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The Last of Us

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The Uncharted game have all the same problems, as the Idle Thumbs people have hilariously pointed out too, but when the story is an action adventure to start with, the violent doesn't stand out nearly as much.

See, I felt the opposite. I felt that there was a much bigger disconnect in the Uncharted games, because Drake is supposed to be this affable hilarious guy who cracks wise while killing a bunch of dudes, which just seemed kind of boring and dumb to me. By contrast, Joel seemed to me scared, determined, and desperate, which is in keeping with the way he behaves both in the cutscenes and out of the cutscenes. He is a pretty ruthless guy, and he is treated that way by the story and the other characters.

I also don't really agree that in other mediums this story would have to be one about a crazed mass-murder. A lot of "genre" stories feature violence that if taken strictly serious imply the death of thousand or millions. Consider the "attack on New York" city scene in the recent Avengers movie, for example. Other genre stories feature the deaths of a bunch of "goons"; consider something like Star Wars, where Luke Skywalker shoots dozens of storm-troopers and kills thousands more by blowing up the Death Star. Or if you want to get historical, you could consider something like the Odyssey, where Odysseus kills something like 100 suitors (in pretty graphic detail) for having the temerity to woo his wife. None of the protagonists in these stories are portrayed as psychopaths, even though they kill as many or more people as Joel does in the Last of Us. So I don't think it's true that in violent stories in other mediums characters as violent as Joel would necessarily be portrayed as maniacs, at least in genre fiction (and I do think the Last of Us, being a zombie game, is pretty clearly in the "genre fiction" category).

Here's a question that might be interesting to think about: what kind of story would better suit the Last of Us's gameplay? Would it be a better or more enjoyable game without Joel and Ellie's relationship, and having Joel be a more maniacal and sadistic killer? Would it be better if the game just didn't attempt to tell a serious story at all and embraced the violence in sort of a wacky cartoon-ish way?

e: I hope I'm not coming out defensive or anything. I am just interesting in talking about this game, and I'm surprised at some of the reactions because I thought it was one of the more effective narratives in a third-person game of this kind.

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In video game terms it wasn't extreme at all, but that is one of the weird things that's starting to become ridiculously, annoyingly apparent to me. In some ways (all the cut-scenes) the game is going right for the serious movie thing, and still, just like in every video game ever, the player is tasked with just fucking murdering hundreds of people. If you compare it to any other medium, it would be the story of a crazed killer, but in video games it's the normal thing people do. Obviously this is not some great revelation, and others have said the same thing better both in this thread and everywhere else – I just found the disjointedness of it all to be extremely jarring, probably because of my expectations and how I felt about the cut-scenes. The Uncharted game have all the same problems, as the Idle Thumbs people have hilariously pointed out too, but when the story is an action adventure to start with, the violent doesn't stand out nearly as much.

 

 

This is of course a matter of interpretation. I got the sense that the story of these people was not really meant to include the combat sequences, and that they detracted from what the story was trying to tell.

 

Let me start by saying that I unfortunately don't have a PS3, so I have not played the game. I'm just interested in the discourse going on in the thread. The problem I see here is a time/price thing:

 

Would you want to sit and do the serious movie thing for 10-20 hours with no action to speak of?

If yes, then go watch Game of Thrones I guess?

If no, then would you want to pay $60 for a 3 hour experience

If yes, then I guess gold class theatres are meant for you.

If no, then ....?

 

To put it another way, most folks aren't generally going to want to play a game that's 20 hours of grueling story without a whole lot of action. That's one reason why adventure games are less popular as a genre and Heavy Rain pulled midling sales. Your options then are either to shorten the game or add a mix of something else in to break up the heavy duty story, neither of which is optimal. Personally, I think the solution lies in the $10 indie games we're getting these days, where you can have a super serious depressing plot, be done in a couple of hours, and then move onto something a little more lighthearted. A top tier $60 game isn't going to be able to pass up the sales numbers by doing things a little more niche.

 

Here's a question that might be interesting to think about: what kind of story would better suit the Last of Us's gameplay? Would it be a better or more enjoyable game without Joel and Ellie's relationship, and having Joel be a more maniacal and sadistic killer? Would it be better if the game just didn't attempt to tell a serious story at all and embraced the violence in sort of a wacky cartoon-ish way?

 

You could go the other way on that and ask what kind of gameplay would better suit the story. The only thing that comes to my mind is transversal type puzzles, and I can't imagine playing twenty hours of those either.

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Is the idea then that people will only buy a $60 game if the dollar per hour ratio is deemed as economically worthwhile? Why is it so unbelievable that someone would willingly pay $60 for 4-6 hours of entertainment, especially when people are routinely paying $60 for a game that they will only play 4-6 hours of, even if the game length is 3x that. If big budget games want to have a narrative that carries meaning then they need to seriously consider abandoning the video game-y aspects that are limiting the effectiveness of the stories game developers claim they want to tell.

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I don't think the complaint is necessarily that there is action or that you're killing guys. It's that you do it so much that the acts of violence become kind of meaningless. A good example would be (spoilers from around at the end)

When Joel interrogates the Firefly guy and starts shooting him in the stomach until he tells Joel what he wants to hear. Absolutely brutal, fitting to the character and way more affecting than any murdering you do yourself.

 

I guess a lot of the combat/sneaking sections don't feel like "the point" and that they're but an obstacle in the way of progression, as opposed to a part of the whole. It meshes a heck of a lot better than Uncharted ever did, but in the end I still killed 100+ dudes. Or maybe I just repeated everything that's already been said.

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Is the idea then that people will only buy a $60 game if the dollar per hour ratio is deemed as economically worthwhile? Why is it so unbelievable that someone would willingly pay $60 for 4-6 hours of entertainment, especially when people are routinely play $60 for a game that they will only play 4-6 hours of, even if the game length is 3x that. If big budget games want to have a narrative that carries meaning then they need to seriously consider abandoning the video game-y aspects that are limiting the effectiveness of the stories game developers claim they want to tell.

See, I think this mistakes what big budget games use narrative for. The point of a narrative in the Last of Us is not to tell a great story about parenthood or something. In my view, the point of the narrative is to lend context and meaning to the actual gameplay: the sneaking and shooting. The narrative exists to improve the gameplay; the gameplay isn't intended to improve hte narrative. If you removed the video gamey aspects of the Last of Us, it wouldn't be a third-person shooter any more (and I probably wouldn't play it). Absent the gamey parts, it might be a better story but it would be a much worse game, at least in my opinion. And after all, that's why I bought it: to play a game, not to be told a story.

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I guess I just fundamentally approach games in a different way, because I would never consider gameplay as the primary component. In a perfect word, narrative and gameplay would work together to provide meaning and entertainment to the player. The story should be helped by the game's mechanics, not an excuse for them.

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I bet Naughty Dog would disagree with you, Dasein.

 

MY OPINION: Both approaches are entirely valid. Sometimes the game is about story. Sometimes the game is about gameplay.

 

Argo, would you really argue that in a Mario game, gameplay is not the primary component? Or did you just mean that statement specifically in the context of Last of Us?

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MY OPINION: Both approaches are entirely valid. Sometimes the game is about story. Sometimes the game is about gameplay.

 

I mostly agree with this but I generally tend to lean a little bit more towards I Saw Dasein's perspective in regards to narrative versus gameplay. While some games are more about the story I think the fact that we are calling them 'games' kind of does imply that that is what it is first and foremost.

 

I personally don't have much of an issue with the way games tell stories. If I want a particularly deep or meaningful story there are books and movies that deliver on that front. Video games with stories have to walk a fine line where they need to provide enough interaction to be a 'game' while also trying to make sure that the interaction that is there fits within the context of the narrative and restricts the player enough so that the story still works. Too much interaction (i.e. game-y stuff) and the narrative suffers. Too little interaction and it is like a series of cutscenes. Because of these considerations I just don't expect as much from a video game story as I would from a book or movie because I would rather have stronger gameplay that negatively impacts the story than a stronger story that negatively impacts the gameplay.

 

I'm sure there are some games that do all this shit right but hell, even Bioshock had all that game-y stuff that, in some cases, probably held the story back just a little bit.

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Argo, would you really argue that in a Mario game, gameplay is not the primary component? Or did you just mean that statement specifically in the context of Last of Us?

 

I would say for an example like Mario that the gameplay and the story work perfectly together; neither detracts from the goal of the other and neither is primary.

 

The idea that games can't have complex and meaningful stories like books and movies is extremely upsetting to me. That's a really limited way to look at games and I would hope that most people want and expect games to deliver on the same story-telling level as other mediums. A good game story doesn't need to be told all through exclusively through cutscenes, well-implemented mechanics can go a long way in reinforcing and even adding to a story. But if the mechanics are there to just pad out the game's length or to fulfill players' expectations of what a game needs to be, then I think they serve no purpose and seriously harm what the game is trying to do.

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Oh I definitely think that games can have narrative and that narrative can be good or better than the narrative in other mediums. I just doubt very much that really great, authorial narrative can be accomplished in a third-person shooter. But that's OK! I like third-person shooters for what they are. And I like that third-person shooters have narrative, even if it just provides context for the third-person shooting.

Ultimately, I think that if you aren't really into the mechanics of a third-person shooter, and especially if you think shooting things is dumb or boring, then there's really no way that you are going to enjoy a third-person shooter no matter what narrative it comes up with. At best you will be putting up with the shooting to get to the narrative, which is just not going to be all that enjoyable.

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I would say for an example like Mario that the gameplay and the story work perfectly together; neither detracts from the goal of the other and neither is primary.

Huh. I would argue that the story in Mario is completely inconsequential and could be ripped entirely out of the game (any single one of them) and the game would be just as good. Maybe better.

 

Mario RPGs notwithstanding, of course.

The idea that games can't have complex and meaningful stories like books and movies is extremely upsetting to me.

I don't think anyone was saying that!

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But what would Mario without a story look like to you? Do you mean that there just wouldn't be an text stating 'save the princess' but all the typical Mario visuals would still be there? Because it would be pretty easy to create story from the visuals alone in Mario, in fact, the visuals are the primary source for the narrative, since textual narrative is fairly rare in most Mario games. If you mean that Mario without story would be a game stripped of all the familiar Mario visuals (so just blocks jumping on other blocks) then that sounds like an incredibly dull game.

 

I don't think anyone was saying that!

 

Zeus did just say that.

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I read it has "I don't really care about story in games" not "story can't happen in games". I can see why you'd read it as the latter, though.

 

Also Mario without a story would still look like Mario. Yeah I guess you can "imagine up a story" from the visuals, but that's.... what. I can't even pretend that's a thing I'd ever do. Especially in Mario? What kind of story am I going to create out of a bunch of abstract shapes and weirdo creatures as I reach the level's end. "I'm on drugs"?

 

The stories I get in games that don't have stories are stories that I created, but that's entirely gameplay. Also see: Minecraft, or games with a big focus on emergent gameplay.

 

And then there's the other kind of nonstory games. When I'm doing time trials in Mirror's Edge, the story is nonexistent. It's me versus the level. Yeah, the game has a story, but the game could've been entirely those abstract-style levels from the DLC and I would've liked it more.

 

Most games, when created, are gameplay first, story second. And most of THOSE games would be fine/better without shoehorning in some half-assed attempt at storytelling. Doesn't mean I don't appreciate the other side of games, because I LOVE the other side of games, but man. Mario.

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Yeah, I pretty much did say that but I didn't mean for it to come out that way. To clarify, I don't think games can tell good stories in the same way as books or movies but I definitely do think great stories can be born out of gameplay that are wholly different from the types of stories in those other mediums. I pretty much agree with what you (Argobot) said in your previous post about well implemented mechanics going a long way towards making a story better. But if a game story tries to follow the same structure as a book or movie I don't think it would be as good as the book or movie version would be.

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If you mean that Mario without story would be a game stripped of all the familiar Mario visuals (so just blocks jumping on other blocks) then that sounds like an incredibly dull game.

This is actually a really good example of what I meant when I said that in big budget games, narrative mainly provides context for game mechanics. The "story" in Mario (meaning the theme, graphics, and so on, and not necessarily the plot) provides context and meaning for the gameplay. No one would say that the story in Mario tells you anything particularly interesting about Mario as a character or about the human condition or anything; but the story does improve the gameplay, because it provides context for what the player is actually doing, i.e. platforming.

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Yeah, I pretty much did say that but I didn't mean for it to come out that way. To clarify, I don't think games can tell good stories in the same way as books or movies but I definitely do think great stories can be born out of gameplay that are wholly different from the types of stories in those other mediums. I pretty much agree with what you (Argobot) said in your previous post about well implemented mechanics going a long way towards making a story better. But if a game story tries to follow the same structure as a book or movie I don't think it would be as good as the book or movie version would be.

 

Except, the very fact of being a game, means that games do not tell stories in the same way that books do, just like movies don't tell stories in the same way as books. Unless you're talking about linear narrative or the basic structure of rising action, climax, denouement, but even then all three mediums employ this basic method of story-telling in vastly different ways.

 

When I talk about story in games, I'm not talking about the game basically pausing itself to give the player narration. I'm talking about the world/characters/environment in a game and the way that the player interacts with those things through the game's mechanics. A game like Journey (which is probably an overused example, but whatever), tells a story with zero narration. It's not a book, because it relies entirely on visuals, but it's also not a movie, because the other half of the narrative puzzle comes from how the player interacts with the world of the game.

 

I really do believe that big triple A shooters can accomplish that same kind of effective story-telling, if they learn how to pair the story with the mechanics, and not treat them like separate entities.

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I really do believe that big triple A shooters can accomplish that same kind of effective story-telling, if they learn how to pair the story with the mechanics, and not treat them like separate entities.

I definitely agree with that. Games like Dark Souls show you can have effective story-telling even in violent action games. And I don't think that The Last of Us should be seen as a great story-telling exercise. But what I don't see is how you could have a big triple A shooter that from a gameplay perspective does not involve an absolute ton of shooting/killing. What I'm trying to say is that any story you tell in a third-person shooter will always be super violent, because that is kind of what the gameplay demands. I know people can make good games that don't involve killing things, but I doubt that people can make good shooters that don't involve a lot of violence.

So when someone complains that a game like the Last of Us involves a character who kills multitudes, I sort of wonder why that person would want to play a third-person shooter in the first place.

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Shooters can have good stories and still get away with the player murdering all the dudes. It just depends on what the story is.

 

Too many recent shooters are trying to have these very realistic, very emotional stories that make absolutely no sense when paired with the 'shoot everyone' mechanic. You can't have that realism and a high body count; it's too disingenuous and a little insulting. The Last of Us wants to be a story about a man and a young girl building a familial relationship together, but its typical shooter mechanics adds a second, unintentional narrative that detracts from the primary story.

 

Maybe shooters by their mechanical nature will also be super violent. I hope that's not true, but maybe it is. But if the super violence is something we have to accept about shooters, then maybe big developers should consider different gameplay mechanics to tell their stories with.

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Except, the very fact of being a game, means that games do not tell stories in the same way that books do, just like movies don't tell stories in the same way as books. Unless you're talking about linear narrative or the basic structure of rising action, climax, denouement, but even then all three mediums employ this basic method of story-telling in vastly different ways.

 

When I talk about story in games, I'm not talking about the game basically pausing itself to give the player narration. I'm talking about the world/characters/environment in a game and the way that the player interacts with those things through the game's mechanics. A game like Journey (which is probably an overused example, but whatever), tells a story with zero narration. It's not a book, because it relies entirely on visuals, but it's also not a movie, because the other half of the narrative puzzle comes from how the player interacts with the world of the game.

 

I really do believe that big triple A shooters can accomplish that same kind of effective story-telling, if they learn how to pair the story with the mechanics, and not treat them like separate entities.

 

You make a great point. To further enhance both of our points, I would add that almost every single example of a movie being made into a game or a game being made into a movie has turned out terrible compared to the original version. This ties into my point that games trying to tell the same type of story as a movie will rarely (if ever) be as good. I think this also ties into your point that games tell stories in a completely unique way that films can't replicate. I'm glad Super Mario Bros was brought up because that is such a perfect fucking example of how a good game experience just does not translate to film.

 

I think I also struggle with the term 'story' as we are using it here to refer to what games do. To me games provide more of an experience (or maybe some better word than that) than a story. When I think of a story I think of a static thing that is well defined where things happen in a prescribed way. While there is some semblance of a 'story' in games where things happen in a prescribed way on the grand scale I feel that the interactive nature makes it something a little bit different. The fact that you can see or do things that other people won't necessarily see or do makes it a different thing in my mind.

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I think I also struggle with the term 'story' as we are using it here to refer to what games do. To me games provide more of an experience (or maybe some better word than that) than a story. When I think of a story I think of a static thing that is well defined where things happen in a prescribed way. While there is some semblance of a 'story' in games where things happen in a prescribed way on the grand scale I feel that the interactive nature makes it something a little bit different. The fact that you can see or do things that other people won't necessarily see or do makes it a different thing in my mind.

 

But when I read a book, I'm going to have a different interpretation than you or I'm going to experience the book in a different way. All stories, whether they're told in a game or in a book, have these little deviations from the prescribed narrative path that are based on the individual's unique experience. That deviation may be more apparent in games, but it happens just as frequently in other story-telling mediums.

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Zeus I will not abide the dig you took at the Super Mario Bros. movie. Intentional or otherwise.

 

Take it back!

 

Argo: I think his point was (or at least the point I see because it's the point I most wholeheartedly agree with) is that while we all might have different interpretations of this or that book, you're still experiencing the same Thing. It just affects you in different ways. A video game, on the other hand, opens itself up to being a completely different experience from one player to the next. Take roguelikes for example. If two different people play a roguelike once, their experiences differ greatly. Or Minecraft. Two players each in their own singleplayer world might start out in completely different environments. Even Super Mario Bros. can deliver incredibly different experiences for the player who finds that secret warp pipe. Another important factor in that Mario example: choice. The player is choosing to thoroughly explore, rather than be led by a string from level start to level end.

 

That doesn't happen with books or movies, unless the reader or viewer consciously chooses to skip a chapter for whatever reason. At which point they're working outside the author's design. Every video game example I gave above is still perfectly WITHIN the author's design.

 

All of this is also why I vastly prefer the idea of a completely open, emergence-focused gameplay experience to that of a scripted, narrative-driven story game. Not that I don't like the latter, because I definitely do, but the former plays to the strengths of video games, rather than opposing them (as I would argue script-heavy games do). But then each and every Story is player-focused, rather than something the author (i.e., the game designer) put in place for the player to see. BLAH DEE BLAH.

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Fair point Argobot. I still feel there is a little bit of a difference because of the fact that with books everyone reads the exact same words and with movies everyone sees and hears the exact same thing. The fact that this isn't quite the case for video games just makes it register a little differently in my brain than the other two mediums. I see where you're coming from though especially considering the fact that the overarching narrative in a game will be the same for everyone. You've made a strong enough point that I don't feel I can argue against despite the fact that I see it a little differently. Well played.

 

And yeah, I realize I am basically repeating what Twig said but I was already in the middle of writing it when his post came in so yeah.

 

 

Zeus I will not abide the dig you took at the Super Mario Bros. movie. Intentional or otherwise.

 

Take it back!

 

I liked the movie. Please don't tell anyone.

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Shooters can have good stories and still get away with the player murdering all the dudes. It just depends on what the story is.

Well, that's exactly why I asked earlier in the thread what kind of story would better suit the gameplay in the Last of Us. Would the game be better if it embraced a cartoon asthetic? Would the game be better if Joel was a total bloodthirsty maniac? What is the story that the gameplay in the Last of Us should be telling?

 

Too many recent shooters are trying to have these very realistic, very emotional stories that make absolutely no sense when paired with the 'shoot everyone' mechanic. You can't have that realism and a high body count; it's too disingenuous and a little insulting. The Last of Us wants to be a story about a man and a young girl building a familial relationship together, but its typical shooter mechanics adds a second, unintentional narrative that detracts from the primary story.

Again, I disagree, for the same reasons I set out above. Violence is not inimical to poignancy; take everything from StarWars to the Odyssey. I don't think the Oddyssey is disingenuous, even though Odysseues kills like a hundred of his wife's suitors before falling happily back into her arms. You could easily add Django Unchained to that list if you wanted a particularly recent example. This treatment of violence may not be realistic, but realism has always been a pretty minor part of storytelling.

 

Maybe shooters by their mechanical nature will also be super violent. I hope that's not true, but maybe it is. But if the super violence is something we have to accept about shooters, then maybe big developers should consider different gameplay mechanics to tell their stories with.

I think this just reflects a philosophical difference between us. I think that developers should start with a game mechanic, and then develop a theme or story around that game mechanic. I think this because I am most interested in games as play, not as storytelling vehicles. The function of a video game (for me) is to be a game first and foremost, and the aesthetic form the game takes should follow from the gameplay rather than the gameplay following from the narrative choice. Of course, you could feel the opposite and prefer video games as storytelling vehicles; there's nothing per se wrong with that approach, it's just not something I'm particularly interested in. I feel there are already a ton of very effective storytelling media that I am happy to turn to when I want that kind of experience, and as you mention above, books are already plenty interactive. By contrast, video games do offer a unique means of play.

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I Saw Dasein - I think the fundamental mistake you are making is that you are talking about bending the story to fit the game play element, rather than the other way round. I don't think that the story needed to change at all but the overly gamey elements undermine it. Although it was the hundreds of deaths that did that for me (I've given up in trying to condemn that in games like this although it did bother me but I just chalked it up to Naughty Dog) it was the division of elements that I talked about earlier.

 

 

You also argue that you play a game for the game play and that you would not be happy if The Last of Us expunged the game play.

 

I think what everyone is saying is the direct opposite of that and they would have been happy to lose most of it.

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