Game News NWN2 screens extravaganza

[kris]

1. We can't continue this conversation since I as an insider and you (I presume) a gamer see things very differently. You don't seem to want to try to think things differently since what you mostly do with your replies is trying to be "smart" to put it politely.

2. When you understand that text is simply a medium to convey atmosphere and images to people who are not in your immediate vicinity we can continue talking about this.

3. As for text selling more than images and sound, the decline of book sales and the domination of cinema and video games covers my position completely.

4. People are not interested about the words themselves but rather what they express.

5. Text is the written word in case you do not understand completely the meaning of the word, and modern games try to minimize text to merely subtitling and try to present the story in a more cinematic way, with sound and images.

6. A story is not the printed text like a painting is not the acrylic (or whatever kind) paint that was used to draw it.

7. If images and sound are not that important then we should probably still work in DOS and the internet should be only text like it was many years ago.

8. Virtual reality should not be a holy grail for gamers.

9. Further more if text is the most important thing we should keep sending letters to each other instead of using the telephone or videophone and so on.

10. Also the very well known saying that goes like "A picture says a thousand words" can put this debate to sleep.

11. Last but not least with my posts I don't try to impress you, unless you were a beautiful Swedish girl :D I simply try to present to you a different point of view. Whether you take the hint or choose to ignore it it's completely up to you. Internet often gives people a false sense of importance and accomplishment.

1. Nice prelude... I presume then you won't tell what kind of insider you are and where you work?

2. Heh? Of course I understand that. I never been talking in other terms at all, I said from the first time that text is there to help you create your own world in your mind. That is the power of a book, it helps you create your own fantasy world, while a movie onyl make you see someone else versions of a world. Same goes for games.

3. Books sell very well still. I never argued that images ro graphics doesn't sell though. although video games does not dominate that much. :D

4. Yes indeed, hey! now you again seems to think I said something else than what I did.

5. What be the word? Oh yes, condescending... You seems to think I am dumb and blind or even a child while beginning eveything showing your own selfworth. Have you not noticed how everyone here knows very well that the cinematic experience is more prevalent for every game. What most here and surely including me don't like is how that takes over with the cost of gameplay, depth, options and how big/long the games are. As for in how text versus graphics means that instead of getting a deep NPC that we can inteact with in several ways we get a very nice looking NPC with facial expressions for the two things the NPC can say. Darn it if only Troika could have the same (size of) crew as Bethesda or Bioware then we would get a so engaging Arcanum game that I would be playing it still. Speech is nice, I already said it before, but if you don't want speech to be a limitation on the game then you need to complement it with text.

6. The whole description and build up of a story is in text or in someone brain. But the importance is that a story does not improve more than marginally from better graphics (facial expressions being the only thing really making a stride), it improves with the writing of it.

7. I'll answer with your own words here:

since what you mostly do with your replies is trying to be "smart" to put it politely

8. What do you imply here?

9. Text = word = talking. You don't talk in a game therefore all conversation is text, whether speech is implementated or not is a feature. a nice feature when done well, but as I said before it is also a very limiting feature, especially if there is a demand to have all text spoken. I respect if you want a short "immortal hero on rail" game with few choices, I hope you respect that that is not what I want.

10. That saying is a lie. A picture can tell a thousand lies to. But more so, a picture shows a situation, when we comes to a story or roleplaying aspects then we need much more than seeing a situational aspect. It shows a state, not a story and surely shows little of roleplaying. This is about roleplaying games right? I have used roleplaying images in PnP, but I did in the end find it much better to create images in the minds of people. If anything a picture then was best used to show a situation that players could react on as a picture can indeed be more factual than visual (about non-people pics).

Now I don't know why you say this would put this debate to sleep. If not dungeon siege is the roleplaying game that everyone dreams about. That would be described as "barely interactive slideshow".

11. I have hot sisters, does that count? I can see I talked straight beside you or something. I thought this was a discussion about the importance of graphic exellence while you seem to think I want no graphics at all.

 

[Section8]

A word is also worth a thousand pictures.

I think that certain narrative elements will always enhance a game. One of my favourites is in Fallout as you lave the vault. Something like "The end of the tunnel is flooded with natural light. For the first time in your life, you are looking at the outside world."

To try and portray those two simple sentences by means of visuals would be inelegant.

 

[SorelissLarethian]

"although video games does not dominate that much."

That shows how much you really know about games.Video games have become the largest chunk of entertaintment industry for quite a few years now with growth rate over 3-4% in a world scale every year. The money involved outnumber the amount of money for films. Probably more people play videogames of all sorts than watching films.

There is no point continuing this as reading text or watching images is clearly a matter of preference.What is also certain, more people like to view images than read books and that is why when screenshots of what will hopefully be a great RPG game like NWN2 come out make such a huge noise in the CRPG community. Many people said that NWN was one of the worst crpgs ever. The millions of people and thousands of modules from one of the most vibrant mod communities proves them wrong again and again.

"I think the view to adopt is one of balance."

"Graphics can never replace the power of the imagination to construct imagery. Which is why novels will never die."

oh you're so right about that!!
as one of my ancestors said "metron ariston", perfection comes from measure/balance.

I remember once they asked Aonuma or Miyamoto why so many years of Zelda we have not heared Link talk in his adventures.He replied that it was all part of why Link is so popular, as everyone who plays Zelda in his head has his own version of Link's voice.This way Link comes closer to you, becomes a more personal thing.

"To try and portray those two simple sentences by means of visuals would be inelegant."
It really depends on the artist.

I like to read the books you find in RPGs.They add more depth to the world around you.They talk about wars, clans, gods.Excite your imagination and complete the experience.

 

[kris]

I like to read the books you find in RPGs.They add more depth to the world around you.They talk about wars, clans, gods.Excite your imagination and complete the experience.

The power of Harry Potter. How everyone loves it just because they feel or would like to feel like the characters.

Personally I prefer to create everything in my mind now, indeed I do write some stuff too. But that is a bit about age, for almost everything you create in your mind comes from things you know and have seen.

 

[LlamaGod]

You can go far more detailed and thus more immersive with text descriptions to assist the graphics, which should give a general idea.

The text gives a specific idea.

No amount of bitmapped, light bloomed, soft shadowed, direct x 9.0 crap can get that kind of detail.

 

[SorelissLarethian]

It really depends on the artist.

 

[Atrokkus]

No amount of bitmapped, light bloomed, soft shadowed, direct x 9.0 crap can get that kind of detail.

Now you wouldn't argue that in a few years, home rigs reach a level that would enable the developers employ the cinematic graphics in the gameplay, whcih would certainly equalize with any text description, don't you agree? Now, is there a real need in that is another questions. You see, there are two exremes + plus one compromise here:
1. you have text-only games (Zork, et al)
2. you have text + bird's eye graphics (no close-up detalization, except for Fallout where you could see some NPCs' faces).
3. full-graphic, text only for vocals, with FP or free-camera viewport. requires a move-level graphics to actually compete with text-only or text+bird's eye.

The trick is that you can't really combine the text-system with the full-graphic FP system, for obvious reasons - the player would get conflicting data. The fact that he's looking "out of the PC's eyes" effectively gets him to "believe" what he sees and consider it taht which actually is there and supposed to be there, while the old RPGs had primitive graphics that acted as just a map of the area, with relative and schematic representation of surroundings, making them imagine the details, not see them.