Video Games: Dawn of Waaaaagh!

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, briantw said:

I think that's fine for a franchise like Uncharted, as each game was essentially stand-alone.  There's no sweeping arc from one game to the next like in Mass Effect.  Uncharted is more akin to James Bond or Indiana Jones, where each film is its own thing but some characters and secondary arcs carry over.

But even with James Bond, if they'd started out making movies that were not adaptations from the books they would have totally failed. It's only after a whole bunch of movies were made based on the books that movies with original screenplays could be entertained. The only stories other than those from the games I want told are after the epilogue from UC4 or how Nate and Eddie Raja know each other. But really, the games in the end are the story of Nate and Elena, so no one cares enough about Nate and Eddie's history for it to be a successful movie. So if the movie isn't about their love story then what is the movie even for and that story is told in the games? It's a total mistake to write a movie about a treasure hunt, Stories need to be about relationships if they are going to appeal to a wide audience. And a if movie is centered on any of the other key relationships in Nate's life then the games also give us those, in a more sketchy fashion, and won't be as good as a love story anyway. No one is really interested in a Nate story before Elena, so the only good idea for a movie with Elena in it that isn't about one of the games is a movie that takes place after the epilogue of UC4. Indeed the opening scene of the movie could be the Epilogue of Season 4.

1 hour ago, DunderMifflin said:

How can Uncharted movie be anything but a money grab. Nothing to do with any of the games plots. Then what's the point? Anybody can write their own movie about an adventurer/explorer dude.
 

Indeed. But it would be a piss poor money grab since it probably wouldn't make any money.

[Fez]

11 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Yeah, they really should have explained the Angara being able to understand English right away. At the very least, Ryder should have had the option to be surprised that a race that has never met any Nexus race perfectly understands them from the get-go.

As for your second point, unless the contrary is explicitly pointed out by the game I always assume this happens in RPGs. For example, while it's never said in-game, Dragon Age: Origins happens over the course of a full year. When you see the outpost established on Eos, it appears right away, but I assume it took at least a few hours, if not days, for the shuttles to arrive and offload all the prefad buildings and supplies. When playing Witcher 3, I assume that it takes a lot of time for Geralt to travel back and forth between points of interest given the setting. So on and so forth. 

Spoiler

That part was explained as well, just after the fact again. There was a reference to Jaal's "translators" (aka the universal translators that everyone in Mass Effect has always conveniently had) and whether they were malfunctioning in his first scene on the Tempest. The angarans don't understand English, neither do most of the Milky Way species, or even some humans still. Its translators. And there is also a quick reference to the angarans monitoring communications, which is why their translators were able to decipher the language; but that's when Kadara should've also been mentioned. And there's no explanation for why Ryder's translators were able to pick up angaan so quickly.

That's Bioware again though. I feel like they specifically have a problem (and always have, I'm not confident I could say the timeframe that Baldur's Gate was supposed to cover) with clearly saying how long a story is supposed to be taking place over. 

Other developers sometimes have this problem as well, but I feel like its less pronounced. The Witcher 3 wasn't great at this either, but there are some comments to help set a baseline (e.g. "Kaer Morhen is a week's ride away." or whatever the exact line was). And there's enough scenes in inns to establish that at least some time passage is being demarcated.

And some developers are straight up good at this, either because they are paying attention to these kind of details (e.g. Harebrained Schemes) or because time is an integral gameplay mechanic (e.g. The Banner Saga games).

[Werthead]

Video game to film adaptations have several key problems. The first is that video game storylines are usually 10+hours long, and even short games are still twice as long (at least) as any movie. The Max Payne movie wasn't well-written and was miscast, but it also didn't help that it was trying to adapt approximately the first half of a 10 hour storyline into a 2-hour time limit. It just didn't work, the pacing was right off.

The other issue is set piece overload. Films generally have a few set pieces which are impressive and a lot of character and plot developing stuff around them. Video games tend to invert this and throw a set piece at the player every ten minutes. That results in bombastic, sensory overload to a passive, unengaged audience.

I think a great video game adaptation is possible, but I think it's more likely in TV (where length isn't an issue) and more likely if the game isn't a crazy action fest in the first place.

Arguably the best video game movie to date, and it's still far from perfect, is WarCraft, because it adapted the first game which was very plot and character-lite so it gave the movie the freedom to develop its own story to suit that medium. I suspect if they ever get to adapting Realm of Chaos or The Frozen Throne (doesn't seem likely at the moment), they'd run into the usual adaptation problems of not fitting in all the characters or everyone's favourite plot moments..

13 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I agree that the creative minds behind a game should at least be creative consultants on an adaptation, though I think even with Naughty Dog involvement The Last of Us adaptation things have hit a bit of a wall.

Was tried with Quantum Break (though not sure how the game and TV show interacted or if the QB TV show ever even happened). Don't think it went well. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried again.

The Quantum Break TV show is built into the game itself, it's not a separate thing. It actually kind of works well. I wouldn't say it was great, but it certainly was an enjoyable experiment. I don't see how they'd really take it much further though.

[RumHam]

17 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

Something that might be exciting is merge the game with a tv show. And both of them relate....somehow. Then the game could update after each episode or something like that.

Syfy tried something like this a while back.

http://www.cbr.com/cci-syfy-merges-tv-video-games-with-futuristic-epic-defiance/

[DunderMifflin]

15 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Syfy tried something like this a while back.

http://www.cbr.com/cci-syfy-merges-tv-video-games-with-futuristic-epic-defiance/

Probably a huge shot in the dark even if you make something good.
I was thinking about these toys from my youth called Captain Power. It was a bit like Laser Tag but your guns were shaped like spaceships. You could try to shoot your friends but they also had a tv show that you used to the toy to shoot at the tv during the episodes. And vhs tapes where you did the same.
Me and all my friends thought it was the greatest toy ever for like a year but the show nor the toys lasted much longer.

[Rhom]

42 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Probably a huge shot in the dark even if you make something good.
I was thinking about these toys from my youth called Captain Power. It was a bit like Laser Tag but your guns were shaped like spaceships. You could try to shoot your friends but they also had a tv show that you used to the toy to shoot at the tv during the episodes. And vhs tapes where you did the same.
Me and all my friends thought it was the greatest toy ever for like a year but the show nor the toys lasted much longer.

Loved Captain Power.  Hated that the show didn't last.

The show ended on a cliff hanger that came close to scarring my fragile young mind though!

[DunderMifflin]

11 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Loved Captain Power.  Hated that the show didn't last.

The show ended on a cliff hanger that came close to scarring my fragile young mind though!

My cousin had the toys so I could only play when I went to his house. I only got to use them with the show like twice. I remember the difficulty level for the show was insane. The vhs tapes were pretty easy but the show was ridiculous

[Werthead]

Playing Blood Bowl 2. Enjoyably tactical game. The campaign is great fun, but the storytelling is limited because it's all done through the announcers. Still, for a game made on a limited budget it's great.

Also, further to the video game adaptation discussion, an Assassin's Creed TV show is apparently in the works at Netflix. Not greenlit but discussions are underway.

38 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Loved Captain Power.  Hated that the show didn't last.

The show ended on a cliff hanger that came close to scarring my fragile young mind though!

The Captain Power creative team went on to make Babylon 5, using some of the storytelling and production techniques they'd learned on that show, so it wasn't wasted.

[Rhom]

48 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The Captain Power creative team went on to make Babylon 5, using some of the storytelling and production techniques they'd learned on that show, so it wasn't wasted.

Huh.  That's interesting.  I had never heard that.  Learn something new every day around these parts!

[DunderMifflin]

I just saw this hour and a half documentary on youtube about the making of Captain Power. That show was way ahead of its time in almost every way. Interesting the creators were just trying to make another he-man/transformers type of show for kids but it was Mattel that had this new toy technology and wanted a show to tie it in with.

Also found articles about a Captain Power reboot Web series called Phoenix Rising, even a trailer. But I can't find any actual show and any reference to it online is from almost a year ago. Seems to have vanished quick much like the original show.

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

Video game to film adaptations have several key problems. The first is that video game storylines are usually 10+hours long, and even short games are still twice as long (at least) as any movie. The Max Payne movie wasn't well-written and was miscast, but it also didn't help that it was trying to adapt approximately the first half of a 10 hour storyline into a 2-hour time limit. It just didn't work, the pacing was right off.

The other issue is set piece overload. Films generally have a few set pieces which are impressive and a lot of character and plot developing stuff around them. Video games tend to invert this and throw a set piece at the player every ten minutes. That results in bombastic, sensory overload to a passive, unengaged audience.

I think a great video game adaptation is possible, but I think it's more likely in TV (where length isn't an issue) and more likely if the game isn't a crazy action fest in the first place.

Arguably the best video game movie to date, and it's still far from perfect, is WarCraft, because it adapted the first game which was very plot and character-lite so it gave the movie the freedom to develop its own story to suit that medium. I suspect if they ever get to adapting Realm of Chaos or The Frozen Throne (doesn't seem likely at the moment), they'd run into the usual adaptation problems of not fitting in all the characters or everyone's favourite plot moments..

The Quantum Break TV show is built into the game itself, it's not a separate thing. It actually kind of works well. I wouldn't say it was great, but it certainly was an enjoyable experiment. I don't see how they'd really take it much further though.

That hasn't held back movie adaptation of books. I don't see a problem with story length in video games. Story depth on the other hand is an issue. But talented writers (of which video game adaptations have been woefully short) can compensate for lack of depth in the source material.

The Last of Us "movies" on Youtube range from 3 to 6 hrs depending on how much gameplay and in game dialogue they include, and I think that is probably one of the longer linear adventure stories out there. The movie development hell it seems to be in notwithstanding I'd say 3 hrs of movie cut scenes in a game can easily translate to a 2 hr movie. But that's also a problem for would be adapters: if you can't make a movie that's better than the "all cut scenes" movie of the game on Youtube then why would you make an adaptation. I guess that at least sets a benchmark.

Action set pieces, again with good writers, can easily be swapped out for scenes that flesh out characters and plot more. There probably only needs to be 2 actin set pieces taken from the game for fan service.

It's all doable provided the elements of an engaging story are there, but it needs people with the right talent and the right motivations to do it well.

You are probably right that Warcraft is the best wide release video game adaptation to date, though critics would say otherwise. However I liked some of the animated Resident Evil movies, and the animated Dragon Age movie more.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Some minor Mass Effect Andromeda Spoilers: I have played 7 hours of Mass Effect Andromeda, and here is my review for those of you on the fence: DON'T.

The game is horribly boring and devoid of interesting characters. You walk around and listen to people say boring things about themselves without any sense of self-interest. Where are you from? "I'm from blah blah blah," That's so interesting, what did you do before this? "I did blah blah blah," oh, why did you join the Andromeda Initiative? "I joined the Andromeda Initiative because blah blah blah." End. The dialogue is so atrocious, and even crew and squad are boring so far. I mean they brought Wrex back and somehow made him boring. I don't know why they insist on calling him Lugnut or whatever.

When you first meet a Krogan, it talks like a stereotyped gay male--and I was kind of offended by this because you don't realize this is a female krogan for awhile. When you find out it's female--the voice is even worse. I don't even know how to unpack that whole thing.

Oh, and the dialogue. When you first meet Peebee and she jumps on your character, Cora says "back up, literally." Okay? Like anyone ever pointed a gun at someone and said "back up" figuratively? Or does Cora mean literally in that new "not-literally" sense? That wouldn't work either. Then you have Peebee who says things like: "Be careful! This planet is all kinds of strange!" I mean, really? Way to take me out of the game--an Asari in the distant future is using 2017, millennial colloquial speech? Whatever. I can't wait for more. I hope Peebee says "bae," "I can't even," or "I got the feels."

Anyway, Ryder is an annoying character and you have no choice in shaping him. Oh, sure, you can click on different things to say but they're all things his character would say depending on his mood. "Wow Ryder--things are really messed up and scary here." Your choices are likely: "We're a team! We're going to okay!" or "We will pull through--we joined this program because we are the best, and nothing will ever stop us! YAYYYY!"

Aside from all that, I want to iterate, the game is boring as fuck. Or BAF. I sure hope Peebee doesn't say that.

 

On a side note: Torment Tides of Numenera is slow, but interesting and fun. I have played for about seven hours in that as well and have only had one combat experience--but I find the game intriguing.

[The Anti-Targ]

So, Star Wars Battlefront II trailer out / "leaked" http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/11/15267222/star-wars-battlefront-ii-trailer-space-battles-singleplayer

Some suggestion there might be an actual single player campaign. Definitely has my interest if true.

Another Uncharted: The Lost Legacy trailer out too. No gameplay though.

Does Chloe look younger than in the Uncharted games here? Where does this game sit in the timeline?

[karaddin]

On 11/04/2017 at 10:52 AM, The Anti-Targ said:

Hell, I would go further than that, for people who have the ability to pause live TV (or if streaming) some of Shepard's major binary decisions (like whether to kill Wrex, whether to save Ash or Kaiden, whether to kill the Rachni Queen) should be up to the viewer. One could even consider whether to let the viewer determine if Shepard is gay or straight, sapiens-sexual (is that the correct term?) or xeno-sexual. We'd probably have an argument in my house about which sexuality route to choose.

There would obviously be a diminishing financial returns curve where cost of production would spiral if there were too many viewer decisions. But sexuality and a handful of major decisions could potentially be incorporated into TV production. Would probably mean such a TV series would be economically more viable if animated rather than live action.

Thinking on it some, I would probably prefer to have a straight, male, xeno-sexual Shepard for the TV series, because Tali is my one true love in Mass Effect. She's really the main reason I played a Male Shepard playthrough of the series.

Amusingly the word you are looking for would be homo-sexual. The homo in homosapien is from Latin meaning man, contextually human - the old men = human, women = less than human sexism at play here, and the sapiens is referring to intelligence - being sapient. The homo (originally homos) in homosexual is from Greek meaning same, versus hetero meaning different. The use of Greek vs Latin really gets confusing around these things. The Latin for "same" is cis, with "different/opposite" being trans which is obviously already in use for a very different concept now.

Sapiens-sexual would be all creatures possessing a certain level of intelligence, and probably actually defines the baseline Shepard sexuality (and Ryder for that matter) best. Xeno-sexual would suggest that Shepard is not attracted to humans at all, and that's a very specific option I don't think the game particularly allows you to make clear.

One of the other problems with game -> tv or movie adaptations is that the narrative structure fundamentally works differently with player agency, and I think a good adaptation needs to take more liberty with changing things for the medium but actually change the right things rather than just discarding half the setting. In this respect I think Warcraft (and what I'd argue is the most successful game adaptation - Resident Evil) has done quite well at the adaptation, the narrative makes sense in a movie setting because it is so bare boned. Tight focus linear narrative games are generally speaking more primed for adaptation though, and the Uncharted games and Last of Us are already very cinematic in their presentation that it shouldn't be hard at all.

Amusingly one game that has a huge amount of player choice I still think could be done quite well if you chose a 'canon' narrative, albeit with substantially less impact is Life is Strange. And speaking of that game, no spoilers here but 13 Reasons Why on Netflix gives off a very LiS vibe. Just the title sequence alone is dripping with it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FNj8Pcf8Wk

 

[DunderMifflin]

4 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Some minor Mass Effect Andromeda Spoilers: I have played 7 hours of Mass Effect Andromeda, and here is my review for those of you on the fence: DON'T.

The game is horribly boring and devoid of interesting characters. You walk around and listen to people say boring things about themselves without any sense of self-interest. Where are you from? "I'm from blah blah blah," That's so interesting, what did you do before this? "I did blah blah blah," oh, why did you join the Andromeda Initiative? "I joined the Andromeda Initiative because blah blah blah." End. The dialogue is so atrocious, and even crew and squad are boring so far. I mean they brought Wrex back and somehow made him boring. I don't know why they insist on calling him Lugnut or whatever.

When you first meet a Krogan, it talks like a stereotyped gay male--and I was kind of offended by this because you don't realize this is a female krogan for awhile. When you find out it's female--the voice is even worse. I don't even know how to unpack that whole thing.

Oh, and the dialogue. When you first meet Peebee and she jumps on your character, Cora says "back up, literally." Okay? Like anyone ever pointed a gun at someone and said "back up" figuratively? Or does Cora mean literally in that new "not-literally" sense? That wouldn't work either. Then you have Peebee who says things like: "Be careful! This planet is all kinds of strange!" I mean, really? Way to take me out of the game--an Asari in the distant future is using 2017, millennial colloquial speech? Whatever. I can't wait for more. I hope Peebee says "bae," "I can't even," or "I got the feels."

Anyway, Ryder is an annoying character and you have no choice in shaping him. Oh, sure, you can click on different things to say but they're all things his character would say depending on his mood. "Wow Ryder--things are really messed up and scary here." Your choices are likely: "We're a team! We're going to okay!" or "We will pull through--we joined this program because we are the best, and nothing will ever stop us! YAYYYY!"

Aside from all that, I want to iterate, the game is boring as fuck. Or BAF. I sure hope Peebee doesn't say that.

 

On a side note: Torment Tides of Numenera is slow, but interesting and fun. I have played for about seven hours in that as well and have only had one combat experience--but I find the game intriguing.

You're going to hate Nakmor Morda

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

I have slowly been getting back into Blizzard's casual MOBA: Heroes of the Storm. I was part of the Beta, but I stopped playing once Blizzard got rid of the ability to play with the A.I. against A.I. I find the basic gameplay of the HotS MOBA relaxing and fun, but I hate the competitive and internet nerd rage of the actual cooperative play. I recently discovered that at some point in my long absence they reenabled the ability to play with A.I. vs. A.I. for rewards. So I have been trying to level one of my old favorites to 10th level before the Heroes of the Storm 2.0 patch comes out later this April. 

[Fez]

I picked up the Utopia DLC (expansion?) for Stellaris and started a campaign so that I wouldn't be playing all ME:A all the time. I like ME:A, but I'm at 70 hours (including multiplayer) already and don't want to get burned out when I seem to still have a ton of game left. I've heard the main story is pretty short if mainline it, and that may be, but I've only done two loyalty missions so far and haven't even been to two of the habitable planets yet.

Anyway, I already liked Stellaris a lot and Utopia seems to make everything a whole lot better (I never play faster than 'normal' speed in Paradox games, so I'm still in the early game). The faction and tradition systems add some nice complexity to empire-wide management; and the ethics systems revamp seems to make sense (again; still early). I also like how they've been slowly building out the galactic lore; including apparently introducing something that sounds pretty similar Warhammer 40ks warp.

And because I wanted to fully experience these systems, I decided to change up my usual, highly regimented playstyle for Paradox games. Which in Stellaris generally meant some kind of authoritarian government with personal freedoms restricted to the maximum possible amount (e.g. I don't want citizens freely migrating between planets and messing up my development plans), a major focus on maintaining ethical solidarity, and not going down any of the paths that can lead to crises later on.

This time, I threw all that out the window. I'm playing as lazy, decadent, hyper-intelligent, super-talented space lizards with a cutthroat, parliamentary democracy. I'm letting everyone do what they want (or at least the space lizards can; when I conquer other races I'm not sure what I'll do yet), and I've gone all-in on building robot slaves for my mines. When shrines to the god of destruction from my race's antiquated, abandoned religion were found in space; I decided, "sure, let's let the researchers study that." I've got massive amounts of influence and the best leaders around, and am relying on that to get me through the challenges ahead.

[Corvinus85]

So in ME: Andromeda, can you not give weapons/gear to your squadmates? In terms of the gear I carry, I am doing what I did in ME3, just an assault rifle and a sniper rifle, to keep the power recharge rate as low as possible. So I have no need of shotguns or pistols. But in the field I keep finding juicy weapons that I don't wish to use, and the only reason to pick them up is to sell them. Some of this reminds me of the tediousness of ME1 regarding equipment. 

[KiDisaster]

Just now, Corvinus said:

So in ME: Andromeda, can you not give weapons/gear to your squadmates? In terms of the gear I carry, I am doing what I did in ME3, just an assault rifle and a sniper rifle, to keep the power recharge rate as low as possible. So I have no need of shotguns or pistols. But in the field I keep finding juicy weapons that I don't wish to use, and the only reason to pick them up is to sell them. Some of this reminds me of the tediousness of ME1 regarding equipment. 

Nope, you can't. I just disassemble all the weapons I pick up for crafting materials. I found an assault rifle and sniper rifle I like in the R&D stuff and I just make the next tier of those whenever I unlock them. "Loot" in this game is dreadfully dull. Vendor trash and items that are of no use to me at all. I've stopped opening containers as I'm going around, waste of time. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

8 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

You're going to hate Nakmor Morda

Lol. Can't wait. Well...I can. But, yeah, you made me laugh.