SonicRob: does history have a “plot”?
FyreHaar: good books do
FyreHaar: Plot is just the story arc
FyreHaar: and the civil war is a pretty damn good one
SonicRob: plot is the imposition of illusory order upon the chaos of reality. it is the most fundamental way in which human beings fool themselves about the nature of existence
SonicRob: not that we have a choice
SonicRob: we turn everything into narrative
SonicRob: our minds just work that way
FyreHaar: are you saying that plot is an aspect of the gestalt mechanism of the human psyche?
SonicRob: like we are seeing bunnies in a cloud
FyreHaar: our inbuilt pattern recognition firmware
SonicRob: yes
FyreHaar: well, yeah
FyreHaar: ohh, I see a bunny in the sky…
Category: Uncategorized
Chat Box
SonicRob: Shinji Mikami, Goichi Suda and Akira Yamaoka are making a game together
FyreHaar: what have they done before?
SonicRob: That is like me saying that Sam Raimi, Spike Jonze and Danny Elfman are making a movie
FyreHaar: whoa
FyreHaar: freaky
SonicRob: Mikami invented Resident Evil
SonicRob: Suda invented No More Heroes and Killer 7
SonicRob: Yamaoka did the soundtrack for all the Silent Hill games and the film
FyreHaar: so a sort of Shawn of the Dead kind of game
SonicRob: they are like a Japanese videogame version of the Traveling Wilburys
SonicRob: that’s the thing, they are innovators
SonicRob: so who the fuck knows what they’ll do when you put them together?
SonicRob: I desperately hope there are no zombies in the game
FyreHaar: could be awesome, could be horrific could be blah
FyreHaar: blah would be worst
SonicRob: but it is supposed to be “action-horror”
SonicRob: yeah
SonicRob: I’d prefer a spectacular failure
Chat Box
FyreHaar: I finished Team of Rivals!!!!!
SonicRob: good work!
FyreHaar: it was
FyreHaar: I cried at the end
FyreHaar: it was sad
SonicRob: well, you know what happens to some people
SonicRob: coughLincolndiescough
FyreHaar: well. I always cry when Lincoln dies
FyreHaar: he was truly an amazing dude
SonicRob: oh man, I wept like a baby at the end of Abe Lincoln vs the Zombies
FyreHaar: how was that?
FyreHaar: it’s by the guy who did P&P&Z
SonicRob: the dialogue was too modern in places
SonicRob: he didn’t really create a sense of place
SonicRob: but the action was good
SonicRob: and the characters were interesting
SonicRob: hehe
SonicRob: “Team of Rivals and Zombies”
FyreHaar: team of rival zombies?
FyreHaar: team of zombie rivals!
SonicRob: Survival Rivals
Chat Box
SonicRob: 2 kinds of predators!
SonicRob: ork weirdboyz!
SonicRob: ahhhhh!!!!
FyreHaar: yay!!
SonicRob: oh fuck
FyreHaar: ??
SonicRob: each chaos leader is devoted to a different god
SonicRob: just like we said!
FyreHaar: just like we said!!!
SonicRob: yay us!
FyreHaar: yay relic loves us!!!!!
SonicRob: they are on our wavelength
FyreHaar: I asked for chaos in our first podcast
FyreHaar: we talked about the different gods
SonicRob: new multi mode
SonicRob: no teams
FyreHaar: maybe they read our blog?
SonicRob: 6 individuals
FyreHaar: ffa???
SonicRob: ayup
FyreHaar: awesome sauceum
SonicRob: VPs count up instead of down
SonicRob: and you can destroy the VPs
FyreHaar: whoa!
SonicRob: there’s a fuck you
FyreHaar: for real
FyreHaar: can you fix it?
SonicRob: it costs, but yes
SonicRob: I still can’t believe it’s fucking Eliphas
FyreHaar: well in canon he survives Kaurava
FyreHaar: oh wait
FyreHaar: sorry that’s Firaveus
SonicRob: Kronos
SonicRob: he dies
FyreHaar: he really dies, bad
SonicRob: yeah
FyreHaar: like cast into the void
SonicRob: well, that’s chaos for ya
SonicRob: he was the only leader with a sense of humor
FyreHaar: yeah
FyreHaar: sexy voice, too
SonicRob: I wouldn’t know =P
Assassin’s Creed by Harlequin!
I am right in the meat of Assassin’s Creed II right now and loving it. I adored the original and this has improved on the experience. It’s just super fun and I can’t wait for each new environment to play around in.
Ubisoft publishing Assassin’s Creed II Novel
I confess that I was, for an instant, totally into this.
More Ezio, more Assassin’s Creed, it’s a good thing, right? More explanation of his life, more revealed about Altair perhaps. More juicy, juicy plot! Romance, action, assassinations!
Shite.
I like running randomly over roofs, stealing every treasure I can find, making my horse gallop a lot and generally fucking around. I like jumping off of roofs without the leap of faith and seeing how far I can fall without dying. They will leave that out. Where in the novel will Ezio use all of his attacks and movements in the Animus loading screen to make a funky disco dance? Where!?
I don’t want to read their interpretation of how I should be playing the game and the adaptation of my playing style would be boring reading. Why don’t they just use the money they are spending on this to make more DLC?
[h/t to Destructiod]
Chat Box
SonicRob: man, that dictionary lady that Tycho linked is kinda hot
SonicRob: especially when she spells
FyreHaar: I think that is the idea
SonicRob: I bet she gets so much play now
SonicRob: M-W will be deluged with requests for her phone number
SonicRob: millions of fans for the dictionary redhead
FyreHaar: mmm, wordy girlz…….
SonicRob: fuck yeah wordy grrlz
SonicRob: If I were single I’d hit that like a pinata
Chat Box
FyreHaar: what should I have for lunch??
SonicRob: food
FyreHaar: I will take PTO to come over there and beat you
You Had Me at Hex Grid
Civilization V has been announced today for a Fall release. Firaxis reports that they are excited to be working on the first game to combine Alan Moore’s seminal neo-anarchist graphic novel with the deep technology tree and addictive gameplay of…
Hm? Yes?
Oh. Oh, I see.
Ah.
Civilization V Announced, Introduces HexesSid Meier’s legendary turn-based historical strategy series Civilization will receive a brand new installment on PC this fall, publisher 2K Games announced today.
Civilization V will charge players with once again leading and shaping a civilisation all the way from the dawn of society through to the space age, now backed by an all-new graphics engine and boasting “unprecedented modding capabilities.”
An “entirely new combat system” which includes ranged bombardment is promised. Civ V also makes the jump to hexagon-shaped tiles, which 2K says will take the series “in new directions” with “deeper strategy” and “more realistic gameplay.”
“Each new version of Civilization presents exciting challenges for our team,” said series creator Sid Meier in a press statement. “Thankfully, ideas on how to bring new and fun experiences to Civ players never seem to stop flowing. From fully animated leaders and realistic landscapes, new combat tactics, expanded diplomacy and shared mods, we’re excited for players to see the new vision our team at Firaxis has brought to the series.”
Developed yet again by Firaxis Games–who’ve helmed the series since Civ III–Sid Meier’s Civilization V is slated for release on PC in fall of this year.
So via Shacknews we see that a new Civ has been announced. The graphics can be assumed to be charming and aesthetically pleasing, so let’s ignore those for the moment and talk about how it will play. Bombardment? Ok, this will allow for bigger projected zones of control. Expanded diplomacy? Intriguing for me, as I’m a big fan of killing them with kindness. Hex grids?
Oh, it’s motherfucking on.
Press X to Be A Dick
Dante’s Inferno is out and plumbing the depths of mediocrity essentially as expected. I’m going to use Dante’s pointless redemption/damnation system as a jumping-off point/excuse to bring up an issue that’s been sloshing around in the back of my gamer consciousness for a while now: games are not depicting morality properly.
Moral choice in games seems to have devolved into either a tedious form of stat allocation (a la Dante’s Inferno and Infamous), or a way to pad out playing time by offering two sort-of-but-not-really different versions of the story to play through (as perfected by Bioware). Morality is offered as a way to tailor the story to the player’s ideal – “play your way” etc. – but so what? There rarely seem to be any lasting effects as a result of the player’s “moral choices”, so where does morality come into things?
Without any consequences, you don’t have choices to decide between, you merely have selections to make. In which case, who gives a fuck? That’s just a skill tree, they’ve had that forever. Whether you put points into your “be a douchbag” skill by using a menu screen or by shooting 50 babies doesn’t really matter; you’re still using a resource (skill points or choices) to purchase an upgrade. When games like Infamous make you chose between acting bad or good, they aren’t creating a dynamic story with depth and replayability. They’re just creating a skill point allocation system with an incredibly tedious and burdensome UI.
Part of what I think I’m bumping up against here is that there’s a chasm between story and gameplay when it comes to consequences. The story consequences can be completely different from the gameplay consequences; if the story is telling you that doing something would be bad, but the actual rules of the game don’t punish you for being bad, or even treat you the same as if you had made the “good” choice, you get a disconnect between what these two sets of moral systems are telling you. If I were a pointy-headed movie lover who studied film for three years at the University of California, I might call these two sets diegetic morality and mechanical morality. But I won’t.
On the off chance that I’m not explaining myself well, here’s an example. In a Star Wars movie, staying true to the Force and not going over to the Dark Side is a constant struggle with temptation, the failure of which essentially risks both a poisonous addiction and eternal damnation. In a Star Wars game, you stay on the light side if you want telekinesis and you go over to the dark side if you want force lightning.
Chat Box
Sonic Rob: http://www.destructoid.com/is-heavy-rain-doing-videogames-a-disservice–162102.phtml
Sonic Rob: Jim Sterling raises an interesting point
FyreHaar: he has a good point
FyreHaar: we go on and on about not comparing movies to the books they are based on because the media are so different
FyreHaar: shouldn’t the same be said for movies and video games?
FyreHaar: A short video game is 10 hours
FyreHaar: a ferociously long movie is four hours
FyreHaar: even accounting for fail states and learning curves
FyreHaar: a movie is never going to have the potential for in-depth story telling that a video game does
FyreHaar: and interactivity is the true video game art form
FyreHaar: we are never going to be able to tell the people in the movie what we want them to do
FyreHaar: to feel that intensely personal stake in their actions
FyreHaar: as we do with our RPG characters
FyreHaar: or the idea of playing a game over and over and manipulating the outcomes to see how much depth has been programmed in for us to explore.
FyreHaar: I mean, think about that
FyreHaar: something like DragonAge where they put in all these possible futures
FyreHaar: just in case you want to go there someday
FyreHaar: to see what would happen
FyreHaar: that is so much effort and care about the experience
FyreHaar: a movie is a rail shooter
Sonic Rob: When I see a game that is promising movie levels of “cinematicness”, I don’t feel like it’s a criticism of games
Sonic Rob: I think it’s a criticism of movies, you know?
Sonic Rob: that they are somehow unsatisfying
FyreHaar: I think it’s a camera movement style
FyreHaar: I think it just means they are trying to make it look and feel like a movie
Sonic Rob: a “cinematic game” is a movie with interactivity
Sonic Rob: not a game with lots of cutscenes
FyreHaar: purely stylistic
Sonic Rob: I disagree
Sonic Rob: I think it’s a lot more fundamental
Sonic Rob: hideo kojima doesn’t really care about gameplay much
Sonic Rob: he wants to make a movie
FyreHaar: a really, really long movie
FyreHaar: that he justifies the length of with action bits that other people make for him
Sonic Rob: that is a beard
Sonic Rob: a fig leaf
FyreHaar: for real
FyreHaar: because if there were no game, it would just be another eight season long anime series where the plot is indecipherable to westerners
FyreHaar: and no one would think he was a genius