Tasteful Understated Nerdrage/MrBtongue Thread

[Murk]

Eh, I'll take that -- I get where you guys are coming from.

 

[DeepOcean]

It's easy to be the peak of gaming journalism nowdays, you only need to say the truth.

 

[Infinitron]

He's back:

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

So, according to him:
- No one knows how Nietzsche's seen his Übermensch, therefore noir protagonists are based on Nietzsche's Übermensch.
- Cyberpunk has nothing to do with Sci-Fi, but a game with magic, dragons, orcs and dwarves is cyberpunk.

Sorry, I couldn't watch this further. Did I miss any more revelations?

 

[Infinitron]

- Cyberpunk has nothing to do with Sci-Fi, but a game with magic, dragons, orcs and dwarves is cyberpunk.

Also GTA3.

 

[DragoFireheart]

That Elder Scrolls video was very well done.

 

[DeepOcean]

So, according to him:

- No one knows how Nietzsche's seen his Übermensch, therefore noir protagonists are based on Nietzsche's Übermensch.
- Cyberpunk has nothing to do with Sci-Fi, but a game with magic, dragons, orcs and dwarves is cyberpunk.

Sorry, I couldn't watch this further. Did I miss any more revelations?

I agree with some things he said on his video, but he downplays too much the role of the technology on a cyperpunk setting, the technology itself isn't the focus but the cyber part is used to show how technology can't save us from ourselves (and can make things even worse), to have hope on technology advancement alone is a bad idea. His ideas about the Übermensch and the noir characters are interesting, but he didn't developed his ideas enough. Everyone that is intelligent and have initiative is a Übermensch?

 

[Infinitron]

TUN on MMORPGs:

 

[Rivmusique]

Isn't that pathfinder online game meant to be sandboxy in an Eve manner, except fantasy? I kind of liked the sound of that when I first heard about it, should be out sometime in the next 20 years

 

[Grunker]

Isn't that pathfinder online game meant to be sandboxy in an Eve manner, except fantasy? I kind of liked the sound of that when I first heard about it, should be out sometime in the next 20 years

WoD online is supposed to be sandboxy

 

[sea]

His video on MMOs was good as always, although to be honest it's also kind of... obvious to anyone who has played an MMO that most of the genre's potential is being wasted because nobody is interested in anything but aiming as high as possible and either going big or going home. There is far more innovation in the free to play market, interestingly enough, because with those games their budgets tend to be lower overall and there's more fierce competition which necessitates appealing to niche markets more directly.

 

[Shadenuat]

Even if his points are obvious, TUN is still always pleasant to listen to (and a lot of things seem like obvious but only when you finally hear somebody knit everything together).

 

[Sranchammer]

Although a browser game, Urbandead reached similar levels of emergent gameplay in 06

 

[Delterius]

It really isn't that obvious. To MMO players that is. As a former WoW player, I only realized there was a alternative Theme Park because I used to play Tibia back when I was 10 - and it wasn't even a best example of the 'sandbox'. Furthermore, as I played WoW, I never ever realized there were so many WoW clones simply because I 'knew' WoW outranked them all. I, with many others, had this idea where if you get tired of WoW, you're tired of the genre itself.

 

[Grunker]

oh shi-

 

[Grunker]

He's calling Mass Effect an Open World game with a Non-Linear Narrative

At least he likes New Vegas better than Fallout 3... Except he does so because it's more consistent in its setting, not because of better non-linear mechanics, factions and C&C.

That video was full of derp and more hipster than any ErrantSignal video I've ever seen.

The basic argument he makes: Games should be more non-linear. They become that by having consistent settings.

L-O-Fucking-L

 

[Infinitron]

He's calling Mass Effect an Open World game with a Non-Linear Narrative

At least he likes New Vegas better than Fallout 3... Except he does so because it's more consistent in its setting, not because of better non-linear mechanics, factions and C&C.

That video was full of derp and more hipster than any ErrantSignal video I've ever seen.

The basic argument he makes: Games should be more non-linear. They become that by having consistent settings.

L-O-Fucking-L

Hmm, I watched a few snippets in the middle and I think you might be selling him short. Let me watch the video in its entirety and I'll comment.

 

[Infinitron]

Grunker Okay, watched it.

I don't think the Mass Effect portion of the video is very important. He only brings it up as an example for his Mass Effect-centric viewership. He doesn't say it's an open world game, but he does say it has an "open setting" (for lack of a better term). That is, a rich setting with lots of consistent elements to build narrative upon.

His basic argument (which might be controversial) is that in a videogame, the story and the setting are one, and thus, a more open, more rich setting, full of consistent elements affecting each other in a plausible fashion, means the game has a better story.

I'm not sure I exactly agree with that, but it's certainly true that when you have such a rich and coherent setting to work in, your story's basic "building blocks" will be of a much higher quality.

He doesn't address things like mechanics and C&C because that's not the topic of the video, although I suppose he could have given them a mention in his comparison table.

 

[Sacred_Path]

That video was full of derp and more hipster than any ErrantSignal video I've ever seen.

It's safe to assume that anyone who spends 6 minutes of a 17 minute video talking about suspension of disbelief or immersion when the subject is neither suspension of disbelief nor immersion only plays RPGs ironically.

So Bethesda designed a place in its long-standing series in a way that went against some snippets in a leaflet that came with an off-shoot game 7 years prior? OH NOES.




Also, "Bethesda wrote themselves into a creative corner", by designing a game that went against their own lore? Logical loophole obvious?

 

[Grunker]

the story and the setting are one

Which is the gist of the bullshit. I think you're wrong about Mass Effect. Mass Effect has an immensely open and very, very detailed and I guess "shandified" setting. It's honestly one of the only true marks of quality in Mass Effect. You can like or dislike the setting, but it is very detailed, very thourough and decently consistent. His argument then, is that for this reason, and because you can sometimes find a dead-end shortly to the left in gameplay, with setting-exposition, Mass Effect is Shandified to the same degree as New Vegas, or at least they're sort of trying the same things to varying degrees of success. Note that his argument is that New Vegas is better than Fallout 3 because of how it treats its setting.

This is completely retarded. New Vegas succeeds with a Shandified story because the open world and the setting is reflected in the gameplay. Because the game is open-ended in its mechanics. Because there is world reactivity.

What is so stunningly idiotic in his video here, is that he made this argument himself in the MMO video. Fallout 3 is theme park, New Vegas is truly open world. That's why New Vegas succeeds where Fallout 3 fails. Not because it has farmland. The farmland is a really great point, and he's absolutely right that the quality of the setting is immensely better because of the farmland, but it has fuck all to do with the non-linearity of the game and the story's shandification.

He doesn't address things like mechanics and C&C because that's not the topic of the video

The mechanics and C&C and the way they interact so well with the story is why Fallout New Vegas is able to criss-cross in all these directions and be F-D-A-C-Q like. It has fuck-all to do with farmland and everything to do with a consistent setting. Indeed, a game with an extremely inconsistent setting could still allow the player to criss-cross in all sorts of directions and tangents in its gameplay and expose story-elements in this way, which would make in shandified, but none the less inconsistent.

 

[Infinitron]

Which is the gist of the bullshit. I think you're wrong about Mass Effect. Mass Effect has an immensely open and very, very detailed and I guess "shandified" setting.

Wait, what? How am I wrong? That's what I'm saying.

His argument then, is that for this reason, and because you can sometimes find a dead-end shortly to the left in gameplay, with setting-exposition, Mass Effect is Shandified to the same degree as New Vegas, or at least they're sort of trying the same things to varying degrees of success.

He never says they're equally shandified. Aren't you reading something that isn't actually there?

The mechanics and C&C and the way they interact so well with the story is why Fallout New Vegas is able to criss-cross in all these directions and be F-D-A-C-Q like. It has fuck-all to do with farmland and everything to do with a consistent setting. Indeed, a game with an extremely inconsistent setting could still allow the player to criss-cross in all sorts of directions and tangents in its gameplay and expose story-elements in this way, which would make in shandified, but none the less inconsistent.

The farmland is also part of the setting and its consistency.

That said, you're certainly right that C&C (the ability to interact meaningfully with these elements of the setting) also adds a lot to the perception of a complex, consistent setting with lots of moving parts.

Look, obviously C&C isn't really part of TUN's lexicon. It's not a buzzword that he uses the same way we use it here on the Codex. Still, I think he's approaching the truth - just from a different direction than we do.

 

[Grunker]

I honestly don't understand you. You'll have to explain to me in basic terms why setting consistency makes a game non-linear.

 

[Infinitron]

I honestly don't understand you. You'll have to explain to me in basic terms why setting consistency makes a game non-linear.

It doesn't. The video isn't about non-linear gameplay, or about gameplay at all. Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are equally non-linear (actually FO3 is probably more non-linear).

He's talking about setting portrayal and its effect on the quality of a game's story.

 

[Grunker]

I honestly don't understand you. You'll have to explain to me in basic terms why setting consistency makes a game non-linear.

It doesn't. The video isn't about non-linear gameplay, or about gameplay at all. Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are equally non-linear (actually FO3 is probably more non-linear).

He's talking about setting portrayal and its effect on the quality of a game's story.

He's talking about non-linear story-telling. In a video game, this cannot be achieved without non-linear mechanics. Fallout 3's story is incredibly linear.

 

[Delterius]

I honestly don't understand you. You'll have to explain to me in basic terms why setting consistency makes a game non-linear.

It doesn't. The video isn't about non-linear gameplay, or about gameplay at all. Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are equally non-linear (actually FO3 is probably more non-linear).

He's talking about setting portrayal and its effect on the quality of a game's story.

He's talking about non-linear story-telling. In a video game, this cannot be achieved without non-linear mechanics. Fallout 3's story is incredibly linear.

He's talking about setting elaboration, which can be conveyed in every way between the 'non linear' and the 'cinematic' ends of the spectrum. Bringing mechanics into the fray by concluding that 'mechanics = story' is the next step his argument could make, reaching a new way Vegas is superior to FO3 and ME's shortcomings. He doesn't do that because its out of the video's scope.