Chris

Idle Weekend December 11, 2015: TGIF, Finally

Recommended Posts

Yay Idle Weekend, great cast, etc. etc.

 

Hearing Danielle talk about playing The Walking Dead when she was in a depressed mood was really interesting to me because when that game was out I was also going through a really rough time and feeling generally depressed about life.  But unlike her I specifically avoided playing it because I was afraid of being bummed out even further.  I instead went for the numbing effect and played games that didn't require any kind of real thought (mostly TF2).  It was a coping mechanism of sorts and it worked for me at the time.  I don't particularly enjoy bleak worlds and the thought of spending so much time in one, especially one so narratively driven, was something I just didn't have the energy or will for.  What was especially upsetting is that deep down inside I did want to play it but the timing was just the worst.

 

I still haven't played it but now I have no excuse other than I'm lazy and just haven't gotten around to it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

cast was good! i'd like to hear rob list some of those sad games.

 

 

damn. now i just want to boot up one of those first two i haven't play yet.

Play Shadow of Chernobyl, it's a masterpiece

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Good debut, I really like the intro song.

 

oh yeah! great tune, ya'll.

 

Great start to the new cast!

Regarding The Game Awards... The Spike Awards were pretty terrible, but their new Game Awards incarnation, while undeniably commercial, seems on balance a sincere celebration of games.

 

is it better/worse or merely different awards shows like the grammys and oscars are voting on their peers while the game awards have critics choosing winners?

 

Play Shadow of Chernobyl, it's a masterpiece

 

went to download this after i posted and it turns out i already had it installed!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

is it better/worse or merely different awards shows like the grammys and oscars are voting on their peers while the game awards have critics choosing winners?

 

Well, we already have the Game Developers Choice Awards voted on by peers so I'm fine with Keighley's Game Awards being chosen by critics.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

<opinions>

 

By the way, sorry if I'm a bit overly declarative with my thoughts on American vs European fantasy and The Witcher. I tend to think anything on forums should be read as in "in my opinion" but maybe it doesn't come across that way. Curious what you guys think. Maybe I am alone in preferring the more grounded, less D&D, variety of fantasy...

 

[edit: I should add perhaps that while my feelings on Bethesda RPGs are generally mixed I am a big fan of Mass Effect... I haven't actually played Dragon Age but from trailers and assorted marketing the world never struck me as convincing.]

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I really enjoyed the conversation about sad games.  I, probably too frequently, seek out melancholy media.  It's a drive that the lady does not understand, at all.  



On spoilers in games, I think what I worry about the most is actually missing a sense of wonder or surprise, often mechanical in nature, not necessarily story driven.  One of my favorite examples of this is from Deadly Premonition.  

Probably one of the things that cemented my love of that game is that I was on the second or third day in game, driving around, and each evening you have to go back to your hotel and sleep.  I had swung by a bar to try and get a chat in with someone, and so was getting back to the hotel later than I had the previous evenings.  The clock struck midnight, AND SUDDENLY GIANT DEMON DOGS STARTED RAINING FROM THE SKY!  I'm screaming, probably just a litany of fuckfuckfuckfuck, as this giant, black, red eyed mongrel is chasing my car, driving like a bat out of hell.  I hit the parking lot of the hotel, power slide to a stop directly in front of the front doors and jump inside...where the nice little old lady who runs the place says hi to me and asks how my day was.  

It has literally nothing to do with any of the story that people would usually want to avoid having spoiled.  But it was such a ridiculously wonderful treat, that had I known it starts raining devil dogs at midnight, never would have happened the way it did.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

By the way, sorry if I'm a bit overly declarative with my thoughts on American vs European fantasy and The Witcher. I tend to think anything on forums should be read as in "in my opinion" but maybe it doesn't come across that way. Curious what you guys think. Maybe I am alone in preferring the more grounded, less D&D, variety of fantasy...

I actually had almost the exact opposite reaction. My exposure to European fantasy is limited to Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and J.K. Rowling, so while The Witcher 3's sense of place came across as distinctly European, the tone brought to mind stuff I've read by American authors like Glen Cook or George R.R. Martin. In addition, the protagonist's English voice-over came across as so aggressively drawn from Hollywood action movies (almost to the point of Kung Fury-esque parody) that I found the contrast between the setting and the delivery of the dialogue jarring before I learned you could play it using Polish voice acting with English subtitles.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Interesting. I think the gruff voice acting works for the character (tried the Polish VO once but being used to the English voices didn't care for it), but it's definitely true that on top of its more grounded historical core the game is not shy about referencing modern pop culture (a fighter named Durden, the Tailor, springs to mind, or the fact that there's a full on several-lines-long Pulp Fiction quote in the incidental dialogue at one point). I wonder, if I wanted to recalibrate my view of non-contemporary American fantasy, other than Martin, any ones you would recommend? (Glen Cook, I guess?)

I do rather enjoy modern American fantasy. I really like Buffy The Vampire Slayer to name one, and in games Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines... I uh, can't think of any non-vampire examples off the top of my head. I guess maybe Sandman counts as semi-American in its setting and influences, though Neil Gaiman (the writer) is a Brit.

But I guess my original point was that when you grow up surrounded by history (which is true pretty much anywhere in Europe) I think you get a different sense of it, as a part of your own culture. Take most any major European city, and modern glass and concrete stand side by side with Renaissance, Medieval and even Roman or sometimes Greek architecture (though the latter two are typically just ruins). Whereas in the USA if something is from two hundred years ago that's considered old. Meanwhile Europe has got nothing on a place like Egypt, where even in Cleopatra's day the pyramids were ancient.

To some extent, when it's not right there, history and myth are all just stories.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Dodo, I'm curious what other RPGs you're comparing Witcher against when you mention D&D. I'd almost go so far as to say the split is between the (former) Eastern Bloc and everyone else, rather than Europe vs North America. A counterexample of a European game that absolutely fails to ground itself, for instance, is Fable. The only other games I've played that capture that dirt and grime are Metro and STALKER.

 

I'm also curious what your criteria is for "real"! I think Dragon Age: Origins, and some of the isometric Bioware/Interplay/Black Isle games fit the sort of mold you're looking towards, but I might be off base. I finally started playing Pillars of Eternity, and it gives me the same vibe. Witcher 3 just happens to absolutely nail all the pieces of execution.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@Badfinger: Fair point. I'll grant you my sample size is limited, and Fable doesn't fit the pattern.

Besides Witcher the main other game I'd put into that more grounded category is Piranha Bytes' Gothic, which is a German game. For all its rough edges it really nails the world and characters. Gothic 2 as well, mostly. The story in 2 is nonsense, but it still captures that particular atmosphere.

It's hard to put my finger on exactly what the difference is. Like you can describe parts of it and it won't sound that different, but it's in the way it all hangs together (which is where my theory of understanding history comes from, but I could be wrong)... It's just something about how the world is constructed, with a certain eye for how things work, functional buildings and all, how people inhabit a world and go about their day, how people react. No one goes all "Hail! Well met, good sir. I have a quest!" on you.

One of the first bits of dialogue in Gothic is when you arrive at the Old Camp in the prison colony. The guard outside asks if you're going to be causing trouble. One of the options is to be a smart ass and say: "Sure, I'm going to take on the whole camp". The guard responds: "You're a funny guy. I don't like funny guys". He then proceeds to beat you up and steal what few items you've collected so far. "Thanks for the ore, I'll drink to you!" he says while you are left lying in the mud. People in Gothic are assholes.

Contrast this with

, which is just... eh. There's nothing there. And that's an improvement over Morrowind which didn't even try to have dialogue; it just printed encyclopaedia entries. The less said about Oblivion, the better.

Skyrim feels like a Nordic-themed RPG land for the player to raid some dungeons and kill some bandits in, where Gothic feels like: well, this is roughly what you would get if some mages bungled a magical barrier around a medieval prison colony and the inmates killed all the guards and took over, then separated into competing camps... oh and also there's a slumbering ancient evil that's making people crazy. And orcs.

Dragon Age: Origins, I haven't played it but my impression from trailers and such, "new shit" notwithstanding, was always that it was a painfully generic high-fantasy world with maybe some interesting quest construction (the origin stories thing sounded neat), but just no personality at all... Though I get the sense from critics individual characters were well-developed, perhaps more so in the sequels. That's certainly something Bioware excels at, and after getting hooked on Mass Effect I've been half-tempted to give Dragon Age a shot despite my misgivings.

As for older Bioware titles, tinkering with numbers is the thing I least enjoy about RPGs so I don't think  those games are for me. As far as I'm concerned, adventuring is not about doing math.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Great first episode. Can't wait for next weekend.

 

I strongly identify with playing games while in a rut--they've helped me through some rough times. KG wrote an article about this back in the day: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/02/14/alone-in-the-dark-weeping/

 

He has this to say about games vs. music/tv/film during depression: "Fundamentally, as long as it is, as distracting as it is, as all-consuming as it is… it ends. You complete it, look up at the sun and realise you have to do something else."

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you're interested in characters and, specifically, world building, then DA:O is absolutely the game I recommend you play first if you play any Dragon Age games. Completely coincidental to this conversation, I was browsing RPS and read this the other day about Dragon Age, and RPS's 50 best PC RPGs. If that article resonates, then for sure give it a shot.

 

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/11/17/dragon-age-origins-retro/

 

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/10/best-rpg/

 

Dragon Age, BG2, and Witcher 3 are all unsurprisingly extremely high on the list (though I vehemently disagree with their #1 pick, to the point I was shocked it appeared on the list at all). PoE is fairly high, which is exciting because I've just started in on it.

 

I don't disagree with you on Skyrim at all. It's a dragon and ice theme park for doing fun stuff. Bethesda are at their best making a game a mile wide and a foot deep, and they nailed it super hard with Skyrim. Using it as your tentpole counterexample from Witcher is something of a strawman though, because I don't think anyone is touting Skyrim as the realistic, nitty-gritty fantasy world to hang your hat on and hold up. All my rambling is to say two things I guess. 1) I think there absolutely are excellent realistic and grounded NA-made RPGs out there, and 2) using Witcher 3 is going to leave most contenders wanting, because Witcher 3 is one of the best video games ever made, and it specifically hangs its hat on being grounded and real.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Great debut!

 

I think one of the real tricks the Witcher 3 does have in advantage is the use of contrast, where instead of things just begin bleak, dark, detailess, colorless and gritty, there is a lot of detail, color and flavor, and this mean that both the darker and brighter side strength each other.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@Valorian: Yeah definitely. If Witcher was all grim all the time it wouldn't work as well as it does. Having that levity makes the darker moments hit that much harder. Works the other way too: a largely cheerful game can really catch you off guard by touching on more serious things. I still remember being really impressed by Milla's hidden memory in Psychonauts.
 

I don't disagree with you on Skyrim at all. It's a dragon and ice theme park for doing fun stuff. Bethesda are at their best making a game a mile wide and a foot deep, and they nailed it super hard with Skyrim. Using it as your tentpole counterexample from Witcher is something of a strawman though, because I don't think anyone is touting Skyrim as the realistic, nitty-gritty fantasy world to hang your hat on and hold up.

 

That's fair: It's a choice. Their priorities are what they are and previously I would've said you have one or the other, something small and focused with a lot of character (Gothic) or something big but perhaps a little shallow (Elder Scrolls), but, it being unusually outstanding aside, Witcher 3 sort of demonstrates you can have both... although it could be argued the difference is less in scale but in the more emergent nature of Elder Scrolls' mechanics.

 

Maybe I'm reading too much into a couple of games with a certain style and tone, but I do feel that having that historical context informs the creative process in a fundamental way and any work cannot help but be influenced by the culture that produces it.

To give a somewhat unrelated example, I am curious what a World War 2 game made by Dutch or French developers would look like, instead of the Allied perspective perhaps a game about living under the occupation, surviving the Dutch "hunger winter", or fighting in the resistance (not The Saboteur, but something closer to the actual experience)...

I don't subscribe to the notion that you can only write what you personally know - that's what research is for - but it does add something when you have that background, directly or indirectly.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm going to have to go to bat for spoiler warnings. I completely understand that people should be able to freely talk about a piece of fiction, and I'm not arguing that the discussion is a problem. But I think the value of that discussion is completely lost on someone who hasn't experienced it for themselves. If you want to tell me how amazing some film is because of what happens at the end and I haven't seen it, we're having a completely one-sided conversation because I have no perspective of my own to bring, and even if I go ahead and watch it afterwards I'm doing so with your perspective in mind instead of forming my own. I also completely disagree with the idea that a work of fiction that can be "ruined" by having a key point told to you in advance was never good to begin with. Being told or reading key plot points is a poor substitute for experiencing the fiction the way the author intended. To me it comes across as a position of arrogance (And I mean that in a general sense, I'm not accusing anyone of being arrogant) to say "I played this game and I enjoyed it so I want to talk about it, but I personally don't think it matters to your enjoyment if I tell you what happens in it." I don't think someone else can tell you how you're going to enjoy something.

 

What I do agree on is that we definitely need to be better at talking about fiction in terms other than big shocking moments. I've had the opposite problem of a spoiler with Undertale since everyone talking about that game says "IT'S SO GOOD YOU NEED TO PLAY IT BUTICANTTELLYOUWHY". I'm finding it a bit underwhelming so far because the only expectations I've had going in were that it was literally the best game ever (Suck it, Ocarina of Time.) I think it's a problem of media literacy that people don't know how to critically praise a game in a way that doesn't hinge on reciting the best moments.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sad games! Sad games are rad! Sad is part of why Dark Souls is so good, and sad is why Silent Hill 2 is a classic, and for all the talk about the crazy action-packedness of Left 4 Dead the first game still had a tone of subtle but overwhelming melancholy over the top of the frantic action. I'm surprised we can have an entire discussion about the ways in which playing a sad game can make us feel better when we're down without the word 'catharsis' coming up, but man playing TWD sure brings to the surface any buried feelings of anxiety and depression one may be struggling with -- which can be a blessing and a curse, because those emotions can be overwhelming but also they're easier to address when given shape and brought to the surface. I was dealing with a lot of stress when I played it, and after each episode I zoned out for an hour or two playing Super Hexagon and trying to unpack my feelings about what had just happened.

 

Anyway! Sad games! Should I check out this The Darkness thing Rob was talking about? Seems like it might have a similar tonal appeal to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, which is another excellent melancholy sort of game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Anyway! Sad games! Should I check out this The Darkness thing Rob was talking about? Seems like it might have a similar tonal appeal to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, which is another excellent melancholy sort of game.

 

Yes! I forgot to mention how glad I was to hear someone talk about The Darkness, because I adore that game. It's a noir-horror nightmare made by the people who did the Riddick games. The atmosphere is absolutely brilliant from start to finish; it doesn't really give you a reason to explore but it's an open world game where all the environments join together, which means you spend a good amount of time just wandering through empty New York streets, and you get between locations by using the subway trains. Those environments are also used for combat and sections of story exposition, and I really loved how a single location would switch between gameplay, dialogue and empty silence throughout the course of the game. If you've never played The Darkness you should definitely pick it up.

 

There was a sequel made by a different studio that I don't think is worth playing. It's one of those situations where it seems like the new devs didn't understand what made the original so great, so they doubled down on the comic book stuff and made it cel-shaded and really actiony and gratuitous (Not that the first game isn't violent, but it's violence that fits the bleak context). Plus the first one ends so well that there was never a need for a sequel, and they had to do some weird retcons to justify it.

 

 

Oh boy, and speaking of sadgames, I was at one of the worst points of my depression when Hotline Miami came out. Now there's a game you shouldn't play if you have a warped sense of reality.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm going to have to go to bat for spoiler warnings. (...)

 

I agree with this. You can only experience something for the first time once and it's not cool to take that away from people unannounced. Knowing things in advance completely changes that experience. Some of my favourite film experiences have been when I knew almost nothing going in, just a poster and a vague recommendation, or maybe a brief snippet of a scene, without having been ruined by overly expository trailers and assorted online discussion (for example I saw Children of Men, knowing nothing about it and was duly impressed... more recently, saw How to Train Your Dragon 2 and was able to enjoy some interesting surprises because I had not seen any trailers). It's a good practice to give spoiler warnings as a general rule, even where they might be reasonably expected. There should certainly be room to discuss story at length so long as those that wish to avoid this have a fair chance of not stumbling on it accidentally...

 

Of course, if you read or listen through a detailed plot discussion of a thing you haven't seen or played you have only yourself to blame.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So I'm mostly the opposite way with regards to spoilers. I primarily feel that way because they've morphed from "Please don't ruin the plot twist to this psychological thriller" to "I don't want to know if Daniel Craig is in the next Bond film." It's the difference between politely asking not to discuss the back third of The Sixth Sense to refusing to discuss the casting for it. Knowing things in advance does change things, but it doesn't necessarily make them worse. I respect the media blackout! I am not unfeeling to that idea. At the same time, you have chosen to listen to a gaming podcast where by design they are taking an approach that encourages deeper discussions. That is the opposite of a media blackout. You are opting in!

 

With that said, I know I personally can stand to do a better job of finding ways to discuss things broadly and highlight interesting things about them without parroting a recitation of the events that unfolded in it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm with Badfinger on this. Don't mention details that are genuinely surprising, but this idea that hearing in advance discussion of plot points will somehow corrupt your experience with a piece of media continues to feel like a bizarre concept to me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't disagree... I'm not saying knowing anything at all is a problem (although as described going in cold can be great) but it's more about the genuinely surprising things, as you put it. And yeah, basic details like casting choices (unless particularly revealing because of a surprise returning character or something) are to be expected, so I do think beyond that point the onus is on the reader, not the writer, to maintain their own media blackout if that's what they want. Mark real spoilers with a warning, but if you're going to discuss a thing, actually discuss the thing.

 

Ok so, specific example, in How To Train Your Dragon 2:

Halfway through the movie, the main character, Hiccup, meets his long lost mother whom he thought had died when he was a baby... The reveal of the character is handled in a really elegant and mysterious way... and apparently, I was told later, all of this is shown in the trailer! I'm really glad I had not been spoiled on this and was able to fully enjoy the emotional impact of the moment as intended, instead of going "oh I guess this is the part where that happens". Worth noting that this an example that could be spoiled by discussing casting choices as well.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A bit late getting on board with this one.

Just chiming in to say that I really enjoyed the feel of the first episode, including the intro music. The hosts both have quite different tastes, but speak so well that they can fit in together.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now