Jimquisition: Emotions, Polygons, and Ellen Page

[DarkhoIlow]

Great episode Jim! Loved the parody impersonating David Cage.

 

[Zeles]

There are plenty of games that tell a great story without going overboard on the visuals. Bastion, for one. Did anyone else feel pissed at hell during the "All Your Base Belong To Us" segment?

And what about Reccetear? I don't know about anyone else, but I really wanted that adorable little girl to succeed.

 

[shrekfan246]

Snip

As great a portmanteau as "Willemotions" is, I think you mean "Willem Dafoetions", because it flows off the tongue more smoothly.

OT: I cannot believe I have been so blind all this time. To think, I thought that personality and characterization were what conveyed emotion. I have been a fool! Thank you, Jimid Sterlage, for showing me the truth!

 

[james.sponge]

I could no longer restrain myself, I had to create an account just to say it! Thank God for Jim!

 

[crimson sickle2]

That mask creeps me out a little too much. It's sad how I wouldn't doubt the diamond thing from David Cage.

 

[Matthi205]

He should focus on his writing instead, cause he really isn´t that talented a writer and desperately needs to improve if he is ever going to achieve his vision.

Thankfully, polygons can more than make up for shit writing.

They don't and they can't. Just tesselating something to an incredible point will not make it better (even if that just seems to be Cage's idea). On more than one occasion I've seen high-poly models completely wasted because they weren't aligned correctly so that the seams showed.
Doing good visual design (like Gearbox with Borderlands 2) helps a lot though.

 

[Grach]

You're damn right how many emotions is people.

 

[themilo504]

Emotional has become one of those buzzwords that everbody who wants to make their story sound good uses.

To be honest I dislike books as a way to tell story?s because there not visual.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

I enjoyed the joke. Little bit jarring, at first, but I got into it. It's funny that Cage puts so much hard work into making faces look as realistic as possible, but the audience isn't going to be able to relate to them unless the writing behind the emotions they're conveying is half-as-good, which, unfortunately, it never is. I enjoyed Heavy Rain, don't get me wrong, but it never made me emotional. And both kids looked creepy as hell. I'm glad one of them didn't make it past the opening chapter.

 

[hentropy]

That's actually why anime characters have the faces they do. So emotion can be shown a lot more clearly. They don't look realistic, but to me this:

Spoiler

expresses a hell of a lot more emotion than this:

Spoiler

This is a great point, it's why I sort of wish games would go back to a more cartoony/animated feel, rather than trying to just cram more polygons into everything to try and make it look more true to life, because it never really works. Personally I loved the Wind Waker because of the way it was able to convey emotion. OoT and the other games were decent at that as well, but WW really nailed it. One of the reasons I fell in love with Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is because of the quality of the art and facial expressions.

Instead we get uncanny valley crap like this and Bioware-face which is just amusing at times, but it still breaks immersion. I mean, it's not all that bad but 'realistic' graphics almost never seems true to life or truly emotional.

 

[The Great JT]

So what you're saying is David Cage is a robot. And that we needed a really super-advanced graphics instead of good storytelling or gameplay of any kind. Yeah, that sounds about accurate.

Or was the message "David Cage once shared a conversation with Ellen Page." Whoa, this is deep. It's like you gotta be some kind of wizard to get the message.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Snip

As great a portmanteau as "Willemotions" is, I think you mean "Willem Dafoetions", because it flows off the tongue more smoothly.

OT: I cannot believe I have been so blind all this time. To think, I thought that personality and characterization were what conveyed emotion. I have been a fool! Thank you, Jimid Sterlage, for showing me the truth!

It was actually a toss up between Willemotions and Willem Dafoetions, and I chose Willemotions because it's quicker and easier to type =P

I do love both, however. And just Dafoetions as well too

The official term shall be Willem Dafoetions then, with Willemotions and Dafoetions as shorthands for it.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Curious, I could have sworn that David Cage was French...

OT: To be honest the games that have affected me most "emotionally" are games with pretty poor graphics.

I'm sure someone has made the comparison already but just look at The Walking Dead... all angular and low res, it's not like there could possibly be any polygons emotion there...

LOOK AT IT!

Spoiler: Walking Dead spoiler

How can I possibly connect with this game? Where are all the emotions?!

 

[twesterm]

I don't understand all the hate for his games. I thought heavy rain was great, and the niche he fills isn't one being filled by any other triple AAA developer. Would you guys prefer if Quantic Dream just made another spunkgargleweewee games? Of course he's passionate about the games he makes and the style he makes them in so by what right do we have to be so cynical as to say that it's wrong. I don't want every game being like Heavy Rain but neither do I want every game being like my personal favorite genre, a RTS.

Just because a game isn't spunkgargleweewee, doesn't mean it's good. I applaud David Cage for trying to make different games, but they're still pretty bad.

Take Heavy Rain. Interesting concept and had some cool ideas, but it tried too hard to be emotional and deep and the game was garbage. Boring characters, stupid plot, bland story, and terrible controls. The only thing it really had going for it was that it looked good. And press X to Jason.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Is it just me or does that face look somewhat like another face I know?

Spoiler

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Emotion in games is dependent on making us emotional attached to them. If we care about them as a character, then there emotional problems of that character will reflect on us. If the character is boring, unrelatable and drab then you cant force the player to feel emotional about them. Saying "Look, his sad, now you should be to" doesnt work if we doesnt give a crap about the character.

 

[Right Hook]

I can't speak for everyone else but I found the David Cage guest appearance to be brilliant, such an enlightened man. I'm upset to learn that I don't have emotion, I'd cry over it but...I don't have emotion.

Jim should be allowed to have fun in some of his videos, if you didn't like it, just wait till next week.

 

[Deacon Cole]

...expresses a hell of a lot more emotion than this:

Spoiler

GAAH! What the hell is that thing?



You know, the worst experience with a game trying to forge an emotional bond and failing recently was the original Fable. Which is an old game, but I don't buy brand new games, so screw you. But that experience was painful. It put me in a shitty mood and I was already in a shitty mood and hoping playing that game would cheer me up a little. Boy, was I wrong. Worst part was relatively early in the game when I had discovered that Fable had a fart button, a belch button and a flirt button. Knowing I could eventually shag NPCs I decided to flirt with all the chicks because I could. So as I was running to something I passed this chick and stopped to flirt with her but accidentally hit the laugh button, whereupon my character started laughing at fucking nothing, which was probably weird. But then the girl and several other nearby characters all turned toward me and also laughed at fucking nothing.


Brrrrrrrr.

It was like Uncanny Valley of the Damned or something. I have never had a more unnerving experience while playing a game. Ever. I'm pretty sure this was not the intent.

I guess the lesson here is that there's more to creating an emotional connection between the player and the in-game characters than just higher pixel or polygon counts or the ability to seduce male or female characters for no real reason. Frankly, I had a much stronger-- not that much stronger, mind-- to the splicers in Bioshock. They also resided in the uncanny valley, but they were supposed to because they were insane and mere ghosts of their former selves. They would spout random-seeming lines as if they didn't quite know where they were or what was going on. There's a sadness in that which trickled just beneath the surface. A trickle isn't much, but it's more than the parched deserts of Fable or whatever the hell that picture is of above.

 

[Ukomba]

But have they yet gained enough polygons to differentiate tears from liquid pride?

 

[Kurt Cristal]

I really don't understand why they're still trying to make games instead of animated films. One of their tech-demo shorts, "Kara", looks amazing. They just should do that from now on.

Did you SEE Enki Bilal's "Immortal"? That's probably why they don't make films. Cage must've been angry that the actors didn't have enough polygons on their faces.