Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #125: Human Resource Machine, Left Handed Gaming, Citadel”
Morrowind and Oblivion drew their storytelling cues from media besides videogames, because that is, by and large, what videogames do. It’s too hard for most games with ambitions of epic scope and narrative content to convey these elements entirely through gameplay; they instead use gameplay as an aid to transport players into storytelling grounded in traditional methods. Which, with roleplaying videogames, is generally what the player wants: to have a story that could be a book or a movie improved by interactivity. And that’s just the point where RPG fans get into the biggest slap-fightiest arguments: book or movie.
Morrowind was literary; it told its story through context and history and shovelfuls of dialogue. most of the story happened when you were standing still somewhere reading something. Oblivion was cinematic–an active, moving, speaking story in which you were the primary character–and it sacrificed a lot to get there.
It had voice-acting for all its dialogue, which forced a thousand compromises from shortening dialogue length to limiting dialogue scope to homogenizing the voices for various races and characters. It seized control of the player to allow cutscenes to occur uninterrupted. It filled a large portion of its campaign with rinse-and-repeat prefab dungeons to allow the other missions the maximum scripting and dialogue budget. Not all of the cuts were logistical, either; some of them were more abstract and philosophical. For example, the increased value and vitality of actors (plus a few other technical reasons not worth getting into yet) meant the developers put stricter regulations on who could be killed. Any NPC who would become relevant to a quest was invincible until they had discharged a necessary portion of their scripting. Technically neither of the first two games gave you leeway to kill random people either, quite possibly for engine reasons, but Morrowind was so bold in making everyone killable that it didn’t seem the developers would retract the privilege. It seems fair, doesn’t it? Your input in the game is very limited. You can’t arrest NPCs, be meaningfully rude to them, spread gossip about them, ask them to stay away from you, fire them if they’re part of your guild, or give them wet willies. Your choices for expressing your opinion on or judgment of an NPC amount to murdering them or not murdering them, and taking away the choice of murdering them is nontrivial. It feels like a fussy exercise of power–a storyteller convinced whatever they’ve got planned is much better than what you’re trying to come up with.
All these cuts and constraints could have easily amounted to a net loss for the franchise. In the eyes of some, they certainly do. But it’s also fair to say that as long as Bethesda was trying to make the best of their scripting and create a broad adventuring simulator, they did a pretty good job of it. It all came down to working with their limitations.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Altered Scrolls, Part 11: Song and Dance”
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So let’s say you get the rights to make a “Star Wars” product, and now you need to guide your creative staff to nail the look, feel, tone, and overall style of the original three movies. What do you need? I’m not talking about worldbuilding stuff like Jedi, X-Wings, and Wookies, but more low-level art cues. Let’s assume you want to make “new” Star Wars stuff. You want new races, new planets, and new time periods, but you want the new stuff to still feel like Star Wars.
What other cues make a place feel “Star Wars”?
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We killed the sexbot in the previous episode. This ignited a debate as to what the moral thing is in this case. The bot ran off. The bot is property. What’s the right thing to do?
Clearly, Star Wars does not present droids an an oppressed underclass. The fact that they’re property is not social commentary and we’re not supposed to worry about their freedom. While I do nerdrage against George Lucas now and again, I’ve always given him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he’s NOT pro-slavery.
To reconcile this apparent contradiction, I always assumed Star Wars droids didn’t really have feelings. This is entirely headcanon on my part, but I imagine that droids don’t really feel emotions. Their apparent emotions are to make them easier to deal with for their owners. If my protocol droid is worrying and stressed, I know it’s near capacity for whatever task I’ve given it, or that it’s at risk of failing at that task. It’s just a more advanced version of giving a friendly voice to Siri. Siri isn’t alive and doesn’t actually care about me, but its creators gave it a friendly female voice because that’s nicer and more convenient than a dialog box.
The movies contradict this notion, though. At one point you see one droid being… tortured? That’s too goofy a notion for me to wrap my head around, so I usually ignore it.
But having a droid run away from its owner undercuts this idea of droids not having feelings. Clearly if a droid is going against the will of its owner you can’t argue that the “emotions” are just cosmetic.
On the OTHER hand, if you pay attention to what the droid says, it’s clear the droid is actually trying to kill itself for the benefit of its master. It has concluded that she’s delusional, neurotic, crazy, or whatever. It’s destroying itself in hopes that she will move on. Presumably if she were better balanced the droid would be content to hang around and give her all the robo-sex she wanted?
But who knows? Star Wars is actually much too pulpy to seriously tackle questions like this. The writer didn’t put droids in the story because they wanted to ask questions about consciousness, identity, free will, or the moral implications of creating a sapient designed to be your servant. They put droids in the story because robots are fun and different from people, and make the world more fantastical.
The last game gave us a pretty good team and also gave us the goal of “go learn about the Reapers”. Then this second one replaced it with “Your team is gone. Build another one.” Once you get over the shift in goalAssuming you ever do. My therapist says I’m making “good progress”. this is a good subject for a BioWare game, as it plays to their strengths in writing vibrant one-on-one conversations with interesting people. Okay, we’re gathering up a team of people even though we have no idea what we need them to do beyond “go through a relay”, but we’ll talk more about the main story later.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 18: There’s No “You” in “Team””
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Around 13 minutes or so, we meet an NPC asking us to look into the disappearance of his son. It’s the voice of Neil Ross, who to me will always be the voice of the Narrator in the Leisure Suit Larry games. I associate this voice with innuendo, sarcasm, and dick jokes. It’s very strange to hear this voice talking for three whole minutes and not making one joke about screwing.
Speaking off-the-cuff, I commented in this episode that in KOTOR, the introduction zones of Endar Spire + Taris + Dantooine would be as long as all of Mass Effect 1. And then today I started wondering how far off / reasonable / hyperbolic that guess was.
By the end of this week we’ll be on episode 21, and (spoiler) we’re going to be on Dantooine until nearly the very end. If we estimate episodes are about 25 minutes longSometimes we run long, but then subtract a couple of minutes for the credits at the end of each episode. For the purposes of simplicity, I’m going to call it a wash. then Josh will finally get to the main “open” part of the game around the 8.75 hour mark.
Spoiler Warning season one is embarrassing in its crudeness and I never encourage people to watch it, but that clocks in at around 11 hours.
So maybe I was overstating things? Except, we’ve been skipping quite a bit of content here in KOTOR. We skipped the ages-long dialog-based crime solver quest. We skipped the Romeo and Juliet thing where you have to storm some guy’s house, which is a huge maze of mines and killer robots for some reason. We skipped all but the first of the arena fights. We only played one round of Pazzak. I think we only did one of several bounties.
On the other hand, we did a good bit of optional side content in Mass Effect 1. The idea of “side content” is somewhat nebulously defined, so it would probably be hard to get a proper apples-to-apples comparison that everyone could agree on. But still, I think my statement isn’t nearly as ridiculous as it sounded at first.
On the other hand, according to How Long to Beat, the Mass Effect main story (no extras) takes around 17 hours. The fastest time on the site was 12, about an hour longer than the Spoiler Warning play through, which included side content like the Moon. Also, Josh and Randy didn’t skip dialog, and most players skip at least some of it. So I dunno.
At any rate, they don’t make ’em like they used to.
Except for Witcher 3, in which case they make ’em like they used to, only moreso.
The locker room before the big whoops-the-jerseys-were-the-wrong-size rematch against the High Seas Surfilletes. I get a glimpse of my own eyes in the medicine cabinet mirror. They look like they belong to another manâ€"another dead manâ€"a dead squidâ€"a dead squid whose whole life slipped off the road down a gully of misery and substance abuse stemming from having really gross eyes.
“Howdy, friend.”
It’s the opposing team’s coach leaning in our doorway, picking his fingernails. He’s got a big fat stupid elf grin on his slender handsome brilliant elf face. “Ready for the big match?” he coos.
“Yup,” I say.
“Halflings, huh? How’d you get stuck with these guys? I mean, it’s cute that you think you can win and all, but let’s be honest with ourselves. Your little fat halflings? Against my trained, professional elves? You’re just going to get walloped again and you know it.”
“Yeah. That’s what’ll happen.”
“Tell you whatâ€"how about a friendly wager? If your little fatboys win out there today, somehow, I’ll…”
“Nah.”
“…I’ll…sorry? Did you just say…”
“No.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He looks puzzled and leaves the locker room. I finish shaving and slowlyâ€"almost inaudiblyâ€"I begin to hum.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Half Time CH3: Kill it with Shire”
Here is a long look at a game that tries to live up to a big legacy and fails hilariously.
A look back at one of my favorite games. The gameplay was stellar, but the underlying story was clumsy and oddly constructed.
Imagine if the original Star Wars hadn't appeared in the 1970's, but instead was pitched to studios in 2006. How would that turn out?
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
Some advice to game developers on how to stop ruining good stories with bad cutscenes.
People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.
Most stories have plot holes. The failure isn't that they exist, it's when you notice them while immersed in the story.
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