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I HATE WHEN THINGS GET OVER EXPLAINED..
Posts
Emanzi
168
Emanzi
View playlists
CloseYeah its alot better if games have fun ways of reminding you what your supposed to do when you want to be reminded. As much as I really don't mind reading or voice overs its always annoying when dialog sounds forced as mentioned earlier when you have the same character replicated in like everything or when you have a skip option the leads to you clicking a fast dialoge option ( I'm looking at you Ice Wind Dale! )
The reason for NPC's and most Character Dialoge ( apart from obviously creating character ) is to guide the player through their journey in kind of an indirect way like an NPC can mention a hint somehwere in their conversation about apples, something like this wont have you like "yeah whats the point if shinigamis eat apples" or "I get it already go to the farm yard" but more like "oh so the farmyard is where I'm supposed to go if I want enough demon points, I need to get some apples to trade with Ryuku."
For example the NPC can say something about how he's never had a good apple pie since a demon came to the farmyard, it could be humorous but it has a point implying shinigamis like eating apples and a previous conversation with Ryuku could have implied he needs something or he will turn into a pretzel and you wanted demon points to get that slick katana ( Ryuku being the only one to trade you demon points yup the eyes things getting old fast ).
Yeah Deathnotes still etched in my brain but hope you get what I'm trying to put across. Could someone make a Death-note fan game if I keep bitchin like this?
The reason for NPC's and most Character Dialoge ( apart from obviously creating character ) is to guide the player through their journey in kind of an indirect way like an NPC can mention a hint somehwere in their conversation about apples, something like this wont have you like "yeah whats the point if shinigamis eat apples" or "I get it already go to the farm yard" but more like "oh so the farmyard is where I'm supposed to go if I want enough demon points, I need to get some apples to trade with Ryuku."
For example the NPC can say something about how he's never had a good apple pie since a demon came to the farmyard, it could be humorous but it has a point implying shinigamis like eating apples and a previous conversation with Ryuku could have implied he needs something or he will turn into a pretzel and you wanted demon points to get that slick katana ( Ryuku being the only one to trade you demon points yup the eyes things getting old fast ).
Yeah Deathnotes still etched in my brain but hope you get what I'm trying to put across. Could someone make a Death-note fan game if I keep bitchin like this?
author=Emanzi
Yeah Deathnotes still etched in my brain but hope you get what I'm trying to put across.
wat
author=Karsuman
1) It's in style. It remains consistent throughout. The dialogue maintains the same emotional gravity that 'standard' prose would have.
2) Plays sometimes have to communicate 'thought' through spoken words. Soliloquies and asides are among those elements. Plays are also not RM* games, and subtext would of course be applied in different ways.
3) There is more subtext in Hamlet than plot. Seriously, the dude is just wandering around thinking and thinking and thinking and doing nothing the whole time. Then everyone dies.
1) Arguable. In fact, not everyone likes Shakespeare. We are not talking about "standard" vs. stylized prose after all. You framed this discussion in the context of "STUFF ANY HUMAN BEING WOULD EVER REALISTICALLY SAY". On that level, Shakespeare is god-awful.
2) RM Games resemble plays more than they do any other medium. Specifically, they resemble playwriting because the author is limited to a lot of the same options, namely, dialogue and very limited stage directions, like pauses and steps. RM games do in fact need to sometimes communicate thought through spoken words. What is your point here?
3) Do you even know what subtext means? None of Hamlet's whiny fence sitting and emo dithering is subtext because it is all EXPLICITLY STATED. He goes ON AND ON about it in LENGTHY, DRAWN OUT MONOLOGUES. The internal life of Hamlet is possibly the LEAST SUBTEXTUAL thing in all of writing. It is right there, in the text, stamped all over it.
Subtext means: NOT STATED IN THE TEXT.
***
By the way, re: combat, I like it when it is good.
I agree with you both. I do enjoy a good story, but having said that..I don't care how good the story is, the gameplay needs to be decent atleast. Gameplay is the most important aspect of a game. I prefer to have both an excellent battle system and story, though. Most of the time it seems as if I cannot have both.
author=harmonicauthor=kentonaI totally agree with you brother, but do you think we're in the majority? I doubt it.
Without the combat, it's not really a game (at least, not an RPG - its more like an adventure game). Most of the fun for me is derived from preparing my party for battle, fighting that battle, and getting stronger so I can do it again.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
In Shakespeare's plays, he would often have the characters speak about the setting in an overdetailed, unrealistic, time-consuming way. Most playwrights of that era did the same thing. This was because plays at the time did not use stage props, and so this was the only way the audience would be able to tell where the scene was supposedly set. It was bad writing, but it was necessary to make up for a technical limitation. In modern adaptations of Shakespeare's work, these lengthy explanations are often removed from the beginnings of the scenes, since the stage is set up to look like that scene.
Max McGee's post is very relevant, actually. We have a similar situation now with video games, epecially ones with low budget graphics. We have to use bad writing to make up for technical limitations.
While the player can see the setting in a 2D game, what they can't see are facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, and many types of subtle actions. You can show a sprite character walking forward or raising his arm, but you can't easily show him unzipping a suitcase. You have to make someone mention it.
Also, most games don't have a rewind button to show you a scene over again, though this limitation is not exclusive to games. Television dramas have a very similar problem usually solve it the same way as we do - by repeating important things in every episode, and sometimes several times per episode if they're critical enough. (Live performances also don't have a rewind feature, but you typically watch them in one sitting, so it's less important.)
Max McGee's post is very relevant, actually. We have a similar situation now with video games, epecially ones with low budget graphics. We have to use bad writing to make up for technical limitations.
While the player can see the setting in a 2D game, what they can't see are facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, and many types of subtle actions. You can show a sprite character walking forward or raising his arm, but you can't easily show him unzipping a suitcase. You have to make someone mention it.
Also, most games don't have a rewind button to show you a scene over again, though this limitation is not exclusive to games. Television dramas have a very similar problem usually solve it the same way as we do - by repeating important things in every episode, and sometimes several times per episode if they're critical enough. (Live performances also don't have a rewind feature, but you typically watch them in one sitting, so it's less important.)
Jericho
52
a video game is not a play set in "shakespeare era." you are the creator. if you can dream it, you can do it -ulillillia
you don't have to have someone mention a suitcase being unzipped. you can
make an animation
make a sound effect
you can see facial expressions as well. It's not that hard to edit a sprite or if you want to go above and beyond, make your own facesets with expressions and stuff such as "rhue-mad" and "rhue-very mad" and "rhue-i am very pissed off about this!!" if you then couple these "setfaces" with "dialogue not penned by someone unfrozen from a block of ice" the reader can generally tell the tone of what the character is saying. you don't really need to show every subtle action to make something engaging or 'real' to be honest.
I am going on a tangent now so don't read into this or even read this at all or anything but I am reading a book series now called "a song of ice and fire" perhaps you have heard of it?? *walks forward three steps, turns thirty degrees, removes own head and slam dunks it into garbage can* a lot of the time detail of the environments and even the physical appearances of characters is kept to a minimum while more emphasis is put on dialogue and character interaction. my favorite character in the whole series is a guy by the name of "rooster bolton." he is very interesting and pretty much steals any scene he's in including the ones where he's not actually present and people just mention him and yet I have no idea what the guy looks like beyond the fact that he has pale eyes and is of average build.
you don't have to have someone mention a suitcase being unzipped. you can
make an animation
make a sound effect
you can see facial expressions as well. It's not that hard to edit a sprite or if you want to go above and beyond, make your own facesets with expressions and stuff such as "rhue-mad" and "rhue-very mad" and "rhue-i am very pissed off about this!!" if you then couple these "setfaces" with "dialogue not penned by someone unfrozen from a block of ice" the reader can generally tell the tone of what the character is saying. you don't really need to show every subtle action to make something engaging or 'real' to be honest.
I am going on a tangent now so don't read into this or even read this at all or anything but I am reading a book series now called "a song of ice and fire" perhaps you have heard of it?? *walks forward three steps, turns thirty degrees, removes own head and slam dunks it into garbage can* a lot of the time detail of the environments and even the physical appearances of characters is kept to a minimum while more emphasis is put on dialogue and character interaction. my favorite character in the whole series is a guy by the name of "rooster bolton." he is very interesting and pretty much steals any scene he's in including the ones where he's not actually present and people just mention him and yet I have no idea what the guy looks like beyond the fact that he has pale eyes and is of average build.
author=Max McGee
1) Arguable. In fact, not everyone likes Shakespeare. We are not talking about "standard" vs. stylized prose after all. You framed this discussion in the context of "STUFF ANY HUMAN BEING WOULD EVER REALISTICALLY SAY". On that level, Shakespeare is god-awful.
I don't care if people like or don't like Shakespeare. I enjoy the fact that you are trying to turn my statement about RM game dialogue into the completely unrelated territory of a several century old play. Neither of us has sufficient background to be an astute literary critic on the subject.
2) RM Games resemble plays more than they do any other medium. Specifically, they resemble playwriting because the author is limited to a lot of the same options, namely, dialogue and very limited stage directions, like pauses and steps. RM games do in fact need to sometimes communicate thought through spoken words. What is your point here?
Next time I see a play that has a dude controlling an actor with a joystick, I'll let you know.
The most important part of games is that that they are interactive. The player gives input to the game and the game only continues at the player's discrection. By your logic here my making a stop-motion animation is also a play. There are similarities, yes, but this is the nature of media. Having 'move direction' commands does not make your RM* game a play, or like a play. Video games share similarities with plays like they do with books. There's text to read! On the screen! Click the button to see the next page!
3) Do you even know what subtext means? None of Hamlet's whiny fence sitting and emo dithering is subtext because it is all EXPLICITLY STATED. He goes ON AND ON about it in LENGTHY, DRAWN OUT MONOLOGUES. The internal life of Hamlet is possibly the LEAST SUBTEXTUAL thing in all of writing. It is right there, in the text, stamped all over it.
Subtext means: NOT STATED IN THE TEXT.
The meaning of Hamlet's actions within the play is one of the most debated subjects in all of literature, because, GO FIGURE: It is ambigious.
Seriously, do you just want to make jabs at my tastes? It's not like you responded to the things that were more readily relevant in my post.
In Shakespeare's plays, he would often have the characters speak about the setting in an overdetailed, unrealistic, time-consuming way.
No he didn't.
This was because plays at the time did not use stage props, and so this was the only way the audience would be able to tell where the scene was supposedly set.
Dialogue. Context. Not much to this guys.
Additionally, many renditions of Hamlet still have few to no props on their sets to emulate the original feel of Shakespearean theater.
It was bad writing, but it was necessary to make up for a technical limitation. In modern adaptations of Shakespeare's work, these lengthy explanations are often removed from the beginnings of the scenes, since the stage is set up to look like that scene.
It would help if these long stretches of dialogue actually existed so they could be removed. The reason they cut scenes from Hamlet are entirely unrelated and much simpler: The play is three hours long, and the stamina of the actors might not be able to take the duress the play puts them under, much less the audience.
While the player can see the setting in a 2D game, what they can't see are facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, and many types of subtle actions. You can show a sprite character walking forward or raising his arm, but you can't easily show him unzipping a suitcase. You have to make someone mention it.
Fortunately we are in a creative enough community to come up with solutions to these problems! Right? Right!?
Seriously, do not blame your lack of 'acting' in an RM game on the engine itself being poor at providing subtext when in fact you are just being lazy and not editing your sprites or something.
eplipswich
2728
author=LockeZ
While the player can see the setting in a 2D game, what they can't see are facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, and many types of subtle actions. You can show a sprite character walking forward or raising his arm, but you can't easily show him unzipping a suitcase. You have to make someone mention it.
Obviously you have forgotten about (say, for example) Final Fantasy VI, which has numerous sprite gestures, facial expressions etc (Kefka's laugh expression, Locke's shake-the-finger expression etc). Can't easily does not mean it's impossible, even if it's unzipping a suitcase. Final Fantasy VI being made by professionals does not mean we indie makers can't make those sprite expressions.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Quit nitpicking irrelevant points, Karsuman. My main point was just that technical limitations are sometimes more easily overcome through slightly-less-than-realistic content than by overhauling the way your video games are created.
As another analogous example, if I had an infinite amount of time I would create a way so that my game had a realistic amount of combat in it, similar to an action movie, but was still exactly as complex and deep and long as it is now. But I don't, so instead it has hundreds of battles. No one cares because this is the norm.
Sometimes you have to scratch realism or good writing or good plot for the sake of gameplay or comprehension. Other times you don't have to, but it sure as hell saves you ten or twenty years.
If we were professionals, we wouldn't bother wasting time on this kind of thing because it's not cost-effective. But we're amateurs, so instead we don't bother wasting time on this kind of thing because it would take an eternity and require people who are way better at this than us.
Edit: Obviously, writing characters who don't ramble isn't something that takes an eternity and requires a skilled team. I was talking about the side-effect problems you get if you take all those kinds of things away. Which are many and varied.
As another analogous example, if I had an infinite amount of time I would create a way so that my game had a realistic amount of combat in it, similar to an action movie, but was still exactly as complex and deep and long as it is now. But I don't, so instead it has hundreds of battles. No one cares because this is the norm.
Sometimes you have to scratch realism or good writing or good plot for the sake of gameplay or comprehension. Other times you don't have to, but it sure as hell saves you ten or twenty years.
If we were professionals, we wouldn't bother wasting time on this kind of thing because it's not cost-effective. But we're amateurs, so instead we don't bother wasting time on this kind of thing because it would take an eternity and require people who are way better at this than us.
Edit: Obviously, writing characters who don't ramble isn't something that takes an eternity and requires a skilled team. I was talking about the side-effect problems you get if you take all those kinds of things away. Which are many and varied.
Jericho
52
your irrelevant points actually lead into your statement that bad writing in rm games is there to make up for a limitation of some kind. it's not. it's there because a. people are lazy and/or b.people do not know how to write.
it actually doesn't take that long to come up with a solution to "LockeZ's Suitcase," neither does it require an overhaul of anything. except maybe...your imagination *rainbows* in fact your declaration that it requires a long amount of time to overcome the obstacle of "facesets with different expressions" is insulting. please pm me an apology. professionals do waste time (????) on this kind of thing and jesus it's just putting in some effort someone come murder me
okay so not actually anything relevant then. thanks for making me write this stupid post. it took a literal eternity
it actually doesn't take that long to come up with a solution to "LockeZ's Suitcase," neither does it require an overhaul of anything. except maybe...your imagination *rainbows* in fact your declaration that it requires a long amount of time to overcome the obstacle of "facesets with different expressions" is insulting. please pm me an apology. professionals do waste time (????) on this kind of thing and jesus it's just putting in some effort someone come murder me
Edit: Obviously, writing characters who don't ramble isn't something that takes an eternity and requires a skilled team. I was talking about the side-effect problems you get if you take all those kinds of things away.
okay so not actually anything relevant then. thanks for making me write this stupid post. it took a literal eternity
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I don't really think that much of bad writing is just because the creator is a bad writer. I'm sure some of it is, but since I've never played a game in my life where this wasn't an issue, I don't think it's that absurd to chalk at least a portion of it up to either an inherent limitation of the medium or a time/budget issue.
The only difference between laziness and time/budget issues is how much importance you place on the thing that was left out. I don't think this is important, at all, even a little bit. It's right up there with user-customizable window borders on my list of priorities. So I'm going to call it a time constraint rather than laziness.
The only difference between laziness and time/budget issues is how much importance you place on the thing that was left out. I don't think this is important, at all, even a little bit. It's right up there with user-customizable window borders on my list of priorities. So I'm going to call it a time constraint rather than laziness.
Kaempfer
1932
RPGs cannot be read like books, or plays, or movies or blah blah, unless they are perfectly linear in every way. If that's the case, the creator never needs to add "go here ye warrior" fifteen times, because there is only one place to go: forward.
How can you even compare standard prose to that in interactive, non-linear (even a little bit) video games? Unless you take the time to make every branch of dialogue flow together perfectly (not impossible, I'm sure, but let's try to stay a little realistic) you're going to have to just give up and say "go here ye warrior" to the player because, in reality, you just want the player to FUCKING GO THERE.
Deep, emotionally fleshed out characters can provide plausible reasons to advance the story, but they should always take a back seat to the actual advances themselves. And if your advances are ambiguous, then you're stuck with a player who's in love with the characters but is unsure about where to go next, which is deadly in an amateur RPG.
A non-linear game combined with a wide cast of characters makes it a silly endeavor to try to flesh them all out. I'd be happy with the main 2 protagonists and antagonists being highly developed, the other main party members being partially developed, and the rest being tropes or spins on tropes.
I'm still not 100% sure how having well-designed characters clues the player into knowing where to go next, though. Like I said earlier: it lets you justify railroading the players (oh we have to do it for deep-seeded emotional reasons, I see) but it doesn't make the track much clearer. How many players read the dialogue in an amateur RPG and say to themselves: "Oh, naturally. 's highschool sweetheart lived in , and he's feeling a bit lonely so that must be the place we're headed to next. It's not marked on the map yet or anything, but one of the supporting cast mentioned there being a festival there about twenty minutes ago, so it all makes sense. No explanation required, video game creator, I've figured it out!"
How can you even compare standard prose to that in interactive, non-linear (even a little bit) video games? Unless you take the time to make every branch of dialogue flow together perfectly (not impossible, I'm sure, but let's try to stay a little realistic) you're going to have to just give up and say "go here ye warrior" to the player because, in reality, you just want the player to FUCKING GO THERE.
Deep, emotionally fleshed out characters can provide plausible reasons to advance the story, but they should always take a back seat to the actual advances themselves. And if your advances are ambiguous, then you're stuck with a player who's in love with the characters but is unsure about where to go next, which is deadly in an amateur RPG.
A non-linear game combined with a wide cast of characters makes it a silly endeavor to try to flesh them all out. I'd be happy with the main 2 protagonists and antagonists being highly developed, the other main party members being partially developed, and the rest being tropes or spins on tropes.
I'm still not 100% sure how having well-designed characters clues the player into knowing where to go next, though. Like I said earlier: it lets you justify railroading the players (oh we have to do it for deep-seeded emotional reasons, I see) but it doesn't make the track much clearer. How many players read the dialogue in an amateur RPG and say to themselves: "Oh, naturally. 's highschool sweetheart lived in , and he's feeling a bit lonely so that must be the place we're headed to next. It's not marked on the map yet or anything, but one of the supporting cast mentioned there being a festival there about twenty minutes ago, so it all makes sense. No explanation required, video game creator, I've figured it out!"
Shinan
4314
author=Karsuman2) RM Games resemble plays more than they do any other medium. Specifically, they resemble playwriting because the author is limited to a lot of the same options, namely, dialogue and very limited stage directions, like pauses and steps. RM games do in fact need to sometimes communicate thought through spoken words. What is your point here?Next time I see a play that has a dude controlling an actor with a joystick, I'll let you know.
The most important part of games is that that they are interactive. The player gives input to the game and the game only continues at the player's discrection. By your logic here my making a stop-motion animation is also a play. There are similarities, yes, but this is the nature of media. Having 'move direction' commands does not make your RM* game a play, or like a play. Video games share similarities with plays like they do with books. There's text to read! On the screen! Click the button to see the next page!
There is some similarities between reading a play and reading a cutscene (I'll limit myself to cutscenes because if I go over that it'll turn into something like "oh the player is the actor and blablabla" and it'll all be a huge strawman of a point that I'd only make because it sort of make sense and it's also kinda funny). In reading a play you have the dialogue and some stage direction (when it is important). In a low-resolution game your cutscene sort of looks like this. You only have the dialogue and some stage direction (when it is important). It is up to the reader/player to add the small ticks and other movements an actor would bring to a play.
Also
Next time I see a play that has a dude controlling an actor with a joystick, I'll let you know.
I've seen this. (though I've seen this in movies too)
author=Ciel
i like games that have a constantly updated journal that you can check at any time telling you recent events and what your current destination and goal are but also drive incredibly simple concepts into the ground by having the characters discuss it exhaustively in 500 lines of dialogue explaining it to one another again and again to make sure the player knows what is going on(golden sun ds)
holy fucking christ, no joke. Golden Sun DS is the worst offender of inane pointless dialogue I've ever seen. Doesn't help that there's like a 1-second pause between each character talking for a stupid little emoticon to pop over their heads.
I'm curious, is Golden Sun DS any worse than either GBA Golden Sun for pointless inane endless dialog that has more words than War & Peace?
Jericho
52
I don't imagine how it could be worse. like, have you ever played through the opening of golden sun?
Neophyte
155
I'm sorry, but Golden Sun DS has to explain what happened in the past 2 Golden Sun games by creating a 20 minute long intro with scrolling text. Thus, it is longer.
It is 20 minutes where you do nothing. This is not an exaggeration.
It is 20 minutes where you do nothing. This is not an exaggeration.
Jericho
52
but is it followed by 25 more minutes of doing nothing because that is the only way it could equal golden sun 1's opening
Crystalgate
694
20 minutes? You can probably summarize everything relevant that happens in the first two golden sun games with about 1,000 words. Of course, if they add stuff like "...and then Felix barged in on a trial designed to test an ability that, as far as he knows he doesn't possess, in the hopes of triggering an event flag that would let him proceed" then I can see the 20 minutes.
Neophyte
155
You can at least control your character in golden sun 1 within five minutes. You can sit your ds on the couch and wash clothes faster than the intro of the DS version.
it is followed by an hour more of doing nothing. it is worse.
it is followed by an hour more of doing nothing. it is worse.
