the character development of Marshal does not fit the actions he does in missions (killing countless unnamed men, who probably have pixel families too)
that he is might to be a intelligent and self determined character yet he follows the order of people that both you and he must know will never actually help him- that irish guy, that medicine guy
Marshal is meant to be a "rouge who is trying to redeem himself"- his actions don't live up to this reputation
also fucking Mexico
You pretty much lose all credibility about this subject when you can't even remember the protagonist's name and if you had actually played through the game's ending, you would have seen the "redemption" and the sacrifices Marston had to do to achieve it
i could make a pithy rebuttal about the character being forgettable but that would be snide and untrue- instead i simply forgot a characters's name/ remembered it as a very similar one. I'm not sure that entirely invalidates my opinion on a game.
I agree with you that the story is very clever, and the ending could have been potentially great, but i think that the gameplay mechanics largely nullify the impact of that story and its ending. Rockstar really wanted us as an audience to care about Marston but most of his missions involved so much violence, murder and mindless-following-of-orders that I ended not caring about him at all. Marston is a contradictory character- the Marston we see in cut scenes is not the same one we are controlling for the most part.
As pointed out earlier this is a problem that appears in all Rockstar games: Rockstar Protagonist Syndrome. I think GTAIV gets away with it because the story is written in such a way that every mission advances the plot in some way, and more importantly that it's protagonist is a stone-cold killer psychopath bent on revenge. Sure Niko Bellic has some redeeming qualites and has his own character arc, but i always felt totally aware that he was essentially fucked-up. There is a reason Bellic seems willing to murder anything that moves in GTAIV, because essentially he is just as evil as the people he is hunting down. Marston is simply too "good" a character to be riding around murdering fools on a horse for 30 hours.
i'm not talking about the actions in cut-scenes but the actions in the gameplay itself
the character development of Marshal does not fit the actions he does in missions (killing countless unnamed men, who probably have pixel families too)
that he is might to be a intelligent and self determined character yet he follows the order of people that both you and he must know will never actually help him- that irish guy, that medicine guy
Marshal is meant to be a "rouge who is trying to redeem himself"- his actions don't live up to this reputation
@DeeGee: the thing about art isn't how technically accomplished it is, or how complicated it but its originality and power of expression (intellectual, emotional or otherwise)
As you said, it's really easy to replicate art; anyone with some black paper and scissors can do what Moss does. It is however incredibly difficult to create something new, or portray an existing thing in a new meaningful way, and that is why Moss' work is so expensive.
Take the example of Space Invaders or Pong; people who say that is art aren't saying it because they are complicated games. You and I could probably make a decent clone of either without much difficulty. They are saying these games are artistically valuable because they represent a new vision of concept that has its own rules and aesthetic. In a similar way Moss' work has its own rules and aesthetics, and that can be what makes it valuable as art.
Whilst you and i would probably agree art is subjective; that doesn't mean it is trivial. It's easy to copy an idea, but way trickier to bring one of your own original ones to fruition and harder still to have that idea mean a lot to a lot of different people.
TLDNR: It's not that you couldn't to what Moss did; it's that he did it first
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