17th November 2004, 1:20 PM
Quote:How much BG did you play? Not just hour count, how far into the story did you get? It's hard for me to say exactly how well BG1 does because as I'm sure I've said before I never finished that game. I've never even finished chapter three... though I've done the first two chapters about five times... I think it starts out quite well. BG2 I did play all the way through though and it's definitely better in gameplay, story, story depth, and presentation... but when I played BG1 again a month or so ago I remembered how good that game was. I really should go back to it and for once actually reach Baldur's Gate...
I've played more of BG2 than 1, and watched my brother (who loved the series) play through a lot of both games.
Quote:They are BOTH. Those two arguements support eachother because both the visual AND literary mediums are important to games.
No, they are not both. Video games, by definition, are a visual medium. Books are not a visual medium because all of the "visuals" are in your mind. With video games that is not the case, which is why you need to narrate them like you do with movies. Books use detailed desciptions to paint images in your mind, which is why they cannot be all dialogue. When games like BG mainly use plain dialogue between static characters in word balloons, that is absolutely bad story-telling. You cannot mix and match like that! Either you don't tell the story visually and narrate it like a book, or you tell is visually like a movie! There's no good in-between method!
Quote:Games are definitely a written medium as well as a visual one. Absolutely. Can you make it all spoken? Mostly yeah. But the way the text is done... it's more like a book than a movie, for the kinds of games I am thinking of. The fully voiced text in Quest for Glory IV or The Longest Journey aren't like movies, for the most part.
Your arguments are extremely flawed. By your logic movies are also a "written medium" because there are silent films, foreign films that require subtitles, or the optional subs for the hearing impared. And we know that movies are not a "written medium", so your argument is baseless. Completely baseless.
Quote:You are right that the main reason games have used text and not voices for everything is technical. Well, technical and time/money dependant -- we have been able to put voices in games for almost 15 years now, but only some games have tried because of priorities, money, and scale issues. A fully voiced Baldur's Gate would have taken forever to voice act and would be on like ten CDs. But still, text has had major uses in games... much, MUCH more so than the text in soundless movies, at least so far.
So that's your only argument? That you can't consider movies that use subtitles or text because of quantity? Okay, so what about long anime series that require subtitles? There's more text in some series than in Baldur's Gate, so I guess that means that I have to start calling Gundam a written medium as well as a visual medium, right? Oh, I bet you're about to say "well they weren't meant to be subtitled". Ah, so what about a series that uses a made-up language and requires subtitles to understand it? I suppose you'd consider it a written medium, right?
Your logic keeps on getting better and better! I'm finding it very entertaining to see you endlessly dig yourself into holes like this.
Quote:Maybe TLJ could be compared to a serial TV series or something, but movies? Movies are short. Games are long. This is a key difference! That length means more detail, which means more influence from mediums that are longer, like books or perhaps serial TV serieses.
TV shows are just long movies. That's all they are, that's how they came about. Length is not of importance to this discussion. There are tv series that are more movie-like than some movies, so that's a useless point.
Quote:Yes, games benefit from being fully voiced. But as I said, I do not feel that voicing them necessarially makes them more like movies. QFGIV doesn't feel more cinematic than QFGIII because of the voicing I think... it feels different, and I really like the fact that it's voiced (adding voices is great most of the time), but.. cinematic? If I would use that term, it would be in a quite limited manner. I'd say that maybe it increases immersion into the world as the creators want it, but cinematic... when I think of that term I think of the whole game changing into a more filmlike style -- like MGS2. Not just a normal game with voices... that's maybe a better comparison to an audio book (though with obvious major differences). If most voiced games are more cinematic, it is as a side effect and not as an intended effect. The main effect is more immersion in the world (as long as the voices are good; otherwise it can hurt the game).
You don't understand the definition of "cinematic", that is the problem here. Not that I'm saying that those games aren't cinematic, but you really don't know why. And you cannot understand this very debate when you don't understand the basic definitions of some of the examples I am using.
Quote:We'll see about the future but for now, particularly on the PC, text is just about as important as visuals to a bunch of genres. And for some games (yes no recent retail ones), text is everything -- see text-based adventure games. I've tried to play a few and it can be hard because of how used I am to graphics, but Zork is still a good game... and it uses no pictures. And being able to get a text (or voiced, but it's really the same thing) description of an item or environment is a genre staple. RPGs too have lots of text in descriptions and conversation... and again even when it is voiced, it doesn't take away from the fact that the book-inspired aspect of the game is very, very significant. Possibly newer games have more influence from movies however because with better graphics we can get closer to what movies are doing, but then I could also argue that with newer games instead of taking from other things there is more of a history with games to draw from and improve on so they don't need to look to other media formats as much for their influences. ... that might be a good point, actually...
So what about games that use no text at all? Are they know longer written mediums? And text-based games are not video games, we've already been over this. Those are text-based games. I will not go over that debate again. You were wrong, whether you want to admit it or not. And if you try to continue that debate I will simply ignore you. You can never admit that you are wrong, no matter how much strong evidence you have in front of you (see: the PSP debate).
Quote:I really cannot understand why you think it's been so bad on the storytelling front for so long. I mean, I can understand the arguement that not enough games try to be "high" art as I've read enough about the topic to know it's true, but this... you don't hear many people saying that particular arguement and it seems more than a bit odd. And it's not just because I love games. I've thought about it and I don't see this massive gulf between games and books and movies that you seem to. And no, I very highly doubt that this is just because I haven't taken creative writing classes.
Actually it's more likely that you cannot tell the different between poor story-telling and good story-telling, no matter what the medium is. If you think that most games can stand up to most books and movies when it comes to story-telling then you're delusional beyond belief.