense of carbon copy gameplay from Halo and a gimmick.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, it tells a story better than it's source material

 

DCotE's story is actually on par with the source material; characters and situations are similar to ones we find in The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

I'm talking about how the story is told through gameplay, not just the story itself.

 

I'm just saying I found the game to be a more powerful experience. For example, in the escape from the hotel, it really feels like you're trying to escape, you're in danger yourself, you're not just reading about someone else's experience, although that can be gripping too.

 

That can be applied to almost every game in existence, ie, the feeling of being there. DCotE isn't particularly special about that, although it's an interesting game all the same. I disagree with it's "powerful storytelling", nonetheless. An example is the loss of sanity when encountering abnormal situations in the gameworld - the loss of control by Jack going mental is clearly about the characters as much as the books are, and not something that affects the player as a person (momentarily lapse of control notwithstanding, of course).

You can say you have the feeling of being there in many games, the problem is most of them are lousy at telling a good story. My point about DCotE was that it did a wonderful job of not only putting you into the shoes of the protagonist, but telling the story through the protagonist's experience; in other words combining the best features of books and games, hence my reference to a book come to life, there aren't many games you can say the same about. Loss of sanity effects I thought worked extremely well at making you feel like you are the protagonist and creating a tense and dangerous atmosphere. Edited June 29, 2008 by Wrath of Dagon

[Diogo Ribeiro]

There's only so much a developer can do to simultaneously tell a story and make a player feel his going through it, rather than than the character - DCotE didn't quite manage on the former, even if it did strive for it. Sanity is a double edged sword - it's a remarkable tool for storytelling and showcases how the character is affected by his surroundings, but players will avoid many situations because being exposed to them will negatively impact their gameplay, with Jack's mental lapses getting in the way of control, perception and whatnot. We are expected to believe all of these abnormal or supernatural occurences are part of the story and of how it's told (which is true), but we avoid them because if we experience all of them we can't play long enough to see the entire story unfold. It's telling us "this is how we tell our story but you can't see or experience it all".

 

An opposite route would be, say, System Shock 2, where witnessing the atrocities commited in the Von Braun are left for the player to negotiate himself, never telling the character what he should feel, or (very rarely, if ever) exerting authorial fascism over the player, taking control out of his hands and telling us how the character is feeling. It's a much better implementation, gameplaywise, of that "feeling of being there" coulped with "storytelling".

Edited June 29, 2008 by Diogo Ribeiro

[Wrath of Dagon]

You couldn't always avoid it, like escaping from the hotel or walking on the girders in the burning bank you would get the effects because Jack is under a lot of stress, which would make things more difficult for the player just as it would for the character. Also I haven't played SS2, but even if it is a better game, that doesn't negate DCotE's achievements.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Look at Half-Life 2 and Portal to see how the technical abilities in the realm of physics allow us to look into wholly new gameplay mechanics that would have been impossible (or impossibly broken, see: Jurassic Park: Trespasser) in previous generations.

 

True, but how many games outside of the obvious genres - firstperson shooters or thirdperson action titles - have used these inovations? We have the technical ability to allow players a degree of environmental interactivity that not only takes its lessons from games like Ultima 7, but it can easily surpass them. The main difference between previous generations and ours is that now, we are much more aware of what can be done on a technical level, but still see it not getting done. We run around saying advanced physics systems like ragdoll and certain middlewares are awesome, but I still have to fetch a key to overcome even the most ramshackle of doors. I can't destroy a wall, break through a window, climb a tower and jump across rooftops - unless we're talking cutscenes. Even today, with the advent of 3D being taken for granted by every single 12 year old runt who has an X-Box 360, there is still a good number of 3D games which don't even use the Z-Axis - one of the most important features it could possibly bring. Look at Bioware. Barring the Baldur's Gate saga, MDK2 was, as far as I can remember, the only game where they used it - all their subsequent 3D games have a three dimensional gameworld with characters behaving as if they were stuck in Fallout's isometric display. Freaking Fallout, considered to be a technological throwback by those same 12 years olds.

 

Where's the Red Faction of role-playing games? There isn't one, even with games such as Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic trying a stab at more complex interactivity. Or, why is The Force Unleashed the only Star Wars game to make use of these advanced physics, and quite possibly, for purely pyrotechnical/eye-goggling purposes, for instance? Wholly new gameplay mechanics is nice and all, but these are only developed and implemented by a select few in the industry.

 

 

Graphics are not ephemeral. Humans are visual creatures, there is a reason you play games instead of reading books and it probably isn't the interactivity and it definitely isn't the story.

 

Can we actually determine that gamers aren't interested in interactivity? That would imply gaming for many would be analogous to watching a tech demo running, or just reading visual novels.

 

 

Besides, the style over substance argument only works so far. Wii Sports certainly isn't about the graphics, for instance, and neither was Nintendogs. Also, witness the deluge of japanese role-playing game fans who claim they only play these titles for their stories (and that these stories are "excellent").

 

 

PS: NOT AN INFLAMATORY POST, MR. DEVELOPER MAN!

Edited June 29, 2008 by Diogo Ribeiro

[Redfield]

exerting authorial fascism over the player,

 

"Authorial fascism?"

 

Honestly, when you typed this, didn't you feel just a little bit silly, considering you're talking about a video game?

[Diogo Ribeiro]

You couldn't always avoid it, like escaping from the hotel or walking on the girders in the burning bank you would get the effects because Jack is under a lot of stress, which would make things more difficult for the player just as it would for the character. Also I haven't played SS2, but even if it is a better game, that doesn't negate DCotE's achievements.

 

Oh, I agree. I do think it's an interesting game, as I've mentioned before, and it's certainly not without positive aspects.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

exerting authorial fascism over the player,

 

"Authorial fascism?"

 

Honestly, when you typed this, didn't you feel just a little bit silly, considering you're talking about a video game?

 

Well... maybe a little But haven't we grown to dissect videogames more thoroughly as time goes by? When we talked of Contra, we wouldn't even mention the designer's intentions - just the fact the game's design was arcade-like, in that it would constantly rob us of 1-UPs so we'd keep feeding the arcade with hard earned lunch money. Nowadays, with texts that compare, say, Half-Life 2's setting with that of 1984, it's not uncommon to throw about that kind of stuff about a designer's intentions.

 

Would totalitarian be better? Or maybe just stick to "authorial intrusion"?

[Redfield]

True, but how many games outside of the obvious genres - firstperson shooters or thirdperson action titles - have used these inovations? We have the technical ability to allow players a degree of environmental interactivity that not only takes its lessons from games like Ultima 7, but it can easily surpass them. The main difference between previous generations and ours is that now, we are much more aware of what can be done on a technical level, but still see it not getting done. We run around saying advanced physics systems like ragdoll and certain middlewares are awesome, but I still have to fetch a key to overcome even the most ramshackle of doors. I can't destroy a wall, break through a window, climb a tower and jump across rooftops - unless we're talking cutscenes. Even today, with the advent of 3D being taken for granted by every single 12 year old runt who has an X-Box 360, there is still a good number of 3D games which don't even use the Z-Axis - one of the most important features it could possibly bring. Look at Bioware. Barring the Baldur's Gate saga, MDK2 was, as far as I can remember, the only game where they used it - all their subsequent 3D games have a three dimensional gameworld with characters behaving as if they were stuck in Fallout's isometric display. Freaking Fallout, considered to be a technological throwback by those same 12 years olds.

 

Where's the Red Faction of role-playing games? There isn't one, even with games such as Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic trying a stab at more complex interactivity. Or, why is The Force Unleashed the only Star Wars game to make use of these advanced physics, and quite possibly, for purely pyrotechnical/eye-goggling purposes, for instance? Wholly new gameplay mechanics is nice and all, but these are only developed and implemented by a select few in the industry.

 

Because when you're designing a game, you have to pick the core features you want your game to focus on--you don't have the time nor the money to do everything.

 

You mentioned BioWare not having used a Z-Axis since MDK2 in their games. As you well know, BioWare's focus is always on their detailed characters/NPCs and the overall narrative. If having a Z-Axis doesn't strengthen their core focus in any way, why would they feel the need to add it? Because other games, that aren't even RPGs (and thus have different areas of focus) do so? That's not a very good reason.

 

If an RPG developer like Obsidian or BioWare, in a future game, included extremely realistic physics interactions, Z-Axis exploration and all other sorts of complex interactivity like we see in other genres, one of two things would probably happen. One, the game would take six or seven years to come out (this is the unlikely outcome). After all, besides all of the features mentioned above, fans would still expect all of the RPG development systems, detailed characters and boatloads of branching dialogue, complete with choice and consequences, right? Second, the game comes out with all of those realistic action game interactions, but it is critically and commercially panned because including all of that stuff made the aforementioned RPG elements, that the company is known for in the first place, suffer. "Yeah, nice physics and stuff, but the story and characters blow, etc."

 

It all comes down to time and money, and the prioritization of that time and money.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Not that I disagree with you, but I don't think that time and money ever surfaced in Patrick's argument. His post was solely on the technical side of things in response to CrashGirl - ie, why today is better than yesterday on a technical level, not why today is more costly than yesterday.

 

As such, I'm well aware of what you said but chose not to talk about it because I felt it would bloat my post (even more bloated than it already is!) with that perspective.

[Wrath of Dagon]

"Yeah, nice physics and stuff, but the story and characters blow, etc."

Mass Effect, not that the physics were that great either.