EzraPound said:
Trishbot said:
The world, and the narrative, of Alice: The Madness Returns appeals to me far more. As a literary expert, artist, and game designer, seeing what's being done with Alice is far more exciting, from the sophisticated approach to the Alice narrative (that could easily have been juvenile and unnecessary) to the stunning visuals (the clash of whimsical fantasy and hellish corruption) to the weapons and gameplay (umbrella guns, physic manipulation, alternate forms and realities) to the legacy of the game itself (say what you will, American McGee's Alice is one of the highest rated, most beloved PC action games ever created).
Now, I WILL try DNF, and it's weird how it was announced back when Alice 1 was coming out, but it's roots are from a time that's long gone. It is the "Anti-Alice", crass and juvenile where Alice is refined and legitimately mature, chauvinistic and overly macho while Alice focuses on a female perspective and legitimate vulnerabilities, and stubbornly archaic and old-school while the new Alice game seems to have taken the lessons of the past several years into consideration when shaping a new sequel.
Now, I could be wrong. Maybe DNF will be the best thing ever, worth the 15 year wait, and maybe Alice will be a disappointing mess, but from my research and experiences, Alice absolutely excites me and I am eager to dive into Wonderland to see just where the limits of the developers' imaginations went. The fact they're throwing in the original Alice certainly doesn't hurt either, since that game alone is nearly worth a repurchase all on its own.
And you're willing to overlook McGee's abysmal post-
Alice record in your valuation of
Madness Returns? You're making the same mistake McGee makes: talking about the "narrative", the "stunning visuals", and the "weapons" when none of them are likely to manifest themselves in refined gameplay. The issue here is one of substance: why put in a room that undergoes a circular twist so that you're walking on what was previously the ceiling by the time you reach the opposite door when that's
all it does? Why include creative, otherly weapons when all you're reduced to doing is circle-strafing around enemies and shooting in order to kill them? Why design visually impressive enemies--the card guards, for instance--when they chronically run into walls and make
Jedi Knight's enemies look ingenious?
Also, to credit Alice with presenting a "female perspective" is pretty ludicrous: it's a game designed by ninety-five per cent men that's plot has to do with female hysteria and in which you walk around with a bloody knife massacring your enemies. In the original, the snippets of dialogue were fairly sparse, and mostly involved the Cheshire Cat--now skinned, if you'll recall--doling out cryptic remarks akin to fortune cookies as if it amounted to something beyond faux-intellectual posturing.
If anything,
DNF is meant to be a parody of gamers like yourself: ones who believe titles like
Alice amount to a courtship of "artistic maturity" (they don't--maybe a courtship of a morbid, poorly-written CGI movie) and who blare their conundrum to the skies whenever, god forbid, someone wants to create a title that doesn't prominently feature narrative development, or moralize vapidly about racism à la BioWare. Games are games, not movies, or books--and they're an art form. Hopefully,
DNF will be exactly what it sets out to be: a
good game, and one that isn't encumbered by the kind of artsy self-consciousness that so often takes precedent over good gameplay.
I find it strange how you utterly ignored all my comments saying I could very well be wrong and that DNF could very well be amazing. In fact, I don't want EITHER to be bad. I'm a young game designer myself and my own instructors have worked on DNF at points in their lives, so I've been very interested to see my instructors' work manifest in the game.
And I am more than aware of American McGee's post-Alice slump (and the cat isn't skinned... it's emaciated... and the game explains WHY...). But that does nothing to discredit the original game as a positively-received, dark yet mature take on Wonderland and how one girl comes to terms with the loss of loved ones and deals with tragedy by drowning herself in fantasies instead of dealing with reality... which she ultimately does by the end of the game, delivering an honest-to-god message about owing up to one's mistakes, dealing with consequences, and coping with tragedy like few games ever have before or since.
And I stand by my assertion that Alice WAS a female perspective. Guess what? They DID have female creators in the game, and American McGee did not create the game all by himself. Even macho games like DNF have women on the team. And I love Alice for presenting a heroine that isn't overly sexualized, is empowered through her creativity and imagination, overcomes her traumas and develops courage in the face of darkness, and ultimately emerges as a stronger, healthier, and liberated individual, her gender be damned.
Edit: Actually, one of my instructors, one of the very ones that worked on DNF, is the one that brought Alice to my attention as one of his favorite examples of good storytelling in games and how it brilliantly used the nature of the world and the level design to delve into psychological issues and address Alice's mental state through the environment and challenges the game offered. They were designed with purpose and reason, he asserted, and a good game is a game where the character, gameplay, and world all work together in harmony to create an immersive gaming experience.
Forgive me for chuckling when you called Bioware games "vapid" too; IGN just ran an article asking every last industry giant, from the creators of Bioshock, Heavy Rain, ICO, Red Dead Redemption, The Witcher 2, Okami, and more, about the nature of story-telling in games, and nearly every last single one of them heaped unanimous praise on Bioware's story-telling craft and approach to narrative structure. If you find Bioware narratives "vapid" in dealing with issues of sexuality, racism, politics, morality, religion, and human liberties, then perhaps your approach to narratives in games is lacking insight and understanding.
I'm a huge proponent for story in games, good stories, ones that push the envelope and tell stories that are impossible in any other form of media. Portal could not be as effective as a movie; Silent Hill 2 would not draw you in as readily as a book; Mass Effect would lose something if it become a TV series; Bioshock wouldn't deliver its message as clearly as a comic book; ICO couldn't be summed up by music video. The nature of interactive games was the canvas these artists painted their masterpieces on, and only through this could their stories be told.
Granted, DNF is not going to be a story-driven game. As you acknowledged, it's a parody. A farce. A winking fourth-wall joke using a variety of stolen memes and classic one-liners from better movies to upend all the macho, chauvinism of the early to mid-90's. So long as it plays well, it can be forgiven a lot of narrative sins.
But I see no reason to disparage Alice either. I've followed the game, and I'm familiar with the studio handling it, just as well as Gearbox (which is just down the road from me). Their approach to narrative structure is solid, and I, for one, happen to like strong storytelling in my games. A good story can elevate a mediocre game for me (Silent Hill 2 doesn't exactly play smoothly), but a bad story can destroy an otherwise enjoyable game (confound you, Other M! What did you do to Samus?!), but there's no reason both can't exist harmoniously (hint: the cake is a lie).
Every game has its flaws, but the footage of Alice I've seen looks quite solid. It may not excel, but it may not need to. Games like Okami, Enslaved, ICO, Bioshock, and Beyond Good & Evil did NOTHING "impressive" gameplay-wise; but their stories elevated their material, and I see no reason why a serviceable Alice game with a good story could not be elevated to the status of "good" or "great" due to a superior narration. Granted, if the game just flat-out is unfun to play, it's possible it could suck, but even if they used the functional template of the original Alice, it would still be a game worth checking out.
But the smart thing to do is to try BOTH and judge BOTH for their own merits. I intend to. I'm not blowing DNF off or dismissing any criticism Alice may receive... but the games aren't out yet. Don't judge a book by its cover, a movie by its trailer, or a franchise by its poor sequels. There can be a lot of good hidden behind clumps of dirt. DNF may have something impressive just as much as Alice may have something worthwhile to offer the industry and genre as well.
