skraeling wrote:All storytelling is fundamentally the same. The objects used may be different, but the methods, forms, and narrative devices are identical across all mediums.
This is such an incorrect point of view even when you compare, like, cinema to television, or fiction to poetry, let alone any of those to video games. The key difference in video games is that the player has an active role in the narrative -- pressing buttons and winning levels -- and gameplay conventions typically interpose themselves into the storytelling. The bit between cutscenes in Call of Duty games -- the part where you shoot
brown people -- is what makes this medium different from others, and there's an expectation that the game playing experience is still complete and enjoyable regardless of what the game is. Look at the reviews for the new game Spec Ops: people generally praise the story and characterization for being really dark and gruesome, toying with people's expectations of the genre (middle east murder simulators), but the gameplay itself is so bland and unsatisfying that it's still getting middling reviews overall. If you just wanted to tell a story about Heart of Darkness parallels in Dubai, make a movie. I had similar complaints about Eternal; Forrest had quite a story to tell, but the whole video games medium did not work well with it.
Point is, the Storytelling 101, 215, and 376 guidelines are equally applicable to literature, video games, or standup comedy. Standup is an especially good example of the rule "don't give the audience things that don't matter"; in a well constructed joke there is no room for useless elements, everything has to contribute to the punch otherwise it won't work.
I think you're missing the point. Window dressing does matter in games. It all contributes to the sets, and the gameplay experience, which I was talking about above. Even a game like Portal 2, which is pretty finely distilled pure gameplay, has quite a lot of that window dressing to make the setting seem more complete. Compare the level designs from Portal 1 to Portal 2. The first game is a pure puzzle game with basically no relevant setting (it's a bunch of white rooms that you make portals in), but the second game really fills that out and completes the picture, even though the game itself is no more complex.
Then don't put a high amount of detail in the setpieces. Or conversely, don't make it ultra linear. Either way, make the two aspects of the game complement each other not work against each other. A good artist accepts and works within his limitations, he doesn't use his limitations as an excuse to produce poor work. Going off your Hard Reset example, they should have made the visual design less elaborate in order to match the simplistic level design since the disparity between them made things seem unconvincing, which seems to be your point, but it's also my point as well.
Paring down the details leads to a very anemic-feeling game. Which is great in a game like Quake 3 or Left 4 Dead, because these are foremost about PVP competition. I don't think I understand your point about how an ultra-linear game can't have that kind of world-building if it's not actually in the field of play. As long as the game design is clear about what is in play and what isn't, I don't see the problem. In a good game, your attention will be focused on what's in play. Take the canal and airboat levels in Half Life 2; there are several areas -- buildings, bridges, whatever else -- where Combine troops can attack you from, and you can't get up there. The game is pretty clear that it's out of bounds, but it's still part of the set design, and it takes the game beyond just a level in a stone trench floating in space. Now it's a drain pipe in a city, and it's much more convincing, even though Half Life 2 is linear as shit.
Treellama wrote:Why are we arguing about #5 which, who cares, when #1 and #6 are clearly BS?
They made more sense in Doom. Particularly #1. Marathon 2 has a lot of textures that have visible seams -- tiled floors, for example -- so you can have two textures abut at the seams and it looks completely natural. Doom doesn't have a lot of these. If you just put a grass texture and a rock texture on a flat floor touching each other without some kind of visible border, it looks weird. Having an elevation shift works nicely for that. Nowadays, of course, you can just have textures blend into each other and it's okay. It's basically point #2 applied to floors.
#6 is about encouraging and rewarding map exploration, I guess. Which is good.