"I am a TREASURE HUNTER, not a thief!"
By Jackswastedlife 1 Comments
I mean, you have to love to see a game go after these themes, because even if you're not a fan of the whole "point and click" genre, these types of emotional experiences don't just need to be in games, they belong in gaming. Think about it. Even from the early days of gaming, we have spent most of our interactive hours wielding weapons, making life-and-death decisions and chasing resources. Carry my woman away, will you? Well, then I'll kick every ass between here and you to get her back. Attack my country? Well, I'll invade yours and kill every last living thing until you're defeated.
We've always glossed over some nutty stuff, so why not allow games to grow up along-side the gamers who have grown up with them?
The point is, there's a lot of cool stories out there, but we as an industry rarely tell them. Sure, we let other people tell them and then we go pay those people for the rights to a game that is half-designed by license-holders who don't understand the medium. Why not let them start at home? We have so many creative people in our business, but they rarely have a voice.
Right.
So when you look at the gap between games and more mature mediums when it comes to story-telling, its seems like a natural conclusion that our medium can make massive strides in the stories they tell. Sure, we may not make leaps in visual detail, animation or gameplay in this generation, but we could easily start to develop our abilities as story-tellers, even if all we manage to do is start telling new ones. It's a tough economy out there and game companies have been on risk-averse roller-coaster since EA's rise to a well-marketed mediocrity machine in the PS2 generation. They proved that, while reinventing the wheel is expensive, adding some spit and polish and putting it in a pretty package will get the mainstream consumers to spend in a big way.
In that sense, story is an interesting avenue to explore at this point. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of overt alien invasions and planet-saving, princess rescuing, war-winning repeats. I have collected enough coins, pulled off enough head shots, and killed enough over-sized vermon. I'm tired of games about lone military operatives, unlikely smalltown heroes and reluctant royal rockstars. I'd love to see more detective stories. More discoveries of amazing things in normal worlds. Or maybe being the normal thing in an amazing world. Fuck. Something...anything
All that said, I'm still enjoying Indigo thus far but, between the control issues, gameplay tuning in some of the minigames, and a general lack of clear direction in many spots, it ends up feeling like more of an experiment than an experience. I hope Heavy Rain fixes some of this game's issues. I hope it tells a compelling story at a high level of visual quality and makes its mark. Maybe that will be enough to make people rethink some things. Maybe it influence the right folks, push the right buttons...open up the pipes a bit for ideas that are juuuust a bit left of center. Lord knows I'd rather be playing the next Firefly or Heroes than watching them.
Log in to comment