thebighead01 said:
FFHAuthor...I feel I should get back to you in a separate post because quite frankly the points that you've made are really thought provoking, and I believe eloquently underpins this situation and deserves serious consideration on my part. Although MW3 better than ME3? We have to talk mate
I've very recently come to the conclusion that Video Games as an art form need to be addressed much differently than other forms of art simply because the way a player experiences a game influences what the game means to the player. Art is the highest form of communication, a form of communication that is used when all other forms of communication are incapable of doing so, but when we call games art we define them based upon other mediums. Game Journalists march to the drumbeat of 'it's art!' but they don't say WHY it's art, and they only call games they LIKE art.
I've never heard a reviewer call Modern Warfare 3 art. But I've heard a lot of them call Mass Effect 3 art. Why? What's the difference? They both tell a story. They both invest you in characters. They both have you go through an arch and suffer and grow. They both have you interacting with a world they've crafted. The story you experience is experienced piecemeal, you don't get massive exposition, you can't look at the scope of the wider war, you don't get long explanations of why you're doing what you're doing, your a soldier, a competent, elite soldier, but a soldier none the less. You're doing what you're told, following orders, following another character's lead.
No one complained about the Modern Warfare 3 ending, even though it IS a mechanic shift, going from FPS battle to a QTE in the final moments. But it suits the story, you've been fighting this man for three games, as multiple characters in multiple places, you've survived and hunted him at the expense of all things, it's personal, and in the end, you're in a First Person QTE, looking through Price's eyes as you're finally killing him. It's personal, it feels personal by now, he's killed your friends, he's killed your allies, he's started wars that have rocked your homeland, you WANT him dead.
Even Gears of War 3's story could be considered superior to Mass Effect 3 because the narrative and the mechanics are working in unison and not against each other. Throughout the game you see Marcus as being a soldier, a fighter, a warrior. He's not a genius, he's not a scientist, he's not a complicated man, he's been fighting a war. He isn't coming up with plans or strategies or working on wonder weapons to defeat the Locust, he's following orders. You the player are given orders, and you follow them, that's the game mechanics, go here, kill that, activate this, kill those things, defeat that. It's a mechanic that fills the game nicely, the points of player choice aren't massive earth shattering decisions, instead they're simple tactical choices that change gameplay and a firefight, not the course of the war.
Mass Effect 3 had shooting mechanics, but it also had conversation mechanics. Conversation mechanics that made up a large portion of the game and that nearly always included the ability to take radically different steps in conversations, you can verbally argue with that reporter on the Citadel who keeps trying to interview you, you can submit to her questions and reason with her, or you can punch her in the face, in three different games you can interact with her in vastly different ways with vastly different outcomes. You can avoid boss battles through conversation, you can face intractable problems and resolve them with conversation, yet the ending has you faced with a situation where your choices resolve in much the same way based upon information that you cannot refute, argue against, or examine further, you are given points to base your choice on, and that's all.
IF we demand games be called art then we need to find something that exists in all games to call it art and we need to acknowledge and focus on that thing. And that thing is Mechanics, and mechanics will change a story if they don't work together.
