GMDX Dev on 11/12/2015 at 17:49
Quote Posted by froghawk
But in a lot of cases, a soundtrack grabbing your attention is actually a bad thing, since that frequently means it's not properly blending into the patchwork of the rest of the film/game.
Honestly, why? My elitism for game design has a lot of basis in logic. Music on the other hand is as subjective as it gets. I favor music that makes itself present and assists in telling the story.
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Yes, clearly. All of the characters are deeply fleshed out entities with complex emotional arcs.
If we can consider the world a character, yes.
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Really though, what do you think it borrows from high art?
The Illuminati-centric events & themes in Paris, mostly.
Thirith on 11/12/2015 at 17:54
Frankly, I never got the major praise Deus Ex got for its writing. It's not bad and does its job, but IMO there's no comparison even to great genre literature. Compared to writers like Iain M. Banks or China Miéville (who both have their own flaws, admittedly), I really don't see how it's special, especially in terms of world building, characterisation and style. Obviously the needs of interactive fiction are different to those of non-interactive narrative fiction, but even keeping that in mind I simply fail to see why Deus Ex should be such a standout in terms of writing in particular.
froghawk on 11/12/2015 at 18:02
^Exactly.
Considering the world a character is a cop-out. None of the characters in Deus Ex feel like real people, and none of them are fleshed out. It's impossible to form an attachment to anyone. Oddly, I think this deficiency actually works in the game's favor, since it makes the game world a very cold and detached future, but I think that's more a happy accident than an example of good writing. And with that said, the game still would've been improved with more fleshed out characters.
And isn't the illuminati more of a case of borrowing from actual history than high art? They were an actual group at one time, after all. And even if it were borrowing from high art, that's just one level - hardly the best of both worlds.
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Honestly, why? My elitism for game design has a lot of basis in logic. Music on the other hand is as subjective as it gets. I favor music that makes itself present and assists in telling the story.
Music is WAY more objective than people give it credit for. They only think it's 'as subjective as it gets' out of ignorance, basically. Just about every aspect of music is pretty easily quantifiable - and while that may sound mechanical, a lot of great musicians are far more calculated than you think they are.
Note that I said a soundtrack grabbing your attention CAN be a bad thing. I think there are three tiers of this:
1) A soundtrack grabs your attention because it is too intrusive and therefore failing to become 'part of the world'.
2) A soundtrack blends with the world and therefore fails to stand out.
3) A soundtrack is good enough on its own merits that you notice it as it enhances the world.
Option 1 makes for a bad soundtrack, and that's what I was talking about. To me, it's disturbing common, probably because soundtracks are constantly making me groan and say 'not this cliche
again!'.
Thirith on 11/12/2015 at 18:10
In some ways I'd actually say that while Invisible War had worse writing overall, because the writing is all over the place, it's got bits that are sharper and wittier than anything in the first Deus Ex, which sticks closely to conspiracy and AI tropes. IMO Invisible War at times subverts and deconstructs the clichés in fun, smart ways that the original game played straight.
froghawk on 11/12/2015 at 18:13
Option 3, on the other hand, is very rare. And this is mostly a problem of musical vocabulary. There are so many different musical languages, and so many different ways to illustrate a story. One of the primary problems with pop art is that one or two languages tend to overtake a genre and dominate it. For example, musicals - they're using music to tell a story and express emotions, so the musical possibilities there are literally endless. Instead, 99% of musicals on or off broadway tend to stick with the same trite, overused harmonic language that's been beaten to death so much that it actually prevents me engaging with the story because it seems so artificial. Soundtracks work largely the same way.
But in the high art equivalent of musicals - opera - you don't see this problem at all. The vocabulary of opera in the 20th century is insanely diverse and really takes advantage of all of those possibilities, in harmony, rhythm, and form/structure. Which is why I think high art influence is important - pop art can easily stagnate based on what sells. While pop art influence is necessary to kill the elitism that can easily come from high art.
edit: Indeed, while Invisible War may be even colder than the original, I enjoy a lot of things about the writing. It goes in some truly odd directions by the end that I haven't seen any other game explore.
faetal on 11/12/2015 at 18:17
Deus Ex storyline is just a greatest hits of conspiracy theories anchored to the gameplay model of you being a superhero agent. The biggest thrill of DX for me is the way you end up being such a major player in between the various factions and how the landscape of that is hidden to you at the beginning of game. There was nothing like it at the time, hence the massive impact of it. You could make a game with better gameplay, a better written story and higher production values and it could be objectively way better, but because it can't make the same impact, it can only feel subjectively better to a new player. I'd be interested to know how many people played Human Revolution first and then played the original and found it better, because you *have* to account for its contemporary impact against the backdrop of what came before at the time of release, as well as your own nostalgia of experiencing that impact first hand.
Because without those two things, the objective experience of the game could be very different.
GMDX Dev on 11/12/2015 at 18:21
It (and PS:T) proved that gaming can do literature, however more so than PS:T it proved it can do it magnificently in unison with everything else that defines a game.
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Considering the world a character is a cop-out. None of the characters in Deus Ex feel like real people, and none of them are fleshed out. It's impossible to form an attachment to anyone.
Huh? Considering they are low-poly low-res poorly animated character models they feel very much alive. But yeah, aside from snooping through their emails such they aren't given much depth, but in place of depth is variety. We must meet, what, 400+ characters that we can talk to?
froghawk on 11/12/2015 at 18:29
Quote Posted by GMDX Dev
It (and PS:T) proved that gaming can do literature
You've said absolutely nothing to justify this stance. What about the writing in either of those games places them on the level of literature?
And I agree faetal, the innovation is more important, as is putting everything in its proper historical context. For example, I have a weird attachment to Invisible War because it was my first exposure to the series, and thus to a lot of the gameplay ideas presented in it. But I played the first chapter, stopped and played through the original, then finished IW, so it was pretty easy to see the ways in which the original was better. Nonetheless, I'll never be able to see IW as a bad game the way many do.
The original Deus Ex innovated in a few arenas, but that doesn't mean it innovated everywhere. In a lot of ways, it did not. And that's not a bad thing, but it also means there's no reason to pretend its writing is on the same level as great literature or that its music is somehow special.
GMDX Dev on 11/12/2015 at 18:39
Sociopolitical statements, high level expression, general intelligent writing, cultural relevance, exploration of relevant themes, provocation of deep thought in the reader/player, along with being entertaining of course.
As you're questioning it, your turn: what doesn't make it so?
Starker on 11/12/2015 at 18:40
PS:T is one of my favourite games, but as a literature nerd I wouldn't really go as far as to pick it as a shining example of literature. Sure, it has long dialogues that amount to about the size of a novel, but a lot of it is about DnD cliches like planes and alignment and fantasy races and whatnot.
