Does anyone want to discuss this gameplay video with me?

[clyde]

 

 

I think there are a few interesting things to talk about in it.

[I_smell]

The most interesting thing about this game is that it's made by Quantic Dream and directed by David Cage!

Their dreams of putting actors into video games and making them more like movies is still solid in this Dreamcast game.

[TychoCelchuuu]

The game's on GOG.com now so you don't even have to watch it, you can play it!

[chummer]

I remember playing this game on the Dreamcast, though I don't remember if I ever finished it. While I think David Cage has the absolutely right idea about how video games should explore more topics and in different ways, I think the way he is trying to execute them is counterproductive. To be fair, I've only played Omikron and Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, though everything I heard about Heavy Rain seems to be continuing the same ideas with just better faces and more branches to the narrative.

 

What is it that you think is interesting about it, clyde?

[Patrick R]

I was under the impression that this was never released? Was there some other Eidos/Ion Storm game that died on the vine or am I just making things up?

[I_smell]

I remember playing this game on the Dreamcast, though I don't remember if I ever finished it. While I think David Cage has the absolutely right idea about how video games should explore more topics and in different ways, I think the way he is trying to execute them is counterproductive. To be fair, I've only played Omikron and Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, though everything I heard about Heavy Rain seems to be continuing the same ideas with just better faces and more branches to the narrative.

 

What is it that you think is interesting about it, clyde?

Yeah I was really on-board with David Cage's notion that Video games should grow up and stretch out to do more things; but I think we're all on the same page that it sounds less profound when the second-half of that sentence is "we just need a FILM-QUALITY ORCHESTRA!"

"Games just need OSCAR-NOMINATED ACTORS! Then we'll be one step closer!"

[Lechimp]

I wish he stuck with the open world thing instead of basically making interactive movies. Maybe Heavy Rain was much better and allowed for more variation from choices than Fahrenheit though.

 

More games should also have David Bowie.

[tegan]

that text is hard to read

 

whoever recorded this really should have sprung for the Dreamcast VGA cable

[chummer]

Yeah I was really on-board with David Cage's notion that Video games should grow up and stretch out to do more things; but I think we're all on the same page that it sounds less profound when the second-half of that sentence is "we just need a FILM-QUALITY ORCHESTRA!"

"Games just need OSCAR-NOMINATED ACTORS! Then we'll be one step closer!"

 

 

I wish he stuck with the open world thing instead of basically making interactive movies. Maybe Heavy Rain was much better and allowed for more variation from choices than Fahrenheit though.

 

More games should also have David Bowie.

Is this going to devolve into a Cage bashing thread? Because I would be down for that. Though John Walker at RPS has done that pretty well already.

[clyde]

I remember playing this game on the Dreamcast, though I don't remember if I ever finished it. While I think David Cage has the absolutely right idea about how video games should explore more topics and in different ways, I think the way he is trying to execute them is counterproductive. To be fair, I've only played Omikron and Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, though everything I heard about Heavy Rain seems to be continuing the same ideas with just better faces and more branches to the narrative.

 

What is it that you think is interesting about it, clyde?

The game begins with your avatar affirming that he is not a fictional character, but a real entity in a parallel dimension. He even goes on to explain how he will reinhabit his body whenever you stop playing your DreamCast. Tinker Bell gonna die if you don't clap. I'm interested in that framework, when the work of fiction insists that it is not fictional. What the motive is for it, when it is effective and how it influences role-play. I imagine that it is a way to tell the player "You are role-playing as yourself, playing this game but pretending that it is real." This context works for me enough to think it is surreal for the player to go through the apartment and burglarize it.

Then the player has sex with fictional dude's wife, not only knowing that she thinks it is him, but after he has had an opportunity to mention it to her. I wonder what the motivation was for having script ready in the case that the player decides to sex the wife disingeniusly . I haven't played the game so I don't know if these issues are eventually addressed by the narrative. 

It got me thinking about how my play-decisions in morality simulations affect my view of myself and whether or not someone else's treatment of fictional characters affects my view of them. This seems like a topic specific to the medium of games.

[Sno]

God, Omikron was such a weird thing.

I was under the impression that this was never released? Was there some other Eidos/Ion Storm game that died on the vine or am I just making things up?

No, Omikron was definitely released, it was Quantic Dream's first game and has no ties to the whole Ion Storm mess.

There were probably a lot of plans at Ion Storm that never came to fruition, I believe an Anachronox sequel was particularly high on that list.

[brkl]

Fuck David Cage for tricking me into buying Fahreheit by making the demo good and the rest shit.

 

I like the Bowie album that song is from.

[Thrik]

Fahrenheit was good for quite some time I think, but then at a certain point in the game you can almost see the developers going "lmao fuck this SHIT!!!!!!!!!!" and the rest was a load of random craziness pulled from abandoned pre-production ideas from Fahrenheit and maybe every other game they've thought about making.

But for a while it was good.

[Joewintergreen]

I heard Fahrenheit was supposed to be a trilogy, but it unexpectedly became clear that they weren't going to be able to do that so they kind of jammed the whole planned story into one game and you end up with something that's more or less sane for the first half or two thirds, and then suddenly everybody goes super saiyan and starts having zombie sex and shit.

 

The game begins with your avatar affirming that he is not a fictional character, but a real entity in a parallel dimension. He even goes on to explain how he will reinhabit his body whenever you stop playing your DreamCast. Tinker Bell gonna die if you don't clap. I'm interested in that framework, when the work of fiction insists that it is not fictional.

I started, but did not finish, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men'>Last and First Men a while ago, and it does a cool thing like this in the opening. I don't know how/if it ends up resolving, but I thought it was really well done. I may read that opening again so I can say more words about it

[Laxan]

Fuck David Cage for tricking me into buying Fahreheit by making the demo good and the rest shit.

 

I like the Bowie album that song is from.

Apparently Bowie wrote a load of songs for Omikron, and then reused them and changed the words a bit and made it into "Hours...". Which is hilarious, and I can imagine David Cage, whilst tipsy in a bar, telling everyone about how he should get some credit for a Bowie album.

[clyde]

I started, but did not finish, Last and First Men a while ago, and it does a cool thing like this in the opening. I don't know how/if it ends up resolving, but I thought it was really well done. I may read that opening again so I can say more words about it

 

I might be exceptionally gullible, but when movies and books have characters that affirm that they are real regardless of their fictional nature, it makes me more considerate. In movies or books though, my actions don't feel required (Tinker Bell lives if I don't clap; the princess in Never Ending Story gets named). In games, my actions are required. I felt guilt when I only played the demo of Faery: Legends of Avalon. Their world was most certainly encompassed by darkness when I didn't buy the full game. I wonder what the impetus is for a game writer to insist that the fictional characters are somehow real. 

[Dewar]

I liked Indigo Prophesy.

 

Giantbomb has a Random PC game video up for Omikron, they got all the way to the Bowie scene. I'd link it but we're still on IE8 at work and Giantbomb doesn't work very well on it.

[Roderick]

Prrrrobably should play Omikron because of David Bowie. Steam?

[TychoCelchuuu]

GOG.com.