The Citizen Kane of video games... - by Yakoob
demagogue on 8/10/2009 at 00:46
Well since you raise the question ... The thing about Alpha Centauri is that the different factions aren't just about having different technology and weapons that change a little how you play.
They each have a completely different ethos and (mutually exclusive) vision about what they want the new world to be like ... The nature-lovers want to terriform everything and have a technologically-repressed society, the AI group wants to control everything with "perfect" supercomputers, the military guys want a total world dicatorship. The very goals of what you're doing the entire game are bound to a certian narrative; you are conquoring to enforce your ideology, not just to win for its own sake. You need to actually play out the "story" of who you are, to the ideological ends your side wants. That's the connection. I realize this kind of argument might depend on what you consider counts as "story", but with an open-mind it's interesting to look at it that way.
june gloom on 8/10/2009 at 00:48
Quote Posted by scarykitties
Care to back that up with some examples? Such as saying that Infinity's multi-player style where each character is separately selected, rather than only the main character being directly controlled, can be pretty annoying. A valid point, that, but at least back up your assertions with a couple examples.
Sure, differing game engines will act differently, but you're still playing as (essentially) one character, clicking where to go and who to attack and what weapons to do so with, all in an isometric perspective. They're more alike than different.
Have you actually even played these games? The main difference is that Infinity Engine is real-time whereas Fallout (and of course Arcanum, which was intended to be similar) was turn-based. That makes a
huge difference, especially when you're trying to balance multiple characters and there's all kinds of crazy shit going on.
Chade on 8/10/2009 at 01:20
Eh? From memory, couldn't you pause and give orders in Infinity engine games? That makes it fairly similar to turn based combat.
Zygoptera on 8/10/2009 at 01:43
IE games are based on 6s 'turns' or 'rounds' during combat, with the turns running simultaneously (sometimes, though inaccurately, called a 'Phase Based' system) rather than sequentially as in Fallout or Jagged Alliance. In all IE games it takes whole rounds to cast spells, attack etc, which is a sure sign of it being turn based at its heart.
Quote Posted by Phatose
The mediums are so dissimilar in the details that it's a totally pointless comparison, equivalent to looking for the Mona Lisa of J-pop or the Shakespeare of butt sex.
Disagree, fundamentally. Just because butt sex or J-pop have no pretensions towards having a 'story' or a 'higher reason' there's absolutely no reason why videogames should not. Sure, most of the publishers are doing their best to turn every game in existence into the equivalent of Transformers 2/ ID4/ Pearl Harbor/ Armageddon but there is not some sort of definitive Law stating that all games must have content designed to reduce you to a dribbling drool dispenser any more than there is a law that all movies must be Bay-esque cretin fests with the intellectual impact of a full frontal lobotomy.
Further, games as a medium is one in which it is (generally) very easy to remove the aspects of gameplay and story from one another. The prime reason why dethtoll is wrong with his criticism of PST wrt it being the Kane of games is that gameplay is irrelevant to any Kane pretensions- in fact, bad or polarising gameplay is probably an advantage to such comparisons, going by the number of people who watch CK and then complain about it not living up to said Bayesque stereotypes. Nobody thinks, say, GoW is like a movie because you can use cover or fire guns, it's the story (incorporating a bunch of things outside of direct story like overall aesthetics and consistency, verisimilitude etc) which makes the comparison and in that respect it is eminently fair to compare games to movies.
Though personally, I think that for most games comparing them to TV series is a fairer comparison as game stories are generally constructed a lot more like TV than movies.
Taffer36 on 8/10/2009 at 02:33
The real problem, I'd reckon, is that if we rewound time and tried things all over again with cinematography, perhaps Citizen Kane would never have happened. It isn't set in stone that art mediums NEED some kind of a Citizen Kane. Without it, perhaps we would have learned new cinematography techniques in a variety of other ways. Perhaps it would have been built upon over time by a number of films that each had a smaller impact.
Phatose on 8/10/2009 at 02:41
I think you see things too narrowly. Story is only but a small fragment of what makes Citizen Kane, Citizen Kane. Large amounts of medium specific concerns also factor in - cinematography, casting, individual actor performances, makeup and editing. Some have analogues in games, some don't - and vice versa, parts of games that are major constituents of the quality of the game have no analogue in cinema or movies.
And then when you look a bit deeper, even the stories themselves are going to have very different criteria for being 'great' in the different mediums. Torment, for instance has a huge amount of backstory and development. CK cannot afford to go to that level of depth - it's a movie, and people will only sit in a theater so long. Of course, you couldn't just swap CK into a game and make it work either - players need something to do, and the story in Kane simply isn't set up in a way to allow for a lot of interesting play.
At which point you're comparing storyline, embedded in two different contexts with very different needs and trying to make an analogy. They're being judged on such different criteria that I just don't see how "It's the CK of video games" is any more useful then "It's a great game."
This isn't to say that video games can't have interesting, involving, deep or insightful stories - just to say that comparing it to CK doesn't say any more then saying "It's great".
As for Torment....while I wouldn't quite go as far as Dethtoll, I would say the game portion of it was humdrum at best. But there is a bigger problem. When people talk about Torment, they do not talk about the game per se, but rather very specific play throughs of Torment. You'll hear plenty of discussion about the conversations with D'akkon and the unbroken circle, but not too many people mention that strange incident where Nameless spent 30 minutes stabbing Morte in the face then resurrecting him, then ran off to find a hooker. Or the part where nameless went berserk and killed Dhabuses until the lady of pain did him in for good.
Both of those are absolutely in the game, and given the freeform nature of the torment, have as much claim to being the actual story of the game as do the more common ones. Yet, they're never included in the discussions of Torment's deep plot.
At which point I'm inclined to believe maybe it's not that Torment had a great plot, but rather that there were a couple of possible great plots and a boatload of crappy ones and we simply ignore the latter.
scarykitties on 8/10/2009 at 03:01
I guess I never got to those points in Torment. I really never got much further than the city in the desert, which may only be a third of the way through, or so. I recall being impressed by a number of plot twists, story devices, and, in particular, the museum, and the Nameless One battling a former incarnation inside a ball (if you can count inevitably outwitting via linear dialog options a battle--but it sure looks good if you don't think too deeply about that).
I've seen Citizen Kane, and I will openly say that I didn't think it was
that fantastic. I'm not saying it was bad, I just didn't see why it was such hot stuff. Clearly I'm missing the cinematographic elements that make it the masterpiece everyone else claims it is. Still, I like (
http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/?p=2597) Cinemasacre's claim that King Kong should have been lauded as what Citizen Kane is if for no other reason than it breaks the rather pretentious "oh, you don't think CK is the best movie ever? Well, then you're clearly a fool, because
everyone who is
anyone will say that Citizen Kane is the messiah."
june gloom on 8/10/2009 at 04:04
Quote Posted by Zygoptera
The prime reason why dethtoll is wrong with his criticism of PST wrt it being the Kane of games is that gameplay is irrelevant to any Kane pretensions- in fact, bad or polarising gameplay is probably an advantage to such comparisons, going by the number of people who watch CK and then complain about it not living up to said Bayesque stereotypes.
Sorry, but this is a stupid argument.
I think Phatose has touched on something here: the driving factor behind
Citizen Kane's importance was that it brought changes in how films were made, particularly in cinematography and other factors. The story, however good it was, wasn't much more than a pointed critique of William Randolph Hearst. Cinematography up until this film was fairly simple and straightforward. This movie was doing stuff no movie had ever
done before and that's what makes it important. scarykitties sort of proves your point in that he completely (and hilariously) failed to recognize
CK's accomplishments for what they were. These days, the things
CK did is old hat. But that was very new stuff back then. The point is,
Citizen Kane, thanks to Orson Welles' imagination, changed moviemaking forever. It's not the story that's important, it's how it's told and how it's shown. Remember, this is the guy who when working at the Mercury Theater in New York City managed to retell the Shakespeare play
Julius Ceasar using 1930s European fascism as a backdrop, with very little in the way of props or backgrounds, using lighting to create his scenes.
With that in mind, when we want to declare a "
Citizen Kane of video games" we need to first see
Citizen Kane for what it is: technical innovation that invents new ways of telling a story. And that's why Planescape Torment does not qualify because on a technical level the game is unplayable and does nothing new anyway.
Zygoptera on 8/10/2009 at 05:29
I think there's an argument that can be made that Star Wars is a lot more relevant for changing movies, now, than CK.
The main thing about CK- to my mind- is that it was a movie that more than any other tried to circumvent the traditional limitations of its medium to further its story and how it's told (story in this case includes some indefinables like 'atmosphere' as well as scripting and acting). The technical aspects were important, certainly, but they were all in service to allowing Welles to tell his story better, not just for their own sake. If you think that th most important things about CK were its technical achievements then that is fair enough and comparing games to it is fatuous, personally I think that's rather missing the point of both the comparison and CK.
It's mainly the first part which I think qualifies PST- it tries to be something more than most games, to make a point and to be different and more ambitious. Sure, you can play TNO as a homicidal dimwit if you want- in which case your reaction is likely to be similar to that of watching CK expecting sex and explosions- but you can also play it to experience its philosophy, its story and to see one of the few games which has attempted to make games more than simply button mashing time sinks.
Illuminatus on 8/10/2009 at 05:32
Quote:
Originally posted by Phatose: Both of those are absolutely in the game, and given the freeform nature of the torment, have as much claim to being the actual story of the game as do the more common ones. Yet, they're never included in the discussions of Torment's deep plot.
Going on stabbing and killing rampages is a (fairly idiotic) player decision, not a plot point (like, say, Dak'kon's Unbroken Circle). You can make a similar claim regarding the child-killing in Fallout or sword-fighting in Thief: these actions are on the periphery of the central game experience, and unless you actively seek them out, they're not exactly the marquee attractions (aka, what you're criticizing isn't the story).
Quote:
Originally posted by dethtoll:And that's why Planescape Torment does not qualify because on a technical level the game is unplayable and does nothing new anyway.
Dude, combat (your main gripe) accounts for maybe 15-20% of the first half of the game. It’s mediocre, sure, but it’s also pathetically easy. Also, of all the things you can criticize PST for, unoriginality (“nothing new”) is definitely among the most least convincing hahah.
