Noodle Soup

Role-playing games and Immersitivityness - PART THE SECOND.

Two Days Later: Phew, okay. I don’t really expect to have my thoughts in any better a working order than I did last time; but I said I’d finish this off, and finish this off I will.
My intention, if I cast my mind back to the hazy mists of last Saturday, was to write about how the games in question, for all their visual and general polish, are just not immersive.

A note going forward: I don’t really have any clear-cut answers for why this might be, or at least not as I write this sentence; let’s see if I can tease anything out of my knotted synapses as I slap ineffectually at my keyboard for a few hundred words.

I love video games. Or, at least, I love the idea of video games that I have in my head. And in my head, an advantage that video games have over every other art form is interactivity and immersion. Just for the record, I’m not saying games are better than any other art form, before anyone jumps feet first towards that conclusion. But on the big list of video game pros and cons, these are the two big entries on the former column.
So. Interactivity and Immersion. The first is pretty self-explanatory - you get to interact, that’s all fun, it’s something you can’t do in movies, books, et cetera, et cetera, blah blah blee bloo.
Immersion is the funny one in my opinion.

For me, I can spend hours at a time playing a game, as I have in Skyrim, and still not feel particularly immersed. As much as I can enjoy the graphics, the intricate construction of the world, the many many dialogue options and so on, I’m still oh so achingly aware that I’m playing a game. I think this is why I spend so much time, as I mentioned before, trying to force some semblance of narrative cohesion onto my stupid guy - otherwise he ends up looking at best incredibly suggestible, at worst, borderline schizophrenic:

Random NPC: Hey dude, do you want to collect some herbs for me?

Me: Sure, that’s a charmingly benign bit of busywork to be getting on with.

~Two minutes later~

Another NPC: Hello, would you like to murder someone for me?

Me: This doesn’t really make sense, on account of how I was just looking for dragon fronds or whatever. I’d have to be a very special kind of entrepreneurial to branch out from plant-collection to casual murder, but I could use the XP. Oh, and I get a free sword? Well then, colour me murderous.

And so on.

Again, I’m not sure what the solution is here, other than locking out certain parts of the game based on your ‘character type’, which is bound to piss off players who don’t share my intrinsic need for intimate characterisation.
But I think the lack of immersion goes deeper than that. It can’t just be to do with story, because in Minecraft, a game that has no story whatsoever (ostensibly), I routinely play up to the aforementioned perfect extent of immersion, the point at which the game literally falls away, and all I know is that I must have iron ore in a most immediate and plentiful fashion.

I think it’s the little things. Story’s definitely part of it, especially in the case of Bethesda’s output, but I wonder if it isn’t more important for me to feel like I’m actually in the world, rather than just clipping through it. One thing I can’t believe wasn’t fixed in Skyrim’s new shiny engine is the propensity for characters to just kinda float-run around, especially when trying to scale a mountain. And guess what, you guys? There’s a lot of mountains in Skyrim. It’s just that kind of a place.

I can’t begin to explain, except in this coming paragraph; how much better I’d feel about that game if my character had a robust climbing animation in which he/she/it clambered up the face of a mountain, clinging to the rock, occasionally shielding their face from the wind and rain, before triumphantly ascending to the top like a mythical hero. Instead of running in place, an inch off the ground, as I defy gravity by rising inexplicably to the top of this one-hundred-and-fifty degree slope. Upon which I find a trio of half-dressed bandits, despite the temperature probably being about as cold as the top of a mountain, in Skyrim. I couldn’t find an analogy for that because NOTHING COULD BE COLDER, OKAY?

Maybe I’m just nit picking, and if that’s the case, I apologise. Hell, it’s not like everyone else didn’t love it. It’s not even like I didn’t have fun playing Skyrim in the last year. But to be the one of the most acclaimed developers means you get the most scrutiny I suppose. And guess what, I’ve made my decision. Give me, any day, a somewhat constrained world that actually makes sense and feels like a world I have agency in, over a flimsy freedom that doesn’t just fall apart, but catastrophically explodes, with the slightest push against it’s wet-paper boundaries.

I know I just spent several hundred words ragging on Bethesda, but this goes for all game developers, especially triple-A ones. If you’re going to try and make me a sandbox, let me act how I want to act, fight how I want to fight, and win how I want to win. Or else don’t bother.

Because when this:

feels more real than this:

well then, you’ve got problems elsewhere I think.

Role-playing games and Immersitivityness.

So I’ve been playing a lot of Bethesda bumpf lately, replaying Fallout 3 and re-re-re-playing Skyrim. I bought the latter on launch, and went through roughly one kajillion character builds trying to figure out why the ever-loving heck I couldn’t get into the ‘for reals’ game, and why i instead spent all of my time fruitlessly dicking about in caves instead of doing the main quest lines.

Sidebar: Just a little disclaimer for y’all before I go on: I don’t, despite what I may come to type in the following rant, think Skyrim is a bad game. It’s a good game. Maybe not so much as everyone says, but it is good. Okay. Yeah. Sidebar over.

I wanted to be immersed into this game. So damn much, if only cos I bought it at the launch price, which was kinda my monthly ‘things that aren’t directly contributing to my continued lifespan on this planet’ budget. 

My repeated re-rolling was down to my assumption that none of the characters were sitting right with my compulsive need to imbue them with some kind of personality, which is absolutely what happens, without fail, when you present me with one of the kind of blank slate characters that WRPG’s seem to favour. The problem with this is that there’s no friggin’ room to be a character in Skyrim. I’m not really blaming anyone for this, certainly not the writers, cos goddamn if I had to write that many dialogue trees, I would see out the first week in an actual tree, throwing pine cones at passersby.

Sidebar the second: I don’t actually know how in the minority I am in doing this whole characterisation thing. I suspect the answer would be ‘greatly so’, or at least that most people place the needs of the game - i.e. maximising beneficial stats and equipping the best items - over the pseudo-narrative needs of the character. True life example: In games of this type, I have been known (on more than one occasion) to eschew the equipping of epic enchanted armour in lieu of the same ratty costume they’ve been wearing all game because it probably has sentimental value to them. Them who don’t exist. Welp. Sidebar the second over. There will hopefully not be a third, if I can keep my brain on track.

Nevertheless, any and all attempts to immerse myself in the backgrounds and motivations of my elf stealth dude, or my hulking punching cat lady were rebuffed by my not being able to do what I wanted it to. Which led me to an interesting question, or at least one that I thought was interesting (and well, if you’ve gotten this far then I’m going to assume it will be of at least passing interest to you):

Is the facade of narrative freedom (specifically one that breaks down pretty damn quick, revealing the pulsating threads and systems beneath…) better or worse than a fixed storyline and characters?

Okay, um. I didn’t really mean for this to get so nerdily speculative this quickly - I sat down intending to smash out a light-hearted whimsy-rant kinda thing about how I simply couldn’t get into Skyrim, and now lookit. So what I’m gonna do is put this up now (hence the you reading it) and come back real real soon - promise - with a part two to this idea, because for reals who even has time to read like a thousand words in one sitting, you all probably have, like, dirt bike races to attend or something. I dunno.

Jake Plays Final Fantasy VIII - Part Two: Jake Gets Lost.

Ok, so we’re in the FIRE CAVERN. This seems like a terrible place to be. Following the Brimstone Road to fight an Ifrit! And… apparently he can talk?

HEY LOOK. EVEN IMMORTAL FIRE SPIRITS ACT LIKE COMPLETE DOUCHEBAGS UPON FIRST MEETING. Although to be fair I did bust up inside his house and start swinging around a sword..gun..thing. You’d be kinda snippy too.

A quick aside:

Alright, wow. This may just be me, but is it ok that we’re enslaving sentient beings to use as nothing more than a weaponized meat shield when the going gets moderately tough?

You know what? Screw it; I’m less than an hour in and I’m already resigned to the random acts of cruelty in this technicolour but amoral universe. Let’s just steal the fiery fucker.

You’re right dude, that is pretty lame. In fact, if I can beat you up, why exactly do we even need you on our team? 

Well, with conflagrated companion in tow, we emerge back outside, whereupon the two jerky examiners from earlier have mysteriously disappeared - although personally I think they snuck off into the wilderness to make out.

We return to Balamb Garden, and Quistis decides to give me a ludicrously dull tutorial! So dull, in fact, that I glaze over the instructions on how to advance the game and get absolutely shitting lost!

So here’s some of the highlights of the antics Squall and I got up to whilst trawling around Balamb Gardens seedy underbelly. Enjoy.

RANDOM INSANITY!

FOOD SHORTAGES!

Dammit.

INNUENDO!

AUTOMOBILES!

Forever Alone.

DEMONIC POSSESSION!

MORE INNUENDO!

Well that’s very nice, but is it really sanitary to get it out in the middle of the cafeteria?

Oh, and I also encounter another teacher in the corridors, meaning that Balamb has at least.. two, which is probably enough for several hundred hormonal teenage killing machines. Anyway he reprimands me for swinging my Gunblade in the corridors (Not innuendo. This time.) with a blissfully unaware bit of hypocracy.

Society’s rules? You mean like the ones about murder? Which you teach daily? Okay I’m seriously done with this observation, let’s just finally accept that everyone’s crazy but me and move on.

Join us next time; as I figure out how the hell to advance the story, and we murder some folks! 

Jake Plays Final Fantasy VIII - Part One: Unprofessionalism in the Workplace.

Um, so I wanted for a while to do one of those fancy let’s play videos like the cool nerds are doing on YouTube? But then I remembered that I don’t know anything about video-editing. Or entertaining commentary, multitasking, or having a computer that doesn’t judder to a halt running anything more taxing than QWOP.

But I can do the same thing but in the form of many giant walls of text!

Oh yeah, and I’m gonna be playing Final Fantasy VIII! Because I played it (a bit) many years ago, and never really got too far with it, and because the plot seemed… interesting? Or perhaps certifiably deranged. Either way I guess we’ll see. Let’s just jump right on in.

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Writing Masterclass.

They say that the first sentence of any story should be immediately eye-catching, to grab the attention of fickle prospective readers, and get them started til the narrative digs its hooks in.

To that end, I have devised a 7-word opening clause for ANY story which will ensure that everyone who begins reading won’t be able to help themselves but continue, and it goes as follows:

“Now, this is a story all about how…”

Some Things I Never Need To See In Any Video Game Ever Again. Ever. (Part 1)

1.Sewer levels

I can’t recall a single sewer stage in any video game in which I wasn’t happy to emerge, blinking and tired, into the unnecessarily lens-flared sunlight. Sewer levels are awful. And honestly, even when done well, in a good game – they’re still just symptomatic of lazy design work.

“Feh, how do we get the player from neat urban setpiece A to neat urban setpiece B?”

“We could have them make their way through the actual game environment, making the transitional period as fun as the planned setpieces themselves?”

“That’ll take ages, how about we just copy-paste a few endless stretches of damp green tunnel and call it a day.”

Also? Sewers are disgusting. Their primary purpose is to hold and channel poop. Wading through a heady cocktail of other people’s nutty butt-loafs for any extended amount of time is definitely gonna put a banjax on any plans you might have had for later in the day, vis-à-vis world saving, assassinations, or whatever.

If they can’t be gotten rid of forever more, if they absolutely have to remain in future games; then I propose that any sewer level in a game is immediately followed by a short cut-scene of the protagonist sitting in the shower, hugging their knees and crying.

2. Mounted turret sections

Boy, you sure are enjoying that run-and-gun adventure, aren’tcha? Wow, looks super fun there, jumping around in ways you never could have dreamed of, enjoying the freedom of movement to befuddle and outwit your opponents.

Welp, thats enough fun for a little while. Why don’t you sit here and operate this minigun for several mind-numbing flow-shattering minutes.

No, I think I’m actually alright thanks, I’ve got a multitude of interesting weaponry here, and the limited ammunition actually adds to the tension of the action.

Nonsense! Now you sit here and spam endless bullets at slowly advancing targets until everything devolves into a dark grey mush– is any of this beginning to sound familiar yet?

Nobody has ever had fun during an forced turret section. Whether they’re the stationary variety – defend this maguffin against wave of oncoming enemies! - or their on-rails counterparts – usually taunting you with the vain hopes of a vehicle section – they are always just hopelessly dull.

What’s more, all the time, money and effort spent creating and rendering the art assets for those sections might as well be pissed into the wind - as the player’s brain (or mine at least) just reinterprets the action as a cursor moving over nondescript targets.

They might as well just give you a literal mouse cursor and ask you to click on pleasantly coloured polygonal shapes for a few minutes to calm you down before something interesting happens again.

3. The protagonists from J-RPGs

I am SO TIRED of J-RPG protagonists’ bullshit.

Now don’t get me wrong, I really love J-RPGs. I like how highly-strung and dramatic they always are, the stupid descents into goofiness they’re so often party to, the unashamed use of bright colours and overblown particle effects.

But GODDAMMIT, if I have to start another game by being woken up, with some irritating shrew-faced woman telling me I’ve overslept for an important event, well… I don’t think the warranty on my console will cover the inexorable havoc I’m going to end up wreaking.

Just once I’d like to play as the Auron or Balthier-type character, the witty veteran who’s all about this shit, and isn’t gonna waste my time bitching about how he’s an orphan or a dream or a biological superweapon for the world’s most time-rich research and development department.

Instead I get to spend ten hours schlupping about some podunk village which I know is going to get destroyed by the big bad anyway. Lucky there’s no J-RPG to which ten hours resembles even the tiniest percentage of.