Profundity in gaming.

[Psychocouch]

Perhaps Journey for the PS3?

From what I've seen of it the story telling seems rather subtle, and more about your own personal quest for enlightenment than anything else.

 

[Your Fearless Captain]

While I think of any games the word profundity is the most awful word ever. It should be profoundness. Profundity sounds so awful.

UGH, no. There are way way way too many adjectives where people glue a big ugly "ness" on the end when there's a real noun for it. "Profundity" is a great word. Please do not mess with my language again.

I disagree. Profundity is an ugly word that is awkward to pronounce. It belongs in the same barrel as hosiery and ointment.

 

[targren]

\
Nope, that just isn't acceptable. It doesn't matter at all how old the medium is, the people who create for it are cut from the same cloth as older mediums. How long the delivery method has been around is totally irrelevant, it's all about the people behind it.

And that's the problem. The "people behind it" now include what would, in other media, be only passive observers (the reader/audience). It's trickier to be profound when you have to take the variable that is the player's mental process into consideration.

 

[superdark]

Half Life 2 has a profound story in my opinion. Aliens take over earth easily, and withhold technology and rights unless you're willing to serve as their occupational police. Over time, humans sell their souls for quite human reasons, and become something other than human. Since a handful of people control the flow of information, this new thing that isn't quite human is presented as being the "evolution" of humanity - purging primate emotions and moving into a starfaring race. And best of all, there's no conversation where the bad guy sits you down for a heart to heart to talk about his ideologies - the ideas are all in the background of the game, and it's up to you to pick up on them and draw your own conclusions.

That is a very interesting deconstruction of Half Life 2 that I hadn't really thought through before. When I played that game I sort of shrugged off the story as being copy/pasted from George Orwell's 1984, but I seem to have written it off without proper consideration. Thanks for that.