Quote:Original post by programmermattc People just need to realize Kojima is probably the closest game developerproducer to bad film director we've ever seen.
There, fixed that for you. Just because Kojima is infatuated with the cinematic apparatus doesn't mean he's creating anything actually worth watching. It's like he's Ed Wood.
Even tough I'm a huge fan of the "story driven" game I agree with this comment completely. I think that I saw a video where Will Wright stated that many game designers suffer from "movie envy" and that they even publicly state so (or did I read this as a quote i don't really remember), this is a very bad thing IMO, because as Oluseyi stated these guys hardly come up with anything worth watching, IMO if they were good enough they would be able to make it in movie industry instead of forcing us to play cinematic games with bad story. Right now they need talent in movie industry, most of the recent movies look just like a straight copy of a previously successful titles (movies/games/cartoons). This could be the "risk reduction" tough, but still it's killing the movies and it's starting to show more and more in game industry as well ... (I think that this point was also raised in the Wright video)
Expanding on RedDrake's expansion on Will Wright, too many game designers are embracing the familiar apparatus of the cinema as a means of "pushing the art form," as opposed to truly pushing the art form by embracing its key characteristic - interactivity - and creating means for generation of narrative entirely from within the interactive experience.
Dribbling out canned narrative elements as rewards for completing interactive challenges is fun, but it's not innovation.
Quote:Original post by Oluseyi Expanding on RedDrake's expansion on Will Wright, too many game designers are embracing the familiar apparatus of the cinema as a means of "pushing the art form," as opposed to truly pushing the art form by embracing its key characteristic - interactivity - and creating means for generation of narrative entirely from within the interactive experience.
Dribbling out canned narrative elements as rewards for completing interactive challenges is fun, but it's not innovation.
That's my opinion on this issue in a nutshell. Very well put.
Quote:Original post by Alpha_ProgDes Just so I'm clear, are we saying that 1 cutscene = 90 minutes or all the cutscenes total to be 90 minutes?
I'd wager that neither of those is true. There is no single cutscene that is ninety minutes long but I'd bank on the fact that there are more than 90 minutes of cutscenes in the entire game.
PSW magazine ran a story saying that one of the cutscenes was 90 minutes long. A bunch of websites picked up on it but it never got confirmed. Guess it was just a rumor after all.
Quote:Original post by Oluseyi Expanding on RedDrake's expansion on Will Wright, too many game designers are embracing the familiar apparatus of the cinema as a means of "pushing the art form," as opposed to truly pushing the art form by embracing its key characteristic - interactivity - and creating means for generation of narrative entirely from within the interactive experience.
While Wright has point, it doesn't mean cutscenes aren't necessary to telling a good narrative in video games. As long as video games have had decent graphics capabilities, they've had audio/visual animations to help the story. Even if it was something as simple as ">post boss animation.
The successor to interactive media as story telling medium are visual medias such as movies/theater. Their successor would be written word.
To quote Yahtzee's Mass Effect review, "the best writing in visual media is succinct, and punchy". Movies have the ability to use spoken words, but they should use most that which is unique to their medium.
Yahtzee explains it using the Ctrl+Alt+Delete as an example, and explains it better than I can:
Quote:Yahtzee's Blog I'm going to post a link now to a Ctrl-Alt-Del comic from July 2007. Don't let the fact that it's old excuse the mistakes; this is still very typical of Buckley's current work.
Here's another comic, this one a Penny Arcade strip from early the same year. The subject matter and joke are the same (Puzzle Quest) but it's a fairly obvious joke to make and I can easily assume both writers came up with it independently.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/28
Both comics identify the humour in the situation - that the rules of a game world seem absurd when applied to the real world - but while Penny Arcade understands that the crux of a joke should be reserved for the final panel, Ctrl-Alt-Del is apparently so excited about the idea that it blurts it out right away, leaving three more panels to flounder in excessive dialogue and pointlessness.
A punchline should be equated to an actual punch in the face. That's why it's called a punch-line. You deliver it and run. You do not hang around explaining how you did the punch and that the recipient should probably be in a lot of pain now.
Identify the funny part of the idea and save it for last. Leave with the audience laughing. If you do nothing else, finish strong. That's a rule any humourist will agree with. But with the centrepoint of the gag already uselessly spent, Buckley's comic is forced to fall upon its old standby of violence as a sort of prosthetic punchline. Now, violence can certainly be funny, modern cinema was virtually built on the tradition of slapstick, but it doesn't work in static, non-animated media. There is humour to be found in shock value, but most people have been on the internet long enough to not be shocked by anything as mundane as a claymore through the sweetbreads.
But even if the joke were structured properly, there is still far too much dialogue. This is a problem common to a lot of webcomics, but since we're already in the CAD-bashing groove we'll stick with it. Shakespeare wrote that 'brevity is the soul of wit'. He did not then add 'unless you're writing a webcomic'. It applies to everything, and don't tell me you're arrogant enough to claim to know better than Shakespeare.
A gag strip has a very simple formula. Buildup. Buildup. Buildup. Punchline. Anything that does not in some way build towards the punchline can safely be removed. If any dialogue can conceivably be replaced with a gesture or facial expression (visit Perry Bible Fellowship for a crash course in this), do so; this is a comic, a predominantly visual medium, not a fucking essay.
Much like movies, video games have their interactive tools along with the tools of their purely visual predecessors. They also must use their unique interactivity as their primary story telling tool. You couldn't pay me to sit through the prefinal boss fight cutscene in MGS2.
BUT much like you can't ignore dialog in visual medias, you can not ignore dialog/visual effects/voice acting/and the other things inherited from movies.
Again using CAD to draw a parallel to visual media, you cannot tell decent complex story without using all the tools your disposal properly. Likewise, games can not ignore what dialog and acting bring to the table in a video game.
I've said before that games don't need deep story to be good. Just give me a princess to save, point me at some stars to collect, and I'm on my merry way.
But when a video game is trying to tell a story, cutscenes are a vital tool. Take Ico, a favorite amongst the "games as art" folk. There's a tear jerker cutscene before the final boss. Honestly it didn't get to me because as I got through the game, I would kicked Yorda off the highest part of the castle if given the chance.
Yorda and Ico's relationship is under developed, and the gameplay did not make me empathize with Yorda as a character. A couple meaningful interaction scenes with the two protagonists would have made the frustrating moments more like "You can make it Yorda!", and less "I hope you rot in hell bitch".
Much like you can too much dialog or visuals in movies, you can overuse interactivity. Roger Ebert says it pretty well:
Quote:Roger Ebert/Clive Barker Dialog Barker: "I think that Roger Ebert's problem is that he thinks you can't have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written 'Romeo and Juliet' as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn't taken the damn poison. If only he'd have gotten there quicker."
Ebert: He is right again about me. I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. Would "Romeo and Juliet" have been better with a different ending? Rewritten versions of the play were actually produced with happy endings. "King Lear" was also subjected to rewrites; it's such a downer. At this point, taste comes into play. Which version of "Romeo and Juliet," Shakespeare's or Barker's, is superior, deeper, more moving, more "artistic"?
While I disagree with "art by the artist"/"high art" schtick, he brings up that a story can be ruined by interactivity. What is a Romeo/Juliet-style game was made with the ability to have a doctor inspect Juliet? It would completely kill the drama of the situation.
Fable is an example where over use of "choice" hurts the story, along with many of "you can be good or evil" games. How many bad movies have you seen where the good/bad guy changes sides for no good reason? It's really no different if the game gives the player the arbitrary choices. How is it good story telling if the character's motivation is because the option was available on the menu, or the quest was available? It's a plot twist for the sake of having a plot twist.
A cutscene can add a lot not just to the story but to the gameplay. Don't tell me you've never had a prefight boss cinematic that made you think "oh fuck", and made it much more tense when you get control of your character again.
To say cutscenes are misused, you're going have to say how it adds nothing to the gameplay or story.
I really do prefer gameplay over cut-scenes, but as long as teh cut-scenes are well made I don't mind.
Metal Gear Solid has sort of developed it's own humor and movie-like sequences. This makes the mans that follow the story happy. Although this is true Im glad they kept the gameplay well done with top notch graphics, nice controls, and good gameplay.
But back to the gameplay factor, I do feel more attached to a character that is useful in gameplay than a character that sits around in cutscenes and is annoying. I think more characters should be represented in their personalities and character through gameplay and what they do.
I really don't understand why people get so aggressive on Metal Gear Solid, specifically in regard to its lengthy cutscenes. That's the style of game it is. It would be like criticizing Pro Evo for being a football game or Rockband for being a glorified virtual karaoke.
What's worse is when people say Kojima should have been a film maker as opposed to a game developer. Putting the storyline of any of the games in the series without serious adaptation would result in a laughable mess. The plot in any MGS game can only work in the context of it being a video game.
Videogames in general require a greater suspension of disbelief than film. There are too many technological limitations and gameplay factors to take into consideration that make it impossible to create a truly representative world on screen. This is why I think game developers can get away with more when it comes to the plot of a videogame.
You know, I find it quite enjoyable how Kojima takes advantage of that and uses the strengths of the medium to tell a story. It also helps that his games tend to be among the most polished and well crafted works in the industry :P
Quote:Original post by Oluseyi Dribbling out canned narrative elements as rewards for completing interactive challenges is fun, but it's not innovation.
So story writers shouldn't ever receive any awards based on their work? To me thats like saying you play until you hit a cutscene and the second it starts just setting down the controller and walking away until you can play again. Story definitely has an impact on how 'innovative' a game is. If I bought some RPG that had amazing contorls and a fun battle system and had the same ol' RPG story there's a really good chance I wouldn't finish it.
Quote:IMO if they were good enough they would be able to make it in movie industry instead of forcing us to play cinematic games with bad story.
It's not like Kojima just quit trying to make movies and decided 'well, games are easy, lets make a few of those'.
If story was so unimportant to good gameplay I'm sure we'd have dozens more games that didn't even feature a story component and still were critically acclaimed. Even online games like Warhawk (with no single player campaign) have background stories. If someone spent their time developing a story, the least we can do is acknowledge it as a core element to a game (especially considering game dev teams have multiple people working on a story).
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Quote:Original post by barakus What's worse is when people say Kojima should have been a film maker as opposed to a game developer. Putting the storyline of any of the games in the series without serious adaptation would result in a laughable mess.
And MGS storyline isn't :D ? Would you like me to start with the US government/terrorist conspiracy, alien government or super-secret soviet MGS production in the date :D. Talk about "suspension of disbelief" [lol]
Quote:Original post by barakus You know, I find it quite enjoyable how Kojima takes advantage of that and uses the strengths of the medium to tell a story. It also helps that his games tend to be among the most polished and well crafted works in the industry :P
Strenghts of what medium ? If you are referring to game-medium and saying that Kojima is taking advantage of it to tell a story then read the whole discussion again :P. If, on the other hand, you are referring to the movie-medium then read the whole discussion again xD.
Your point about "Videogames in general require a greater suspension of disbelief than film" hardly stands IMHO, and MGS gets trashed (outside of it's circle of fans) even more because of it's actual story than the way it tells it (and the number of sequels over a shallow storyline)
EDIT: I just rememberd a flash video on the topic of "sequels" and the MGS, where they said you will play Snake in a wheel chair in the next one [laugh], darn i wish i can find that link :D.
Quote:Original post by barakus I really don't understand why people get so aggressive on Metal Gear Solid, specifically in regard to its lengthy cutscenes. That's the style of game it is. It would be like criticizing Pro Evo for being a football game or Rockband for being a glorified virtual karaoke.
So the MGS series is a cutscene game, not a shooter?
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