Games "must be like Hollywood" is the worst decline in gaming

[Iucounu]

And are you suggesting that the reason for games which have poor gameplay is that the developers hired voice actors? I mean, there are hundreds of examples of truly awful games prior to 1994/1995 when voice acting started to become more common, and countless examples of excellent games after that point. The whole argument is blowing my mind. Like I was on board with the start of the thread because I thought the point was that it's boring when games try to specifically emulate the type of storytelling seen in movies, but "games are bad because the developers hired voice actors, Mass Effect is the best ever game to have voice acting" is not an endpoint I saw coming, I have to admit.

No I'm discussing fully voice acted games, limited voice acting is fine.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I'm not a fan of voice acting, I prefer to read the text by myself. But the worst degeneracy is people listening to Japanese voice acting without understanding what it even means.

That reminded me that I have Yakuza -Like a Dragon on my backlog.

 

[Viata]

But the worst degeneracy is people listening to Japanese voice acting without understanding what it even means

Agreed. Gotta follow this anon:

 

[Lemming42]

No I'm discussing fully voice acted games, limited voice acting is fine.

Depending on what you mean by "full" voice acting, what about games like Thief or Half-Life or Tomb Raider? Or Crimson Skies, Anvil of Dawn, and Baldur's Gate 3, as mentioned earlier in the thread? Max Payne, New Vegas (if you count quest design as gameplay), Commandos/Desperados, C&C Red Alert? Almost every good game made after like 1994 would qualify.

Either way I don't think parts of the budget going towards voice acting have a negative effect on gameplay mechanics; the only real drawback to them is that they reduce the amount of dialogue a game can include, which is a double-edged sword when you see how wordy and exposition-heavy some games without voice acting can get. Compare New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity, and you can see how having a limit on how much they could write for NV might have curbed some of Obsidian's worst tendencies.

 

[Vic]

just another stupid shit take "games with voice acting are bad"

 

[Iucounu]

No I'm discussing fully voice acted games, limited voice acting is fine.

Depending on what you mean by "full" voice acting

More specifically, fully voice acted dialogs. Also traders (like Skyrim's) that don't limit themselves to short greetings, or even worse if the trading menu doesn't open until they've finished their lengthy talking (that you must listen to again every time you want to trade).

I think the Stalker games have a good balance in their dialogs, with mostly the first sentence or so being voice acted, while the rest is text only. I have less hope for Stalker 2 though.

I don't mind non-dialog games to be fully voice acted (unless it's excessive cutscenes).

Either way I don't think parts of the budget going towards voice acting have a negative effect on gameplay mechanics; the only real drawback to them is that they reduce the amount of dialogue a game can include, which is a double-edged sword when you see how wordy and exposition-heavy some games without voice acting can get.

AAA studios don't seem to have any problem financing their voice acting despite endless dialogs, so yes one would think that they could afford good gameplay designers as well. Maybe their target audience is not really interested in gameplay, so the studio doesn't even try.

I agree that excessive text can be annoying as well, but surely a human editor is a better tool for cutting down on that than a bean counter? And if a studio has limited resources I do believe they must limit gameplay development in order to afford more voice acting.

 

[Serus]

Of course shit eaters like Lord_Potato will love it

Of course dumb fucks like you would like games to stop developing at a level of gold box series, with no further advances. Fortunately most of us are not as retarded.

Games pretending to be movies isn't a good direction of development though.

Don't forget: neither are games pretending to be books.
Games pretending or even being games - those I like - but since they are rare in the "mainstream" nowadays, at least when it comes crpg, I almost exclusively play indies. Which I propose everyone should do. And contrary to what some people claimed here, attempts at doing something new are usually being made in the indie games not in the titles with budget of millions. Except bear sex and adding even more polygons but that goes without saying. This is not about voice acting being always bad or whatever. It's about mainstream games never getting good again if people will keep buying them as they are now.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

The prime reason why for RPGs to go all-out Hollywood is decline hasn't been brought up. It's real simple:

Role-playing is collaborative storytelling and moment to moment improvisation. Movies are not. They're a passive experience of somebody telling you a story. Trying to merge those two is a dead end. Looking Glass realized this when they divided anything obviously movie-like from their actual gameplay fully right to their last game (not that they claimed Thief to be an RPG, smart and sophisticated guys, mind, but yeah). :D

Larian's BG3 has a weird clash of things going on by the way. On the one hand, it's implementing all of these systems likewise, and letting you improvise. And then there's all the carefully staged cutscenes (which at some point won't be able to cover EVERY OUTCOME of their improv part of their games unless they're holding that back, it's just impossible to have a cutscene for everything).

The final release doesn't let you do this anymore, but I "broke" one of their early cutscenes in EA. It's in the crypt at the starting area. There's a bunch of undead that rise when you push a lever. I picked up those undead and threw them into a fireball trap nearby. THEN I pulled the lever... This worked insofar as that the undead were toasted when they rose. In the movie.mpg aka staged cutscene beforehand however, they were clearly shown rising in their usual place. Naturally so. It's a movie somebody had staged beforehand. I could have thrown those undead someplace else. Anywhere else. The movie would have always shown them rising in the place I picked them up from. Larian's solution to this was to limit your agency. You cannot touch these guys anymore without the cutscene being triggered and them rising immediately. This is a simple example. But one that shows the dilemma.

Hollywood.mpg and actual moment to moment improvisation don't gel very well. No wonder that most fully cinematic games are far less open affairs -- with linear quests, very finite set of protagonists or even set ones to boot.

 

[NecroLord]

Hollywood RPG:
Pick your character and class:
1. Nigger Rapper.
2. Casting Couch Enthusiastic Woman
3. Jew Producer.
4. Jew Director.
5. Strong Woman.
6. Hypocritical Leftist White Male.

Etc.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Hollywood RPG:
Pick your character and class:
1. Nigger Rapper.
2.Casting Couch Enthusiastic Woman
3. Jew Producer.
4. Jew Director.

Etc.

Needs Drug Addict Has-been -class.

 

[Devastator]

Hollywood RPG:
Pick your character and class:
1. Nigger Rapper.
2. Casting Couch Enthusiastic Woman
3. Jew Producer.
4. Jew Director.
5. Strong Woman.
6. Hypocritical Leftist White Male.

Etc.

Can you multi class?

I think that a good level 10 character would be a nonbinary queen (level 4 Strong Woman + level 4 Leftist Male) with a dip in BBC Rapper (2 levels).

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Hollywood RPG:
Pick your character and class:
1. Nigger Rapper.
2. Casting Couch Enthusiastic Woman
3. Jew Producer.
4. Jew Director.
5. Strong Woman.
6. Hypocritical Leftist White Male.

Etc.

Can you multi class?

I think that a good level 10 character would be a nonbinary queen (level 4 Strong Woman + level 4 Leftist Male) with a dip in BBC Rapper (2 levels).

If it's written by Iron Tower Studio you don't want to build hybrid for first playthrough.

 

[Reinhardt]

Hollywood RPG:
Pick your character and class:
1. Nigger Rapper.
2. Casting Couch Enthusiastic Woman
3. Jew Producer.
4. Jew Director.
5. Strong Woman.
6. Hypocritical Leftist White Male.

Etc.

Can you multi class?

I think that a good level 10 character would be a nonbinary queen (level 4 Strong Woman + level 4 Leftist Male) with a dip in BBC Rapper (2 levels).

why would you gimp your character with 4 levels of white male? literally zero benefits.

 

[Devastator]

Hollywood RPG:
Pick your character and class:
1. Nigger Rapper.
2. Casting Couch Enthusiastic Woman
3. Jew Producer.
4. Jew Director.
5. Strong Woman.
6. Hypocritical Leftist White Male.

Etc.

Can you multi class?

I think that a good level 10 character would be a nonbinary queen (level 4 Strong Woman + level 4 Leftist Male) with a dip in BBC Rapper (2 levels).

why would you gimp your character with 4 levels of white male? literally zero benefits.

What do you mean? His hypocritical leftist background has native proficiency in cuckoldind, being stepped on and sucking cock. That's a preferred alternative to speech, you just persuade people by letting them fuck your partner, etc.

P. S. It just occurred to me that if the codex made a game like that under a pseudonym it would probably be a best seller. Not because they would find it funny but because they would identify with it. "I can finally be the hero I am also in real life." What is bear sex (boring) compared to a Strong Woman Jew Director stepping on you while a party of BBC Rappers ravage all the holes of your trans partner?

 

[Reinhardt]

Hollywood RPG:
Pick your character and class:
1. Nigger Rapper.
2. Casting Couch Enthusiastic Woman
3. Jew Producer.
4. Jew Director.
5. Strong Woman.
6. Hypocritical Leftist White Male.

Etc.

Can you multi class?

I think that a good level 10 character would be a nonbinary queen (level 4 Strong Woman + level 4 Leftist Male) with a dip in BBC Rapper (2 levels).

why would you gimp your character with 4 levels of white male? literally zero benefits.

What do you mean? His hypocritical leftist background has native proficiency in cuckoldind, being stepped on and sucking cock. That's a preferred alternative to speech, you just persuade people by letting them fuck your partner, etc.

and what's the point? when with just one level in jew you can silence anyone with "muh holocaust" and win all speech checks by default.

 

[His Dudeness]

I agree OP, the birth of the concept of games as a nebulous "experience" instead of a game is one of the greatest pitfalls of modern game design.

They will spend tens of thousands to make the characters in God of War sound like Californians arguing because that is the expectation, while the core mechanics of the game remain little more than follow the marked road until the next cutscene.

 

[Stavrophore]

I literally cannot enjoy modern (post-modern) CRPGs anymore

If I wanna watch a fucking movie, I'll go to the cinema. If I wanna read a book, I'll read a book. If I want GAMEPLAY I'll play a GAME.

When I play old school games like Wizardry or Dark Sun, I really feel great

No one is holding your hand. No voice acting. No cutscenes. Just this abstracted gameplay which invokes this dreamlike feeling. Games nowadays are oversimulated.

Im really pissed when games where cutscenes are made using in-game engine take player controls. Why not reneact that cutscene through gameplay and animations while retaining same pov and immersion? If player stands in a place where animation should take place, there should be another alternate place to play the scene, or the npc should give you a hint that you should move your character like "geralt, could you move aside, i want to sit at the table". Overall, game devs should do everything as possible to not rely on cutscenes that take the player from its POV and take its controls.

There's nothing wrong with voice acting, voice acting was always a problem due to finite resources needed to enact it, now with ai personality voice models you can make endless amount of voice acting. Every minor quest can be voice acted and even generated like fetch quests, with more elaborate quests coming in future where the full aspect of ai personalities could be leveraged with a more simulationist worlds[though i doubt the gaming will follow these new tools, as its too much work].

 

[Lemming42]

I wonder if part of the reliance on cutscenes is that a lot of current devs will have grown up in the 80s/90s, where cinematic elements were still exciting. I remember rushing through the levels in Command & Conquer and Crusader: No Remorse just so I could see the next FMV sequence, and loving the cutscenes between Tomb Raider levels so much that I wished they'd make a whole movie of them.

Of course the novelty of those elements in games has long since worn off, but I wonder if a lot of modern developers are just trying to recapture how impressed they were at some older games, especially in the mid-90s, that first started playing around with movie-like qualities. It's interesting to think back to the era of QTEs because, even though they were shit, they were an sincere and genuine attempt to fuse gameplay and cutscenes.

The final release doesn't let you do this anymore, but I "broke" one of their early cutscenes in EA. It's in the crypt at the starting area. There's a bunch of undead that rise when you push a lever. I picked up those undead and threw them into a fireball trap nearby. THEN I pulled the lever... This worked insofar as that the undead were toasted when they rose. In the movie.mpg aka staged cutscene beforehand however, they were clearly shown rising in their usual place. Naturally so. It's a movie somebody had staged beforehand. I could have thrown those undead someplace else. Anywhere else. The movie would have always shown them rising in the place I picked them up from. Larian's solution to this was to limit your agency. You cannot touch these guys anymore without the cutscene being triggered and them rising immediately. This is a simple example. But one that shows the dilemma.

This is a really good case study. I do think BG3 generally does a fair job of letting the player improvise and play with game systems (you can skip the entire Nightsong arena battle and the entire Cazador battle, plus maybe some others, with the right amount of thinking ahead, and the game allows for it) but that undead thing is definitely an example of them getting it wrong.

There's a lot of cool ways that cutscenes/scripted events change based on what you've already done though - one example that springs to mind is that if you pickpocket the book from the woman who can teleport you to Avernus, she'll play out the cutscene as normal but when the time comes for her to get the book out, she'll realise it's been stolen, correctly blame you, and tell you to get out of her store, which forces you to figure out the ritual on your own.

 

[NecroLord]

I literally cannot enjoy modern (post-modern) CRPGs anymore

If I wanna watch a fucking movie, I'll go to the cinema. If I wanna read a book, I'll read a book. If I want GAMEPLAY I'll play a GAME.

When I play old school games like Wizardry or Dark Sun, I really feel great

No one is holding your hand. No voice acting. No cutscenes. Just this abstracted gameplay which invokes this dreamlike feeling. Games nowadays are oversimulated.

Im really pissed when games where cutscenes are made using in-game engine take player controls. Why not reneact that cutscene through gameplay and animations while retaining same pov and immersion? If player stands in a place where animation should take place, there should be another alternate place to play the scene, or the npc should give you a hint that you should move your character like "geralt, could you move aside, i want to sit at the table". Overall, game devs should do everything as possible to not rely on cutscenes that take the player from its POV and take its controls.

There's nothing wrong with voice acting, voice acting was always a problem due to finite resources needed to enact it, now with ai personality voice models you can make endless amount of voice acting. Every minor quest can be voice acted and even generated like fetch quests, with more elaborate quests coming in future where the full aspect of ai personalities could be leveraged with a more simulationist worlds[though i doubt the gaming will follow these new tools, as its too much work].

Id Tech games used to do this, which I thought was pretty cool.
Star Trek: Elite Force 1 and 2.
Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy.

 

[Stavrophore]

Id Tech games used to do this, which I thought was pretty cool.
Star Trek: Elite Force 1 and 2.
Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy.

I didn't mean merely doing cutscenes in ingame engine which is most prevalent in modern games, but not taking control from player, ie. doing the "cutscene" ingame.

Here's an example where star trek takes control from player. Or maybe you had some particular cutscene in mind?

 

[Lemming42]

Elite Force has a lot of story points where you get to keep "playing" while Tuvok talks about what material the wall is made of or whatever, but it falls into the Half-Life 2 style of "interactive cutscene" where you're basically locked in a room while NPCs play out a script that you can't interfere with and which proceeds the same regardless of what you do.

 

[Stavrophore]

Elite Force has a lot of story points where you get to keep "playing" while Tuvok talks about what material the wall is made of or whatever, but it falls into the Half-Life 2 style of "interactive cutscene" where you're basically locked in a room while NPCs play out a script that you can't interfere with and which proceeds the same regardless of what you do.

Yes, that's better than completely detached from the game world, pre-rendered cutscenes, but its still not what i had in mind.

 

[NecroLord]

Id Tech games used to do this, which I thought was pretty cool.
Star Trek: Elite Force 1 and 2.
Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy.

I didn't mean merely doing cutscenes in ingame engine which is most prevalent in modern games, but not taking control from player, ie. doing the "cutscene" ingame.

Here's an example where star trek takes control from player. Or maybe you had some particular cutscene in mind?

Ah, I see what you mean.
Still, those were awesome cutscenes.

 

[luj1]

Of course shit eaters like Lord_Potato will love it

Of course dumb fucks like you would like games to stop developing at a level of gold box series, with no further advances. Fortunately most of us are not as retarded.

Games pretending to be movies isn't a good direction of development though.

Don't forget: neither are games pretending to be books.

Which no one implied is a good direction

Disco Elysium (pretending to be a CYOA book) or Baldurs Gate 3 (pretending to be a movie) are equal offenders

 

[vitellus]

it has to be handled like half-life, but not. allow the scene to play out as in half-life but fucking allow me to walk right the fuck by and move on with the gameplay. half-life failed by locking the door to make me listen to the mewling.