Let's be Postive about Negativity

[KaiserStratosTygo]

I'm sure you guys went to college so I'm kind of shocked that you haven't had experiences like this before. I've had many, many, many college professors demonstrate even worse condescension about real-life issues through-out an entire semester. It's par for the course where people go to college to have their biases supported and their emotions coddled by stopping anything that's a threat to students' safe spaces ...


But, that's a topic for another time ...

I've been in college for about 4 years and have never had that occur, surprisingly enough. but that's probably because I live in Oklahoma where SJWs are NOT tolerated by any stretch of the imagination.

[TheEconomist]

Lucky bastard

[sandwich_bird]

in a video game course

Video game courses, gross.

I'd love to know why you didn't like The Last of Us though. My understanding from your comment is that you find the zombie theme overdone and the characters boring? I can agree to that but overall I'd say the story is satisfying and the gameplay is good. Graphically, it was also great for the PS3 (didn't play the remastered on PS4 so I can't comment on that).

[KaiserStratosTygo]

Lucky bastard

Heh heh heh.

my state is stupid 85% of the time, but at least we don't have SJW nonsense, we did one thing right for once!

[TheEconomist]

Don't believe the hype. I've lived in Tennessee, Florida, and New York. I've always heard that Tennessee was retarded.

On a large enough scale, everyone is retarded. Everywhere. In every country.

[Nissa]

Haha, you guys make me miss not having internet at home.

For the record, the teacher himself is usually pretty chill. I guess he wanted to start a "class discussion" or something...maybe...but I just wanted to use the time to work on stuff. Of course, he also said he identifies himself as a feminist, so draw your own conclusions.

Yeah, I do dislike nihilistic stuff, but I can appreciate it if it's well written or sarcastic enough to be funny. But Last of Us...well, there's various reasons why I didn't like it there. For one thing, since movies have invaded gaming, California culture (specifically, bad Hollywood tropes) have infiltrated the game to the point where I simply am incapable of caring. Last of Us has that same, bland, dead feel that a paint-by-numbers movie has.

Not that the story was entirely crap. I liked the mushroom angle of the monsters. That's a great idea -- in a novel. Storytelling in games must always bow to gameplay, and the mushroom/mold angle does nothing at all for gameplay. It makes no difference. The monsters could be cyborgs, golems, guys in suits, whatever, and it wouldn't make a difference, because that's just a layer of paint on a zombie-clone baddy. Besides the fact that most of the game is spent shooting humans rather than the monsters.

Also, I think the ending is likewise better in a novel. I don't like being forced into evil actions, and choice in games is important, especially if the main character is a psychopath. Apparently they attempted to give the player a choice, but they didn't know how to make it fit with Joel's character. That's really nothing more than admitting one's failures as a writer, at least in terms of gameplay writing.

Honestly, making Last of Us into a game instead of a novel or comic was a mistake. They wanted to do what they wanted with the character regardless of the feelings of the player, and in increasingly story-driven games, that's just plain wrong. An elaborate story in an advanced game should allow player control. If you only want to do what you want to do, then write a book. Forcing the ideas they had into a format that can't appreciate what they were going for is lame.

That, and the gameplay is repetitive and boring.

Honestly, my biggest reason for disliking it I can't really put into words. I see clips or pictures of it on the internet, and I just feel sick. It makes my synaesthesia act up in a negative way.

[Turalyon]

Yeah, I do dislike nihilistic stuff... Last of Us has that same, bland, dead feel that a paint-by-numbers movie has.

I'm not entirely sure if you've sufficiently conflated the medium of the thing (like a movie) with the genre of the thing (zombie survival horror) enough to justify your statement. Just because it's just like any other like-genre fare, doesn't mean it's the fault of the medium in which it was presented.

Storytelling in games must always bow to gameplay, and the mushroom/mold angle does nothing at all for gameplay. It makes no difference. The monsters could be cyborgs, golems, guys in suits, whatever, and it wouldn't make a difference, because that's just a layer of paint on a zombie-clone baddy. Besides the fact that most of the game is spent shooting humans rather than the monsters.

You clearly haven't played the game. There are different levels of "infected" and they behave differently than the normal enemy human armed with a gun. For example, the "clickers" are blind and are attracted by noise. Headshots don't necessarily bring them down because their heads are covered up by the thick fungus. Melee attacks are largely useless against them unless you you use a strong weapon (which can break) or they are snuck up on and shived - the shiv being a specialised item that breaks upon it's use, is in rare supply and must be manufactured using scavenged materials.

Also, I think the ending is likewise better in a novel. I don't like being forced into evil actions, and choice in games is important, especially if the main character is a psychopath. Apparently they attempted to give the player a choice, but they didn't know how to make it fit with Joel's character. That's really nothing more than admitting one's failures as a writer, at least in terms of gameplay writing.

Thing is, the world in which the setting is based already has marked Joel as being "evil" to some degree. He's a stone-cold killer and what he does at the end of the game is really no different to the actions he has already committed ever since his real daughter died at the start of the outbreak. He was a "hunter" (those who deceived, tortured and/or kill others under the pretense of "surviving" ) at one point after his daughter died and before he met Ellie. In fact, it can be seen that his motivation for killing at the end is now worth something/in service of more than just protecting/survival for himself (if not more morally defensible even), because he sees Ellie as his daughter now and will do anything to protect her. It turns out that a lie is the most damaging thing he can do in the service of "protecting" her. That therein lies the tragedy of the ending: Joel is not redeemed by any measure but he has something to live for now and regained some of his humanity through Ellie but it was at the unforeseen cost of alienating her in the process and would probably serve to eventually break the bond they had formed.

Honestly, making Last of Us into a game instead of a novel or comic was a mistake. They wanted to do what they wanted with the character regardless of the feelings of the player, and in increasingly story-driven games, that's just plain wrong. An elaborate story in an advanced game should allow player control. If you only want to do what you want to do, then write a book. Forcing the ideas they had into a format that can't appreciate what they were going for is lame.

I disagree. A story can be good in whatever medium it comes in. Just because the game medium provides a more direction type of interaction with the story, doesn't mean the story always has to serve the gameplay. Besides, all stories (not just in games mind you) are really just the author doing "what they wanted to do with the character regardless of the feelings of the viewer". The difference is whether the author was skilfull enough in building it up in such a way to make the viewer understand why a character does what he does, if not try to make us empathise a little with them. The Last of Us wants us to look at the forming of a father-daughter relationship in it's two main leads and the consequences of such a relationship. I think it does this well enough.

[TheEconomist]

especially if the main character is a psychopath.

Joel was not a psychopath. He was a survivor. If that's psychopathy then non-psychopaths are the abberration since all through-out human evolution that hasn't just been a necessity for survival, it's been the only thing for survival. Human civilization is just a blip on the overall time line of humankind.

Besides, psychopaths are born that way, sociopaths are made that way through trauma or whatever else. If he's anything, he's a damaged sociopath. But, then, that's not even the case since sociopathy is the norm in an apocalyptic world.

That being said, his actions in the end were ... 'evil' ... sure ....


Also, contrary to Nissa statement, I'd say that a video game is the best medium for the kind of story it was telling. Last of Us has a far different focus than The Walking Dead (etc) and the premise is based around being connected to character's motivations. In this instance, it works best in video games. I'm also kind of surprised you even bothered with a zombie-apocalyptic game since it's pretty clear that it's contrary to your interests no matter what goes on with it.


I'm also still waiting for you to tell me when you think was a better time in gaming, especially since there's far more choice in games now.

[Nissa]

I'm not entirely sure if you've sufficiently conflated the medium of the thing (like a movie) with the genre of the thing (zombie survival horror) enough to justify your statement. Just because it's just like any other like-genre fare, doesn't mean it's the fault of the medium in which it was presented.

Oh great, another Tura textwall.

*sigh*

No. The genre has nothing to do with it. The writers wanted to to what the writers wanted to do storywise, and any such feelings are better in a book/movie, where the medium does not change per audience interaction. It's sort of like why I don't want to use my tiefling character to play Dungeons and Dragons. I know that whatever happens in the game will change her in ways I might not like, so I'd rather write fanfiction about her than actually use her for a game. It's the same concept.

You clearly haven't played the game. There are different levels of "infected" and they behave differently than the normal enemy human armed with a gun. For example, the "clickers" are blind and are attracted by noise. Headshots don't necessarily bring them down because their heads are covered up by the thick fungus. Melee attacks are largely useless against them unless you you use a strong weapon (which can break) or they are snuck up on and shived - the shiv being a specialised item that breaks upon it's use, is in rare supply and must be manufactured using scavenged materials.

I know there are variations of baddies. There are also variations of zombies, and none of these variations took advantage of their fungus-based story concept in a way that wouldn't also make sense with a zombie.

Except the clicking thing. That's pretty cute. Well, except probably there's other games out there where you have to sneak by zombies.

Thing is, the world in which the setting is based already has marked Joel as being "evil" to some degree. He's a stone-cold killer and what he does at the end of the game is really no different to the actions he has already committed ever since his real daughter died at the start of the outbreak. He was a "hunter" (those who deceived, tortured and/or kill others under the pretense of "surviving" ) at one point after his daughter died and before he met Ellie. In fact, it can be seen that his motivation for killing at the end is now worth something/in service of more than just protecting/survival for himself (if not more morally defensible even), because he sees Ellie as his daughter now and will do anything to protect her. It turns out that a lie is the most damaging thing he can do in the service of "protecting" her. That therein lies the tragedy of the ending: Joel is not redeemed by any measure but he has something to live for now and regained some of his humanity through Ellie but it was at the unforeseen cost of alienating her in the process and would probably serve to eventually break the bond they had formed.

Heard it all before. None of it inspires me to care.

I disagree. A story can be good in whatever medium it comes in. Just because the game medium provides a more direction type of interaction with the story, doesn't mean the story always has to serve the gameplay. Besides, all stories (not just in games mind you) are really just the author doing "what they wanted to do with the character regardless of the feelings of the viewer". The difference is whether the author was skilfull enough in building it up in such a way to make the viewer understand why a character does what he does, if not try to make us empathise a little with them. The Last of Us wants us to look at the forming of a father-daughter relationship in it's two main leads and the consequences of such a relationship. I think it does this well enough.

That's not really what I'm talking about. Sure, you can force a given story into any medium, but there's still mediums where a concept will work better and mediums where a concept won't. I feel that this story would have been better as a movie or novel, though horribly cliched no matter what medium it took. Seriously, the whole father/daughter relationship thing is pretty done to death. Just because Ellie isn't technically his daughter doesn't change the trope. Actually, the death of his daughter is another trope in and of itself. It's all just emotional manipulation.

I'm also still waiting for you to tell me when you think was a better time in gaming, especially since there's far more choice in games now.

Sorry, there's a lot to respond to in this thread.

I honestly feel that the nineties were better. One can debate "best", but I feel that this particular decade was good because our technology did not yet outstrip our creativity. Like we were talking about in the Starcraft remake thread, having less technical power meant that the designers of Starcraft had to be extra creative to make something look cool, like by using shadow and light in fun ways. Other games used story, ambiance, or gameplay to make up for limited power.

Thing about it is, high def graphics don't actually make a game fun. And so nowadays people have to spend so much time to make graphics look really HD, there's less time for creativity on the aspects of a game that contribute more directly to a game's fun. Plus the programmers have to make objects move and operate in 3D space.

Besides the time aspect, there's the culture aspect. For all mediums, really. The nineties were way less PC than now, for one thing. And for another, most mainstream stuff like movies and games tends to come from California or New York, meaning that a smaller population of people is able to have a massively huge impact on the rest of the world. They have more money and resources, and as moviemaking and video games merge more, the more modern gaming is going to be dictated by the whims of a small, narrow-minded culture.

In other words, games are only good to the extent they represent people being creative. Which is why indie developers are doing better than AAA games right now. Except it looks like Nintendo did a really great job with Zelda. Makes me want to buy a switch.

[TheEconomist]

Right, you've told me before what you feel about modern gaming, but I'm asking for why. Saying that game play and stories were better isn't what I'm looking for. It's hard to see how gaming stories were better in the 90's (when almost everything was a platformer) without examples. Game play was far more simplistic (although more difficult) back then, which the obvious exception of StarCraft and BioWare, and some others.

When you break down into old games and their modern (rough) equivalents, I just don't see how gaming is worse.

When I think back to the games of my childhood like Super Mario World or Mega Man X, even though Mega Man is trash now, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a far superior game to Super Mario World. And the action games of the past such as Contra or TMNT are nothing compared to Uncharted 4. RPGs are getting more vast and more content-filled even if particular subsets had a golden age. Sure, it's been nearly a decade since a decent JRPG was released, sure the isometric text RPGs of the 90's offer something that modern RPGs don't, but, seriously, comparing Final Fantasy III or Baldur's Gate II to The Witcher 3? The Witcher 3 wins by a land slide.

Sure, you can say things like Unreal Tournament hasn't been topped, the new Final Fantasy's are trash, strategy games are largely dead, or BioWare/Blizzard are disappointing, but those are small portions of the entire industry.

My only really complaint with modern gaming is the business model, but that's really only because people as a whole refuse to pay more than $59.99 for a game, so they have to nickel and dime people on other things. Also, keep in mind that games used to be far, far, more expensive. SNES cartridges, adjusted for inflation, were between $80-$100 for something that had a microscopic fraction of content compared to the likes of Grand Theft Auto V or Skyrim.

Thing about it is, high def graphics don't actually make a game fun.

They make a game more immersive, which is part of the fun. The Witcher 3, while a master piece in every regard from music, to game play, to characters, to story, still wouldn't be the greatness it is without the superb animations and amazing graphics.

I play 16-bit classics as much as the next guy, but graphics are an important factor.

. And for another, most mainstream stuff like movies and games tends to come from California or New York, meaning that a smaller population of people is able to have a massively huge impact on the rest of the world.

The exact opposite is the truth. It used to be that most Western games came from San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc, but, now, everyone from Canada, to Australia, to Britain, to Germany, and even Poland are making games now that rival the greats of America and Japan. That was not the case before where almost everything on consoles came from Japan (Tokyo) and everything on PC came from America (California).

There's also the whole indie game factor. It used to be that a game had to be published by major companies and approved by the likes of Nintendo. Now, pretty much anyone can make a game.

And so nowadays people have to spend so much time to make graphics look really HD, there's less time for creativity on the aspects of a game that contribute more directly to a game's fun.

Budgets got much larger and graphics take up more of the budget to be sure, but there definitely isn't less time. For one, development cycles are years now, instead of months. That's more time for raw creativity even if it's more cumbersome to do. It's just that companies are catering to different demographics.


Also, again, I ask: did you play Last of Us or watch a let's play? Because that makes as huge difference in this case.