Yeah the BBB is a bit of a joke. I'm going to the BBB about my "choose your own adventure" book. It ended with me dying and that is NOT the adventure I wanted.
Also I found it interesting that a room was constructed with three buttons that would decide the fate of a very particular outcome of previous events. It's like the people who built the facility saw this whole scenario coming.
I don't understand. If the game is dependent on choices, and there are SO many choices, no two people should have the same ending. Even if each player doesn't get a completely unique ending, there should still be hundreds, if not thousands, of variations. No? Seeing as how there should be so many endings, how can there be such a large group of people who all dislike THE ending, as if there is a single one? If there is a single ending, then it doesn't matter what the fuck you choose, as long as you don't choose to get game over before the end.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is worse. It's not even a menu. It's literal buttons you walk over to and push. "Push this button to kill everyone here and hide what happened. Push this other button to tell the truth and make humanity turn forever away from science. Push this OTHER other button to ..."
Ah, yes, the Ending Vending machine. Really the only leg they had to stand on there was that it was tradition - Both the first and the god-awful second game ended that way - but they still managed to fuck it up, at least both of the previous games gave you different endings depending on which option you went with.
I don't understand. If the game is dependent on choices, and there are SO many choices, no two people should have the same ending. Even if each player doesn't get a completely unique ending, there should still be hundreds, if not thousands, of variations. No? Seeing as how there should be so many endings, how can there be such a large group of people who all dislike THE ending, as if there is a single one? If there is a single ending, then it doesn't matter what the fuck you choose, as long as you don't choose to get game over before the end.
Oversimplification, but I'm not surprised or grousing on you for it, it's not like you've played the game.
They do differ, but you have to both be a real lore-head and you have to get a lot of it by interpretation of what you see and paying attention - if you don't read pretty much everything, it's easy to miss a TON of stuff that all ties in. The other problem is that there are common elements which make no sense narratively - for example, all the mass relays are destroyed, which they established with ME2's arrival DLC(Which is referenced in 3, no matter if you played it or not) basically sterilizes the system the relay was in. So, basically, the war was won...except then the homeworlds of every sentient race worth speaking of in the galaxy was wiped clean of life, except earth. Thus basically outdoing the reapers at their own game.
Even if you ignore that, it's just Ending sequence, the encounter with the heroic Marauder Shields, ending sequence, choice, cutscene for that choice, more generic cutscene that only has slight differences between choices, credits roll.
It probably doesn't help that everybody who has actually played the game agrees that almost everything else is absolutely fantastic. In fact, the general sentiment is that if not for the narratively inconsistent ending, it would have been the perfect coda to the trilogy.
The fast travel aspect of it is a red herring, nobody is really trapped on their particular worlds, getting around the galaxy is still possible for most of them - it's just a little slower, in the region of months, rather than hours. It's like being dumped back from Air travel to sailing ships, we can still get between continents, it just goes slower.
Technically the whole last game is one big ending for all the choices that you've made throughout the previous two games. What people are complaining about is really only the last ten minutes of the game, where you get three choices but the cutscenes for each one are very similar to eachother and also vague.
Technically the whole last game is one big ending for all the choices that you've made throughout the previous two games. What people are complaining about is really only the last ten minutes of the game, where you get three choices but the cutscenes for each one are very similar to eachother and also vague.
So no matter what other choices you make in the rest of the game, the last ten minutes is always the same and always gives the same three choices? That's not even a fraction as complex as Chrono Trigger. These people are definitely full of shit if they think that you craft your own unique experience through your choices with that kind of game. Fighting games have more endings than that, and the only choice you made is which character to play.
So no matter what other choices you make in the rest of the game, the last ten minutes is always the same and always gives the same three choices? That's not even a fraction as complex as Chrono Trigger.
Yep, pretty much.
These people are definitely full of shit if they think that you craft your own unique experience through your choices with that kind of game.
Ah, you were doing so well, then you just had to go fuck it up. This is why you should be a little more cautious talking about games you haven't played and don't actually know much about. Especially with your habit of oversimplifying things.
Speaking to, say, five people who actually played the game, you'll get at least five different experiences, and that's just people who have played only ME3. They'll have some shared moments, sure, but still unique experiences - sort of like a random selection of five people who went to the same high school. If they've imported from ME1 and/or 2, then the world around you becomes dramatically more complex, so that the game attempts to wrap up or reference literally every single major choice you made in the previous games, and the web that each of those choices formed within the previous games - there are things which I thought were minor choices, made with hardly a second thought which have been referenced, or had a story built around it, or in some cases, come back to cause problems. The part that is almost exactly the same no matter what you do is simply the ending.
Fighting games have more endings than that, and the only choice you made is which character to play.
Bit of a weak comparison, as fighting games don't often have an interactive story(or in most cases, any story beyond the framing story), they have "Punch this guy till you get a cutscene, repeat." It's a flip-book with bruises, rather than a story you have any effect on, unless you count Win-get-a-cutscene-lose-press-continue-try-again. And if you could choose even two more characters to play as in mass effect rather than Shepard, it's likely the game would be three times as large and thirty times as complex.
Every time you play Space Invaders it's a different experience. You shoot the enemies in a different order. You die at a different time. You make it further, you make it less far.
If you want to claim that your game gives the player a lot of choices, and those choices have an effect on the story, then that means exactly that. Each and every choice I make should change the story. If I play the game again and make only one choice differently, then the story should be different by exactly one choice worth of difference. If I play the game again and make all the choices differently, the game should be so drastically different that it might not even be the same game.
Nobody does this. Everyone wants to say they do, but they are all full of shit. All the differences these games make are a different line of dialogue here, or a different character there, or the timing of an event a little different over there. Chrono Trigger only had 13ish endings, which is about the same as a CYOA book. That's more control over the outcome than these newfangled games have, but far less than they claim.
Man, I should just make a cookie-cutter third person action game that has the same number of choices as Chrono Trigger. I'll make the same outlandish claims as these other publishers, and all the suckers will probably think it's the best game ever made.
Just to remind you - Scott, think about what has happened literally every single time you've tried to argue about a video game you haven't played and know almost nothing about. Now stop thinking positively about it, because despite what I don't doubt you're thinking, you've never yet actually come out of those arguments either winning or not looking foolish.
Now that this has failed to discourage you at all, carry on. It's always entertaining, at the least.
Scott let's take a example from other kinds of games. Roleplaying kind.
Let's imagine that there were a table top rpg system where players all played bounty hunters in wild west who try to find and catch know criminal Six-Finger-Pete, the game always starts with that and always ends with bounty hunters finding and capturing Six-Finger-Pete. Now tell me. How many different stories can be told or created with that game? Based on your arguments, the answer should be one, but is it?
Japanese developers are much better at diversifying game experience. A few that immediately come to mind:
Chrono Cross Dark Souls Disgaea
However I will say that Scott's definition of how RPGs should play out (as far as video games) is basically a world simulator and at a certain point that gets incredibly not fun.
Scott let's take a example from other kinds of games. Roleplaying kind.
Let's imagine that there were a table top rpg system where players all played bounty hunters in wild west who try to find and catch know criminal Six-Finger-Pete, the game always starts with that and always ends with bounty hunters finding and capturing Six-Finger-Pete. Now tell me. How many different stories can be told or created with that game? Based on your arguments, the answer should be one, but is it?
There could be a lot of different outcomes to this that would not be the same, which is what he is saying.
Scott let's take a example from other kinds of games. Roleplaying kind.
Let's imagine that there were a table top rpg system where players all played bounty hunters in wild west who try to find and catch know criminal Six-Finger-Pete, the game always starts with that and always ends with bounty hunters finding and capturing Six-Finger-Pete. Now tell me. How many different stories can be told or created with that game? Based on your arguments, the answer should be one, but is it?
How do you force the ending to be the exact same thing every time without railroading? If it's a free-wheeling tabletop RPG, players might end up befriending Six-Finger-Pete, or maybe they completely fail to find him, or maybe they die before ever finding him, or maybe they get the wrong guy, or, or, or...
You could make it to where it's a relatively limited scenario that always ends in a confrontation with Six-Finger-Pete, but you can't really pre-determine the outcome of that confrontation. Some player decision or game mechanic will ultimately decide, and the number of possible outcomes is as large as your collective imagination.
How do you force the ending to be the exact same thing every time without railroading?
Quite simple. Write it in the rules. Rule 1: Every player character is a Bounty Hunter who is looking for Six-Finger-Pete. Rule 2: Game ends when Bounty Hunters find and capture Six-Finger-Pete. Variating from those rules will be considered cheating, griefing or an act of playing different game, where these rules do not apply as written.
How's that for a lesson in game design.
But that was not the point I was trying to make. What I tried to say that even with starting point A and ending point B there is infinite stories between them. Journey is more important than the destination and sometimes there are different routes, to have different journey to the one same destination. You can't measure the amount of meaningful to story choices in the amount of endings a game has. That's just silly.
It is true that any number of wildly different journeys can end in the same place. You can make decisions that control that path of that journey, even if you do not control the final result. There is some horrible inescapable fate that no matter what you do, the result will be the same. Even if some incredibly large number of journeys all have the same result, the decisions you make feel as if they do not matter. It could even be argued that they do not matter.
Imagine a hypothetical Tetris-like puzzle game. It's designed such that no matter where you put the blocks, it is impossible to lose the game before level 10. It is also impossible to beat level 10. You can play the game a zillion different ways dropping the blocks in different crazy patterns. In the end, you get to level 10 and then lose. How many times are you going to play that? Do the different games actually feel different? What if I made a very complex board game, but player one always wins. Once you realize that fact, you will never want to play it again.
For a decision to matter it has to have consequences that are different than the consequences of alternate decisions. Two decisions with the same consequences are effectively the same decision. If all decisions in a game lead to the same ultimate consequence, then all of those decisions are effectively equal.
If the boat ride and the mountain path both result in fighting the dragon, then they are the same. If you missed out on the boat ride, you can watch it on YouTube later.
If you want to argue that a game has decisions that matter, then it has to be a decision tree where the ending nodes are equal to the number of decisions squared multiplied by the number of starting nodes. That of course assumes the decisions are binary. You have to cube the trinary decisions and so on. If the number of possible outcomes is even one less than that, then it means that some number of the decisions, or some combinations of decisions, are effectively identical as they share the same ultimate consequence.
You know what else? My brain jar is far nicer than your brain jar. Your brain jar stinks like an old bin, and the water is all murky and full of nasty bacteria. This brain jar right here? Rolls Royce of brain jars. It doesn't get better than this, if you're a brain in a jar.
It's hilarious how much Scott is talking out of his ass, without knowing how the game works at all.
Hey, I warned the guy, I straight up said, "Remember what happens EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU DO THIS", but if he's not gonna listen, far be it from me to put the brakes on free entertainment.
It's not my fault the guy follows a script better than any actor I've ever met.
Imagine a hypothetical Tetris-like puzzle game. It's designed such that no matter where you put the blocks, it is impossible to lose the game before level 10. It is also impossible to beat level 10. You can play the game a zillion different ways dropping the blocks in different crazy patterns. In the end, you get to level 10 and then lose. How many times are you going to play that? Do the different games actually feel different? What if I made a very complex board game, but player one always wins. Once you realize that fact, you will never want to play it again.
This paragraph here is bullshit, we are talking about stories, not games (well stories in games, but the story part is the more important here). Off course when you distill something to a pure game it should follow rules of good game, instead of good story.
You know stories aren't just collection of decisions made by character(s) and their consequences. Well, maybe they are on some level, but they shouldn't be looked at so simply. I was going to mention something about Wither 2 and how it has apparently big parts of the game different depending on player choice, but I don't have any first hand experience with the game, so I'll keep my mouth shut about that.
So instead let's go back to our Bounty hunters and Six-Finger-Pete. Let's say that there is a version of the story where the Bounty hunters start their journey untrusting of each other, arguing, thinking that one might be a traitor and during their journey to find Six-Finger-Pete they slowly start to work together and trust each other and finally with the power of working together they catch Six-Finger-Pete. Nice story if I may say. Let's hear another. Bounty hunters start seeking for Six-Finger-Pete as a tight group of buddies might do and together they face the wild west that doesn't want to give Pete to them, a west that doesn't like and trust bounty hunters and seems to hide Pete. These bounty hunters must sail between the distrust of locals slowly gaining their trust to finally find and capture Six-Finger-Pete.
See two totally different stories with exactly same ending. Something like that might not happen in video game any time soon, but if you look at what's different in those stories you might notice something. One big thing is the characters, or the group, which is just a collection of characters. And letting players give a little bit of their own taste to the protagonist is something that games already can do. In the case of Mass Effects (almost) every Shepard is different, at least in some little ways. Some Shepard might be a space racist, while my Shepard is pretty nice guy until it's time to action when he can be quite ruthless (also my Shepard has funny eye). Little bit of different color to the character might not be a big thing considering the "Big Plot", but I don't care, for me small character stuff can be just as important than the "Big Plot" and I don't see anything wrong in that.
We've discussed the same sort of thing a zillion times, but every time we always discuss this particular example or that particular example. None of that shit matters. Here is how I see it.
There are games that are nothing but games.
There are stories that are nothing but stories.
There are games with integration of story and game.
Then there are the movies masquerading as games because the creator couldn't make it in Hollywood.
Most people seem to think the fourth one doesn't exist. They see an integration of story and game simply because the same piece of software contains a movie and a game superglued to each other. May as well take a Pong cartridge and tape it to a fantasy novel.
When you properly integrate a game and a story, the story is still just flavor. It can be light, or strong, but it's never running the show.
When you don't properly integrate you get Final Fantasy. Hours and hours of grinding with cutscenes inbetween.
So as for Mass Effect, the game I haven't played and apparently know nothing about. You are probably going to try to argue it somehow has the integration I'm talking about. Well, there is an easy test for that. How do you determine if a game is integrating the story or if it's a story with a game stuck to it? Here is how.
Pretend all the story and color were removed from the game entirely. For example, in Monopoly the properties would be named A1, A1, B1, B2, B3. Hotels and houses would be replaced with generic cubes. Money would be replaced with generic points. Make it as bland as checkers. Now, is the game still good?
Portal 2, take away all the flavor. Still amazing puzzle game. Would still be crazy popular. Super Metroid, yeah, I would still explore the fuck out of that planet if all the bad guys were generic cubes. That's not to say that the flavor is worthless, far from it. It's just that the underlying game can stand strong on its own. The flavor is a huge added bonus on top.
Final Fantasy. So it's just grinding and nothing else? Fallout 3. Walk around and shoot things very slowly and easily for hours on end? And your favorite game I apparently know nothing about, the Masses Effectsesess. A generic and lame, and trivially easy, third person shooter. Pew Pew Pew! If it fails as a game, it fails entirely.
And that's my point about the paths being effectively the same. No matter the story, it fails as a game. If it fails as a game, it fails, period. Unless you want to say it is not a game? I would rather it not be a game! But nobody seems to talk about the cookie-cutter shooting parts.
Think of it as a mattress and bed sheets. The game is the mattress. The flavor is the sheets. Good mattress with ok sheets is still pretty good. Great mattress and awesome sheets is the bestest ever. Even the highest threadcount sheets in the universe can't make a pile of jagged rocks any more comfortable.
I can't help but facepalm, Scott. You haven't played the game at all, yet you continue to judge it with an air of complete authority. Its excellent multiplayer mode, which extracts and extrudes the gameplay itself outside of the story, is quite strong. It's a testament to how refined the actual gameplay has become.
Plus, we weren't even talking about whether the game "fails" or not. We were talking about whether your choices throughout the series actually affected your overall experience in the game.
Your narrow and close-minded viewpoint of these games have become so comical, its almost painful, Scott. Just go back to your Counter Strike or NS.
I heard about that today. The only reasons you wouldn't like it is if you find absolutely nothing about fantasy interesting, you don't like any sort of challenge in a game and find no satisfaction in accomplishment, or the idea that you're not a super hero and are extremely mortal does not appeal to you.
The best argument against Scott's warblegobbling about Mass Effect is that Mass Effect does have a version built right in without the story; the co-op multiplayer. Which is fun on a goddamn bun, especially when you have a group who is actively working together with the voice chat. Ain't nothing quite like baiting a Phantom into the open with the Sentinel, letting the tech guys take her barrier out, then smashing into her at a million miles an hour with your vanguard. Especially considering if you fuck up any of those steps on the harder difficulties, if you get caught with your abilities recharging or you let her get behind something, she will disappear and then promptly fillet your whole team.
Mass Effect 3 has the structure of a third-person shooter, but it's got a nice little bit of complexity layered in. It's like Gears of War and the class ability dynamic of the typical MMO had a sci-fi baby. Scott will say it's bad because it is a third person shooter. He will also say it's easy because it trivializes the only skills he considers legit, which is clicking on heads. I dare him to play a round of Gold against the Reapers and tell me that to my face.
I'm inclined to agree with scott (considering how the point of argument changed) but the mass effect games are sort of a testament to not being that great of games. I haven't played the third one but I've played the first and second one and it's not that fun as a game. I beat both to just get the story. The shooting is poop and there is no denying it. It's bad gears of war shooting. The story is the best part and the focus of the game and could very easily just be a movie.
Half life 2, one of my favorite games has amazing gameplay, the world they built around the game is amazing too. Same with ocarina of time, same with gta games, the missions just give you a push to play the game more, it doesn't command the game.
That being said it is annoying when a story dictates the supposed freedom of choice in a game. One thing that pissed me off about the new deus ex was that I was tring to be sneaky and non lethal. But the game forced me to kill the bosses, which actually severely contradicted the game mechanics. I go through the entire game being sneaky and silent takedowns then it doesn't really matter in the end. The point being that if you say I control what's going on but then in the background force me into something beyond my control then it doesn't matter what I chose because the story might as well have been static. I'm not really concerned with touching on how ME 3 may or may not do this because I done know I haven't played it. But there are a number of games that say they give you choice but can't because they're tethered to a standard narrative.
I can't help but facepalm, Scott. You haven't played the game at all, yet you continue to judge it with an air of complete authority. Its excellent multiplayer mode, which extracts and extrudes the gameplay itself outside of the story, is quite strong. It's a testament to how refined the actual gameplay has become.
It shows that not only is he arguing from the position of having never played the game, and thus being absolutely clueless about the experience, he doesn't even know the simplest, most basic, entry level information about the game that you'd get from reading the little information panel on the back of the box.
He knows literally nothing other than what he's already said about the ending, and continues - as with every single other time this happens - to argue from a position of utter ignorance, without even the limited amount of information from the Wikipedia article.
And yet, I'd almost lay down good money on a bet that he thinks he's not only absolutely correct, but that he's winning this argument.
While I am a little unsure how we got here from where this conversation started I will say that I do agree with Scott on some of his points, even if he is talking out his ass about something he has never played.
One of those points is that Mass Effect is barely a mediocre third-person shooter. If you take away story you are left with something that is not even worth spending time on, not to mention if you were to take away the powers as well it would not even be a mediocre third-person shooter. Does this mean the game is not an enjoyable experience? No, the game can be, and in my opinion is, an enjoyable experience even if all it happens to be is a cinematic with some interactivity, which I believe may be a point I disagree with Scott on.
I believe there is a subset now of games that are nothing more than movies that just happen to be interactive, such as Mass Effect and Uncharted, and I think that is something I agree with Scott on. As games they are complete failures in the gaming department but as I stated above that does not mean they lack entertainment, their entertainment just happens to be derived directly from the story. All I believe is that if we are going to label games under genres then they should have their own that contains games that do nothing more than tell a story.
Comments
They do differ, but you have to both be a real lore-head and you have to get a lot of it by interpretation of what you see and paying attention - if you don't read pretty much everything, it's easy to miss a TON of stuff that all ties in. The other problem is that there are common elements which make no sense narratively - for example, all the mass relays are destroyed, which they established with ME2's arrival DLC(Which is referenced in 3, no matter if you played it or not) basically sterilizes the system the relay was in. So, basically, the war was won...except then the homeworlds of every sentient race worth speaking of in the galaxy was wiped clean of life, except earth. Thus basically outdoing the reapers at their own game.
Even if you ignore that, it's just Ending sequence, the encounter with the heroic Marauder Shields, ending sequence, choice, cutscene for that choice, more generic cutscene that only has slight differences between choices, credits roll.
It probably doesn't help that everybody who has actually played the game agrees that almost everything else is absolutely fantastic. In fact, the general sentiment is that if not for the narratively inconsistent ending, it would have been the perfect coda to the trilogy.
The fast travel aspect of it is a red herring, nobody is really trapped on their particular worlds, getting around the galaxy is still possible for most of them - it's just a little slower, in the region of months, rather than hours. It's like being dumped back from Air travel to sailing ships, we can still get between continents, it just goes slower.
Speaking to, say, five people who actually played the game, you'll get at least five different experiences, and that's just people who have played only ME3. They'll have some shared moments, sure, but still unique experiences - sort of like a random selection of five people who went to the same high school. If they've imported from ME1 and/or 2, then the world around you becomes dramatically more complex, so that the game attempts to wrap up or reference literally every single major choice you made in the previous games, and the web that each of those choices formed within the previous games - there are things which I thought were minor choices, made with hardly a second thought which have been referenced, or had a story built around it, or in some cases, come back to cause problems. The part that is almost exactly the same no matter what you do is simply the ending. Bit of a weak comparison, as fighting games don't often have an interactive story(or in most cases, any story beyond the framing story), they have "Punch this guy till you get a cutscene, repeat." It's a flip-book with bruises, rather than a story you have any effect on, unless you count Win-get-a-cutscene-lose-press-continue-try-again. And if you could choose even two more characters to play as in mass effect rather than Shepard, it's likely the game would be three times as large and thirty times as complex.
If you want to claim that your game gives the player a lot of choices, and those choices have an effect on the story, then that means exactly that. Each and every choice I make should change the story. If I play the game again and make only one choice differently, then the story should be different by exactly one choice worth of difference. If I play the game again and make all the choices differently, the game should be so drastically different that it might not even be the same game.
Nobody does this. Everyone wants to say they do, but they are all full of shit. All the differences these games make are a different line of dialogue here, or a different character there, or the timing of an event a little different over there. Chrono Trigger only had 13ish endings, which is about the same as a CYOA book. That's more control over the outcome than these newfangled games have, but far less than they claim.
Man, I should just make a cookie-cutter third person action game that has the same number of choices as Chrono Trigger. I'll make the same outlandish claims as these other publishers, and all the suckers will probably think it's the best game ever made.
Now that this has failed to discourage you at all, carry on. It's always entertaining, at the least.
Let's imagine that there were a table top rpg system where players all played bounty hunters in wild west who try to find and catch know criminal Six-Finger-Pete, the game always starts with that and always ends with bounty hunters finding and capturing Six-Finger-Pete. Now tell me. How many different stories can be told or created with that game? Based on your arguments, the answer should be one, but is it?
Chrono Cross
Dark Souls
Disgaea
However I will say that Scott's definition of how RPGs should play out (as far as video games) is basically a world simulator and at a certain point that gets incredibly not fun.
There could be a lot of different outcomes to this that would not be the same, which is what he is saying.
You could make it to where it's a relatively limited scenario that always ends in a confrontation with Six-Finger-Pete, but you can't really pre-determine the outcome of that confrontation. Some player decision or game mechanic will ultimately decide, and the number of possible outcomes is as large as your collective imagination.
How's that for a lesson in game design.
But that was not the point I was trying to make. What I tried to say that even with starting point A and ending point B there is infinite stories between them. Journey is more important than the destination and sometimes there are different routes, to have different journey to the one same destination. You can't measure the amount of meaningful to story choices in the amount of endings a game has. That's just silly.
Imagine a hypothetical Tetris-like puzzle game. It's designed such that no matter where you put the blocks, it is impossible to lose the game before level 10. It is also impossible to beat level 10. You can play the game a zillion different ways dropping the blocks in different crazy patterns. In the end, you get to level 10 and then lose. How many times are you going to play that? Do the different games actually feel different? What if I made a very complex board game, but player one always wins. Once you realize that fact, you will never want to play it again.
For a decision to matter it has to have consequences that are different than the consequences of alternate decisions. Two decisions with the same consequences are effectively the same decision. If all decisions in a game lead to the same ultimate consequence, then all of those decisions are effectively equal.
If the boat ride and the mountain path both result in fighting the dragon, then they are the same. If you missed out on the boat ride, you can watch it on YouTube later.
If you want to argue that a game has decisions that matter, then it has to be a decision tree where the ending nodes are equal to the number of decisions squared multiplied by the number of starting nodes. That of course assumes the decisions are binary. You have to cube the trinary decisions and so on. If the number of possible outcomes is even one less than that, then it means that some number of the decisions, or some combinations of decisions, are effectively identical as they share the same ultimate consequence.
TL;DR:
It's not my fault the guy follows a script better than any actor I've ever met.
You know stories aren't just collection of decisions made by character(s) and their consequences. Well, maybe they are on some level, but they shouldn't be looked at so simply. I was going to mention something about Wither 2 and how it has apparently big parts of the game different depending on player choice, but I don't have any first hand experience with the game, so I'll keep my mouth shut about that.
So instead let's go back to our Bounty hunters and Six-Finger-Pete. Let's say that there is a version of the story where the Bounty hunters start their journey untrusting of each other, arguing, thinking that one might be a traitor and during their journey to find Six-Finger-Pete they slowly start to work together and trust each other and finally with the power of working together they catch Six-Finger-Pete. Nice story if I may say. Let's hear another. Bounty hunters start seeking for Six-Finger-Pete as a tight group of buddies might do and together they face the wild west that doesn't want to give Pete to them, a west that doesn't like and trust bounty hunters and seems to hide Pete. These bounty hunters must sail between the distrust of locals slowly gaining their trust to finally find and capture Six-Finger-Pete.
See two totally different stories with exactly same ending. Something like that might not happen in video game any time soon, but if you look at what's different in those stories you might notice something. One big thing is the characters, or the group, which is just a collection of characters. And letting players give a little bit of their own taste to the protagonist is something that games already can do. In the case of Mass Effects (almost) every Shepard is different, at least in some little ways. Some Shepard might be a space racist, while my Shepard is pretty nice guy until it's time to action when he can be quite ruthless (also my Shepard has funny eye). Little bit of different color to the character might not be a big thing considering the "Big Plot", but I don't care, for me small character stuff can be just as important than the "Big Plot" and I don't see anything wrong in that.
There are games that are nothing but games.
There are stories that are nothing but stories.
There are games with integration of story and game.
Then there are the movies masquerading as games because the creator couldn't make it in Hollywood.
Most people seem to think the fourth one doesn't exist. They see an integration of story and game simply because the same piece of software contains a movie and a game superglued to each other. May as well take a Pong cartridge and tape it to a fantasy novel.
When you properly integrate a game and a story, the story is still just flavor. It can be light, or strong, but it's never running the show.
When you don't properly integrate you get Final Fantasy. Hours and hours of grinding with cutscenes inbetween.
So as for Mass Effect, the game I haven't played and apparently know nothing about. You are probably going to try to argue it somehow has the integration I'm talking about. Well, there is an easy test for that. How do you determine if a game is integrating the story or if it's a story with a game stuck to it? Here is how.
Pretend all the story and color were removed from the game entirely. For example, in Monopoly the properties would be named A1, A1, B1, B2, B3. Hotels and houses would be replaced with generic cubes. Money would be replaced with generic points. Make it as bland as checkers. Now, is the game still good?
Portal 2, take away all the flavor. Still amazing puzzle game. Would still be crazy popular. Super Metroid, yeah, I would still explore the fuck out of that planet if all the bad guys were generic cubes. That's not to say that the flavor is worthless, far from it. It's just that the underlying game can stand strong on its own. The flavor is a huge added bonus on top.
Final Fantasy. So it's just grinding and nothing else? Fallout 3. Walk around and shoot things very slowly and easily for hours on end? And your favorite game I apparently know nothing about, the Masses Effectsesess. A generic and lame, and trivially easy, third person shooter. Pew Pew Pew! If it fails as a game, it fails entirely.
And that's my point about the paths being effectively the same. No matter the story, it fails as a game. If it fails as a game, it fails, period. Unless you want to say it is not a game? I would rather it not be a game! But nobody seems to talk about the cookie-cutter shooting parts.
Think of it as a mattress and bed sheets. The game is the mattress. The flavor is the sheets. Good mattress with ok sheets is still pretty good. Great mattress and awesome sheets is the bestest ever. Even the highest threadcount sheets in the universe can't make a pile of jagged rocks any more comfortable.
Plus, we weren't even talking about whether the game "fails" or not. We were talking about whether your choices throughout the series actually affected your overall experience in the game.
Your narrow and close-minded viewpoint of these games have become so comical, its almost painful, Scott. Just go back to your Counter Strike or NS.
Mass Effect 3 has the structure of a third-person shooter, but it's got a nice little bit of complexity layered in. It's like Gears of War and the class ability dynamic of the typical MMO had a sci-fi baby. Scott will say it's bad because it is a third person shooter. He will also say it's easy because it trivializes the only skills he considers legit, which is clicking on heads. I dare him to play a round of Gold against the Reapers and tell me that to my face.
Half life 2, one of my favorite games has amazing gameplay, the world they built around the game is amazing too. Same with ocarina of time, same with gta games, the missions just give you a push to play the game more, it doesn't command the game.
That being said it is annoying when a story dictates the supposed freedom of choice in a game. One thing that pissed me off about the new deus ex was that I was tring to be sneaky and non lethal. But the game forced me to kill the bosses, which actually severely contradicted the game mechanics. I go through the entire game being sneaky and silent takedowns then it doesn't really matter in the end. The point being that if you say I control what's going on but then in the background force me into something beyond my control then it doesn't matter what I chose because the story might as well have been static. I'm not really concerned with touching on how ME 3 may or may not do this because I done know I haven't played it. But there are a number of games that say they give you choice but can't because they're tethered to a standard narrative.
Regardless I'll still play it once it's on sale.
He knows literally nothing other than what he's already said about the ending, and continues - as with every single other time this happens - to argue from a position of utter ignorance, without even the limited amount of information from the Wikipedia article.
And yet, I'd almost lay down good money on a bet that he thinks he's not only absolutely correct, but that he's winning this argument.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in this one.
One of those points is that Mass Effect is barely a mediocre third-person shooter. If you take away story you are left with something that is not even worth spending time on, not to mention if you were to take away the powers as well it would not even be a mediocre third-person shooter. Does this mean the game is not an enjoyable experience? No, the game can be, and in my opinion is, an enjoyable experience even if all it happens to be is a cinematic with some interactivity, which I believe may be a point I disagree with Scott on.
I believe there is a subset now of games that are nothing more than movies that just happen to be interactive, such as Mass Effect and Uncharted, and I think that is something I agree with Scott on. As games they are complete failures in the gaming department but as I stated above that does not mean they lack entertainment, their entertainment just happens to be derived directly from the story. All I believe is that if we are going to label games under genres then they should have their own that contains games that do nothing more than tell a story.
*looks*
Ohhhhhh...