Chibz said:
Raiyan 1.0 said:
Care to explain how Half-Life was shoddy? Considering it had a five year development cycle and took $40 million, won 39 Game of the Year awards for its advanced physics, animation, sound, AI, rendering, and narrative, what caught your eyes that the entire gaming community missed? And I don't think you quite understand what the term 'gimmick' means. Portal was never aimed to be a mass-marketed title - it was a small, free game that came with the Orange Box. The enthusiasm surrounding it was purely generated by the gamers themselves due to the uniqueness of the title. And care to share any experience of the game (bugs, mechanics, etc) which contributed to your opinion of it being 'shoddy'?
Perhaps it's because Valve titles lack the gimmicky cutscenes and trailers with graphics far removed from gameplay that has been a must-have for JRPGs for quite some time?
I call it shoddy because the game has zero replay value. The environment was forgettable, the character was an undeveloped void. This is a big problem, given that it's a storyline based shooter (WHAT?! BLASPHEMY!) without anything but the story to support it. I don't know what Valve was smoking, but I wants me some of that.
Also, if you'll notice... The JRPGs I support (Disgaea, Phantom Brave, etc) don't have very high end graphics. In fact, almost everything is handled using sprites. Unfounded statement? Yes.
You're kidding me, right? Half-Life had one of the most understated environments ever. There was nothing spectacular about City 17 itself, but from the moment I got off the train, the Combine soldiers, the city scanners, the looming Citadel - all of them gave me the creepiest Orwellian vibe. Introducing me to the world via Professor Breen's public address in the beginning without any cutscenes was original as well. It was a particularly effective use of environmental storytelling. The dialogue of Breen's address contains all the exposition that would normally be delivered in a cutscene, but instead it's relayed in the background.Players are free to stand in front of the display and listen to the entire speech, but few players will. And they needn't, because it conveys everything the player needs to know, seamlessly, and without interrupting the player's exploration. The main idea -- an alien invasion, an oppressive take-over by a complicit government -- comes through.
Not to mention the design direction (the Combine Gunship was my favorite). I still remember the level under the bridge - till then, I could never have imagined the sounds a bridge can make because of the wind. I still remember the desolation of Ravenholm, and the dark corners of Nova Prospekt.
And Half Life was never about character development. If they tried to shoe-horn it in where it didn't belong, that would've half-assed. It was more about the unfolding of an event of considerable scale, interest and mystery. The silence of Gordon Freeman has always been a trademark of the franchise, and has never impeded gameplay or storyline.
'Rise and shine Mr Freeman...'
And the game itself has NOTHING to support itself other than the story? Dare I point to the countless mods based on it? Including one of the most popular multi-player shooters, Counter-Strike?
As for Portal, it was a major step in videogame story telling. Without a single cut scene, or even so much as a reference to some kind of back-story, it manages to transport us into the virtual space of its plot, allowing us to deduce our own way through its elaborate puzzles and come to our own conclusions about the conspiracy that is amiss. In Portal, we actually act out the story as part of the gameplay. Also, it seamlessly delves the player into the reality of its own world. At the beginning of the game, when the situation is most artificial and the dialogue needs to be the most expository, GlaDOS functions as an explicit, relatively neutral tutor. As the story progresses, she develops more as a character and conveys more of the developers' sense of humor. There's no disconnect between the gameplay and story, because the game implicitly acknowledges the artifice of the gameplay and then seamlessly transitions into storytelling. Portal's most effective storytelling moment comes not in a cutscene, but in another piece of environmental art "accidentally" discovered by the player. What that moment did -- apart from launching an annoyingly tenacious internet meme -- was subtly and completely re-cast everything the player was doing. It took a clever but artificial puzzle game and turned it into a story in which the player was participating. It introduced the possibility of escape. It affirmed the sinister nature of the test chambers, that had been hinted at by GlaDOS's voice-overs. And it transitioned the player from reaction to anticipation. She's still going through the process of solving the puzzles presented to her, but now she's looking at the puzzles in a larger context, trying to find an opportunity for escape. The nature of the unfolding of the story was unprecedented, as was the character development of GlaDOS and her dark humor.
Too bad you didn't find the puzzles entertaining. They were carefully designed so that people could solve them, but felt a sense of accomplishment at the end when they succeeded. (Finished the game in 5 hours.)
And dare I mention 'Still Alive'?
Valve's games are always etched with subtleties. It's your loss they fly over your head. Hell, I don't think you even like FPS games. And you were obviously trying to incite a flame war by attacking a popular developer. If so concerned by character development and storyline, why not attack CoD or MoH, which recycles the same old story/stereotype year after year?
