Muzman on 14/2/2013 at 22:35
Yep, they're about the only ones. Diego as well to a degree. SS2 is more on the nose in its info delivery than SS1 but it's hardly a lot by todays standards, or even Bioshocks; which, while having some very good backstory and world building straight up tells you the stuff you need to know right now at pretty much every point.
SS2s pulpy qualities are not to be denied however (although if you were paying attention I think just about anyone would have seen it coming. It's about her not assuming you're a complete idiot either. There's plenty of Nice Polito emails long before you go to meet the real one. I think SHODAN really is just arrogant enough to think you'll see her superiority and join her, or hand you the keys to the universe before getting a chance to do anything about it anyway. But she didn't count on DelaCroix).
So yes, Bioshock may have made a slight adjustment to essentially the same story that suited itself better. It did also insert the ludicrous clone/memory wipe/false history/plane flight/crash/convenient heroism/*gasp*revelation instead. Which is at least as preposterous as (and arguably moreso than) anything in SS2, for all its earthy pretensions and philosophy.
SubJeff on 14/2/2013 at 22:41
Quote Posted by Phatose
I dunno if they were old hat then, didn't play it at release.
So you really just pulled that "old 'Audiologs of the dead' thing" right out of your ass then, didn't you?
ZylonBane on 14/2/2013 at 23:09
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Oh, ZB, you're always good for a laugh.
Well then, why don't you explain what's so funny.
Angel Dust on 14/2/2013 at 23:15
Quote Posted by Phatose
I might be remember it wrong. Lets see...Bronson, Prefontaine, the little blonde who only fired a gun for the first time this morning, the crazy hacker....that's 4 from memory, and it's been a while since I played the game.
A lot of those characters had plenty of other audio-logs before you got to the one where they died.
The old scattered notes is certainly an overused storytelling method that, even when implemented well, can still come off as a little silly if you really think about it but it can still be dramatically satisfying. I thought
Miasmata was a recent example of it being done well, whereas
Deadlight's diary pages where awful, dull and completely daft (it's
your diary). Another thing that a lot of developers seem to get wrong is they contrive, by creating a rigidly linear experience or cheating, to give you all the notes in the correct order. What made System Shock games storytelling work, and
Miasmata did this too, was they jumbled the order of the notes up so you had the satisfaction of piecing it all together. You also get little bits of dramatic irony of the timeline variety, both planned by the writers and not depending on where you ventured in the levels first. SS1 had the most fractured, and therefore, to me, the most compelling narrative, and SS2 was a little tighter.
Bioshock was tighter still and also had far too many obvious IMPORTANT CHARACTER arcs and not enough little people for my liking.*
Basically, in SS1/2 I felt like I was discovering the story but in
Bioshock it felt like I was being doled out the story in small portions.
* I also had a major problem with much of the voice acting too - sure it was more professional than SS2 more amateur efforts but I feel that give the latter game a little bit of low-key realism whereas
Bioshock's hambones made the whole thing come off like one of those films with an all-star cast and delusions of award season glory (the recent remake of
All The Kings Men would be an example).
Phatose on 15/2/2013 at 00:02
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
So you really just pulled that "old 'Audiologs of the dead' thing" right out of your ass then, didn't you?
It's old now, and even if SS2 was the origin of it, the fact that it's old isn't the problem. the problem was that it was stupid even when it was brand new.
Quote Posted by Angel Dust
A lot of those characters had plenty of other audio-logs before you got to the one where they died.
The old scattered notes is certainly an overused storytelling method that, even when implemented well, can still come off as a little silly if you really think about it but it can still be dramatically satisfying. I thought
Miasmata was a recent example of it being done well, whereas
Deadlight's diary pages where awful, dull and completely daft (it's
your diary). Another thing that a lot of developers seem to get wrong is they contrive, by creating a rigidly linear experience or cheating, to give you all the notes in the correct order. What made System Shock games storytelling work, and
Miasmata did this too, was they jumbled the order of the notes up so you had the satisfaction of piecing it all together. You also get little bits of dramatic irony of the timeline variety, both planned by the writers and not depending on where you ventured in the levels first. SS1 had the most fractured, and therefore, to me, the most compelling narrative, and SS2 was a little tighter.
Bioshock was tighter still and also had far too many obvious IMPORTANT CHARACTER arcs and not enough little people for my liking.*
Basically, in SS1/2 I felt like I was discovering the story but in
Bioshock it felt like I was being doled out the story in small portions.
* I also had a major problem with much of the voice acting too - sure it was more professional than SS2 more amateur efforts but I feel that give the latter game a little bit of low-key realism whereas
Bioshock's hambones made the whole thing come off like one of those films with an all-star cast and delusions of award season glory (the recent remake of
All The Kings Men would be an example).
Yes, they had plenty of other audiologs. Makes it feel less contrived, but doesn't make it any less of a stretch. They're clearly not recording everything. And 5 times (cause the pervert in the mall also pulls it) they managed to turn on their recorder like 30 seconds before they die?
Actually, the whole audiolog thing is pretty odd when you get down to it. Even if everybody on the ship was required to keep every audio recording or voice mail message they ever sent....why are they all on different devices? I get that it's used as a narrative device, but it's one that invokes an awful lot of fridge logic.
EvaUnit02 on 15/2/2013 at 00:03
Quote Posted by Pyrian
and has better and more interesting character upgrades, so in significant aspects it's better as an RPG.
Are you high? Bioshock barely can be called a RPG, SS2 is a fully fledged one. SS2 has actual RPG systems (which were designed in such a way where you had to specialise), character classes and PERMANENCE. There was even some consequence to using SS2's pattern buffers (vs. none with Bioshock's vitachambers having none).
In Bioshock you can hotswap out skills with no consequence and you're a jack of all trades. Character permanence is huge part of Roleplaying and Bioshock doesn't have this in the slightest.
ZylonBane on 15/2/2013 at 00:18
SS2 doesn't actually have character classes-- the career choice at the beginning is just a way of guiding players into creating a non-gimped starting character. Beyond that, you're free to put points into whatever skills you want, without the sort of restrictions that exist in class-based RPGs.
heywood on 15/2/2013 at 00:21
Quote Posted by Muzman
Incidentally, since it's at least the second time someone said this...
What's all this "by today's standards" stuff people are saying? Where's all this devastating storytelling I'm missing exactly?
Not "devastating", but in the sci-fi RPG genre, I was thinking any of the Mass Effect games. Among immersive hybrid shooters, I was thinking any of the Deus Ex games.
Having recently played Dishonored, I felt that it's story was a bit weak. But after a quick mental comparison to SS2, I think the Dishonored story was more fully fleshed out with better writing. It just wasn't a particularly interesting story. But when I think of the other games from the late 1990s, SS2 is better than most. For me, Deus Ex really changed my expectations.
SubJeff on 15/2/2013 at 00:47
Quote Posted by Phatose
It's old now, and even if SS2 was the origin of it, the fact that it's old isn't the problem. the problem was that it was stupid even when it was brand new.
This is backtracking of the worst kind. Come on man, stop it.
Phatose on 15/2/2013 at 01:16
Fine. I was wrong, it was new then. Happy now?
