Yes that term that's really silly sounding and easy to make fun of. I've been thinking about this for awhile but what really made me want to talk about this is Bastion's animated short. Basically this short demonstrated that Bastion was a peaceful creature that decided to abandon his previous programing and live alone in the forest, and that any time he became violent, it was his programing going Iron Giant on him. Something that directly contradicts the in game Bastion, which camps and merrily mows down dozens of living, thinking people. Overwatch has a very interesting story, and very fun gameplay. And I know we've all thought this at one point or another, but the two might as well be on different planets.
Moments like this are sad because it tells me that, for all of its evolution, gaming is still stunted in a lot of ways. Blizzard was able to come up with an interesting world with a lot of aspects for it with Overwatch, but the game that goes with it? People just killing each other with shooty bang bang (Smashy slice slice in the case of Genji and Reinhardt). And because I just know that some people are going to take this the wrong way, I'm not saying that this is bad, but I think we've all admitted at one point that gaming relies on combat a little too much. Sure there are genres that don't do it, visual novels, puzzle games, simulation games, but huge swathes of gaming create interesting and vast worlds and don't give you very few ways to interact with it outside of killing things. Sometimes that works from a narrative standpoint. Sometimes, as with Bastion and Overwatch, it really doesn't.
Now there are always going to be games like Overwatch and TF2. Games where people have backstories, but at the end of the dead they're going to fight against their mothers and three clones of themselves because it's fun. I just wish that gaming would find other ways to show conflict, as there are only so many ways that you show fighting before you run out of possibilities.
There are games who are breaking out of the mold and doing new and interesting alternatives, Fallen London and Sunless Sea come to mind. Both have combat, but that's more of a side thing to the meat of the gameplay in both cases. In fact, a lot of indie games seem to be going down this route.
I have no idea where I'm going with this to be perfectly honest. I'm just trying to say that gaming has a lot of narratives that it seems to want to tell, and they tend to get slapped together with gameplay that doesn't always suit them. Why, in Suikoden, when my main concern is political intrigue, do I have to keep stopping to fight fucking DoReMi elves? And I like Suikoden, I just feel like gaming is kind of hobbled right now in terms of possibilities. New frontiers are being explored, but it's a slow process. I want to see new games. Games where...I dunno, the point is to stay as far away from fighting as possible. To keep fighting from happening. To navigate a complex system of politics.
I'd want to see a character like Bastion in a game where his goal isn't to camp and farm kills. Gaming is unique in that it can tell a story through it's mechanics. I'd like to see more of that, and not a contrast between gameplay and story.
Moments like this are sad because it tells me that, for all of its evolution, gaming is still stunted in a lot of ways. Blizzard was able to come up with an interesting world with a lot of aspects for it with Overwatch, but the game that goes with it? People just killing each other with shooty bang bang (Smashy slice slice in the case of Genji and Reinhardt). And because I just know that some people are going to take this the wrong way, I'm not saying that this is bad, but I think we've all admitted at one point that gaming relies on combat a little too much. Sure there are genres that don't do it, visual novels, puzzle games, simulation games, but huge swathes of gaming create interesting and vast worlds and don't give you very few ways to interact with it outside of killing things. Sometimes that works from a narrative standpoint. Sometimes, as with Bastion and Overwatch, it really doesn't.
Now there are always going to be games like Overwatch and TF2. Games where people have backstories, but at the end of the dead they're going to fight against their mothers and three clones of themselves because it's fun. I just wish that gaming would find other ways to show conflict, as there are only so many ways that you show fighting before you run out of possibilities.
There are games who are breaking out of the mold and doing new and interesting alternatives, Fallen London and Sunless Sea come to mind. Both have combat, but that's more of a side thing to the meat of the gameplay in both cases. In fact, a lot of indie games seem to be going down this route.
I have no idea where I'm going with this to be perfectly honest. I'm just trying to say that gaming has a lot of narratives that it seems to want to tell, and they tend to get slapped together with gameplay that doesn't always suit them. Why, in Suikoden, when my main concern is political intrigue, do I have to keep stopping to fight fucking DoReMi elves? And I like Suikoden, I just feel like gaming is kind of hobbled right now in terms of possibilities. New frontiers are being explored, but it's a slow process. I want to see new games. Games where...I dunno, the point is to stay as far away from fighting as possible. To keep fighting from happening. To navigate a complex system of politics.
I'd want to see a character like Bastion in a game where his goal isn't to camp and farm kills. Gaming is unique in that it can tell a story through it's mechanics. I'd like to see more of that, and not a contrast between gameplay and story.
