are there ANY bioware rpgs that are bad

[Bretty]

Dragon Age was a fail by far.

I loved, Kotor, and I loved (am am still loving) Mass Effect, but Dragon Age was just horrible in comparison. It was the first game in a while that I stopped playing about half way through out of choice. I expected a Mass Effect or Kotor level story, which it didn't, and I expected the combat to be like Kotor, which it wasn't. I don't even remember how, but it was just horrible.

Each to their own I guess. I have played through Dragon Age 3 or 4 times now. Brilliant game.

I just hope that they can make a good MMO.

 

[Starke]

Same here, with the caveat that I didn't like that you could never get ahead of the curve, so you never had the feeling you were getting genuinely powerful, but, depending on player choices (which were potentially unintentional), you could end up horrifically behind the curve.

Yeah, I definitely hit that point. It seemed that almost the best way to get ahead was to not sleep, and on separate playthroughs some things that were easy at first turned out incredibly difficulty to it. All the optimised leveling just didn't seem worth it.

Personally when I play Oblivion these days I use the KCAS mod and drop the level cap by about 10-20 levels. Which means you'll be slightly tougher than the game expects at each level. It also wipes level optimization in one fell swoop and makes attributes advance in time with skill progression rather than at the level screen.

In 3rd and 3.5 your survivability goes up dramatically about the time you hit 3rd level. At first and second it's a crap shoot on if you can survive, but after that, unless you have a malicious DM, you usually have enough hitpoints to survive.

That's true, and 4th ed fixed it so you're starting out at roughly that power level. I found the best way in 3.x to survive was to take a level of barbarian and rage when I was close to death. It was quite satisfying at first but got tedious after a while. AD&D didn't quite have that level scaling feel where you thought it was an illusion, which also made it harder to balance and had even an incompetent DM rather than a malicious one making things miserable.

Yeah, in actual P&P the caliber of your DM is absolutely crucial. I apologize if that sounds like a cop out, but, if you've got a bad DM, regardless of the cause, you're in for a rough time.

For the uninitiated the Kestral is the highest tier commercially available ship in EV, and runs for around 10m credits. The Lightings are actually pretty easy to dispatch with any respectable ship. It's the combination with their much heavier mothership that makes the situation a real threat. That and the Pirates absolutely love the things.

Also, the main issue I found was the missiles. I needed to have the money to pay for enough missiles to be able to fight them at range.

I got pretty good at taking them down with Javelins, but that was a long time ago.

EDIT: In a weird nonsequitor, I always had trouble with weight, not money. So, while Javelins are cheaper, they're also weightless in comparison to standard missiles.

That said, EV actually did feature regional enemies. Whenever you jump into a system the game queries a list of potential ships and fleets that can be there. Some regions skew much higher and hostile than others. It just isn't clearly delineated until you've spent some time in the game where you can and can't go safely.

I'm fine with that though, given it's still random. In Baldur's Gate some high level encounters were guaranteed, even though they were plot wise intended for much later.

Again that's the kind of thing Escape Velocity did in fact do. It's much more pronounced and explained in Override and Nova, but the original game had several really dangerous systems to jump into without warning. IIRC immediately after starting the game you were within four jumps of a system that could (and did) spawn pirate Kestrels or Corvettes without warning.

You could also jump out of the system the moment the warning horn goes off and before they can get a shot in at you.

And prey they don't have inertia-less drives. (I can't remember if that was only in Override and Nova, though. I know it's in the game code for EV).

I think Half-Life hasn't aged well for a completely different reason. It's not a open world RPG so there isn't really an argument to be made about newbie zones or the like, and its enemies don't really scale with you, but then again, you don't actually get more powerful except when you're grabbing new weapons. What HL really suffers from today is that every other FPS out there draws heavily from it. If you've played an FPS in the last 12 years, you've played one that was heavily influenced by Half-Life, so going back to the original game now... well... it looks stupid, and bland. It's still a fine shooter, but it's aged terribly for the same reason The Matrix has. Everyone's done it to death.

That's the same with Baldur's Gate now too though. Plenty of games do open world exploration that actually works along with a good story, and without the drawbacks of Baldur's Gate. When it was released it was new and very little else out there was like it. Now it's got nothing to distinguish it.

It's somewhat to be expected that BG wouldn't age well though, because neither has AD&D, whereas systems like Call of Cthulhu, while basic and bland by now still age very well.

Because THAC0 is such a brilliant idea. More or less I'd put Baldur's Gate in the same genre as the regional wandering RPGs (Like NWN, NWN2, Dragon Age, Kotor, and so on, even the original Fallout games use the same kind of environmental breakdown that Baldur's Gate does, it kinda was the standard RPG format at the time, and when you get into Torment, which is from a year later, that's the same wandering system you'll see there too) rather than true sandboxes (like the Bethesda titles). But, (and this may only be my perception (and bias)), I don't see Baldur's Gate's hand in every open world RPG I play the same way I do see Half-Life's in almost every FPS I play.

 

[Starke]

It depends on what you're talking about explicitly. With dialog, it's how well it flows, and how natural it sounds (usually), with writing as a whole it tends to be how well does the narrative set up and execute it's story, does it remain consistent with itself? Does it rely on writing cliches like deus ex machina or others? Does the writing work together to present a coherent theme or story?

In the case of the film I referenced above, the answer is no. There's literally no third act, the film just stops (almost at random). The dialog is sometimes passable, but usually preoccupied with seeing how it can shock you senselessly. The writing is similarly preoccupied with trying to be shocking or shoehorning in the $6.66 bit into every occasion the main characters buy food, ect. I should probably relent and say the actors aren't bad, they just don't care. They hit their marks, and deliver their dialog with all the conviction of a whipped dog.

How do you reach an objective conclusion on how "natural" dialogue sounds?

Short answer: on this particular count, I'm not sure. Long Answer: Through extensive exposure to and training in media analysis. "Natural" dialog isn't an element of Analysis I'm actually good, at, but it is one of the criteria.

There's a certain vague range, I'll grant, but how do you determine where it lies?

Again, there is an empirical state. On "naturalness" of dialog, I'm not much better off at pinning it down than you are. That said, this isn't the only element to evaluate dialog by.

For that matter, is there a non-subjective way of measuring story cohesion, a method which doesn't rely on the intellect or logical ability of the perceiver?

Well. No. Insofar as it isn't possible to do an analysis of anything without factoring the intellect or logical ability of the analyst. Their personal biases and tastes can be relevant and accounted for, and most good reviewers attempt to do so, but when it comes to getting rid of logic and intellect you're shit out of luck, sorry.

There's also a lot of post-modern stuff which isn't "supposed" to have a coherent story, or uses cliche in an "ironic" sense.

At its core, the post-modern philosophy is that there is no single "truth". Rather that each person creates their own. I'm simplifying and will piss of others who know what they're talking about with this description, but there you have it.

Now, intentionally using cliches for ironic intent isn't cliche. Cliche by definition means tired, overused, or by rote, rather than something innovative. Using a cliche ironically is taking narrative elements that people are familiar with and turning them around and using them in a different way. In itself, this is nothing new, and can trace it's lineage back to Shakespeare.

Now, there IS a post-modernist thought process, and you'll trip all over it on the internet that claims that every opinion is valid because "it's my opinion", and its quite frankly bullshit. One can hold the opinion that stepping in front of a bus is a fun way to spend a day, but that doesn't mean it's valid or correct. By the same measure one can hold the opinion that Dragon Age: Origins is the height of the dark fantasy genre in modern video games, and like the bus opinion it's flat out wrong.

Personally, I think that's a cop-out, but that doesn't stop loads of people insisting on its "artistic merit". Are all of them wrong (as I think) or is there something extant, evaluable and measurable that I don't realize?

Because of the way I type these things, I kinda answered this before you asked. But, no, what we have are a lot of people who don't know what they're talking about expressing opinions based on a myopic range of experiences claiming they know more than they do to soothe or inflate their egos.

Note that I don't entirely disagree with you on the point that some opinions are more valid than others, but I'd like to understand your position a bit more clearly.

To be fair to you, literary analysis isn't my specialty when it comes to popular media. Political analysis is. And Bioware has left me with literally nothing to analyze on that front at all. While I can easily burn 2000 words on the political ramifications (and content) of anything from Asimov, or Babylon 5, or Star Trek (any of them), Bioware talks about how they're ascending to the throne of the Sci-Fi greats in their developer interviews, and then, I'm sitting here with nothing to chew on after playing Mass Effect 2. So, I turn around and apply some of that training back on the rest of their works and end up with nothing good (except Jade Empire).

So, in short, to do this kind of analysis you need two things. Training, and the ability to put your personal feelings and prejudiced aside. Training tells you how to qualitatively analyze a given element, and the ability to set aside your own feelings on the subject lets you analyze impartially.

EDIT: typo patroll

 

[Zyxx]

snip

I can accept that certain truths can only be perceived by the application of intellect - but can such a perception be truly unbiased by the natural inclinations of that intellect? Even a fool can see something blue and say "it's blue", whereas two equally intelligent, equally unbiased people can argue indefinitely over whether Planescape: Torment is a quality game or not and never achieve consensus.

What's the difference between being trained and simply adopting someone else's method of subjective observation? The training materials might claim they are demonstrating how to properly perceive something's true value - but I need some evidence to prove that's not the same kind of overinflated ego-speak as we get from the people who sign toilets and call it art.
Perhaps the training has been around longer, and hopefully attempts have been made to refine it - but is it actually any more unbiased as a result? How is that tested and proven?

In addition, media (most things, really) can be analyzed according to different schools of thought and come to different conclusions regarding its quality. If two of these schools completely disagree on a subject's quality, is there a way of determining which is actually correct?

Not every opinion is equally valid but I think arguing that there is an objective measurement of quality which trumps all subjective opinions - at least regarding media, or art - is a very tricky (and I might say slightly dangerous) stance, whether one claims to know what that measurement is or follows someone else who does. If one claims it exists, but can't give specifics on what it is, how is the conclusion of its existence reached in the first place?

(Side note: not being a very active forumite, I'm not clear on how long we're allowed to embark on this kind of tangent, so if we need to wrap it up, I want to thank you for a delightful discussion. Not to say it can't go on, if such is permitted...)

 

[Starke]

snip

I can accept that certain truths can only be perceived by the application of intellect - but can such a perception be truly unbiased by the natural inclinations of that intellect?

I could swear I've read that exact phrase before someplace, right down to the anachronistic use of the hyphen. Though, I as I recall, it wouldn't have been anachronistic when it was written...

Even a fool can see something blue and say "it's blue", whereas two equally intelligent, equally unbiased people can argue indefinitely over whether Planescape: Torment is a quality game or not and never achieve consensus.

Well, actually, no, they can not. To argue upon the quality of an artifact without creating a methodology is folly. One must determine a schema to critique a subject, and fuck; now you have me doing it too...

Anyway, If you want to argue on the merits of a game, you can't simply revert to a kindergarten frame of mind and say, "it's good"/"nu-uh". If you're looking for a cultured debate on the subject, you're going to end up with different aspects. In video games this is usually: the writing, the gameplay, the presentation (graphics, sound, ect), the program stability, and intermittently a wild card of "is it fun?". Ignoring the aforementioned wild card, these are all relatively quantifiable values. So, the argument that is left is how important each of these factors is. And that, is a matter of subjective opinion.

What's the difference between being trained and simply adopting someone else's method of subjective observation?

...and how did you come upon their methodology? I will concede that the term "trained" is perhaps a bit preloaded with unintended connotations. In this context, we can operationalize "training" to include several different courses of education.

The training materials might claim they are demonstrating how to properly perceive something's true value - but I need some evidence to prove that's not the same kind of overinflated ego-speak as we get from the people who sign toilets and call it art.

As I mentioned "training" is perhaps not the best term to use without further operationalization. However, having dispensed with that; the point of training is not to instill a specific method, rather to provide a tool box or skill set from which one can objectively analyze. To imply that a system of objective analysis is fundamentally skewed by the ideology that shapes it isn't completely without merit, however the enduring methods tend to effectively purge any internal prejudice as they advance.

Perhaps the training has been around longer, and hopefully attempts have been made to refine it - but is it actually any more unbiased as a result? How is that tested and proven?

Through validity. If someone is presented with a method of analysis, and returns with a theoretically objective result, we do not know if it is or is not valid. However, if you offer the same data, and method of analysis to a dozen different people, and they return consistent data, then there is, what we call, validity. This is not the only method we may avail ourselves of, but, in brief, the methods used inliterary analysis have been used and refined, quite literally, for centuries.

In addition, media (most things, really) can be analyzed according to different schools of thought and come to different conclusions regarding its quality. If two of these schools completely disagree on a subject's quality, is there a way of determining which is actually correct?

In the never ending war between divergent schools of thought, often, we resort a coward's route, and we wait to see who wins out. Then, picking through the refuse, we refine the surviors, and build off of then.

While in theory this can result in "the wrong man winning", in practice, the school of thought usually does so for a very good reason. The literary process of deconstruction comes to mind in this case.

Not every opinion is equally valid but I think arguing that there is an objective measurement of quality which trumps all subjective opinions - at least regarding media, or art - is a very tricky (and I might say slightly dangerous) stance, whether one claims to know what that measurement is or follows someone else who does. If one claims it exists, but can't give specifics on what it is, how is the conclusion of its existence reached in the first place?

To your indictment of rational thought, it is imperative to understand that if there is no objective, then science is a sham. The schools of medicine and physics are merely the playthings of idle egotists who dictate their philosophical dreams without any actual data.

Into the discipline of the arts and media, some standards must be applied, otherwise there is no value, and without value there is no reason to persist. In fact, it the most dangerous of implications that opinions alone posses greater value than the idle musings of the unwashed masses. For if that is the case, than all is lost.

(Side note: not being a very active forumite, I'm not clear on how long we're allowed to embark on this kind of tangent, so if we need to wrap it up, I want to thank you for a delightful discussion. Not to say it can't go on, if such is permitted...)

No bonus points for attempting to sound like a eighteenth century writer in the first paragraph. I've read way way too much of that shit.

 

[AllLagNoFrag]

Hmm.... I wouldnt say that Bioware has made any RPGs that Ive played which I would call bad. However, out of all the Bioware RPGs played, the most disliked rpg for some reason is Dragon Age. I dont see why but, my friends say that the combat isnt as fluid as they hoped which really made the gameplay unenjoyable.

 

[Starke]

Hmm.... I wouldnt say that Bioware has made any RPGs that Ive played which I would call bad. However, out of all the Bioware RPGs played, the most disliked rpg for some reason is Dragon Age. I dont see why but, my friends say that the combat isnt as fluid as they hoped which really made the gameplay unenjoyable.

Honestly, if Dragon Age had used a turn based system like the flash game, I could probably have forgiven it. As it stands, the combat is a mess.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

Mass Effect for me. I haven't played 2 yet, but the first one was so boring, I gave up on it over halfway through.

Also, Dragon Age/Baldur's Gate are probably my favs. ^_^

 

[Mighty the Moose]

My personal Bioware preferences, from best to worst:

1. Baldur's Gate 2 (and Expansion)
2. Baldur's Gate (and Expansion)
3. Neverwinter Nights (OC was atrocious, but there is some wonderful community-made content)
4. Mass Effect 1
5. Dragon Age
6. KoToR
7. Jade Empire
8. Mass Effect 2

I have to say, however, that I hold the Baldur's Gate series in much higher esteem than all the rest. As with apparently many others in this thread, I think that the Bioware's transition from games such as the Baldur's Gate series to Mass Effect 2 offers incontrovertible proof that console gaming has dumbed down the whole genre. ME2, an "rpg" whose gameplay in essence boiled down to overly-easy and brainless Gears of War-esque cover system fight ad-nauseam, the horror... I had to force myself to play through that game because I spent $60 on it. If it wasn't for the amusing characters, I might have even tossed it.

 

[nightwolf667]

KOTOR was shit, and Dragon age looks like it has the same problems.

Also, Drew Karpyshyn should not write. Ever.

YES! Someone else has the same opinion. Honestly, Karpyshyn's writing makes my eyes want to bleed.

I don't know if all aspects of Bioware's games are bad, they're graphics are usually good. It's just that the stories often leave something to be desired (namely plot: I'm looking at you Mass Effect 2) and the tendency to reuse the same character archetypes (or more often the same characters with a different name and cosmetic changes) over and over and over again. They also never play against type. I get that the formula works for them and that Peter Weekes (sp?) likes to hide behind using "Campbellian archetypes" as the reasoning for why their characters, their fetch quests, and often their plots all feel like a rerun, but it might be time that they tried something new. Or at least tried to play against type.

I feel that Jade Empire was probably their best, at least most original, game. But Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, and KoTOR start to get painful to listen to after a while.

 

[Condiments]

I guess my least favorite would include Jade Empire and Mass Effect 1. One felt like a shallow underdeveloped action, where the other seemed half-baked in the mixture of both genres it tried to emulate.

 

[Zyxx]

[

No bonus points for attempting to sound like a eighteenth century writer in the first paragraph. I've read way way too much of that shit.

Let's be polite. I wasn't "attempting" to do anything besides get my views across. If I came across a certain way, or happened to echo someone's sentiments, it was coincidental (or the residual effect of various influences shaping my blah blah blah.)

I think we have very different views on what constitutes value and whether we need an objective truth for attempting to make sense of the world. Not that that's a bad thing (at least, in my view it isn't) - I'm having a blast, and I'd like to keep things pleasant.

[

Through validity. If someone is presented with a method of analysis, and returns with a theoretically objective result, we do not know if it is or is not valid. However, if you offer the same data, and method of analysis to a dozen different people, and they return consistent data, then there is, what we call, validity. This is not the only method we may avail ourselves of, but, in brief, the methods used inliterary analysis have been used and refined, quite literally, for centuries.

That only tells you what the result of applying that method to that data will be, not whether that result is correct. With science or math, a resultant error can often be caught, through a practical experiment if nothing else. How do you do that with art?

What does the objective truth of science or medicine* have to do with art? "We're writing poetry, not laying pipe." I would argue than even without standards, art has value. The creation of art, the perception of art, these things are intrinsically valuable, without someone needing to say "This is better than that." There's nothing wrong with trying to understand the mechanism behind that or whatever, but I think at some level the matter of individual perception becomes inseparable from the actual value of the piece, where however good it might or might not be "objectively" simply ceases to be relevant in the light of what someone gains from it.
(*not that I agree than an objective truth is strictly necessary for those things to have value, either - I see nothing less meaningful about trying to understand a subjective universe than an objective one, doing the best you can with what you've got, and there a great many idle egoists passing themselves off as scientists in the world today - but that's another topic)
All the scholars in the world can tell me all they like that Hills Like White Elephants has greater artistic value than, say, Riven. Maybe they're right. But I derived infinitely more pleasure and personal, intellectual, and philosophical growth from the latter than the former. Until someone can prove to me - in something more definite than a bunch of collected opinions that excedy-ex quality is superior to excedy-why quality because it is because we all say so - I will continue to maintain that Riven is better, and I know others who agree with me.
Maybe we're "wrong", but so what? It's not that I'm unwilling to change my stance, I just have to be given some solid evidence before doing so.

The danger of an objective truth is when you are convinced that you know, once and for all, what it is. Saying we have ultimately analyzed something's worth and no other opinions matter is every bit as foolish as utterly ignoring the tribal witchdoctor's cures because they can't possibly be right because he didn't find them with our science. Maybe they don't work, but isn't it worth at least a look to find out?
In the same way, maybe someone's opinion is wrong - or maybe they're seeing something in a new way, one that is, or will turn out to be, more "artistically valid" than yours. You can refute it, reject it - but give it a fair consideration, not merely discard it because it wasn't formulated according to some artificial rubric.

In any case, I'm going to bow out before incurring mod wrath for eating up big chunks of forum space with off-topic discussion. Thanks again, it's been fun, and I'll keep thinking on the subject. You may have the last word if you wish.

 

[whycantibelinus]

I am personally not a fan of Dragon Age. It just seemed like a remake of Oblivion that wasn't as good in any way at all. Also Jade Empire kind of starts feeling monotonous about halfway through.

 

[AlternatePFG]

I am personally not a fan of Dragon Age. It just seemed like a remake of Oblivion that wasn't as good in any way at all. Also Jade Empire kind of starts feeling monotonous about halfway through.

Remake of Oblivion? What? It's nothing like Oblivion.

 

[Theron Julius]

No. Bioware is the god of story. Fear their wrath and well written scripts!

 

[whycantibelinus]

I am personally not a fan of Dragon Age. It just seemed like a remake of Oblivion that wasn't as good in any way at all. Also Jade Empire kind of starts feeling monotonous about halfway through.

Remake of Oblivion? What? It's nothing like Oblivion.

Spoiler: Vague Dragon Age spoilers.

The main character has a role pushed onto them that they didn't necessarily want. The king was murdered for someone to usurp the throne. There is an unknown force coming from some other dimension that is closely related with death and destruction and the main character must stop them before all life as it is known is destroyed.

That's just how I saw it. I wasn't too into it. If you loved Dragon Age then good for you, I just felt like it was a waste of money when I already had Oblivion. No offense or anything, just my opinion.

 

[cthulhumythos]

didn't care for dragon age, mass effect 2, and kotor 2 was unfinished.

 

[Yureina]

I didn't like Dragon Age. I guess that counts. Still, I would not call that a really "bad" game.

 

[AlternatePFG]

I am personally not a fan of Dragon Age. It just seemed like a remake of Oblivion that wasn't as good in any way at all. Also Jade Empire kind of starts feeling monotonous about halfway through.

Remake of Oblivion? What? It's nothing like Oblivion.

Spoiler: Vague Dragon Age spoilers.

The main character has a role pushed onto them that they didn't necessarily want. The king was murdered for someone to usurp the throne. There is an unknown force coming from some other dimension that is closely related with death and destruction and the main character must stop them before all life as it is known is destroyed.

That's just how I saw it. I wasn't too into it. If you loved Dragon Age then good for you, I just felt like it was a waste of money when I already had Oblivion. No offense or anything, just my opinion.

Nah, I didn't take any offense, just was wondering where you were coming from.

I don't see how they're related really, story wise, there's similarities, but gameplay wise they couldn't be more far apart.

 

[Starke]

No bonus points for attempting to sound like a eighteenth century writer in the first paragraph. I've read way way too much of that shit.

Let's be polite. I wasn't "attempting" to do anything besides get my views across. If I came across a certain way, or happened to echo someone's sentiments, it was coincidental (or the residual effect of various influences shaping my blah blah blah.)

You're right, it wasn't an "attempt" it was borderline plagiarism. Now, quoting something that looks suspiciously like Descartes may make you feel wiser, but to someone familiar with his work like you cannot formulate an actual argument or thought process on your own. If you've studied Descartes outside a vacuum, you'll know that he has suffered from the aforementioned coward's path. There are serious, fundamental (and even borderline schizophrenic) flaws in his reasoning that have resulted in his process being discredited in modern philosophy.

Now, no one talks like Descartes (or his contemporaries) today, anywhere, for any reason. The reason is, the English language, it's grammatical structure, the specific use of words, and even the vocabulary have changed radically.

For example: this is particularly apparent in the concept of the mind as its own free roaming independent identity. This concept has been mostly quashed by the advancement of modern psychology, so to use a phrase like "the natural inclinations of that intellect" is extremly anachronistic in modern language, simply because the language (and its speakers) do not operate under a model of the world where that is a logical statement.[footnote]There are fragments and idioms that haven't been updated, such as "to lose one's mind", but, that's a specific idiomatic phrase that's understood long after the conceptual underpinnings have been shattered.[/footnote]

As advice, if, for some reason, you do talk like that, or at least write like that on a more frequent basis, train it out of yourself right now. Sounding like an escaped Jules Verne character is the least of your worries, your instructors (if you're continuing on to college) will view it as plagiarism, and that is a quick way to get yourself expelled from classes.

I think we have very different views on what constitutes value and whether we need an objective truth for attempting to make sense of the world. Not that that's a bad thing (at least, in my view it isn't) - I'm having a blast, and I'd like to keep things pleasant.

I'm not attempting to be unpleasant. However, attempting to adopt a tone of "sophistication" is a good way to undermine your own argument (potentially terminally). So, pay attention to what you're writing and try to avoid blithely replicating anachronistic terminology. It doesn't make you sound smarter and opens you up to ridicule.

I'm going to cap off with a random tangent here: there is no official lingual format for philosophy or the like. People, like Descartes or John Madison wrote the way they did because of the language of their time. To a modern reader it is obtuse as hell, but this was the state of the language when they were writing. Now, the merits of this increased accessibility of the language is a completely different argument.

Or more poetically: To plunder the ideas of others without possessing the capacity to assimilate and synthesize their work, profits none. Not the reader who derives no mental sustenance from the exchange nor the plagiarist, who becomes a simulacrum of intellect.

Through validity. If someone is presented with a method of analysis, and returns with a theoretically objective result, we do not know if it is or is not valid. However, if you offer the same data, and method of analysis to a dozen different people, and they return consistent data, then there is, what we call, validity. This is not the only method we may avail ourselves of, but, in brief, the methods used inliterary analysis have been used and refined, quite literally, for centuries.

That only tells you what the result of applying that method to that data will be, not whether that result is correct. With science or math, a resultant error can often be caught, through a practical experiment if nothing else. How do you do that with art?

Through sociology and psychology. Again, the trick here is to apply scientific methods to generate validity. In point of fact, the method I explained earlier, using the same method across multiple individuals can validate a processing method if it produces consistent results.

To be fair, I said a dozen, for statistically valid data your sample population actually needs to be a little over 1000 (1012 IIRC), but that's neither here nor there.

What does the objective truth of science or medicine* have to do with art?

Because, whether you realize it or not, putting together a piece of art is really a science all its own. Films, Video Games, Novels, and even Paintings are often fundamentally dependent on their own sciences or consistent techniques.

If you look at classical paintings, there are complex mathematical and geometric structures at work that are directly tied to human psychology and the way the human brain processes raw data. An art class would help you here, or better yet a course in graphic design, which does help to decompress these concepts. In short, in fine art, you can't simply slap shit up on a canvas and call it good. There are underlying patterns which must be adhered to or manipulated.

Similarly the pacing of a film may seem to be an abstract and aesthetic preference, but, in point of fact it can be measured scientifically and gauged. How the audience responds to the pacing selected is a product of their expectations (prior media influence (sociology) and psychology).

What you'll find in the study of anything, and I do mean anything you enjoy is, that at its core there is a remarkably complex and carefully built set of structures that are necessary to its functioning.

"We're writing poetry, not laying pipe."

Being poetic is not poetry.

I would argue than even without standards, art has value. The creation of art, the perception of art, these things are intrinsically valuable, without someone needing to say "This is better than that."

And yet, we still strive to hierarchically categorize art. The Mona Lisa is better than Persistence of Memory. Why? How do you measure that? There's a reason I'm not a fine art student.

What we run into today on the subject of video games is something of a distraction. It's entirely possible to demonstrate that a game is good or bad. To empirically prove one game is better than another however, is much trickier.

There's nothing wrong with trying to understand the mechanism behind that or whatever, but I think at some level the matter of individual perception becomes inseparable from the actual value of the piece, where however good it might or might not be "objectively" simply ceases to be relevant in the light of what someone gains from it.

In the context that the "goal" of art is often to expand one's horizons/perceptions, what one gains from a piece could be a quantitative value. However, we're talking about fine art, and the contextual reference in the thread is Bioware, that's a little like trying to compare Stephanie Meyer's work with Homer's Epics. Yeah, there's some overlap, but in comparison one is art, the other isn't.

(*not that I agree than an objective truth is strictly necessary for those things to have value, either - I see nothing less meaningful about trying to understand a subjective universe than an objective one, doing the best you can with what you've got, and there a great many idle egoists passing themselves off as scientists in the world today - but that's another topic)

Then without being too capricious, you're doomed. The subjective universe cannot be examined, or measured. It is a product of the mind and the imagination, and as the objective universe, you know, the one that actually exists, the subjective one is a mystical land of neural chemistry forever manipulating your perceptions in a myriad of entertaining and ultimately self-defeating ways.

All the scholars in the world can tell me all they like that Hills Like White Elephants has greater artistic value than, say, Riven. Maybe they're right. But I derived infinitely more pleasure and personal, intellectual, and philosophical growth from the latter than the former. Until someone can prove to me - in something more definite than a bunch of collected opinions that excedy-ex quality is superior to excedy-why quality because it is because we all say so - I will continue to maintain that Riven is better, and I know others who agree with me.

In the traditional sense, Riven (and the rest of the Myst franchise) may have more artistic merit most of the medium. They explicitly encourage a kind of artistic introspection that is diagnostic of art. (This could easily digress into a the are video games art debate.)

But, ultimately, you've been distracted by a rabbit track. Not being a fan of Hemingway, I'll refrain from passing idle judgment on his work. But it is basically irrelevant for almost any comparative analysis to generate a quantitative measure between mediums.

There are some singular exceptions such as "does Apocalypse Now have more or less artistic merit than Conrad's Heart of Darkness?" In this case there are common themes which can be used to evaluate the variable merits of the two works. However selecting two works at random will generally produce combination that cannot be compared in such a way. Comparing The Hills Have White Elephants with Riven for example would be fruitless, unless you're aware of some themes of American political identity or abortion rights in Riven that I missed.

Maybe we're "wrong", but so what? It's not that I'm unwilling to change my stance, I just have to be given some solid evidence before doing so.

Well, okay, here's one. There is no such thing as subjective evidence. Subjective science went out of style with the fall of Rome, and since the enlightenment the focus has been on generating objective measures to evaluate the world. To say that there is no science in art is like saying there is no water in your body. You're on the internet at the moment you read this, a piece of technology dependent upon objective analysis, both scientific and artistic.

The danger of an objective truth is when you are convinced that you know, once and for all, what it is. Saying we have ultimately analyzed something's worth and no other opinions matter is every bit as foolish as utterly ignoring the tribal witchdoctor's cures because they can't possibly be right because he didn't find them with our science. Maybe they don't work, but isn't it worth at least a look to find out?

Anthropology is a science. When you look at the shamanic tradition through that format, what you find is a remarkably complex psychological model that allows for a kind of psychotherapy in a non-technological environment. The reason I can explain this is via objective observations. Now, I'll be the first to admit that in this particular aspect of anthropology there is some blending of the objective and the subjective, the goal is to evaluate and explain a very subjective experience, but objective results are available.

In the same way, maybe someone's opinion is wrong - or maybe they're seeing something in a new way, one that is, or will turn out to be, more "artistically valid" than yours. You can refute it, reject it - but give it a fair consideration, not merely discard it because it wasn't formulated according to some artificial rubric.

To be fair, the world basically turned it's back on saying "there is no objective truth" about three to four hundred years ago. Now, as for the artificiality of the rubrics? No. Go on any credible review site, hell even most non-credible ones, and you'll end up very similar rubric from them. This doesn't mean there is a single rubric descended from holy writ, unassailable in it's divine origins, but, people who know what they're talking about, and know what they're looking at consistently generate similar rubrics independently of one another.

In any case, I'm going to bow out before incurring mod wrath for eating up big chunks of forum space with off-topic discussion. Thanks again, it's been fun, and I'll keep thinking on the subject. You may have the last word if you wish.

The last word is: Adirondacks.