Do FPS have better story than RPG games?

[Erttheking]

Snip

That's an interesting take (not one I really agree with) but I'm confused as to how it ties back into the point about elitism you were making before. Mainly because of the argument that Force users believe they are stronger than ordinary people. I really can't recall anyone in Star Wars openly espousing, or even hinting at, that view. Even the Sith. Also because, well, Star Wars regularly depicts heroes that have no Force sensitivity whatsoever fighting alongside the heroes that do, in some cases doing even better than them. Honestly, Star Wars depicts the Force as a very useful power, but one that very skilled individuals (such as Bobba Fett or Cad Bane) can still overpower.

Except...it's not depicted as Batman always being in the right. Batman Noel shows him being viciously overzealous against a criminal working for the Joker, whose crimes are basically just picking up and delivering packages whose contents he doesn't know the first thing about. One episode of Batman the Animated series had Dick Grayson quit being Robin in disgust after (along with some other factors) Batman mercilessly attacked and interrogated a criminal in front of his family, with Dick even physically striking Batman. After that, Batman realized that Robin had a point and gave the criminal a chance to go straight, giving him a security job at his company and started regularly checking up on the guy's family. The Justice League series had a big thing where the US Government had a secret organization dedicated to creating counter-measures against super heroes after they learned about an alternate reality where the Justice League took over the world. Batman is actually the member of the Justice League that decided they had a point the most, and this eventually lead to them decommissioning parts of their orbital station that the US was worried about, and having a ground base that the government had a right to sent agents to investigate. Batman is also the guy who has counter-measures set up so that if any member of the Justice League goes too far, he can stop them (with him also saying that he considers the League to be the counter-measure against him going too far) And like I said, Batman regularly works with the Gotham PD. He doesn't consider himself above Jim Gordon, and usually wants their approval when he can get it.

The only times I can honestly think about Batman being an elitist and it not being portrayed as a flaw that he needs to work around (that time he built Brother Eye is usually depicted as him being stupidly paranoid) is a handful of situations. Batman No Man's Land, and all of the times Batman was written by Frank Miller. Most of Frank Miller's work is dismissed as drek, and even the ones that are considered "good" I kind of hate for the exact reasons you point out, Batman really is being elitist in that one. The Dark Knight Returns again openly shows Batman having contempt for people who stand in his way, even if it's the police, and I hate that. Meanwhile, Batman No Man's Land depicts a Gotham where all authority has collapsed due to Gotham being expelled from the union, and Batman eventually takes control of territories of Gotham to restore some form of order, but only as a very last resort and with it being clear he didn't want things to end up that way. It's not portrayed as a romanticized ideal, but as the best he can do in an utterly terrible situation where centralized authority has collapsed. I don't disagree with your concept of elitism, I honestly hate it when characters are depicted that way. I just don't think it applies to Batman that easily.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Stop accusing other users of shitposting or provocation. It is not against the CoC to be obsessed with one particular topic or being a die-hard fan of a single thing. If any of you want to make topics about nothing but the glory of old Sierra games, that's fine. It is not fine to call other posters out. If a particular poster is irking your or getting under your skin, do not read their posts and don't engage with them.

 

[Sonmi]

*snap*

B-Cell, my friend, long time no see!

How has life been treating you?

 

[Fappy]

Why aren't you at least suspended yet

I'm not done eating my popcorn yet.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

If you included the actual events of the games rather than artificially separating "story" from "gameplay", the stories of pretty much all FPS and RPG games would have to go like this:

-Once upon a time in ...... there was a ..... whose quest/mission/goal was .....
-And then the hero slaughtered 3 monsters.
-And then the hero killed 5 more baddies.
-And then the hero got wounded.
-And then the hero found a health kit and healed herself.
-And then the hero walked for a bit.
-And then the hero killed 3 more bad dudes.

...repeat ad nauseum ad infinitum...

 

[Saelune]

Oh and Knights of the Old Republic 2, because it actually dares slaughter the sacred cow of Star Wars, even if it, just like Bioshock and Spec Ops, is more of a deconstruction of its own universe.

What sacred cow is that?

The over reliance on the force as a plot device and the nature of the Jedi vs Sith war. KotOR2 suggest that both Jedi and Sith are equally callous and indifferent to the plight of the common man, being locked as they are in a perpetual struggle that neither side can win. KotOR2 also suggests that the Force is a jerk if all it really does is propels conflict and select a small fraction of people to aspire to greatness while everyone else is left to suffer at the hands of those chosen.

I feel like the prequel movies also did a fair bit of that though. I do definitely remember intentionally rocking the Grey Jedi robes in Kotor II though. If Jedi were real, I'd probably think they are a bunch of overly controlling religious nutjobs. I certainly disagree with their philosophy of essentially suppressing emotions.


I also love the hypocritical 'Only Sith deal in Absolutes' quote. I wonder if that was on purpose or not.


I need to replay Kotor II.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I also love the hypocritical 'Only Sith deal in Absolutes' quote. I wonder if that was on purpose or not.

I hope to god it was on purpose. Even when I first heard the line I was like "uhhh...Hang on just a second there, man, what?" XD

 

[Saelune]

I also love the hypocritical 'Only Sith deal in Absolutes' quote. I wonder if that was on purpose or not.

I hope to god it was on purpose. Even when I first heard the line I was like "uhhh...Hang on just a second there, man, what?" XD

I want to give Lucas the benefit of the doubt. I think Lucas is a pretty great creator. For all the shit the Prequels get, its all way better and more thought out than the new films. Also, as one of those who complains about Rey being too OP for a level 1 character, it did made me re-evaluate how much effort the original films put into training and justifying Luke's abilities. Lots of seemingly small, throw-away lines that are spoken to justify what he does.

 

[CaitSeith]

Stop accusing other users of shitposting or provocation. It is not against the CoC to be obsessed with one particular topic or being a die-hard fan of a single thing. If any of you want to make topics about nothing but the glory of old Sierra games, that's fine. It is not fine to call other posters out. If a particular poster is irking your or getting under your skin, do not read their posts and don't engage with them.

I'll take your word on that.

* Starts writing drafts for 50 threads about Mystery House and a love letter to Roberta Williams *

 

[Erttheking]

I also love the hypocritical 'Only Sith deal in Absolutes' quote. I wonder if that was on purpose or not.

I hope to god it was on purpose. Even when I first heard the line I was like "uhhh...Hang on just a second there, man, what?" XD

That strikes me very much as Lucas going full melodrama and not having anyone to smack his hand with a rolled up newspaper and say "NO!"

 

[Red Sentinel]

What a curious way of running a forum.

elder scroll and fallout story are crap even their fans believe both games story suck.

And how many fans have you questioned? Any polls? Or surveys? Or any research at all?

 

[Tony2077]

at a simple level no but its not simple so its a bit of no and some exceptions

 

[Canadamus Prime]

We get it B-Cell. You love FPSs and think all other genres of games suck. You don't need to keep proving it.

 

[Super Cyborg]

I wouldn't be able to give an honest opinion, since I have played very little FPS games and JRPGs are one of my main genres I love to play. That said, stories are one of the staples of RPGs, where a good RPG needs a good story. FPS's for most people are more about the gameplay and the multiplayer experience, so if there is a story and it's bad, great gameplay will allow people to ignore the story bits.


I'll put it this way in games that I have played that I liked/love. I played Timesplitters back in College and while the story isn't great by any stretch, the gameplay was really fun and that carried me through the game, and the insanity of the character selection made me play multiplayer with friends. Last year Persona 5 was one of my favorite games to come out and is up there in my best games list. The gameplay was good and was dynamic, but if it didn't have such a great story and characters, playing a 90+ hour game of just turn based battles would not happen to me.

 

[Souplex]

I'm sorry, but Half Life's story was a hot garbage fire. The moment you used it in your list of examples you killed the credibility of any statement you make in this thread.

 

[Terminal Blue]

That's an interesting take (not one I really agree with) but I'm confused as to how it ties back into the point about elitism you were making before. Mainly because of the argument that Force users believe they are stronger than ordinary people. I really can't recall anyone in Star Wars openly espousing, or even hinting at, that view.

Well, in the Old Republic setting it's very text. Revan's Empire and The Sith Empire is literally presented as a society in which only force-users, and only dark side force users who are seen in that society to be more "powerful", have the right to rule. I wasn't a huge fan of the Old Republic MMO, but one thing I genuinely enjoyed about it is that it wasn't afraid to play up the explicit parallel between the sith social system and hereditary aristocracy, with the sith themselves often being presented as the weak link in the empire as a whole.

Similarly, the Jedi are the protectors of the Republic (and the galaxy) which implies that they have the power to protect it, and to some extent that it can't protect itself. This becomes very obvious in the prequels, because the republic genuinely is presented as powerless. For example, other than the Jedi, the republic seems to have literally no military or security force prior to the clone wars, which I think Lucas intended to show that the Republic was a peaceful and idealistic place, but it also makes it look stupid.

Like, the way it presented to us on screen, the clone wars are entirely fought by Jedi and clones, and from a narrative perspective we aren't supposed to care about the clones. They're just faceless soldier men who are there so we can have battles with lots of deaths and not feel bad that little Timmy on Corruscant is going to be waiting for his father to come home on space Christmas (Life Day?). The Jedi are the important characters, they're the people who matter. The rest of the citizens of the republic are so literally unimportant, so utterly inconsequential, that we barely see them on screen through the entire second half of the prequels. There is no Han Solo in the prequels, there isn't even really a princess Leia because Padme is just ineffectual and never does anything. Ordinary people are not allowed to do anything heroic in the prequels, only Jedi can protect the galaxy.

And if you look through the expanded universe, you might start to see why, because I don't think George Lucas got to the idea that the Jedi were the only thing people cared about on his own, and again, I think it goes back to the fact that the Jedi went from being a religion (albeit a religion with at least a kernel of truth to it) to just being superheroes.

Batman stuff

Okay, so these are all good examples of the way batman has been depicted, but they actually draw attention to a point I made, that any superhero story has to in some sense address the elitism of its premise, and no, it's not that batman is necessarily an elitist, but that the world batman is written to inhabit is one in which elitism works, and the story has to explain why.

One way of doing this would be to have a superhero always be right, always do the good things and to present situations which are so morally black and white that the audience never asks the question of whether the superheroes' power over other people, whether their claim to protect other people from harm or their right to beat up those they think are bad, is justified.

The other way, and this has certainly become more popular as the "gritty" or "realistic" alternative, is to openly embrace these questions within the narrative, to try and present superheroes as human and flawed and just doing the best with the power they have. So sometimes they get it wrong, or maybe they're just a violent antihero whose motivations aren't even very good to begin with, but they're still cool and badass and they get the job done.

But the real question in both cases is, what are we getting from the story? In the former case, why do we like to fantasise about a world in which powerful people get to be morally unambiguous heroes? In the latter case, why do we stick with these characters and continue to care about them when they're clearly just people abusing their power?

And the answer, in both case, is because deep down, on some level power is fun, or exciting, or entertaining. We love the idea of being powerful, and perhaps to some extent we love the idea of powerful people protecting us or looking after us, and we tend to be more tolerant of our main characters or "good guys" being powerful because they're a narrative stand in for us, or at the very least, because they're on our side, and we like people on our side being powerful.

And that kind of power fantasy is fine. There's nothing wrong with it, just as there's nothing wrong with any fantasy.. until you take it outside into the real world and into the kind of categories which actually exist in the real world. The problem is that people do. Look around on the internet and you will find the same people, even the same public figures, justifying the shooting of unarmed black men by police because they were "disrespectful" and "what did they think was going to happen", yet also being outraged about an armed white militia member being killed by FBI agents while reaching for a gun and challenging the agents to shoot him.

What does this have to do with batman? Well, nothing directly. But it shows how people can very easily wind up on the side of power, and even supporting abuses of power, when they feel that power is on their side. It isn't just a rule that works in comics, but often works in real life too. Batman is a great idea as long as you can believe that batman would never use his power or authority to hurt you. I mean, sure, he hurts other people, but that's not a problem, he's just a human being, he's flawed and trying to do the best he can. He's not a bad person.

To me, though, it's not enough. We need to be less forgiving of abuses of power or the assumption of "rightful" or "benevolent" authority, and while fiction isn't actually the problem, it's a good place to start practising.

Whoops. I didn't really want this to turn into a whole thing on my feelings on batman..

 

[Bombiz]

wait aren't System Shock and Deus Ex RPGs?

 

[Dalisclock]

In this sense, Kreia is right. Kreia represents a view which we as the audience should maybe indulge sometimes when we look at other Star Wars media, because the same problems are still there.

I don't know much about Kreia, or KOTOR 2 for that matter, but isn't she the person that bitches you out if you give money to a beggar because of some social darwinism stuff about how people need to overcome challenges and stuff like that? (And because it would make him a target and then he gets shanked not thirty seconds later?)

I ask because part of me is curious about KOTOR 2, but the rest of me hears about situations like that and go "oh, it's gonna have THAT kind of writing." I've generally been kind of concerned considering that one of the writers admitted that they basically used her to air their complaints about Star Wars. Kind of like what they did with Ulysses in Fallout. Airing your grievances about a genre you're working in is all fine and dandy. But you still have you give people a narrative they give a shit about. By all means take out the traditional Star Wars narrative, but I do have to ask. What do they put in to replace it?

It's been close to a decade since I played it and I was really overworked and exhausted at the time, so my memory is somewhat hazy. I've read since then that it's essentially deconstructing Star Wars and I kind of see that but at the time I was more cognizant of the fact the game was generally a mess. Especially once you reach the finale where it feels like all narrative flow just seems to vanishes and things just seem to happen.

Mostly because the game was pushed out the door for Christmas and apparently the team wasn't allowed to patch it up afterwards, so large chunks of the game ended up on the cutting room floor.

Maybe the restored content mod made it much more enjoyable and made it easier to appreciate what it was trying to say.

 

[Hawki]

but the way it is approached by the characters, in-universe, is the same way we'd approach religion.

If we're confining this to the films, again, I disagree. Even the Force as a whole, I'd say it's more philosophy than religion (same way Confucinism isn't really considered a religion for instance). Even the Jedi Code for instance isn't really religious in nature, it's just a series of guidelines.

Religious people in our world don't always believe that they are acting on blind faith.

Many people believe that prayer actively works. Many people believe that meditation has changed their life. Most Christians believe that Jesus performed literal miracles. The fact that the force in Star Wars seems to be real at least in some sense, does not make the Jedi more than a religion.

Except there's a clear distinction between the Force and the Christian (and other) religion. For instance, if I was a Jedi and used the Force to levitate something, that's clear, hard proof of me having a tangible effect on reality. A Christian claiming that they were "healed" by God/Jesus, or that they pray to their deity of choice? That's entirely faith-based.

To take a similar example, several of the red priests in A song of ice and fire display magical powers, up to and including being able to raise the dead. Does this mean the worship of R'hllor is not a "religion" in this setting?

Melisandre's powers are distinctly real. Whether R'hllor is is another matter. Magic exists outside the Red Priests.

I've actually seen this debate come up elsewhere, as to whether Melisandre's powers can be considered proof in of itself that R'hllor exists. Martin himself has stated that he's reluctant to make any definitive proof over the existence of gods in the setting (or lack of it)

 

[Terminal Blue]

Except there's a clear distinction between the Force and the Christian (and other) religion. For instance, if I was a Jedi and used the Force to levitate something, that's clear, hard proof of me having a tangible effect on reality. A Christian claiming that they were "healed" by God/Jesus, or that they pray to their deity of choice? That's entirely faith-based.

Hawki, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

Personally, if you were a Jedi and a you used the force to levitate something, but we lived in a universe where anti-gravity engines can make anything from tiny droids to flying cars and enormous starships levitate, I personally wouldn't take that as clear, hard proof in the existence of space magic, precognition and destiny and an all powerful energy field that binds together all objects in the universe as part of some grand cosmic plan. I would probably assume it was a trick of some kind and that you'd used some technological device I wasn't familiar with to achieve the effect I saw. But a more credulous person than me might indeed look at your "miracles" as proof that your entire belief system was true, even the parts that can't be demonstrated.

The difference here is not one of faith, but one of truth. You and I know that faith healing is a scam, and we know that (at least the way it is presented to us) the force is real in the Star Wars universe. But the person who goes to a faith healer and believes they have been healed doesn't think it's a scam, they don't think they're acting on blind faith, they think the power of faith healing has been proved to them because it worked. Similarly, someone in the Star Wars universe doesn't automatically know the force is real. Han Solo, initially, is skeptical. Even witnessing Luke deflecting the bolts from the training drone doesn't immediately convince him, despite the fact that it's "clear hard proof". Those who visit faith healers have faith in something that doesn't exist, and people in the Star Wars universe lack faith in something that does exist (at least in some sense) but it's still the same faith.

Melisandre's powers are distinctly real. Whether R'hllor is is another matter. Magic exists outside the Red Priests.

Thoros of Myr's powers are also real, and he's just a fat alcoholic whose only noteworthy distinction is that he happens to be a red priest.

And the force in Star Wars exists outside of the Jedi. The Jedi are just the oldest surviving force tradition and as such tend to have influenced the others. But again, in the Old Republic setting, the Rakatan Infinite Empire predates the Jedi and had their own dark-side force tradition build on their own cannibalistic cultural practices and featuring literal temples and priests. In the expanded universe, the Rakata were themselves taught about the force by the Kwa, the species who uplifted them and who had their own force tradition which emphasised balance between the light and dark side, rather than the Jedi teaching that the dark side is evil.

Again, just because the force is a fact of life in Star Wars (at least in some sense) does not mean that the Jedi beliefs about it are anything other than faith, even if we accept the very faulty (I think) premise that a religion by definition is not true and can only ever draw on "faith" as a means of substantiating its beliefs.