Gamers are just like everyone else. There are a lot of reasons they might like a game and a lot of reasons they might not like it.
The whole Elder Scrolls series very much appeals to “big world” and “virtual world” gamers. Gamers want to reward these games for their philosophical excellence, thus the game gets a +10 bonus to quality just for being big and realistically designed and open ended.
Also, gamers are by and large optimistic. Their idea is that Elder Scrolls games are 75% potential and 25% real. Thus the whole series gets a bonus not for the games themselves, but what the games might LEAD to. This flies in the face of normal reviewer logic, which states that each game must be treated on its own merits.
A lot of the issue is that reviewers are just not very honest. There’s no reason they can’t breakdown their own analysis in this way… instead they say “great graphics” and “decent gameplay” and call it a day… the reality is that there’s a lot more going on in what a reviewer thinks… he feels he can’t talk about it because he’s in the restrictive “reviewer” mode.
Thus you have this divide where some people think Morrowind is great and others can’t understand what they think is great about it… one large issue at play is that people who think its great don’t clarify their position because they aren’t comfortable talking about games in terms of potential or world design philosophy.
And so you get the people who are very excited about the next R&D project (err… I mean… game) from Bethesda and these same people say “man, I hope this game is ok”… they are excited but they don’t even know if the game will be any good!
They aren’t excited about the game, really… they are excited about the ongoing project of an emergent 3D world RPG simulator, which due to market demands takes the form of a game…
Hopefully reviews of Oblivion will be a little more intelligent, a little more honest, a little more self-aware, than reviews of Morrowind were.
No, that’s not it at all. We’re not excited because the game represents the promise of a future in which RPGs evolve into something more than their current form. We’re excited because the game represents a step on that path. Is it perfect? No. But it’s still good, and it’s still better than what’s come before. The game is popular because it’s better than other RPGs that are already out, not because its sequel might be ever better than that.
If Half-Life 2 is any indication (one of the first mods out was a replacement of Alyx with some japanese adult-video looking chick) the first mod will be an Idoru-like virtual plaything with swimsuit and nude skins.
Torment is also a superlative game that is over six years old. I mean, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a pretty strong counterargument to “Games should have graphics”. Shall we argue about that?
How does Torment being a good game with lots of text somehow translate into “lots of awesome text = awesome games”? Can I nominate “Reading John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise while my screensaver runs and iTunes plays” as GOTY 2005? Do I have to stop playing We Love Katamari because the King of All Cosmos doesn’t give great speeches about the time his grandpa knew the illithid?
Reading is completely non-interactive. Can you imagine if you were playing D&D, and you’re exploring a room, and the DM says, “You find a book: here is the book,” and then actually hands you some pamphlet or binder? Immersive? Not really. You’re now in Oprah’s Book Club. And hey, if that’s one of your favorite parts of the game, then I’d have to say you either weren’t very interested in playing a game in the first place, or that the game absolutely blows dire goats, or quite probably both-- and furthermore you in fact are kind of jealous of the game’s metaphorical sexual exploits.
I think it was probably the buggiest game I’ve ever played; it was certainly the buggiest major title. I remember saving compulsively, because it was always crashing.
But, it was a lot of fun. And it restarted fairly quickly. ;-)
Ok Matty, what is your preferred method of receiving quest and background info in-Game? Do you prefer when it’s an npc that when clicked on pops up a text box? Or does all info have to be audibly spoken to you, with all the horrible cheap voice acting that you can swallow? What if the book had eyes, a nose, and a moving mouth which spoke it’s writings to you? Will you then ask your new friend Mr. Talky Book to please repeat paragraph 3 because you were distracted when your cat jumped in your lap? Would Mr. Talky then respond: “I don’t feel very immersed when you type at me.”?
What drove me crazy about that game, and the reason I quit playing it, were the dungeons. Their insane designs must have been drawn directly from Escher’s nightmares…
Some games do accomplish this in an appropriate manner that befits the medium, you know. Like Half-Life, or Halo, or even KOTOR. But not Jade Empire.
I can’t imagine anyone would have ever championed the opening crawl of Star Wars if it had been the first five minutes of the movie instead of a minute. But that’s exactly the kind of thing games like Morrowind don’t blink twice at subjecting you to.
EDIT: I know someone’s probably already writing a reply saying that you don’t have to read the books in Morrowind, and they’re in there for the people who want to read them. That’s not the point. Obviously all the content in a game is meant to be presented to the player, and the method chosen is an issue.
Except that the books are not mandatory for progressing the game, unlike the opening text of a Star Wars film. The books are there for those who enjoy them, and just as easily ignored for those who don’t.
And I think it’s cool that some people liked to go to a high mountain overlooking the ocean and read the Collected Works of Some Writer/Developer In Maryland. I really do. But Chivalrous Matt’s point is right on.
I’d gesture vaguely towards the asylum level in Thief: Deadly Shadows as another example of good writing: I stopped and read everything I could get my hands on in that game, and there was never a sigh accompanied by Sean Hargrave’s enormous eyerolly because I knew it was going to be another 37 pages of text that was sorta relevant but not really, and I was going to have to obsessively/compulsively read it anyway. (I’m good for about one, maybe two if they’re good, enormous multi-page reading events in games – but Morrowind’s got the muthafiznuckin’ Brothers Karamazov in every peasant shack you break into.) But in T:DS, it was concise and you could always correlate it straight to the level you were in; and plus, the gameplay had you shitting your adult undergarments and so it added anyway.
Still, the ultimate way, in my opinion, to have “found media” enhance the gameplay experience in games is the System Shock system of voice logs that can play, complete with their context-lending background noises, while you’re doing other things in-game.
Second: I had no idea that watching the opening crawl of Star Wars was mandatory. I think if I had been late to the cinemaplex I would have still a) been admitted to the theater b) understood what was happening. How did we even watch Star Wars back in the 70s without Han meeting Jabba at Mos Eisley and Greedo shooting first? Was it all a dream?
Speaking of in-game found media, you know what would be really cool?
Something like Ilovebees, but instead of being audio shorts you download from the developer’s website every few weeks prior to the game’s launch, they’re audio files you find throughout the game. Compelling, well written stuff that fleshes out the gameworld in an interesting way.
Wow, you’re just all over the map in your obsessive need to burn those books with your bonfire of critical anal-isms. Showing up late to a movie is hardly the point, and my comment points out why your analogy was a poor one. Sure, you could zone out and ignore the lenghty crawl, though few probably would, and it certainly requires more conscious effort than simply ignoring books on a shelf in CRPG. But you continue with your quest of commingling non-mandatory in-game text with Lucas’ changes to his films (whatever the hell that logic is supposed to be).
In a game like Morrowind, however, not all the content is intended to be presented to all players.
Bethesda’s games are about being big. A large world, with a huge number of NPCs, more quests than you’ll ever see, and so on. The books are one part of that sense of scale. You aren’t expected to read them all, any more than you’re expected to track down every side quest.
It’s like the vampires in Morrowind. Most players aren’t going to become a vampire, follow the vampire quests, discover the cure, and become human (or whatever) again. Heck, many players might never even SEE a vampire–I don’t think the main plot sends you past any. There’s certainly no game advantage to becoming one. But they’re in there, because they add size to the game world.
Are you guys actually arguing about anything, or just bickering for the hell of it?
How about a more moderate view, that books in games are ok but it’s lame to rely upon random books laying around to tell the entire plot/history? Especially when you have to routinely pilfer them out of people’s houses just to learn the back story, and it’s obvious they’re placed there for exposition.
You completely missed the point, which is that the crawl isn’t immune from criticism just because it’s not integral to the rest of the movie. In fact, you kind of are still clinging to the idea that it is an integral part of the movie, which is just really bizarre.
“Ah hey, you can ignore the books so who cares, right?” is a very specious argument. I mean, you can win Civ IV on Chieftan with a Space Race victory, so does that mean I can’t criticize the way the game works on a different difficulty level with a Conquest victory condition?
Some dialog is necessary but I agree with Matt – reading just brings the game experience to a halt. The less of it the better. And as good as Torment may have been, I couldn’t get past the excessive amount of dialog to actually get very far into the game.
I’d rather Bethesda dump the books in-game and commission some good fiction set in the game world and include that in the game box in electronic or paper format. I’d rather read a good story than good backstory.
You mean reading brings action to a halt. The game experience includes anything that the developers feel they want to include. Fortunately, not all games are action games, or the industry would be in a sorry state.
Stating the obvious: I think it plain that people want different things from their gaming time. The trick is finding games that match and accept that not every game is going to be the way you want it.
