Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation, Fully Ramblomatic)

Stanley Parable is how you do a walking simulator properly.

"Engagement", means different things to different people. Night in the Woods probably doesn't have enough gameplay for some but it's one of the best stories I've ever experienced in a game, and it would have been lessened had it not been dependent on my immersion in Mae as a character that I could only achieve by playing as her.

Again I want to reiterate that I'm not demanding he like these games, but the Interactive Narrative genre (that's the name now, fight me) isn't dependent on the same things as traditional games because "gaming" as we know it is still evolving.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Feb 19th 2020 at 9:24:10 AM

I think better question than "is there something in game worth losing gameplay for story" is "Does the game's story work without it being interactive"

"Interactive Narrative". Nice name, and it brings to mind a new question to quantify the games.

Are you actually interacting with the narrative in them? Or are you just pressing down W until the game gives you the next bit? As if a movie would stop unless you constantly held down play button on your remote.

In Stanley Parable, messing with the narrative is the whole thing, so the answer is yes. As far as I know, Night in the Woods is much less branchey than that, but you still get dialogue choices and interactions that allow you to invest in the characters, so still yes.

That is basically why I think it'd be better question. Does the feeling of controlling player character contribute to either the player's experience or the narrative itself, or is it basically just glorified version of pressing button to turn the page on the book.

Like, its definitely true its literally different experience to play a game where you walk around and discover narrative than just watching a movie, but is it meaningful enough difference in some cases?

One benefit of controlling PC to discover narrative is that it makes you feel like YOU are discovering the narrative, but if its done badly enough I can easily imagine player not getting that kind of feeling at all.

Edited by SpookyMask on Feb 20th 2020 at 11:26:34 AM

Yep, I'm in agreement here. My post above is basically rephrasing of yours

Interactive Narrative is a good name, not least of all because that's what is definitely missing from the bad ones.

If you're just pressing W for the story to trudge along, you might as well just make a Visual Novel.

And even if the story is the point, there can still be fun things to do that give the player a sense of having some control over the outcome, even if it's as simple as "get from point A to point B without dying". Quicktime events that act as glorified pause buttons and dialogue trees that have no effect on the story can get bent.

Visual Novels still have certain gameplay through dialogue trees that actually alter events. That's more than a bottom-tier walkersim can muster.

Yeah, you can have great games with zero interactivity to their narrative aspect. I.e. Celeste - awesome platformer, awesome narrative, but the script is 100% fixed, you only advance from point to point. The process of advancing however, is fun in itself, so the game works perfectly.

Now imagine if there was no jumping, only a first person perspective slow ascent up a mountain pass, and even when things get surreal you're still only sedately walking up a road. It still could work on some level, buut the whole process would be a lot more boring.

Edited by Adannor on Feb 20th 2020 at 4:18:23 PM

Exactly. If I fall asleep while playing a game, its claim to be an "artistic experience" falls flat.

In fairness, that does describe my usual experience visiting art galleries, so in that sense those games' are very artistic.

I fell asleep playing Crusader Kings II once

to be fair was 2 am so..whoops

I fall asleep playing games a lot but I have sleep apnea.

Anyway I'm in agreement that making Interactive Narratives compelling is hard, but this whole time I've been wanting to defend the sanctity of their existence in the first place. They're an emergent form of exploring stories in gaming that we still need to nail down.

Night in the Woods has the occasional minigame and platforming, but the game is absolutely a linear story where your only choice is "who is Mae hanging out with today?" Wandersong has gameplay, but it's "sing in this direction" and the actual meat you're here for is the story.

And Yahtzee himself would join you on that.

The problem is that while Walking Simulators are very hard to do well, they're very easy to do, so the usual result is that they're basically fan fiction.

The fact a lot of people who make those are very snobbish artist types doesn't, and I suspect only made games because more traditional media is harder to release in.

Last but not least I can't help but feel like they're a step backwards: remember when all AAA companies wanted to turn Video Games into glorified movies? WS gives me the same vibe, that while games can tell stories just fine on their own, they keep wanting to turn them into something else out of a percieved stigma.

Last part might just be me, though.

The problem is that while Walking Simulators are very hard to do well, they're very easy to do, so the usual result is that they're basically fan fiction.

The fact a lot of people who make those are very snobbish artist types doesn't, and I suspect only made games because more traditional media is harder to release in.

It's this kind of viewpoint I want to fight against. It's a valid expression of storytelling and trying to paint it as a tool for pretentious arthouse types is just closing off potential avenues for the medium to evolve. We sure as hell would never have gotten Night in the Woods and Wandersong with that kind of attitude, and those are two of the best stories in games in the last decade.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Feb 20th 2020 at 6:08:31 AM

I'd say that's the issue with the bad ones, the ones that are essentially playing follow the leader and missing the point. Which isn't exclusive to WS/IM at all, it's part of everything.

Night in the Woods was another one he praised. I don't think he did a full review of it, though. It was at the end of another review, basically telling to people go play and enjoy it rather than the tosh he'd reviewed.

Yeah that.

BTW what's the name of the play with the horse and Harry Potter's knob?

Equus

Basically, Daniel Radcliff decided to star in the weirdest play imaginable (one that involves a naked scene, among other things) in order to avoid being typecast as Harry Potter and try something different.

Oh yeah I kinda forgot to comment on the Journey to the Savage Planet review.

Having played the game (and watched a bunch of L Ps) really highlights Yahtzee's Accentuate the Negative status. Needing to hop back to the ship for progression upgrades is technically an annoyance, but every puzzle/bossfight with them has a teleporter right outside it (and half the time the teleporter is right at the end of the cave/zone itself). Resources required for those upgrades also become a negligible problem if you explore around, nearly every youtuber ended up sitting on giant stashes of them as they went through (one exception being a guy that would constantly come into the secret area, grab the collectible and leave behind the resource nodes inside it).

Overall, the game was a hella fun romp, if kinda short, just a weekend's worth at most.

Zombie Army 4: Dead War (Zero Punctuation)

That name is going in my "most generic ever" pile, along with the game itself.

Next week is a game called Wolcen: Lord of Mayhem, a Diable-clone with shoulder pad that put Warhammer 40K to shame.