Made by committee
By vidiot 8 Comments
My appreciation for Id Software is a roller-coaster of emotion, similar to my current standing with Square-Enix. I think back to Id Software's humble origins, it's push and spark of creativity. I look at Rage and instead of appreciating the game on display, like Final Fantasy XIII I am impressed by flashy visuals juxtaposed over tired mechanics and setting. While Square might have won an award last year for "Most Stupid Things A Developer Can Say Publicly In An Allotted Time", John Carmack, an individual I have the utmost respect for, probably wins the award a million-times over with this fun quote forever to be set in embarrassing stone.
That's John Carmack folks, comparing the products of our industry to the porn industry. It's why he's part of the technicalities, versus the game's design. Go back to making " mega-textures", or whatever goofy name you've given to this tech."Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." - John Carmack
It's that type of mentality in western game development that I hate with a angry passion. I've skimmed over before, regarding what I perceive are the two broad branches of thought when it comes to game development:
- Games are interactive experiences, story and cut-scenes go hand-in-hand with the gameplay.
- Games are interactive experiences, all story must be disseminated entirely within the game because games are interactive simulated experiences and you should press a button to breathe.
The hell is wrong with you?!
You can pause and skip them you idiot!
...
*ahem*
...back on topic...
As an active observer (sounds a bit voyeuristic <_< >_> -_-.), sometimes I get the impression that it's the second concept of thought, usually has the "worst" storytelling. The reasons for this are many: Most are made in accident, with the designer believing the player has more affinity and could push one's persona onto an antiquated mute character. Without that leap of logic, that happens a lot for the people that play these games, the end result can be a soul-less experience one hampered with a main character that seems out-of-place with the illusion of the situation happening in the game.
I find this format of thought as equally antiquated than a game giving you twenty minutes of direction and story after giving you twenty minutes of gameplay. The simulation aspect can be formed out of games of old, games that relied heavily on their mechanics at an almost arcade level. To be fair, all game origins and genres derive out of this arcade gene-pool. Id Software's back-catalog since it's inception to Doom 3 married and championed this mentality throughout the 90's. Games that played great, but were nothing more than games that played great. I look at Rage and my memory of Doom 3 becomes to seethe to the forefront of my mind.
I still hate Doom 3.
There were tons of mods for Doom 3...
...Flashlight mods.
It also didn't help that the game shamelessly copied the far superior Half-Life:
- New guy goes to work.
- Catastrophic catastrophe is slowly hinted at.
- Catastrophic catastrophe happens.
- Main character is seemingly unaffected by incident.
- Fights enemies from anther dimension/hell
- Goes to other dimension/hell
- Attempts to make things right with varying degree of success.
Or maybe you did? I heard a shotgun helps take out " those brown s.o.b's."
So it's no surprise that a company that took over a decade to adopt the concept of "story" into their game did so that poorly. I'm still not surprised that roughly six years later their new game is essentially Borderlands and they're proclaiming that gameplay and story mechanics we've seen for years are a new concept worthy to differentiate against the competition. While the two companies are dramatically different, you can probably understand and see why I decided to make a direct comparison at the beginning of this blog with the disturbingly out-of-touch Square.
A few blogs ago, I proclaimed that Infinity-Ward had no creative vision.
It's a statement that I still stand behind.
It's the committee factor. The lack of a striving vision that gives the product it's own palpable space on your gaming shelf, one that can stand alone against the shooting clones or the JRPG clones. Because if we have the mentality that a game's story is only as important and comparable to a guy delivering pizza's at a sorority, this type of introverted and short-sighted concepts breed similar short-sighted concepts in other area's of a product.
When nobody want's to take a risk, when nobody want's to strive to do something new and play it safe, we get stuff:
Like a helicopter running on bingo fuel for the fourth time, while you remake a sequence from a James Bond movie.
Don't worry, the next level will have you running for a helicopter running on bingo fuel, while you remake a sequence from Red Dawn.
With all the legitimate claims that game developers over-seas enjoy rehashing the same concept over and over again, don't think for a second that western game development is exempt from the same over-focus-tested bullshit.
(Note to self: Get a job in the pizza delivering business.)
What the hell is this?!
So why in gods name am I enjoying DarkSiders?!
Have you played this game? You want a shameless rip-off of....everything.....Go check out this piece of work.
At first I joked that it should be renamed into "Videogame: The Videogame".
That's not a joke anymore.
I've literally seen in the last few hours God of War, Devil May Cry, Legend of Zelda and....I'm not making this up.... Panzer freaking Dragoon.
The game is coupled by a plot that involves angry people being angry and making their voice sound more like growls than actual audible words that can be constructed into some type of language.
- It's after the apocalypse!
- You're the horseman War!
- There's a council!
- There's a hot angle-chick in revealing armor!
- There's a dark power thing that's old and stuff...and evil.
This thing was written and put-together not just by committee, but by some bizarre machine that took other games and stapled and glued them together.
It's refreshing for me to find humor and general enjoyment, out of something that I can easily perceive others proclaiming as bland drivel. The shameless nature of Darksiders is something I can completely comprehend and enjoy. So perhaps in this case Carmack's quote rings a thread of truth. That perhaps a game can stand entirely on it's base mechanics, and the plot could be written on a fucking napkin.
Or maybe it's because they're no game developers willing to make some goddamn Zelda clones! C'mon people! Why hasn't anyone touched the designs of Zelda?! I swear to god, you know where half the anticipation for the new Zelda title comes from? Yes, because it will be a high quality product, but it's also simply: a new Zelda game!
That alone makes people excited, because no one is interested in making a Zelda game!
I've typed enough today. :P