The most explicit form of game design breaking narrative

Or maybe I just wanted an eye catching subject line as badly as game designers implore you to move forward despite hiding little trinkets throughout the game.

It seems to happen all the time in games lately, most recently I was bothered by what happens if you aren't whisking through that SWAT exercise with precision in Beyond: Two Souls. They showed it in the Quick Look and it was part of the demo. And now I'm finally trying to finish Max Payne and whenever there's a pause in the action with this girl, I've been trained to run around looking for...stuff. Gold guns, pills, ammo. But she doesn't care. "C'mon Max, we have to move!" "Let's go, Max!"

I hear you. But I'm hurt. I want oxycontin. Leave me alone.

Collectables in general are pretty awful for this. It just feels so unnatural in almost every situation. Plus 9 out of 10 games have collectables that are pretty god damn pointless to get.

Also Audiologs. God dammit, who would EVER do that? The only plausible example i could think of is a scientist recording results, aside from that, NO ONE does that. It feels so unnatural and terrible. I'm all for telling stories and side stories in games, but we need to move away from the awkward audiologs.

EDIT- thought of another one! Doing side stuff and other things when THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END. I think ME3 is the best current example of this. The reapers are fucking up the galaxy and you're off finding parts for some dipshits spaceship and solving everyones problems. Alot of RPG's suffer from this one though. Like Skyrim, "sup i know dragons are destroying the world and shit, and im the only one that can stop them or something, but lemme deliver this guys flute to him". Just stop making stories about the world ending.

@clonedzero:

My obvious answer does both quite well.

Rock Band is pretty rough. Why the fuck would these jokers get so popular just covering songs? I call bullshit on that.

Although you aren't required to do it, I know there were some people that hated that Vito could kill innocents during the freeroam moments of Mafia 2. They didn't know why Vito would be killing innocents because he's not that kind of guy, and yet it was the player's fault.

The Scarface game made it so you couldn't fire your weapon when your crosshairs were over a civilian, but splash damage could still kill them.

I don't know, wouldn't you be interested in a band who's vocalist can transform their voice to sound EXACTLY like the original artist.

I do agree - if a game needs you to be in a rush then what you need to be doing should be pretty obvious. Otherwise don't tell me to move on.

Audio logs worked pretty great in System Shock 2. They're a good way to provide story content that you want to be optional, and not shoved in the players face.

Oh man, Max Payne 3. Everything about that game annoyed the shit out of me. Uninstalled it as soon as I finished it. This is coming from a hardcore MP1 and MP2 fan. Pasos or whatever his name is was especially bad about the "Come on Max! Time to go!" bullshit. It made me want to take painkillers in real life just to take the edge off of hearing him say it over and over. Maybe that's what they were going for?

I forgot what I was playing recently that was REALLY bad about this. I'm trying to explore a bit and the game is telling me "COME ON WE HAVE TO GO MOVE MOVE MOVE." the entire game. Maybe it was Max Payne, now that I think about it.

@you_died: Well yeah, in the right context audio-logs can be great. When they make sense. Other times, when its random people talking about random shit to add more flavor or backstory. They just feel so god damn out of place and forced.

There should be a logical answer to "why was this conversation recorded?". If there isn't, then they should probably find a new way to tell that bit of story. I remember Bioshock being especially guilty of this.

Audiologs are pret-ty bad. I get people talking to you over a headset or something, but the idea of setting up shop and listening to an audiolog in the middle of a mini-apocalypse is absolutely absurd.

I thought the audio logs in Halo ODST were cool for what its worth

Regardless of gender, at that!

I want to love this game so much. The atmosphere is great, I can tell the game SHOULD be killer...but I never found Max Payne insanely difficult. Max Payne 3 I find INSANELY DIFFICULT. I still die once or twice per every 2 or 3 encounters on EASY. Granted I always play on Normal but I didn't find anything obtuse about Uncharted 3's Hard campaign. It was just hard. But this game, with the physics and all the reload/pill animations and heavy damage taking...I imagine maybe if you played on PC it was an alright time but I've tried all kinds of settings over the past...4 months? trying to beat this game. And it is just proving so stressful, from the NPCs nagging me to the lack of pills to the heavy damage to the fact every.fucking.situation turns into a blood bath.

I really hope this next generation that the action game designers can cope with designing an action game with plenty of quiet moments. Most of the best action movies don't feature half hour shoot outs every five minutes. I get this is a game, but they built a cool world here. I'd rather believe in it than constantly get berated by it.

.............

But anyway, that's another thread for another board.

I had the same issue in my first playthrough, but in the second I stopped taking cover so much and started slow mo running and learned how to shoot dodge effectively and it was WAY easier. They give you tons of slow mo meter and it builds fast, abuse it. That's my off topic tip for you!

And this is why I decided to stop caring about being a completionist long ago. Now obssessive searching is saved for games where it matters.

If you're not constantly in bullet time you're not playing the game right. That probably sounds harsher than I meant it, but it's true. The game was designed from the ground up to be a Max Payne game. That means bullet time is always on and shoot dodging is a necessity. Even on Easy. The only time you should be taking cover is to reload. Always keep moving. Running, shooting, rolling, jumping, keep moving and keep shooting. Once you scrub off the cover shooter mentality you'll see that MP3 is a great, fun shooter. It's just different from what we've had this generation.

Oh, i got more!.

When you're part of a team or a squad, but you have to do EVERYTHING. There was a CoD campaign that was like that, i think MW2. Where you're a marine or something in the US and they're like RAMIREZ SHOOT DOWN THAT CHOPPER! RAMIREZ SNIPE THAT GUY! RAMIREZ! RUN OVER THERE AND HIT THAT TANK WITH AN RPG! the squad leader guy like never told anyone else to do anything. It was pretty silly.

Breaking the 4th wall on purpose. I can't think of a single positive example of this. It's not funny, or clever, or witty. It's annoying and distracting. Fuck off with this nonsense.

Tutorials with a character telling you how to do stuff to someone who in the narrative clearly already knows this shit. Don't have a character have my super sword master guy fight dummys for a couple minutes. Don't have my badass spacemarine shoot targets. Don't have my space wizard lady take a space wizardry class. A little pop-up thing explaining the message and an easy bit at the start to get used to the mechanics is all we need. It's not only narrative breaking but often comes across as condescending.

In the case of MP3, it's not so much that I want to be a completionist, I could care less about the guns or clues. But when I end every firefight with red up to my shoulders and no pills, I'm gonna look for pills. And I'd appreciate it if you let me explore your elaborate sets in futility without my useless A.I. partner making fun of me for being awful at the game in both the sense that I need to spend this time looking for health items and that I can't figure out where to go. YOU MADE ME THIS WAY, Max Payne 3. I didn't choose this life.