Horizon Zero Dawn violates the Hippocratic Oath of game design

Game developers really need to invent new ways to write videogames, if sound voices and emails are “no go” elements for many people… and it seems the case.

Because what are the good alternatives? cutscenes? these are expensive to make. Flavour text on weapons? apparently thats something people loved from Dark Souls. I dunno.

Holograms appear to be the new hotness but they take over your visual attention so they’re very imposing.

The problem you run into there is it often becomes the Captain Exposition Show.

I’d rather have to look for the lore than endure it.

The ones in The Division were pretty cool.

Doom (2016) did exposition correctly. Even though Doom Marine is silent, you can almost hear the contempt with which he views the NPCs bidding him to do their deeds.

Besides light optional exposition (it seems Doom fits? but I am thinking mainly of the first Dark Souls), I don’t remember any good story or writing that didn’t get somewhat on my nerves in recent years, and I am beginning to think all the games I enjoyed for their story when I was younger was because I was younger.
Well, sometimes, you get the crazy brightening jewel that eclipses everything else though, like Soma. So maybe it is really just a question of quality?

People talking? That’s so derivative . . . :)

One of my favorite moments from Doom was when a computer terminal starts into a boring audiolog style exposition and the Doom guy just reaches out and rips the terminal off and smashes it…ending the audio.

That was a glorious moment!

Nah, they just need to build better users. Audio logs and emails are awesome, provided that the story they’re telling is good.

This is perhaps the best audio log in any game:

Or they just have to realize that you can’t please everyone.

There are tons of games out there that don’t focus on story and few that do.

Or, you know, hire writers. I mean it’s not as if we don’t people out there who dedicate their time to weaving stories. Not every game needs a strong story but those who do… but hey I say the same thing when I hear some kid from the stocking room standing in as a voice actor.

The writing in that game is awful! She’s weeping over a deer she kills, and five minutes later she massacres 30 guys? Oh, and she never needs food again. At least Nathan Drake never pretended to have a tender heart. They were obviously in love with their “college girl becomes badass adventurer” pitch but couldn’t find a way to actually dramatize that in a convincing fashion.

Personally I think it’s best to lean into the gameplay and avoid storytelling methods cribbed from other art forms. Otherwise, in-game dialogue has worked fine in RPGs for decades.

I don’t love the whole “is it a cutscene or isn’t it?” school of game design, where you keep wondering when/if you’re going to have to take the wheel. Stresses me out. Saw a lot of that in Tomb Raider, some in H:ZD.

You go, girl!

That was one of my favourite things about the game early on. Shame it kind of peters out as you get further in. The worst thing about the game was those gravely voiced exposition dumps you encounter in the hell levels harping on about the Doom Slayer. At least you could ignore them or walk away as they were playing.

Yeah, seriously.

I don’t know where this idea comes from that Tomb Raider goes from zero to Call of Duty in sixty seconds, but it’s a really odd distortion of the way the game is actually written. I wish more games had the insight into character development that Tomb Raider had.

-Tom

I played the Tomb Raider reboot for a dozen hours, and while I wasn’t shocked by the transition/progression itself, I was deeply unappealed by the murdering spree Mrs. Croft initiates very quickly into the game. It probably is because the game is more of a cover shooter than anything else, which is quite a shock when you appreciated the action-puzzle, almost 8-bits, explorative nature of the first games.
In any case, while I don’t agree with the idea concerning the game, it echoes somewhat to my feelings toward the series, and maybe it is why it gets spread around, as a simplification as well as a way to try to avoid sounding like old farts preferring the older games?
We need ludosociology chairs in universities obviously.

Maybe we have been infected with political opinions and ideas.

I can’t look back at any hollywood movies where the good guy torture the bad guy to extract information to save lives (or maybe only because the bad guy deserve it and the information is only where is the money hidden).

It don’t mean these movies are now bad and back they where good. The movies have not changed, we have changed. So we can move to different movies or games where torture don’t happen. ( I use torture, but ‘killer spree’ apply the same way). These games already exist. Like… Watch Dogs 2 is not a game that I would recommend to anyone, but you can try to play the whole game without killing anyone (I think when you knock down a guy he is only sleeping, not dead). We can even demand game developers more games where killing is optional. But is because match our current tastes, not because make games better.

My favorite part of that Tomb Raider game is how it contrasts Lara’s progression as a killer to that of the rest of the ship crew. They are genuinely horrified by what she has become when they get reunited.

This thread jumped the shark at post #____