Metzen and his team should retire?

[TheEconomist]

This is why I made such a big deal of differentiating between "showing" and "telling" earlier.

Oh, I see now I was wondering why you made that distinction.

Glad we cleared that up

[Eligor]

Both of you, look. I don't have time as I used to to write up a big wall of text about basically nothing. I kept my posts short, and, therefore, more easily misinterpretable becaue I have no intension of spending fifteen minutes typing something. Nevertheless, I am amazed at the continuous misinterpretations.

@Eligor:



It's been eons since I've seen such a gross misinterpretation of a post .. and from you no less. I expected much better and, quite frankly, I'm astounded that it was you to have done this.

My point, yet again, was simply to mention the unique methods of storytelling that each form provide. The uniqueness of storytelling that books provide is that you can imagine the world yourself and typically have higher themes that either movies or games. Movies are similar to books but in a visual format. It's uniqueness is in that it is comprised of moving images. Games are, simply, games. They are meant to be played. You interact with them by pushing a button or moving a mouse. It's primary focus is to engross you in a setting by directly interacting with it. Therefore, the story should be a method to further the gameplay. Just as movies use camera angles and what not to further the story and books use the language on the page




Yes, and I've commented on this in this very forum. My point is that it's accidental (for lack of a better word) because that is not a focus (yet) in StarCraft 2.



They are put there to set up a future enemy, to give depth to the races you're playing, and to provide motivation to the actions in the story. Pretty much everything EXCEPT to give a "commentary" on the possibility of, say, humans being created by aliens.



You're looking at it the wrong way.

Let's say in an abstract way, there was a conflict in movies between providing good camera direction (catering to the purpose of a movie; moving images) and telling (ehem, SHOWING) a higher level theme. In reality, they go hand-in-hand, but, for this purpose, let's say this was a possibility. Would you rather have a movie with good direction even if the storytelling suffered or would you rather the movie succeed at the entire purpose of a movie; the imagines (ignoring music, acting, etc). Likewise, would you rather a game create a plot which provided you with awesome places to game in and likeable heroes/hateable villains or would you rather it tell a higher level story. Like I said, it's unavoidable that a plot element will contain these, but, like you said, it shouldn't be forced. So you agree with me here. This was entirely unnecessary.


Deus Ex had terrific gameplay. Silent Hill? Meh. I never liked it. Quite possibly for the very reasons you enjoyed it. That's why I presented my post as an OPINION; not an argument or a fact.

First of all, apologies for sounding unnecessarily harsh in my previous post as well as misinterpreting your words. I must confess I've read them hastily, latched onto the wrong ones and THEN wrote a poorly thought out reply, re-reading which frankly makes me cringe, as I ended up sounding both stupid and unfairly self-righteous for my sins. I entirely agree with you that themes shouldn't be "forced" and that it's the job of the player to infer them if he wants to as well as that every element of the plot should contribute to the gameplay in some way or another. The one thing I'd like to differ about is that what is even more important is that the dialogue and plot should already be engrossing just in script form, once that is accomplished making the gameplay one with the story is much easier to do, just like every one of pure.Wasted's examples, where an idea for a mission originates from the characters' motives and actions. Mission ideas sort of depend on the characters in SC 2 as well, for example, it's just that ninety per cent of the time the characters don't do anything particularly interesting or develop in any specific direction, they just give you missions that introduce them and then hang around without really doing anything besides offering miscellaneous conversation. Hanson and Tosh may live or die, but both casualties are insignificant events with no effect on anything and we don't really get to know them well enough to care. So in short, characters should do stuff and things should happen, and it all must be interesting and convincing, how it all affects the gameplay depends on what they do and what happens then.

This post is an opinion too, but I hope you'll agree.

[TheEconomist]

No problem, Eligor. I know that post was out of the ordinary. We all have our ups and downs.

Anyways, I own a share of the blame I was under the impression that pure.Wasted wanted games to start having complex themes to the point that these themes shadowed the purpose of the game. For example, I doubt many people saw and enjoyed 'V for Vendetta' without focusing on the political elements.

This post is an opinion too, but I hope you'll agree.

Yes, I agree.

[hyde]

I think Metzen and them have just become complacent. Too much Grey Goose and Oysters for lunch.

Seriously, why can't we just have the Warcraft3/BroodWar story telling back? SC2 was all over the place with the most one track story I've seen in awhile. No twist? Tychus back stabbing us was given away in the intro cinematic. Who the hell was the antagonist? There was no real threat. The entire game felt like an extended road trip in space.

They tried to do a Mass Effect inspired non linear game play idea in a very very linear game/story....I don't need to say much more.

[Blazur]

If Metzen and his team were in any way involved with the cinematics then no, I would not advocate their retirement. But if they were involved in the craptacular dialogue and voice acting of both Kerrigan and Zeratul...then perhaps it's time to give somebody else a shot.

And I'd agree they can stand to mature their games and add some darkness to them. They can be humorous and serious at the same time. I really had a hard time getting immersed into the story of SC2, and perhaps that was because it felt like it was written for a high-school kid.

[Eligor]

For example, I doubt many people saw and enjoyed 'V for Vendetta' without focusing on the political elements.

Well, almost guilty of that. "V for Vendetta" still works as a good thriller (political themes or not). But I gave up reading "Watchmen" by the fourth chapter and struggled with Frank Miller's "Allstar Batman" exactly for the reasons you've stated. Both read more as a commentary on superheroes than a story told for its own sake.

[RussianSpy27]

If Metzen and his team were in any way involved with the cinematics then no, I would not advocate their retirement. But if they were involved in the craptacular dialogue and voice acting of both Kerrigan and Zeratul...then perhaps it's time to give somebody else a shot.

And I'd agree they can stand to mature their games and add some darkness to them. They can be humorous and serious at the same time. I really had a hard time getting immersed into the story of SC2, and perhaps that was because it felt like it was written for a high-school kid.

Right on, Blazur!

The only way someone else would be given a shot these days is if the Market so demands (or if Activison Blizzard Exec was one of us and nostalgic about the great story of SC/BW). Right now, there is no hope for Market to demand it for the multiplayer SC game.

I hope BioWare's SW MMO comes through with their promise of deep story that would attract millions. Only then, in an situation of a Storytelling Cold War between companies (and still maybe not in relation to SC) would the writing staff be ordered to get their sh*t together.

[RussianSpy27]

As for my thoughts on the debate (or, ahem, exchange of opinions) as to whether games serve more of a TELLING or SHOWING function, I see no reason why today's interactive games can't bridge the gap between both (I apologize if it has been said, I don't think I read through every single of those posts carefully). E.G. A skilled writer can create plot and theme that is meant to make people think about life and then incorporate it into the gameplay so it fits the game.

I think even original SC and BW explores themes such as racial dominance, pride, religious intolerance and blindness, technological tempering and so forth.

In todays' games, I think Mass Effect and Dragon Age series do a decent job at that, though there is surely more than enough room for improvement.

[RussianSpy27]

-A genuine mutiny aboard the Hyperion would have been great, to show that a nice "We can do it!" speech, or two, just doesn't cut it when the people who work for you need to eat every day. What do we see of that in the final game? One "we can do it!" speech in the Cantina and all ills are immediately cured.
-How about Tosh? The potential for the story surrounding him was immense! Not only do you have a mysterious, cool new breed of supersoldier, but these guys just might be worse than anybody Raynor's ever dealt with in the past. Talk about your "ends justify the means" philosophy. The problem is Blizzard treated the "Better Future" cinematic as a conclusion to the arc, when in fact it was obviously only the jumping off point. That's when things were getting interesting. Did Raynor make a mistake breaking those bad guys out of prison, and now they're out there terrorizing the countryside? Was it just Dominion propaganda all along? Or does Tosh continue to tread the line ambiguously, never making Raynor regret helping him, but always keeping Raynor on his toes? Not only did Blizzard end the arc just when it got interesting, they pretty much tied their own hands by saying "we're not going to bring up branching elements again, so as not to sabotage your idea of what choices you made."
-How about Raynor's guilt over what happened to Tychus? Tychus spent nearly ten years in Folsom for him, never ratted out Raynor, and Raynor never even TRIED to stage a break out attempt to get his friend out. Great material here alluded to by the game... but not once followed through on the way it should have been.
-Was Ariel Hanson really a Zerg agent in disguise the way Tosh suggested? -How did Valerian manage to convince half the fleet to go with him to Char? -Was Mengsk only feigning surprise, when his own plan obviously involved Tychus getting close to Kerrigan? All of these are interesting ideas that are never resolved.

Answering any one of these could have made the story more dramatic and the plot more dense, more intricate, more exciting to follow. Imagine that after you get out of Mar Sara, 3-4 missions later you get a cinematic where half of the crew stage that mutiny in a cinematic. Immediately after, we get a mission aboard the Hyperion where you use Raynor/Tychus/Swann as combat units and have to kill your own guys who are trying to take control of the ship. Now Raynor's supplies are dwindling... which is why he's FORCED to accept Tosh's request to mine ore on Redstone as a mercenary. We get ideas, we get drama, we get explosions, and we have story progression. All in one neat, beautiful package.

Imagine that following the break-out of New Folsom, when Raynor stages his assault on Korhal itself, we have Tosh helping on the ground (you'd think Spectres might come in handy in an attack on Mengsk's core world)... but while Tosh is helping, some of his Spectres begin to kill civilians. The more civilians die, the less cash reward you get for this mission (to show the public turning against Raynor). If you want to keep the civilians alive you can kill Tosh's troublesome spectres, but then you get less help against Mengsk. Drama, gameplay, interactivity, story progression, and all we would have to lose is Tosh randomly mining Terrazine for an entire mission. Couldn't the Terrazine have been on Redstone, and mining minerals on Redstone simply been his cover for looking for the stash?

The more conflicted the characters become, the more interesting it is to follow their story. The more twists and turns you can create. Who'll side with whom? How far can Tosh's spectres push Raynor before he gives up on them and admits he was wrong for breaking them out, and has inadvertantly unleashed a terror upon the innocent populace? The seeds for all of this are planted in the game, but only the seeds. As I believe Nicol said, WOL is a lot of disconnected plot threads with no resolutions. It's a mass of great ideas that never made it past the brainstorming stage.

The easiest way to avoid making this mistake in HOTS is to make sure that every single mission is being used to do EVERYTHING it could possibly do. Getting every character as involved in the missions as possible. Raising the stakes by making the conflicts less black-and-white, the protagonists less right and the antagonists less wrong. If a mission doesn't have a plot twist of some sort (Cut-Throat's one random mercenary we don't care about betraying the other random mercenary we don't care about isn't a plot twist...), it's failing. If it doesn't allow characters to get angry at each other and question their own morals, it's failing. If it isn't progressing three storylines while simultaneously resolving a fourth, it's failing. Those might be ridiculously high standards, but if Blizz works with that in mind and achieves only half of it, that will still be a considerable improvement.

Pure.wasted, this is awesome!

Do I have your permission to quote you on a battle.net forum? I realize that posting suggestions to Blizzard there may not have much effect at all, but I'm...(well, instead of calling myself naive and gullible fool)...a hopeless romantic. :P

[pure.Wasted]

Pure.wasted, this is awesome!

Do I have your permission to quote you on a battle.net forum? I realize that posting suggestions to Blizzard there may not have much effect at all, but I'm...(well, instead of calling myself naive and gullible fool)...a hopeless romantic. :P

I've actually been working on something more detailed than that (not sure when it'll be finished), but go right ahead.