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Jake

Idle Thumbs 82: An Ancient Evil Awakens

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Since Skyrim came out and then Dark Souls PC I have returned to my love of RPGs full force. I can't get enough. I even just borrowed FF13/13-2 from a coworker (I guess in an effort to stop liking RPGs :P).

If you have access to a Wii, let me strongly recommend Xenoblade, absolutely fantastic game. (Or just play Witcher 2 on the PC, which is probably more what you're looking for after playing Skyrim and Dark Souls.)

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I'm not as sure about the second part (partially because I can't find a good definition on Google, lol), but I would totally agree that a lot of games that use violence aren't so much about the violence. As they've talked about on the podcast a few times, "shoot something to make it go away" is a really simple and time-proven mechanic to build a game on top of, so we'll get thoughtful games stacked on top of a shooter. That's the disjunction that's really bothersome: the violence is central to the game, yet not where the passion and creativity is. It feels poorly-weighted.

I think The Walking Dead succeeds because it makes the violence peripheral, with the central aim of feeling other people out and trying to discern what they're thinking. As you noted, other games like Hotline Miami and Far Cry 2 choose the second route of addressing the violence head-on and actually being about it.

This reminds me of that Soren Johnson talk about how lots of games have this weird disconnect about what they purport to be, and what they actually are. Like Bioshock is supposedly about the failures of an attempt to put a Randian libertarian utopia into existence, and it evokes this idea through narrative and atmosphere, but the action is just straight up shooting dudes (now that I think about it, a game that was about a person or group of people coping within a failing utopian society would be pretty cool...). That doesn't necessarily detract from the enjoyment of the game, or what a person gets out of the game, but as an aesthetic achievement of a particular vision it does leave a lingering question asking us just how thoroughly that vision was actually achieved?

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Jon Blow had a really good lecture on that subject. A few of his lectures have really helped me to clarify my own thinking in regard to game design. Highly recommended if you have the time.

And the reason why I, personally as a critic and designer, find Hotline Miami so exciting is because it goes a long way towards resolving these problems. I'm currently writing a... manifesto? Well, a critical analysis, maybe, which goes into more detail. Hopefully some of y'all will find it interesting.

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just how thoroughly that vision was actually achieved?

But what if this lone man, with his singular vision, and ability cutting through the riff raff is the purest expression of it? Isn't the FPS the purest expression of Randian individuality? i wound up with all the money, and all the toys.

(for the record I think Objectivism and Libertarianism in real life is silly)

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I had just finished the campaign of Halo 4 when I listened to the whole "skull" conversation, which made it extra hilarious to me.

Also 2 things

1. Prometheus was the the Titan who gave fire to humanity and the flaming skull enemies are called Prometheans. Think about that.

2.

Those skulls actually ARE human skulls. Later in the game, you learn that some of the Prometheans are in fact humans that have been transformed by the Didact.

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Man, ending the podcast with "no way this is going in the podcast, could you imagine if we just put in *BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*" is evil. Our curiosity will never be sated!

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I had just finished the campaign of Halo 4 when I listened to the whole "skull" conversation, which made it extra hilarious to me.

Also 2 things

1. Prometheus was the the Titan who gave fire to humanity and the flaming skull enemies are called Prometheans. Think about that.

2.

Those skulls actually ARE human skulls. Later in the game, you learn that some of the Prometheans are in fact humans that have been transformed by the Didact.

I thought that funny too, listening to the podcast.

The initial assessment he was ridiculed for was totally on the money and actually a spoilerly revelation from half way through the game.

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The bit about Hotline Miami had me really frustrated as I rarely am when reading the podcast, since I really thought that you guys weren't giving it enough credit. Fortunately I had like an hour and a half of other cast pods to chill off to afterwards, and can no longer remember most of the points I wanted to argue. I'll probably write one or two thousand words on Hotline Miami this weekend, and try to make a case for why I think this game is super important and more than just a novelty. I'll link it here, along with maybe a couple of choice quotations, when it's finished.

Okay, finally got this written and it came out to like 3000 words jeez. Pretty pleased with how it turned out. Here are a couple of quotations relevant to the discourse in this episode of the pod:

Re: Violence discussion

violence... [is] a common cause of ludonarrative dissonance. Therefore, in order to make a unified game, one must either implement non-violent gameplay, and create a narrative context suitable to that gameplay, or address the violence somehow. Implementing a non-violent gameplay paradigm is much more difficult than it sounds, because most of the progress of the industry has been in honing inherently violent gameplay elements to perfection. It would be foolish and naive to discard this experimental data entirely, which is a big part of why even people who want to forge out into non-violent directions find themselves creating implicitly violent games. Non-violence is an exciting field of development, but any time you’re experimenting with untested game tropes you run a risk of, well, creating a kind of shit game.

So, if you want to reap the full benefit of everything we know about game design, you basically have to make a violent game.

. This is why we’re starting to see games like Spec-Ops: The Line and Hotline Miami pop up, because it is the obvious, and necessary, first step towards consonance. Hotline Miami doesn’t treat the violence as real violence, but it acknowledges it and raises the obvious next question: What kind of person does that sort of thing?

Re: Disappointment with the ending (spoilers, obviously)

Think back to playing the game. Think back to the questions, the mysteries, that drove you forwards as you played. Now: How many of those did the ending actually answer?

The ending answers one question, possibly the least interesting question posed by the game, that of the titular Hotline Miami. This ending accomplishes two things: First, it gives you an intriguing hint that the world the game takes place in is not our world, and second it tells you nothing that you’ve actually been asking.

This frustrated some people. Oddly, many of these people wished that the ending had been more open-ended, all without realizing that relative to the main plot of the game the ending was, in fact, completely open ended. We still know nothing about Jacket, whether he lived or died, how much of the experience we played through was real.

You can read the whole thing here.

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Did everyone besides me get a memo about there not being an Idle Thumbs podcast yesterday?

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Considering how busy I've been this week I'm glad there's a delay. I feel like I'm not missing it when the scoops are fresh. And... hot.

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But now it's too late :angry:

I cannot simply reorganize my world just because the podcast is a day later :hmph:

:hitler:

I also haven't seen this emoticon for a while:

:rubik:

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Ok guys! There is a reason why it's a human skull that pops out of the Promethean's helmet, but it's a little bit of a spoiler if you care about the Halo 4 storyline. And it's not really supposed to be flaming. I don't know why they pulled that effect out of their ass, but they're more or less supposed to be made of glowy data shit. I'm really enjoying the game tho! :-)

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