LordNue said:
But see you shouldn't have to play a game for 20 hours to find the little nugget of fun. You should be able to enjoy a game on the first level.
Funnily enough it's only in the RPG genre, the games that do last over 20 hours, that you find people who try and convince you that. You'll never find someone who hates emerald hill zone and try and convince them "DUDE IT GETS BETTER IN MYSTIC CAVE ZONE" or someone who hates the first zone of Devil May Cry because of it's gameplay and try and convince them it really does get better halfway through. Either you like it or you don't. If an RPG has shit gameplay, chances are someone's not going to want to suffer through twenty hours of shit being shoved in their eyes to find that little tiny nugget of "It's not entirely shit".
Except that I enjoyed the first parts of the game as well and it simply kept getting better and better for me the further into the game I played, funny how that works. The combat wasn't great, but it certainly wasn't shit either, and played on the harder difficulties it's possible to get some seriously intense battles as you struggle to make every combo count, use your magic wisely, and chug down the right potions for the situation.
Besides, the game was intriguing. I know most gamers today expect instant gratification from their games, but I was raised reading books more than playing games, and so grew up with an understand of rising action leading towards the climax of any tale. The payoff being often worth the sale of the book alone. Take for example, oh I dunno, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I love the book, but honestly, the first half is pretty damn dull as it sets the scene for the dramatic second half. And this is a
thick book, so there's alot of boring to go through. Totally worth it however! The scene where Jonathan Strange begins to go mad was memorizing, and the conflict between him and Mr. Norrell was electric. Why? Because the books took the time to set up the characters and to establish a proper setting and story. That's how it's done!
Few games bother to do any of that because most gamers are young and thus don't have terribly good attention spans. Planescape: Torment does
(Good god the mortuary is boring, but I keep playing because I'm intrigued by the story!) as does The Longest Journey
(First couple of hours worth of gameplay are spent doing, well, boring everyday stuff to help set the scene for when the more surreal enters into the tale later.), and I love both those games as well. The Witcher isn't the best written story and the translated dialogue can be more than a little off in places, but it's got a firm grip on narrative and plays a surprising lot like the books it is based on; slowly building up the suspense till the inevitable fire of racial tension ignites and The Witcher is thrown into conflict! Except in this case, being a game, we have a choice on how things turn out.
But most games tend to take the Modern Warfare 2, Gears of War, God of War, Pokemon, Devil May Cry, etc approach where there's something jumpy and explosive happened every ten seconds lest the attention of the audience wane. It's Michael Bay on drugs, a terrifying thought! What it isn't is proper story-telling.
Which is not to say those games are bad, I actually like all of the above except Devil May Cry. But it's nice every once and awhile to just slow down and see a game that takes its time building up proper suspense.
But that's just me, and as pointed about previously, we PC gamers are notoriously idiotic sometimes, easily distracted by shiny things.
