I doubt however right they were, they were refering to themselves in the third person.
None-the-less… holy, you were right! Someone liked Desmond!!!
I’ve never met this Pogue guy. He sounds really smart though, and handsome.
Gameplay-wise, it is like in Darksiders II when you get to the level where all the combat is entirely different then the rest of the game.
I get devs want to spice things up, but these sections are rarely as enjoyable as the rest of the game or that’s what you would be playing most of the time instead.
Ciri was fine though. :P
Agreed. Although that game did commit the unforgivable sin of letting your absent party members abscond with whatever items you trusted them with.
Betrayal at Krondor is another game that really pulled it off.
In general, I think it works way better for party-based games than for single character ones. For the latter category, I feel that it must be a central mechanic where the many characters get similar pkaytime and not just a throwaway gimmick where you’re pulled away from your main character for a few minutes at a time.
It might be a weird example, but Broforce is made more interesting by its “character roulette”.
This is not an uncommon criticism, but I think they are actually super important to the structure of these games. They are powerful tools for shaping the pace of an experience. It’s super easy to say a game would be better without, but that’s quite difficult to actually prove. You could play that version of the game and unconsciously become fatigued by the lack of any reprieve.
Exactly, they provide a unique opportunity to enrich the emotional component of the game by illustrating alternative viewpoints. But above and beyond that I think they are actually make playing the hero feel better by their inclusion. You get to live the juxtaposition between what a normal person can do, and the freedom you have as the hero. You also are faced with the heightened danger a regular person would be threatened by that would normally pose to obstacle in the game. And building on that, it shows the strength and heroism of these side characters who don’t have the shield of superpowers.
Also, they make up like 30 minutes of a 40 hour game like Spider-man. It’s a tiny percentage of what you do relative to the positive impact they bring.
I bet that a lot of game writers/producers/directors in the AAA space have a theatrical education, background, and/or experience.
Swapping the tension device away from a protagonist to another character is a very, very common thing to do in the 2nd act, to prevent the story from being a linear series of obstacles the protagonist has to overcome. (There are other reasons, of course, but not pertinent to the argument here)
The problem is that games are pretty much a linear series of obstacles for the player – as the protagonist – to overcome. There’s that cognitive dissonance of the player going “I’m who now?” when the primary tension device is swapped away. Works well in movies… but, if sloppily done, or used to introduce a game mechanic that will never be used again, or ($Deity forbid) used to stretch gameplay out, it works like shit in games.
Ah, I like side characters fine, especially if they’ve got some kind of gimmick going for them. Games with an ensemble cast are even better!
Oops, that wasn’t meant to be direct reply :-(
Yeah, I didn’t really love the Ciri sequences in Witcher III myself, although the idea of a ‘playable flashback’ is sort of interesting. (Alien Isolation had a cool bit in a similar vein.)
I’m totally fine with playing side characters (or other segments that temporarily substitute the main gameplay mechanics) in principle, but they can easily be misused or overstay their welcome.
It depends on how/why it’s done.
For instance, with Ciri in Witcher 3, it was done to give you as a player a real insight into why you would care about finding her.
So you play her, and she kicks ass in combat. And then there’s that lost little girl, and Ciri is sweet, and kind, and helpful.
And in the context of the game fiction, you’re left with: “This is the person the character I am playing raised. This is my daughter. And she is amazing.”
And then, well at least for me, I cared very much about finding her, helping her, saving her, whatever. And then after that helping her work through the problems present and involving her in the solution. And the big reason I cared about all of that is that I got to play as her and be her and get a glimpse of the impact she made on those around her.
I am not a fan of playing some side character either, and Bioware gave me ways to see these stories and understand party members while still playing me. I’d prefer that over these kinds. I don’t really hate the tool though; it’s just not my preference. I think the Breath of Fire series did this too, and it was a little odd then.
Yakuza 0.
The Ciri stuff also worked well for me though.
When I play Ciri in W3, all I can think of is sarcastic Hawke, and wondered why she isn’t sarcastic.
I’m glad you mentioned Max Payne 2 as it was the one example that immediately sprang to mind. Playing through similar levels as Mona brought about that change in perspective that fitted the narrative well. While I don’t recall there being any bullet time, she essentially functioned the same as Max in terms of movement, however the developing narrative set them apart.
I quite liked playing Ciri, at least as a way of getting to know her part of the story. Admittingly, the gameplay itself when playing Ciri was bland, it was almost impossible to die and what bugged me to no end was the fact that you were still able to loot stuff, but never got to use any of it. But still, better than watching several cutscenes.
I came to dislike all the GTA5 characters not just Trevor. Which I guess fits, its a gangster piece after all. but the main characters in the previous games I individually found much more likeable. Thinking about it, it may just be I found GTA5’s overall writing to be darker and more I dunno, icky? than the previous games. So that could be it.
As for games that did it right. Yeah not sure. I dont care for it either really.
I think The Last of Us used this technique really effectively.
Ha, I forgot all about that one, but I agree completely!
I…generally like perspective shifts in games?
The obvious answer to everything - Yakuza 0 - has already been mentioned, but going off the rest of my top ten of 2017, the way The Evil Within 2 juggles perspectives in the climax was one of my favourite things about it, the VHS tapes as vehicles for protagonist shifts and delivering clues in Resident Evil 7 was fucking terrific.
And also, Nier fucking Automata.
No idea how I forgot this one!