Jake

Idle Thumbs 253: Ambitious Ambivalence

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I thought the exact opposite by the absence of Farcry 2 talk. If anything, you guys should get sobriety coins for abstaining so long. Proud of yall.

 

 

Also, man, Nick turning Stardew Valley into Depression Quest 2: Skip Work and Eat Bread in Bed was rough to listen to...

 

In the second release by indie studio Campo Santo, Farmwatch lets you play as Nick Breckon, a man who escapes his troubling life as a video game developer by taking care of a shitty farm.

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I don't think it's that silly. There's a difference between the AGI/SCI 1 vs later SCI era Sierra games. Sierra clearly had a lot of trouble with learning to design puzzles for mouse-driven interface.

 

Myst and the 7th Guest did make me worry that I'd loose the games I really loved: the Lucas adventures. Eventually it turned out I did, but not for the reasons I thought. I also thought that Ultima Underworld games were the heralds of a new age, but that also never really came to be.

 

I think they did, it just took like 20 years to get there.

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the thing about ubisoft open world games is that the ones that actually are kind of doing their own thing in terms of structure are usually the ones that review poorly and get hated on.  And then people fatigue of the super safe and regimented versions and wonder why they aren't exciting any more.  I'm glad that Ubisoft seems to have a bunch more popular franchises going at this point instead of just mainly assassin's creed.  Hopefully they don't feel the need to release any of their series on an annual schedule, which I think would go a long way towards developing more fully realized and focused versions of different kinds of structures that people might be more willing to try out.

 

all that said, I kind of do care about there being some narrative thread to pull me through a world, and there being tangible reasons to pursue that thread.  It's hard for me to really get excited about wandering around in Skyrim.  Sure, I enjoy avoiding the terrible story, but I'd rather that story just be good and interesting, and I'd rather the world exist mainly to give it texture rather than combing every inch of it clearly being the point.  You can spend a lot of time wandering around Paris in Assassin's Creed Unity, doing side missions and ignoring the story, and that feels a lot like what it feels like in Skyrim.  Side missions are even often written better than Skyrim's quests. And I still don't like it.

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My response to Nick's Stardew Valley story was very similar to Jake's response after the Spaceteam card game story last week. =P

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After finishing his loaf of bread, Nick Breckon watches Ice Station Zebra for the 127th time.

 

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Open-ended games often bring with them a kind of analysis paralysis where, faced with a million things you could do, you get overwhelmed and don't do a single thing. So I certainly understand Nick's frustration, but my experience probably couldn't have been further from his. I finally picked up the game just now and played through some four days, and I really enjoy the tiny clearing I am tending to so far. As predicted on the cast, it only took a few minutes to get rid of weeds to the point where I could start farming. The game gives you a starter pack of 15 turnip seeds, so I'm not sure how Nick ended up watching a single plant grow, unless he sold his seeds to pay for more stale bread to munch in bed. I also learned that you can earn money by fishing or picking vegetables growing in the wild, so it really doesn't seem that hard to flourish in this game, assuming you are willing to leave your virtual house.

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I'm one of those people who really didn't like Myst when it came out, and I think you guys hit most of the reasons. It was around an odd crossroads in PC gaming. Part of it was due to my not liking the direction Sierra was going. This all feels super silly to type out, but I didn't like most of their VGA point n click games, and I blame the fidelity/interface transition more. Around 1992/93 we had PQ3, QFG3, KQ6, and SQ5. They looked nice, but I thought they were less interesting, and I think Myst struck me similarly.

 

There was also a bit of proximity to the FMV "games are the new Hollywood" explosion, and I probably felt Myst was closer to that. It had the smooth motion, but generally less-"interactive" nature. It wasn't like 7th Guest or anything, but it seemed more like that to me, when my favorite game at the time was Ultima 7, which was pushing "total experience" in a way no games had at that point.

 

I liked Myst when it came out, but ended up not really having fond feelings for the game down the road. I explained it in detail whenever this discussion last came up, but very briefly I think what struck lots of people as an impressive environment didn't age well, and the artificiality of the whole thing was potentially annoying.

 

Robert Yang touches on this in a really nice piece about environmental art in video games: http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2016/03/a-history-and-triumph-of-environment.html

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During the Far Cry map discussion, sadly, my mind imagined a future Ubigame with a lore terminal explaining why in the Far Cry -universe the tectonic plates moved alot more in pre-historic eras and the primal bit of Europe ended up in the Himalayas some 10 millenia later. And a diary for why, despite these vast changes, the area still looks the same.
 
My experience with Stardew Valley was less extreme than Nick's. Still, I did experience some existential discomfort as well. The kind of weird opening cutscene paints the farm inheritance as an escape from the corporate serfdom. However, what the actual gameplay encourages is extreme time management and micro-optimization. Each day lasts only 20-30 minutes, and at the very least you have to water the plants. If a villager has a birthday, you really should give them a gift. If it's raining, you don't have to water the plants but you can spend it fishing or mining or just doing general chores. 
 
Instead of leisurly working on the farm, each night I need to plan the next day: I need to buy seeds today, so I should first go to the sea shore to collect the shells, and if I have time before the shops open, catch a fish, and then sell the shells, then go to the seed shop to get the seeds. Then back to the farm and plant the seeds and water the plants. After that I still have half a day so a quick trip to the baths to replenish energy, then to the mines to collect some ore. My poor farmer guy never was this beholden to the clock as the office worker. I suppose this matches what actual farming is like. You worry about the weather, time and expenses. Definetly not relaxing :-)
 
I still feel the comparisons between Myst (plus its sequels) and The Witness are weird, since pretty much the only thing the games have in common is the are first person, they have puzzles and they begin on an island. The Myst begins with a very clear narration, and an hour into the game you're already diving into other worlds. As iconic as the island is for Myst, you spend most of the game off it. There are a lot of journals and there is, in general, a whole bunch of story being fed to you. Pretty much all the puzzles in Myst try (and often fail) to fit in the world. Fictionally, they are not puzzles for the sake of being puzzles. They are the tools the inhabitants of the world used. Where as The Witness, instead of having a bunch of menus for choosing puzzles has an island you walk on. But it effectively is a pure puzzle game. The game I personally have found myself comparing the Witness to is the Starseed Pilgrim. Admittedly it's a lot less well known. But I would never compare Starseed Pilgrim with Myst. Perhaps I'm doing a disservice for the beauty of the island of the Witness, and all the environmental stuff in the game.

 

Hmm, maybe that's why I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere in Stardew Valley, I pretty much water then do one thing each day, and that's it.

 

Also, there are baths that restore energy? What the hell? Where are they? That would solve a lot of my problems.

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So I'd just finished listening to Ken & Robin talk about Tycho Brahe's racing elk, which got drunk at dinner and died from a fall down the stairs, before listening to this podcast which basically opens with Chris' story about the Murder Elk in Far Cry. What a wonderful wonderful surprise.

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Jake's point about the relationship between Myst and text-based adventure games got me wondering if any of the Thumbs ever played Return to Zork because it's a perfect example of exactly this thing. Released in 1993 (a little before Myst!) it was the first in that series to go from being a text game to using pre-rendered 3D graphics, FMV, and CD-quality sound, and to underline the importance of this generational leap,
- 'You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.' - before seguing nicely into an animation of exactly that landscape. 

 

As well as the simple compass-based navigation, the game also had some other mechanics in common with the earlier Zork text games. There was an array of verbs you could use, a bit like in the LucasArts point and click games, and some of the puzzles had multiple solutions. There was a camera and tape recorder for making in-game recordings. You could use pretty much any item on anything else, and sometimes something interesting or amusing (or really bad) would happen. You could get a knife and kill any character in the game, and sometimes this would make it impossible to continue. And you could die in all kinds of stupid ways and each time you'd be presented with a unique (and somewhat disturbing) game over image. 

 

I'm not sure it was a great game, but it certainly left an impression on me. Probably I was a little too young to be playing it because at times it left me quite terrified. The world they created was a light-hearted fantasy, but it also had a strong character of weirdness and forboding about it. In retrospect, it certainly feels like Twin Peaks was a big influence on both the characters and the ambience of the thing.

 

But in spite of the dodgy FMV acting and the grainy graphics, there was something totally captivating about its aesthetic and its ambition. And I still regret giving away my old 'big box' CD-ROM copy because it came with some amazing feelies, including a bound copy of the Encyclopedia Frobozzica. I used to take it to school with me because I was extremely cool.

 

(Also, oh my god, this 'Quit game?' screen.)

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I had that game - I think it came with my first CD ROM drive along with the CD version of Loom, I'm almost positive - and I could never get anywhere in it and found it totally baffling, but I always loved the opening.

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Nick's Stardew Valley story was wonderful. I haven't played it, but I love the idea of games allowing you to be depressed in a game world without requiring extrapolations about the player's life outside of the game.

They should include a feature where the longer you stay in bed, the more anxious your character becomes; they could provide visualizations of the house going into further disrepair than it actually is and of towns-folk being angry with you even when your relation-stats are actually positive. I love the idea of two simulated worlds, the perspective of the player-character that affects visual style and music, and a simulated reality that sustains itself independent of the player.

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want some rye? course ya do!

 

man, looking at a video, i really want to try this again. i played it in 93, but i feel like i didn't get too far. all those contextual icons were something else to my young dumb brain. 

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Also, there are baths that restore energy? What the hell? Where are they? That would solve a lot of my problems.

The entrance to the area with the railoroad and the baths is next to Linus' tent and the carpenter's house. Initially it is blocked. The baths open up sometime in the during the first summer, iirc.

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want some rye? course ya do!

Speaking of things that are CD-ROM as fuck, I just started playing Pegasus Prime, the remake of The Journeyman Project. It's pretty sick so far.

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Oh my god, the Journeyman Project series was probably one of the first series that I begged my parents for the sequel. It marked me moving on from being a kid who just bought the prettiest game on the store shelves. I had no idea they remade the first game. I think I might buy the three pack.

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The Journeyman Project folks made Myst III, and I suspect that's why it's the only Myst game I've gotten on with very much. (Though I also appreciate them casting Brad Dourif as the villain. Love that guy.)

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