Renzatic on 16/12/2009 at 21:56
I'll be inclined to halfway agree. There were times I wish the game showed me a scene instead of describing it to me in breathless, wordy detail.
As is though, I do find PS:T to be one the best game I've ever read.
Yakoob on 16/12/2009 at 22:21
I, too, think Torment was too wordy, and I haven't even played it!
Zygoptera on 17/12/2009 at 03:50
Quote Posted by Renzatic
I'll be inclined to halfway agree. There were times I wish the game showed me a scene instead of describing it to me in breathless, wordy detail.
I sometimes think that. But then I think of how current 'cinematic' games generally 'show' things and decide that reading really ain't so bad.
Stitch on 17/12/2009 at 04:34
Eh, it depends. I'd agree for something entirely text-based like interactive fiction, but a game that is predominantly a graphical display with a small box of text at the bottom should probably take advantage of the graphical display.
Of course, my issue has less to do with presentation than the fact that I fucking hate exposition. Teach me about your world through the story and the characters, not through endless dialogue trees.
demagogue on 17/12/2009 at 05:19
Anachronox did text in a graphical game right, I think (if you're going to go down that path at all)... Everybody still has their own little story, but just a blurb and you get the idea. PS:T could have been better if it had gone more in that way.
Zygoptera on 17/12/2009 at 06:19
Quote Posted by Stitch
Eh, it depends. I'd agree for something entirely text-based like interactive fiction, but a game that is predominantly a graphical display with a small box of text at the bottom should probably take advantage of the graphical display.
Yes, it certainly should, but frankly the implementation is often just so outright
bad in games... when implemented well- probably the most recent example I can think of is "a slave obeys" from Bioshock, arguments about the plot overall notwithstanding- the 'show' philosophy can have excellent results but when implemented badly it just underlines how immature gaming is as a medium. I almost cringe at what a mess a 'shown, not told' approach could have made of something like Deionarra's sensory stone. It's also more difficult to implement than text, so implementing almost always means less scope and more costs.
Quote:
Of course, my issue has less to do with presentation than the fact that I fucking hate exposition. Teach me about your world through the story and the characters, not through endless dialogue trees.
Fair enough. You don't really have to read the exposition but, well, it is the sort of thing you can't know for exposition before reading it. I would say that a lot of the stuff in PST is not really amenable to being shown through anything other than 'exposition blobs' but that's more of a justification than a counter argument.
Personally I found the exposition in something like Mass Effect more annoying despite it being more 'advanced' and much of it being shunted into the Codex or whatever they call it, but it's certainly a YMMV.
