Beyond Two Souls [Spoiler tags please!]

Started by Inari, October 11, 2013, 07:22:52 PM

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Chris Brady

Not saying they're bad.  I'm saying Mr. Cage's games have proven to me to be 'bad'.  At the same time, they're not anything innovative, rather restrictive.
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Koren

Im going to point a couple of things out quickly. One of which is that I am a Game Dev so please do not talk to me like I have no idea whats going on. I do. I'm not like the idiots I went to uni with who thought that because they played games they understood everything and every idea of theres was good and they knew what they were doing just because they called themselves Game Developers. I don't think like that at all. But I do have a lot of background knowledge here and a far deeper understanding of the game development process and even the academic understanding of games as well.

QuoteThis argument always gets a WTF??? from me.  'Stereotypical'?  Seriously?  A game is pretty well defined, and this 'game' skirts the wrong side of the line.

If you want to go there, a game is defined in its broadest terms as an INTERACTIVE EXPERIANCE. There is no definition about the level of interaction, or the mechanics needed for it or anything else. Interactive movies are technically games is you go with the most accurate description of what a game is. And obviously there are blurred lines there about how far the term interactive covers.

I mean, you interact with your coffee machine but that doesn't make it a game, so we can go back and tighten the definition more to say that perhaps a game is only a game when its interactivity is put within a set of rules in a virtual of physical world designed to provide a specific experience.
And obviously I could go for hours looking at the technical specifications of terms and trying to get descriptions up, but in all my time at uni, talking with people who worked on games like Star Wars The Force Unleashed through to Jetpack Joyride and even people who make flash games for a living, along with academics who constantly are researching this idea of "What is a game" and after reading the dozens of game design books which constantly look at the idea and work on it, the one thing everyone can agree on is that is its an 'interactive experience' and there is no limit on how that interaction has to be, but beyond that no one I've spoken to has been able to concisely define and constrict a game to a specific set of words, and if they do, other academics rarely agree with them 100%

As far as Ive played in Beyond Two Souls, it was no more true cutscenes then a normal game (cutscenes being where you are just watching and dont have your hands on the controller) and just because the gameplay is scripted and minimalistic (and far less QTE based the heavy rain) doesnt meant it isn't still gameplay.


QuoteMr. Cage is NOT trying anything new.  In fact, the man's obsession with photorealism brings his own games down.  See, there are two parts to a stereotypical video game, the graphics and the actual engine.  And the sad part of it is, if you focus on one, the other suffers.  A good game balances requires both, which means it's not quite as pretty to look at.  Thing is, the other half, the hidden half, AI, physics, collision detection and all things that make a game fun, that takes up the rest of the space, but you can't have both being super awesome, either you focus on one, or the other.  Or you make a decent looking game, with fun gameplay.

Also I hate to say it, but while I love the fact that more people outside of the dev community are starting to understand how a game is put together, this isn't right.
Wheres the design component? What you mentioned as the engine stuff, the AI, collision detection, physics etc, they do NOT make a game fun, not at all. They are the technical components that make it functional.
The THREE parts of a good game go into Design, Aesthetics, and Technical. The aesthetics are the graphics as mentioned, but also the feel of the game, the way a game absorbs the player and how the space around the player conveys a feeling or a presence. The Technical is the engine and programming stuff, and is just making the game functional, bug free.
The design is where the rest of the game falls. Design covers everything from how the player should move around in the world, all of the interactivity and how the player is going to understand the world, through to what the levels are, map design, what the AI should act like, and even story elements like a scriptwriter etc.

It can be broken down a lot more then that as well but if you want broad categories, its important to recognize that third. And no category is more important then another, and just because one category is good, DOESN'T mean that another has to suffer, not at all. That is a DESIGN decision as to what gets developed how and where, and I garentee in every game you've ever played, how 'photo realistic' a game looks, or how 'cartoony', and how full on the interaction is, that is a conscious choice made through months if not years of development
And if you want to go deeper there is then a fourth and actually potentially the most important category, QA. Without testing you can release a game you think is great, only to realize its full of bugs and no one understands what to do with it.


Now with that in mind going back to Beyond Two Souls, it definitely fits into the definition of a game, even if it doesn't feel that way.
People have lately had the idea that games have to be fun, but when you look at a lot of games, and why people play them, they don't play them for 'fun', and really, what does 'fun' even mean anyway? I've never heard The Last of Us described as a fun game, but that got rave reviews (which I strongly disagree with to an amazing degree, but thats for another topic)

And the part that is mostly lacking with Beyond is a lot of testing of design. They clearly tested the technical and aesthetic aspects of the game, I cant say I've ever seen a popping texture, or a collision bugging out, or other things like that, although I'm sure its happened for someone, it happens in every game, but I'm quite happy to say that while their design goal and approach was solid, they didn't realize that it made less sense to those outside of the office, or people who weren't testing it every other day. Things like people not realizing there is a timeline. The fact that Jodie's animations at some points are almost completely unreadable to figure out how to make her move. The fact that the choices seem insignificant which again goes into the fact of the messy timeline.
Id actually love to get my hands on one of the early prototypes for the game, and the QA notes and see how it developed really to see if they were smart enough to adjust their design goal from the early stages to release because of playability. I garentee that it would have been an INCREDIBLY different game.

Chris Brady

I was talking how games affects hardware, like GPUs and Processors.  There are two parts, the visual and the technical, under the hood, physics, control systems, AI that sort of stuff.  I know nothing of how to make a game, just how they affect the hardware.  Mr. Cage seems to really only care about the visual, which means that his under the hood stuff suffers.  Like the gameplay.  If you focus on one, the other suffers, especially in the limited hardware available in a console.

A game has a win condition and fail states.  BTS barely has either.  But I'll grant that it does have them.  Unlike another, truly indie game, Dear Esther, which is more of a carnival ride, than a 'game'.  So I'll retract any inference that BTS is not a game, and instead say that I found it severely lacking in the game play department.
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Koren

Quote from: Chris Brady on October 22, 2013, 01:09:09 AM
I was talking how games affects hardware, like GPUs and Processors.  There are two parts, the visual and the technical, under the hood, physics, control systems, AI that sort of stuff.  I know nothing of how to make a game, just how they affect the hardware.  Mr. Cage seems to really only care about the visual, which means that his under the hood stuff suffers.  Like the gameplay.  If you focus on one, the other suffers, especially in the limited hardware available in a console.

A game has a win condition and fail states.  BTS barely has either.  But I'll grant that it does have them.  Unlike another, truly indie game, Dear Esther, which is more of a carnival ride, than a 'game'.  So I'll retract any inference that BTS is not a game, and instead say that I found it severely lacking in the game play department.

Okay I can understand how the confusion happened there between the computer processing and the development of a game and their parts.
But like I said, I think that you'll find that the gameplay doesn't suffer because of the visual, it is just that it was designed that way. One of the core things of actually making a game is prototype, and the earliest prototype game devs do is a greybox, that is literally what it sounds like. You play as a shape, in a world of shapes, and you have all the playability of the game components you are testing, all of the game mechanics etc, but with no aesthetics. The design of the mechanics and the controls and interactivity gets started on far before aesthetic is even thought about, in a lot of cases before even story.
Yes a lot of it is in how they are going to use the processing power of the engine, but the actual mechanics do not suffer because of high quality graphics, the two sides don't impact each other like that. Look at God of War 3 for example. That game looks amazing, and because of reflections and shaders etc, probably, actualy i would say definitely after remembering the opening scene, uses more processing for graphics then beyond two souls as a lot of the aesthetics is illusion based in that game, but its mechanics are a lot more involved.

Dear Esther is actually not what I would concider a game because you don't interact with it. You exist in the world of it, but there is no interactivity at all, you may as well be looking at the map in a 3D modelling program, rather then have it in engine. That game actually made me rage quit because it was so boring and the map was so badly designed.

The idea of win and fail states is a very iffy thing though, especially with indie games which don't always have the same sort of 'boss fights' and that sort of stuff that have definite win and loss conditions within them, and many don't even have things like health etc.
Like Journey. I don't think I've met anyone that has argued that that isn't a game, but there is no way to loose at it.

Chris Brady

Actually, although I personally found Journey dull, you can lose.  Loss does not have to be 'death'.  It might mean certain avenues are closed off or the game becomes harder to finish the goal, but even Journey has a Fail State.
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Koren

I know that loss doesn't mean death. Again, I'm a game designer, I have designed a lot of games that don't have win and loss as victory and defeat, but I personally don't see a fail state in journey because no matter what you can always get to the mountain. What do you think it is?

Sabby

Oh my... such delicious controversy.

Apparently, Ellen Page was fully modelled for her shower scene in the game. Even though your not supposed to see below the neck, there's a whole body there, with all the things and stuff.

It gets worse.

Hackers have gotten a hold of that 3D model. Now anyone can just incorporate it in their Source Filmaker projects.

It gets worser.

SFM has a pretty active 3D porn scene.

Cease and desists are flying everywhere, but there's no undoing this... the next few weeks are going to be very interesting.

Suiko

I thought it wasn't her body model - just one added on to her face. It's still a bit embarrassing for her but I'm not sure what Sony can do about it since its all over the Internet.
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Sabby

Considering she has a body in the game, I'd say they just added the details to it, so it's going to be almost identical. I'm just confused as to why... but then I find out David Cage had a scrap book of her pictures that he was making for a year before he finally showed her.

Suiko

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Sabby

It's kind of sweet, in a creepy stalker-masquerading-as-business-associate kind of way :3

Suiko

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Chris Brady

Quote from: Khoraz on October 23, 2013, 11:39:53 AM
I thought it wasn't her body model - just one added on to her face. It's still a bit embarrassing for her but I'm not sure what Sony can do about it since its all over the Internet.
It wasn't.
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Also, I now come with Kung-Fu Blog action.  Here:  Where I talk about comics and all sorts of gaming

Sabby

#38
Wow, this game looks like garbage >.< I finished his first two games, will not be playing this one.

Edit: After watching some more of it on Youtube, I really think this is Cage's worst game yet. His games aren't as linear as people say they are. Both Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain had fairly decent branching paths and consequences, even if they didn't go beyond the current chapter. There were multiple ways you could lose at something, and half the time you'd get a game over screen after a few failed attempts, but some times there actually was a few different ways to approach it with varying outcomes.

This, however, is just find all the buttons. It reminds me of one of those old PC games when I was a kid, where you just found all the things you could click in the picture, but you actually need to find them all to win, and they are GLOWING BLUE THROUGH WALLS.

As for the writing... David Cage needs his dominant hand broken. I can kind of deal with the random showing of events in her life, since he keeps showing us a timeline, but that party scene? That was easily one of the worst things I've seen all week. I've read original character X-Men fan fiction better then that.

Koren

Do you guys honestly think that David Cage writes EVERY last line of the script and refuses to allow anyone to edit it (theres over 2000 pages btw according to ellen page) and programs every last interaction himself? Thats a hell of a lot of work, and damn impossible for a game of this size, I can tell you that.
Game design is a GROUP effort. And to be honest if he was that strict on everything his team could or couldn't do, likely he wouldn't have a team. When you guys come out and bag him, or anyone for that matter, you aren't just beating on him, you are beating on the entire dev team who has put so much work into it and I can damn well tell you from experiance that it hurts like hell to have youre ENTIRE game put down because people dont like just a few parts of it, or that one guy worked on it.

And this game does have quite a few segments where you can do something differently or wrong and have consequences for it, it just isnt as in your face as it is in the other games
Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide
The one that immediately comes to mind is the part with the native american boys and at the end of that chapter, you can either go and heal the father, or start the ritual right away. There is nothing to immediately point out that you can save him, but if you dont he dies and it changes the ending of the game.

Sabby

If David Cage isn't in charge of what get's finalized for the script, then wtf is his contribution? I know he can't make the whole game himself, but that's not a pass for atrocious writing. He either wrote it, oversaw, or didn't check it. Either way, it's his fuck up, and he's a terrible writer.

Vanity Evolved

Want to know what bugs me about this game most, when compared to the outright lie that Indigo Prophecy was and the horribly written, retconned wreck which also has to lie to you for the plot to even work and not fall through on itself?

I saw promise in Beyond: Two Souls, something I haven't seen in a David Cage game. I've been watching Two Best Friends play it and it has the exact reactions I'd expect; giving you free reign of Aiden, at least in some part, gives you some pretense of moral choice. You can mess as much, or as little, as you wish; lots of people will go for the latter, which helps create the (obviously inspired by) Carrie style of a girl ruining shit through her supernatural abilities. One of the best parts I saw was after the truely awful party scene, which is one of the worst set pieces I've seen in a game of late.

After being locked in the cupboard, what does Pat, currently playing the game, do when he's able to control Aiden again? REVENNNGE! Suddenly, you have some semblence of not only a revenge urge driven solely by the player, a true moral choice, but it's a damn effective and fluid way of executing it. What does Cage do however, in his 'movie'?

For the first time that being 'movie-like' would help him, he forces you to unlock the door and gives you a choice - Revenge or Leave. Boom. Gone. You're suddenly reminded you're in a game, with two binary choices, rather than the freedom to just fuck up the people who tormented you or leave them be.

Even ignoring the little I've learnt about narrative in Uni this year, as a layman, I have to say this; David Cage can't write for shit. He reminds me a lot of Peter Molyneux. He has an idea. But he has no-where near the ability to actually realize that idea. Excusing his terrible writing by claiming 'But they put a lot of effort into it' doesn't change the fact that it's bad. I mean, lets examine the scene.

"Look at this slice of life party. This is fun. I have an idea; how about a dance scene where everyone is gone, you push two buttons in the same direction a couple of times, while music plays, for no reason. Now, tilt the controller to dance with this guy. These people are interested in your 'powers'. Do you show them? Well, they're kind of impressed. Presents! Wait, what the fuck is a 'Poe'? What is this shit? I wanted a thong! Yeah, you're probably a fucking witch whore. You know what we do to witches? We burn them! Lets lock her away and burn her! Muhahahaha!"

The characters arn't even bad characters; they're characatures. They randomly bounce from being generic, unbelievably ignorant teenagers to Inquisitors looking to root out witches within five seconds of her opening a present. It's not just absurb; it's unbelievable and has no logical, realistic flow to it.

Let me ask you, if you took out the button prompts to any David Cage game - Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls - would you sit down and pay [going rate for a film in the cinema nowadays] to see that? Would you say that is a plot intriguing and well-written enough that you would -want- to see it as a film?


Sabby

#42
Quote from: Vanity Evolved on November 05, 2013, 11:22:42 AM
Let me ask you, if you took out the button prompts to any David Cage game - Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls - would you sit down and pay [going rate for a film in the cinema nowadays] to see that? Would you say that is a plot intriguing and well-written enough that you would -want- to see it as a film?

That's what's always confused me about Cage. I can't play it, and I can't watch it. So what do I do? It's like he thinks breaking the status quo is somehow an achievement in and of itself, and the novelty of the product is it's quality.

Edit: Oh wow, do they really have to make the Aiden sections so damn linear?

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide
So, she's trapped by SWAT with a busted leg. Aiden, go! Fight for me! Okay, what to do! Let's see, two groups of SWAT in cover, one helicopter, one sniper on the roof. So many choices! Possess the sniper! absorb his power! Turn it against them! Wait, why is there a button prompt? WTF?! He jumped off! D= That's not what I wanted! Uhg, fine, guess I'll just possess someone else. Wait, why can't I possess anyone? I can do force choke on this guy, but the rest are untouchable

It's almost as if there is only one way to do this, with certain powers only working on certain people. Because game. Choices and such.

Koren

Yeah the party scene was horrendous. I hated it too and thought it was stupid, but if thats the only thing you are basing it off, look deeper. Like with any game some bits are horrible and some are absolutely amazing.

With anything with a game, at some point there comes a point where you cant afford to spend months finalising and perfecting every little detail, thats in the script and the gameplay. And its the same with choices. Having a full and lasting choice in each part would be SO much more art, code, script, assets, data, memory, that it would quickly get out of control.

I did personally think that the aiden parts were perhaps a bit too limited as well though, that it would have been nice to maybe have a reason for the limited control you could have over people etc, but I also wonder if in some areas that would have made the game too confusing

Im not saying you guys are wrong for hating the game, everyone has a right to think what they think about games, and i know these games have a lot of controversy attached to them a lot of the time, im just saying dont judge so harshly and bash things without understanding them and the way they work and what you are actually critiquing. If you can't be bothered seeing the good parts because of the bad parts, then I personally find fault in that.

QuoteLet me ask you, if you took out the button prompts to any David Cage game - Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls - would you sit down and pay [going rate for a film in the cinema nowadays] to see that? Would you say that is a plot intriguing and well-written enough that you would -want- to see it as a film?

No I wouldnt, but not because I dont like the plot, but because being able to play as aiden, experience the crap that jodie goes through, have to deal with the ending choices, thats what made the plot for me, connected me with it. And because by taking out those bits you are fundamentally changing the entire fabric of the experiance in a greater way then you expect, even down to the scenes etc, it would be an entirely different experiance and I couldn't guess what that experience would be.

Sabby

#44
Oh, I'm not basing my whole argument on one scene. I'm a few hours into the game and so far the entire experience has been thoroughly unpleasant. The gameplay is clumsy and breaks immersion, the characters are written terribly, the dialogue is painful, the plot is told in the most unnecessarily convoluted fashion, and the entire thing is just dull.

Cage has basically taken a bad story and a poor understanding of what makes a game and mashed them together into something he thinks is unique but really isn't. It's been done far better before, on smaller budgets. Hell, I just now got to The Walking Dead game by Telltale. So far, I don't think it's nearly as good as all the hype says it was, yet it's superior to David Cages games in every way that matters.

Vanity Evolved

Quote from: Koren on November 08, 2013, 05:25:41 AM
Yeah the party scene was horrendous. I hated it too and thought it was stupid, but if thats the only thing you are basing it off, look deeper. Like with any game some bits are horrible and some are absolutely amazing.

With anything with a game, at some point there comes a point where you cant afford to spend months finalising and perfecting every little detail, thats in the script and the gameplay. And its the same with choices. Having a full and lasting choice in each part would be SO much more art, code, script, assets, data, memory, that it would quickly get out of control.

I did personally think that the aiden parts were perhaps a bit too limited as well though, that it would have been nice to maybe have a reason for the limited control you could have over people etc, but I also wonder if in some areas that would have made the game too confusing

Im not saying you guys are wrong for hating the game, everyone has a right to think what they think about games, and i know these games have a lot of controversy attached to them a lot of the time, im just saying dont judge so harshly and bash things without understanding them and the way they work and what you are actually critiquing. If you can't be bothered seeing the good parts because of the bad parts, then I personally find fault in that.

No I wouldnt, but not because I dont like the plot, but because being able to play as aiden, experience the crap that jodie goes through, have to deal with the ending choices, thats what made the plot for me, connected me with it. And because by taking out those bits you are fundamentally changing the entire fabric of the experiance in a greater way then you expect, even down to the scenes etc, it would be an entirely different experiance and I couldn't guess what that experience would be.

"Play" as Aiden is strong word; you're given a set-piece and a very limited amount of actions you can perform. From everything I've seen, you're -forced- to perform. If you choose Revenge during the party, you're forced to just throw stuff about until the game allows you to progress. The SWAT scene gives you a couple of button presses with no variation between what you can/can't do; you have to do those things to progress the story. If it's anything like Indigo Prophecy, then there will be no moral choice; so far, there is a very barebasic Mass Effect style black and white morality system. "Do you be Carrie or do you not?"

Except unlike Mass Effect, there is some well-written responses in place, despite Mass Effect rather poorly handling this enforced system of morality within a game. Does a poor plot really become 'deeper' if, insted of the main character walking behind cover, you hold the X button to make her walk behind cover, with nothing happening until you hold X long enough?

Vanity Evolved

Actually, here's a better idea: I'll actually post my feelings on the game a little better now I'm not at uni and trying to smash out an opinion while on a five minute break. ;D

Please, try not to use 'you just don't get it' as a refutation of other peoples opinions. You can't say "I see why you dislike the game, and I agree with you" and then in the next sentence say "But you just don't get it, and you should try judging the game when you understand what it's -really- about. If you knew what you were takling about, you'd like it." It comes across as very passive aggressive and condensending to me, personally.

My main issue with Beyond: Two Souls, like Cage's other games, is this: David Cage has no particular talent. I don't intend this as a personal attack against him, but it is my opinion on his work. Cage is, in one of my nerdy analogies, a Monk in Dungeons and Dragons. He has no idea what he wants to do and the few things he can do, he does poorly. It would be poor form to base this opinion on just his work with Beyond, which to me is one of his better works, but I've seen Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, which gives me a decent basis to criticize his work.

Cage wants to be a storywriter, a game developer and a film director at once. Unfortunately, he's not particularly skilled in any one of these three areas, which means everyone of his attempts to combine these three things turns out to be a trainwreck. A pattern I've noticed with Cage is that he wants to have his cake, and eat it; he wants a film, written like a film (a predetermined beginning, middle and end) but at the same time, a branching storyline with gameplay (for obvious reasons, these two things don't mesh). Cage doesn't seem to write stories; he writes set pieces. He gets an idea. He gets another idea. He gets a third idea. And rather than thinking how appropriate they are, or how well they fit together, he goes ahead with it. He doesn't care how he gets from Point A to Point B. He simply knows he wants those two points to exist and no matter how poor the excuse, he will get from those points.

Lets look at Indigo Prophecy. He wants to create a multiple choice game about a supernatural crime thriller. What do we actually get? A pre-determined game with no actual choice, other than cosmetics (You have to be found and identified in the cafe, no matter how little sense it makes, etc.) which has multiple endings - which are all determined based on one choice at the end of the game. He wants a serious murder mystery... which quickly devolves into alien AIs, ancient Illuminati orders and Lovecraftian bugmonsters hunting down Aztec Neo as he fights Aztec Agent Smith by shooting Hadoukens at each other complete with Dragonball Z charge up sequences.

Heavy Rain follows a similar trend. It's an ambitious project which begins as a psychic victim of circumstance hunting down a killer from four possible people, including himself. This game -does- have more endings and choice matters a little more, but this mainly changes the endings of the characters and who fights the final battle. Of course, this idea is heavily plundered and retconned, which not only breaks the game's plot entirely (the point where you're in the typewriter shop has a section where the plot doesn't just have a plot hole, the plot collapses; it can't support itself. The only way the game can continue is by the plot purposely omitting information and lying to you), but also leaves large plot holes all over the place and gaps in the narrative.

Beyond: Two Souls, so far, has gone a similar way to the last two games. I've not ignored  the good parts of Beyond; I've seen several parts I like. Want to know what bugs me? Cage actively ruins them. My prime example is when you're locked in the cupboard at the party, a true moment of actual moral choice - which is the one time Cage decides to put in a forced, arbitary game decision which not only reminds you that you only have two choices, but breaks immersion entirely. Cage decides he wants a 'story of a girl plagued by supernatural powers, not focused on military stuff like so many games at the moment'... then proceeds to have one of the most major gameplay segments where the 'gameplay' begins revolve entirely around her becoming a SpecOps agent and killing SWAT. Sabby nails it perfectly. There is no choice or gameplay; the SWAT arn't obsticles that pose a thread. They're button presses. You push a button or two, see something happen, the plot continues. You have no choice in what happens. You have four or five actions with Aiden, yet every obsticle is prescripted. You used possess on that one guy? Well, it doesn't matter, because the game uses the 'possess' stick movements, but this actually means 'Force Choke'. Cage loves huge dramatic set-pieces... but he never has any drama in them. When he writes action scenes, they drag out to the point of ridiculousness.  His writing is jerky, and all over the place (which is Beyond, isn't helped by the fact the narrative is constantly jumping back and forward in time in addition to being clunky and forced). David Cage is a man who wants to write, direct and make video games all in one sitting - yet is horribly unproficient in every one of these roles.

Koren

QuotePlease, try not to use 'you just don't get it' as a refutation of other peoples opinions. You can't say "I see why you dislike the game, and I agree with you" and then in the next sentence say "But you just don't get it, and you should try judging the game when you understand what it's -really- about. If you knew what you were takling about, you'd like it." It comes across as very passive aggressive and condensending to me, personally.

You have my sincerest apologies, I wasn't trying to say that at all and certainly didn't mean to give you that impression.

I understand completely that some people will like it and some people wont, and I wasn't at all trying to say that everyone has to like it, or they'd like it if they understood it, not at all, i was simply saying that I dislike the attitude that I get from a lot of people in the gaming community that they dislike this game because of one thing, or because one person worked on it etc, ignoring anything else that comes of it. A game can still be horrible, even if it has a few awesome parts, i just hate when people say that the awesome parts don't matter because of the rest of it.

Chris Brady

Quote from: Vanity Evolved on November 08, 2013, 08:49:22 AM
Actually, here's a better idea: I'll actually post my feelings on the game a little better now I'm not at uni and trying to smash out an opinion while on a five minute break. ;D

Please, try not to use 'you just don't get it' as a refutation of other peoples opinions. You can't say "I see why you dislike the game, and I agree with you" and then in the next sentence say "But you just don't get it, and you should try judging the game when you understand what it's -really- about. If you knew what you were takling about, you'd like it." It comes across as very passive aggressive and condensending to me, personally.

My main issue with Beyond: Two Souls, like Cage's other games, is this: David Cage has no particular talent. I don't intend this as a personal attack against him, but it is my opinion on his work. Cage is, in one of my nerdy analogies, a Monk in Dungeons and Dragons. He has no idea what he wants to do and the few things he can do, he does poorly. It would be poor form to base this opinion on just his work with Beyond, which to me is one of his better works, but I've seen Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, which gives me a decent basis to criticize his work.

Cage wants to be a storywriter, a game developer and a film director at once. Unfortunately, he's not particularly skilled in any one of these three areas, which means everyone of his attempts to combine these three things turns out to be a trainwreck. A pattern I've noticed with Cage is that he wants to have his cake, and eat it; he wants a film, written like a film (a predetermined beginning, middle and end) but at the same time, a branching storyline with gameplay (for obvious reasons, these two things don't mesh). Cage doesn't seem to write stories; he writes set pieces. He gets an idea. He gets another idea. He gets a third idea. And rather than thinking how appropriate they are, or how well they fit together, he goes ahead with it. He doesn't care how he gets from Point A to Point B. He simply knows he wants those two points to exist and no matter how poor the excuse, he will get from those points.

Lets look at Indigo Prophecy. He wants to create a multiple choice game about a supernatural crime thriller. What do we actually get? A pre-determined game with no actual choice, other than cosmetics (You have to be found and identified in the cafe, no matter how little sense it makes, etc.) which has multiple endings - which are all determined based on one choice at the end of the game. He wants a serious murder mystery... which quickly devolves into alien AIs, ancient Illuminati orders and Lovecraftian bugmonsters hunting down Aztec Neo as he fights Aztec Agent Smith by shooting Hadoukens at each other complete with Dragonball Z charge up sequences.

Heavy Rain follows a similar trend. It's an ambitious project which begins as a psychic victim of circumstance hunting down a killer from four possible people, including himself. This game -does- have more endings and choice matters a little more, but this mainly changes the endings of the characters and who fights the final battle. Of course, this idea is heavily plundered and retconned, which not only breaks the game's plot entirely (the point where you're in the typewriter shop has a section where the plot doesn't just have a plot hole, the plot collapses; it can't support itself. The only way the game can continue is by the plot purposely omitting information and lying to you), but also leaves large plot holes all over the place and gaps in the narrative.

Beyond: Two Souls, so far, has gone a similar way to the last two games. I've not ignored  the good parts of Beyond; I've seen several parts I like. Want to know what bugs me? Cage actively ruins them. My prime example is when you're locked in the cupboard at the party, a true moment of actual moral choice - which is the one time Cage decides to put in a forced, arbitary game decision which not only reminds you that you only have two choices, but breaks immersion entirely. Cage decides he wants a 'story of a girl plagued by supernatural powers, not focused on military stuff like so many games at the moment'... then proceeds to have one of the most major gameplay segments where the 'gameplay' begins revolve entirely around her becoming a SpecOps agent and killing SWAT. Sabby nails it perfectly. There is no choice or gameplay; the SWAT arn't obsticles that pose a thread. They're button presses. You push a button or two, see something happen, the plot continues. You have no choice in what happens. You have four or five actions with Aiden, yet every obsticle is prescripted. You used possess on that one guy? Well, it doesn't matter, because the game uses the 'possess' stick movements, but this actually means 'Force Choke'. Cage loves huge dramatic set-pieces... but he never has any drama in them. When he writes action scenes, they drag out to the point of ridiculousness.  His writing is jerky, and all over the place (which is Beyond, isn't helped by the fact the narrative is constantly jumping back and forward in time in addition to being clunky and forced). David Cage is a man who wants to write, direct and make video games all in one sitting - yet is horribly unproficient in every one of these roles.

And his ego doesn't see that he needs to learn.  And unfortunately, there are enough people who don't really care past that it's got Ellen Page and/or Willem Defoe.
My O&Os Peruse at your doom.

So I make a A&A thread but do I put it here?  No.  Of course not.

Also, I now come with Kung-Fu Blog action.  Here:  Where I talk about comics and all sorts of gaming

Sabby

This Assassins Creed timeline on shuffle mode is really pissing me off. There are actually some good scenes in this game. Seriously, there was a moment just now where I really got into it, and felt very sad for Jodie. Problem is, the events leading up to that moment hadn't happened yet, so I had no idea why it was happening, because they feel the need to tell the story in seemingly random chunks.

Think of that sad scene from Titanic where they're floating on a piece of wood and the girl has to let him go and watch his frozen corpse sink away, but you haven't got to see the boat yet. Next you see some of the girls school life, then her young childhood, and THEN you see her board the Titanic, then back to her school days again.