Pfhorrest wrote:There's several different kinds or stages of "Jjaro"...
Oh, my. Was all of that supposed to come through from playing Eternal?
Pfhorrest wrote:There's several different kinds or stages of "Jjaro"...
Pfhorrest wrote:I like to write stories where greater worldbuilding stuff not directly driving the plot is just implied everywhere by the rest of the stuff in the story world. Marathon inspired me to that, with things like the scale of the ancient Hulk rebellion being just implied by three little comments in three different terminals scattered across the games, or the player being a Battleroid, or for that matter the fact that time travel is happening at all in Infinity.
RyokoTK wrote: I think Infinity's storytelling suffered quite a bit by having that sort of mysteriousness as beats in the actual story. The time travel itself is fine, but not just coming out and saying "hey this is happening" is kind of crappy storytelling when it seems like the SO actually has agency and knows what's going on.
General-RADIX wrote:Out of curiosity, how would you make the time travel clearer in Infinity? The most obvious methods that come to mind are giving the SO a chance to speak, and/or having Durandal figure it out (Thoth could as well, but he'd probably be obtuse about it; Tycho seems to realize that something's up, but by the time that happens he's obviously snapped), but I dunno if that's the route you'd take.
RyokoTK wrote:General-RADIX wrote:RyokoTK wrote: I think Infinity's storytelling suffered quite a bit by having that sort of mysteriousness as beats in the actual story. The time travel itself is fine, but not just coming out and saying "hey this is happening" is kind of crappy storytelling when it seems like the SO actually has agency and knows what's going on.
Out of curiosity, how would you make the time travel clearer in Infinity? The most obvious methods that come to mind are giving the SO a chance to speak, and/or having Durandal figure it out (Thoth could as well, but he'd probably be obtuse about it; Tycho seems to realize that something's up, but by the time that happens he's obviously snapped), but I dunno if that's the route you'd take.
I don't know who exactly I would have make the connection on the player's behalf, but I would say it in a fairly explicit way. Having that sort of nonlinear storytelling would work a lot better in a game that supported cutscenes, or NPCs that you can actually have a conversation with, so that you can see what's going on or at least probe a bit more deeply. Then again, I am not the most nuanced storyteller, ha.
When it comes to all the secondary and tertiary lore, then I think you can do that as much as you want, since it encourages additional reading of the terminals on the next playthrough.
philtron wrote:I'd have to disagree with Ryoko on this one. As I've said before on these forums, I'm a big fan of Infinity's story and I really like how it was handled.
Explicitly coming out and saying what's going on in Infinity would have been a bad choice because it would have been pointless. The whole point is that the confusion encourages the audience to figuring out what's going on, or become lost; the audience has to engage with the story on a more personal level and actually struggle through the chaos that seems to surround them; you're supposed to fight with the narrative. If Infinity came out and explicitly said, "You're exploring alternate timelines to find one that doesn't end in an apocalypse" then this would defeat the impact of realizing what's going on; might as well just do a straightforward story at that point.
Which maybe they should have done. The fact that the story is confusing and that it is a style of storytelling that most people will not get excited by, these things aren't flaws. But, the fact that they tried to do this type of narrative in a Marathon game, where fans have preexisting expectations of how things are done, probably was a poor choice on their part.
I for one loved the story in Infinity, although I am a big fan of strange and experimental literature. The bizarreness and the confusion of what's going on is precisely what pulled me deeper into the story and what made me want to engage with it in a way I hadn't with the previous Marathon games.
However, nothing is perfect, and Double Aught definitely could have done a little more to clue in the player to what's going on without being explicit. And, although you didn't ask me, here's what I would have done to make it more clear as to what's going on:
Use the dream levels more effectively.
The dreams levels I think are obviously there to break up the different timelines and to drawn attention to the time travel narrative. I don't think they work at all in that respect and tend to just add to the confusion of "what the hell is going on".
So, what could be done to make the dream levels more effective in drawing attention? You could use visual imagery at the beginning and end of the dream level that reflects the levels you came from and are traveling to.
Let's say you finish Confound Delivery. You travel to a dream level whose starting area mimics the architecture at the end of Confound Delivery, then the middle of the dream level is just weird architecture, then the end of the dream level mimics the architecture at the start of Acme Station. And then you travel to Acme Station.
You could even have the same dream level repeated, with windows looking into rooms that look like starting areas to levels, but each time you return to the dream level a different window has opened up (while others are closed) leading to a different room and a different timeline. Double Aught tried to do this in Electric Sheep, but plain, grey, metal pillars just don't do a good job conveying what's going on, whereas duplicating architecture, or even showing screens of preceding/succeeding levels in the dream level terminals, could possibly accomplish the narrative goal.
Also, I would tone down the difficulty in the dream levels; maybe take out enemies altogether. It is not fun dealing with invisible S'pht'kr and it's hard to stop and think about what's going on in the narrative when you're dodging bullets and platforming. And then there's that one dream level with really narrow bridges over lava; that level was bullshit.
RyokoTK wrote:The big reason why Infinity's story doesn't work for me, but a very experimental novel like House of Leaves might work (although I didn't like that book whatsoever, surprise surprise), is that Infinity's narrative is constantly interrupted by the shooting and gameplay. There's a complete 100% separation of narrative and gameplay in Infinity because it's an early 90s FPS. And you can't go backwards in levels to review something you missed, so if you end up in a level like Foe Hammer and you're not sure how exactly that transition worked, well, you can just get bent and hope you had a save from the last level. There's just no real way to review something that was unclear, or like... On the third Electric Sheep, you can't go back and review the terminals from the first one for context without going back and replaying the game. Not to mention, there's 15 minute segues between the beginning and end of each level.
RyokoTK wrote:The big reason why Infinity's story doesn't work for me, but a very experimental novel like House of Leaves might work (although I didn't like that book whatsoever, surprise surprise), is that Infinity's narrative is constantly interrupted by the shooting and gameplay. There's a complete 100% separation of narrative and gameplay in Infinity because it's an early 90s FPS. And you can't go backwards in levels to review something you missed, so if you end up in a level like Foe Hammer and you're not sure how exactly that transition worked, well, you can just get bent and hope you had a save from the last level. There's just no real way to review something that was unclear, or like... On the third Electric Sheep, you can't go back and review the terminals from the first one for context without going back and replaying the game. Not to mention, there's 15 minute segues between the beginning and end of each level.
A game like Bloodborne can handle being exceedingly vague about its plot and setting because the player can, at his leisure, return to earlier zones and investigate all the items he's found for more details. And also because the connections from one zone to the next are at least coherent.
RyokoTK wrote:This is good.
philtron wrote:You're being cheeky, but that's still wrong. It's like saying, "You want Destiny to have a story? Just quit the game and go online to read the grimoire!" You shouldn't have to leave the source material (whether book/film/game) and go to some supplementary media to understand the source's story; everything you need should be easily accessible within the source material (even if it's difficult to understand at a casual glance).
philtron wrote:True, but I feel like this is a problem for all games in general, even Dark Souls/Bloodbourne. Whereas in a book you can flip backwards and forwards and read whatever you please in whatever order you please, in a video game you're very restricted in what you can do and how you're allowed to explore the game and it's narrative; even in Bloodbourne, in which maybe you can backtrack freely (Maybe? Do monsters not respawn?) but you definitely can't move forward freely.
I've finally received Ryoko's approval on something. Does this mean I've beaten the Pfhorums? Did I unlock New Game+?
PerseusSpartacus wrote:Yeah, you may be right about that. Personally, I don't particularly mind if the deeper, more subtle parts of a story require a little bit of extrapolation and external reading, but I will say that the core elements of any story had better be easy to grasp just by engaging in the content the way you're supposed to, otherwise there's something wrong.
Pfhorrest wrote:The PiD monsters were used because the monsters I thought I had someone making for me (still W'rkncacnter dreams) never materialized, so I just used the W'rkncacnter dreams we'd already seen in PiD instead.
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