Thirith on 12/11/2008 at 07:46
It's strange - I always thought that compared to old-old-school RPGs all of the Infinity Engine games were very accessible, at least gameplay-wise. Planescape's inaccessability, I'd imagine, would lie in its off-the-wall scenario and unconventional story and characters.
This may just be due to my dabbling in D&D when I was a teenager as well as to my having played RPGs since the C-64 days.
demagogue on 12/11/2008 at 07:51
Quote Posted by AxTng1
Oh wait this is TTLG :D
Go onto any other gaming forum - Steampowered, GameFAQs or even The Escapist, and see how many have read War and Peace or listened to Holst's Planets suite performed. Not many, I'm guessing. 99% of art is the warm elitist feeling you get by understanding more than the proles. Any form of media is divided into the critically acclaimed and the populist.
Being the pretentious jerk I should be then, I can say that that reminds me of Nietzsche in
Untimely Meditations saying that great artists can't exist alone. They need a great audience or the greatness of their art doesn't even exist. Wagner to a simpleton is just so many hoots and hollers, clever maybe, but not great.
If we weren't here ready to play the next great game, it could never come.
I have to quibble about "inaccessible" as a criteria, though ... maybe in subject matter, but not in interface or gameplay. A great game should still have to have natural, intuitive gameplay or it's not a great
game, just a great concept that wasn't quite perfected.
Edit. I also want to say that a game's artistic merit is still a different question from how it handles ethics and being in-taste. It probably won't be tasteless like a game that isn't paying attention might be. But very beautiful or touching games don't have to be the foundations of great moral thinking either.
Another World was wonderful, but still basically a beautiful fantasy. Some strategy/diplomacy games like Heart of Iron, Making History, or even Civilization could raise really relevant issues about the real world, ethics and power-politics, but you don't tend to think of them as "artistic" in the traditional sense.
june gloom on 12/11/2008 at 09:12
Quote Posted by AxTng1
Also Torment needs a remake. Just don't let Bethesda do it.
I'd play the remake. Question is, who would make it?
Aja on 12/11/2008 at 09:43
Quote Posted by AxTng1
Having said that, doesn't "aggressively inaccessible" cover all "great" works of art?
Absolutely not -- one criteria for great works of art could be their tendency to appeal to both intellectuals
and laypeople.
TTLG seems to seek out "aggressively inaccessible" games because they feed its desire to position itself as a cultural authority of gaming. But scan the commchat preference threads and you'll see almost the opposite -- we all read fantasy novels and rave over superhero films.
In fact, TTLG is a lot like Bioshock -- it
loves to portray itself as high-literature, but it's too self-enamoured and too stubborn to be truly sophisticated or progressive ;) And, like Bioshock, it sure looks good when stacked next to its peers.
denisv on 12/11/2008 at 09:45
Quote:
I'd play the remake. Question is, who would make it?
I say Blizzard. I want a PST that's more action and less silly emo dialogues.
Thirith on 12/11/2008 at 09:47
Quote Posted by Aja
Absolutely not -- one criteria for great works of art could be their tendency to appeal to both intellectuals
and laypeople.
While I don't think that art has to be outright inaccessible, I do believe that most *interesting* art challenges its audience. Appealing to a broad audience often means pandering to the lowest common denominator or at the very least aiming to please before anything else, and neither of those tends to make for interesting art. If you don't have to put in at least some effort to process a work of art, chances are it's its genre's or medium's equivalent of elevator music.
Apart from that, though, I think you make a very good point. Ouch, though! :D
Aja on 12/11/2008 at 09:51
Maybe the best works of art are those that offer some form of instant gratification (to FEED THE MASSES) and then continue to reward more diligent observation. I'm thinking of something like a Picasso, which might be merely striking upon first viewing, but able to impart subtle and complex emotion for those who take the time to study it further.
Thirith on 12/11/2008 at 09:56
Quote Posted by Aja
Maybe the best works of art are those that offer some form of instant gratification (to FEED THE MASSES) and then continue to reward more diligent observation. I'm thinking of something like a Picasso, which might be merely striking upon first viewing, but able to impart subtle and complex emotion for those who take the time to study it further.
Hmm. I think that some of the best works of art may be like that - I do think, for instance, that something like Mozart's
Requiem offers instant gratification to a large extent but also rewards further engagement. At the same time, many of the novels that I consider to be among the most important works of art - and definitely lots of poetry and drama - will be considered obtuse, boring or pretentious by "the masses". In my opinion, this does not automatically diminish their artistic value. I'd definitely have problems with statements along the lines of "All the best works of art are X."
Matthew on 12/11/2008 at 10:15
Quote Posted by denisv
I say Blizzard. I want a PST that's more action and less silly emo dialogues.
Congratulations for missing the entire point of Planescape: Torment!
Thirith on 12/11/2008 at 10:17
Shh... I think it may just be possible that he was being ironic...
