Are we really seeing a new age of gaming? - Page 2

So what is everyones thoughts on Mirrior's Edge? I know it’s not released yet, but it seems to have a complete environment and capable storyline. Despite the nauseating motion cam, it’s said to change the way people see FPS (because it not suppose to be one either). I am fairly interested in the cliché story of the rebellious freedom fighter (in this case a courier) in a dystopian society.

I can't pass judgement on Mirror's Edge until I play it - I don't think the plot is meant to be particularly engaging, especially considering who developed it - it'll mostly be about the gameplay, which i've only found impressive to look at for that one sequence - longevity does seem curious though.

It's definitely unusual looking.

Half Life 2's initial tour of City 17 is probably one of my favourite moments in gaming, and what's impressive is that you can take what you want from it. In Half Life you're effectively on rails at the beginning so you have no option other than to gawp at things, in Half Life 2 you have the choice to either rush through the City or let that atmosphere soak in. It's hurt by the scale of the gameworld, it's easier to tell a story in a confined placed like Black Mesa, but it didn't screw the pooch on the final levels like Half Life did.

In fairness, there wasn't really a likeliness of them letting you wander randomly through the opening sequences of HL - since they're mostly points you backtrack through at a later date, whilst devestated.

I see what you're saying, it's certainly an apt setup for the game - and the moments on the rooftop are great. It just tried its hardest to make the world unlikeable - intentionally so I guess, but this felt it feeling lifeless. Gloomy. If you enjoy the bleak feeling, I guess it's great.

Ravenholm had more character and it was one giant cliche.

But was that a cliche back then? I can't think of many games which had opted for that kind of dystopia. I just remember it feeling like something out of a Tarkovsky movie when I saw it, this twisted banal promised land, full of screens and dilapitated housing but also with a minor hint of urban design as if the Combine had attempted to make something of the place, but didn't quite get Aesthetics. Ravenholme is a fucking playground more than anything else, it's essentially a pitstop from the maingame to allow you to get used to the Gravity Gun.

Your right though all of the Half Life 2 games are exceptionally oppressive and I know that turned a lot of people off. I liken it to STALKER which has similarly unpleasant and discomforting 'levels'.

Ravenholm was definitely the "horror level" cliche. Complete with Church finale.

I did feel the vibe of HL2 when STALKER finally saw light - I didn't think the rest of the game's atmosphere was unoriginal at all - far from it, it was wonderously bleak.

I love Half Life 2. It was a fantastic game. But the feeling of wonder I had at the moments in Half Life were greater.

HL2 tried something new and different - it was beautiful, played well and the physics are still groundbreaking, however the story simply needed more work for a game that was trying so much.

It's barebones by anyone's standards.

It is barebones, it's trying to relay information in a new way. A lot of the plot is taken from fucking newspaper clippings and stuff attached to the walls, stuff you wouldn't normally notice. It's a bare bones version of BioShock's plot devices, but it was perhaps done TOO subtly.

You could argue that the arc of the story simply meant you never really find out more than what we discover - because of circumstance and chance.

I guess it's more groundbreaking if I think of it that way.

Even if not, it's hardly a game-ruining moment. A movie-ruining one, perhaps.

Eh. I am remiss, Half-Life did indeed do the dialogue w/o cutscenes thing first.

I tell you one trend that needs to stop right now though, game developers planning all their games out as trilogies. It's not a stylistic qualm as much as it seems really shortsighted to not offer a conclusive ending to games when the tempestuous of the gaming market means that this is probably your only shot at your 'story'

Case-in-point: Longest Journey sequel "Dreamfall" ending on a cliffhanger.

Despite not letting anyone know this and being a terrible ending. Did that sequel ever come about?

I think Mass Effect compromises nicely, here. It is planned to be more than one game, but Bioware knows better than to not offer closure to the player on the shit they've been doing THIS game. Assassin's Creed? Not so much. And I hear the same about Too Human.

Prey's another example of a 'hey buddy, fuck you until you buy our sequel which will never get made' ending. Preplanned sequels were a bad idea in the days of Shadowman, and they're still a bad fucking idea.

Xion: Mass Effect offers closure to the current storyline and characters whilst establishing a world to set sequels in, it's not a Bison's arm emerges from the wreckage in Street Fighter sort of moment.

I'm pretending the Assassin's Creed sequel set in the modern day is Mirror's Edge.

I feel like i'm talking in code with half these game names.

Mirror's Edge is itself part of a planned trilogy.

Then the sequel to Assassin's creed can always, when released, double up as the sequel to Mirror's Edge instead.

Yeah, we're seeing a new age of gaming. Film-like trilogy planning.

Has there ever actually been a trilogy of videogames?

I'm assuming Halo wasn't planned as such?

Halo is probably the only one I can think of and that's more of a Matrix and it's interlinked sequels thing than anything else.

I'm not even sure it was planned to be like that - it was a surprise success wasn't it?

I'm going to cheat and say Die Hard Trilogy and Aliens Trilogy.

The End of Halo is fairly definitive.

I may have worded it poorly, Spike, but in general that is exactly what I was trying to say about Mass Effect.

As for Assassin's Creed... who says the sequel (if they make it) will be set in the modern age?

If you wanna give Valve the benefit of the doubt over their PR spin, Half-Life's an intended trilogy, with "Half Life 3" spread over 3 episodes.

Conversely, if you've every watched the Halo 3 ending on Legendary, they pull an X-Men The Last Stand with that "definitive" ending that really just pisses me off.

I'm pretty sure the studio's gone on record saying this somewhere. My apologies - since I don't have a link to hand it's probably best to take it with a pinch of salt.

I know this opinion will probably get slammed, but I've enjoyed the overall plots and themes of the Halo series very much. I think all of the ire garnered by the lackluster single player campaign in Halo 3 is undeserved, especially when you're playing Co-Op - still one of the most fun multiplayer experiences I've had gaming. I guess I'm dumb because when you see MC is still alive and kickin' I instantly went "Yessss, more Halo games!".

And also, I think Halo: Recon is a good idea for the franchise.

i actually thought, even though the game was truncated at the end, Halo 2 did rather awesome things with its story, things that Halo 3 completely failed to capitalize on, which was my primary complaint.

In many ways, the structure and quality of the Halo series is the mirror image of The Matrix trilogy.

I can see certain parallels, but at least I didn't fall asleep while playing Halo 3.

I did. And still beat it.

I think you need to play Co-Op with Spike, Nate and I.

If I still had my copy, I'd be happy to try. I bought the game same time as the Orange Box, and there was just no contest in the long run which experience I preferred.

Portal had some great game play innovations. If it is expanded upon, I can see advancement in game play mechanics. The story was surprisingly good as well.

No, we're not in a new age of gaming. Gaming is facing a similar dilemma as CGI-era Hollywood now: they have the technical ability to make almost anything, and it's creatively paralyzing.

Too many big budget games with huge art staffs are trying to be "cinematic" like Hollywood, and instead they're coming out Sci-Fi Channel. They aren't taking advantage of the unique properties of the medium to show unimaginable things and places.

We need more Deus Ex (1) today, less Gears Of War.

I sort of see Portal as lightning in a bottle, though. It had a different gameplay experience coupled with extremely clever writing and plotting that I don't think can be replicated.

I don't think we need less Gears of Wars. It's an insanely huge video game property that opens doors to gaming being more mainstream. The more in the public consciousness it is, the more talent will be attracted to the industry.

Right, with Deus Ex you had to think your way through the maps, what path to take...etc With games like Gears of War its just a button masher. you can just zone out and play...

the best games are the ones that make you think, and have more then just two outcomes.

i think there is too many people attracted to the industry, ones with no talent.

But the product will become diluded as well.

This means gaming gets more popular, not better. I'd say we've already reached a good level of saturation in terms of how present gaming is in the mainstream. Maturation is the problem, and in the minds of the mainstream, there's still a social/creative stigma attached that games like Gears aren't helping.

Yeah, Gears is good for the industry monetarily, but not good when it inspires other games to use generic settings with space marines vs. infinite waves of near identical humanoid shaped aliens.

As for Mass Effect (minor ending spoilers) I had a very good time with the PC version, but the game felt truncated and rushed into the pathetically bad Star Wars ending. The fleet of generic ships all shooting their stupid little orange pellets, my God. A company with the writing and art staff of Bioware seriously could not come up with a better scenario than yet another variation on shooting the core, with Seth Green heroically swooping in to deliver that one final payload?

The game had excellent dialogue trees, a lot of characters with personality, some fairly unique alien races, and most of all great voice actors to sell it all (Female Shephard kicked ass). The overall storyline, however, was a separate entity. Same old ancient prophecy bullshit, with the universe about to be destroyed for no compelling reason. Seriously, the fucking Space Shrimp thing was like "Your dimension can not even comprehend the reasons that we want to destroy you all! I'm sure it's a very good reason, though!". And, worst of all, Shephard's team mates end up having absolutely nothing to do with the story. Bringing them along on missions only results in the occasional little useless side comment. Nothing else even happened with Wrex after I decided to keep him.

So, I would say Mass Effect is game that was ALMOST a masterpiece. Bioware seriously needs to just make an adventure game where you talk to people, fuck with them, make decisions, and look at the pretty uninteractive static environments, without the need to compromise it into a franchise starter or stroke their Star Wars fetish yet again.

I don't think gaming becoming popular is at all good for the industry. Once they know people'll buy anything - as with a band or a director - there's less incentive to innovate.

Because being popular really killed the creativity in the movie and music industry.

Thing is, while an insanely popular film or piece of music might create a lot of cheap imitators, they don't impede creative folks who want to create films or music outside the mold. Because it's more costly to create and market a game than a movie, the industry is far more prone to follow the dollar wherever it can be found. The fact that a space marine FPS or a DDR wannabe can get a greenlight and be on the market within months, but David Jaffe couldn't get dollar one to get some of his amazing sounding passion projects off the ground even after making Sony truckloads of money with God of War is proof positive that being popular is not enough to advance this medium.

What's killing creativity is the retail end more than anything else. XBox Live Arcade is testament to the fact that Microsoft is willing to take risks. I think once we get to digital downloads and Microsoft/Sony can charge $20-$30 for a new game then we'll start to see some more interesting stuff. The risk of failure won't be as huge.

I thought EA was the prime example of this?

They see someone becomes successful and buy them out. Creativity does not leave the black hole that remains.

Guess what Bees there always have been a plethora of cash in games and there's always been a thin crust of creativity. As long as we have Mass Effects, Brutal Legends, Icos, and Little Big Planets balancing the mediocrity we're fine.

Those two industries are totally different than the gamin industries in terms of being able to break into. Small movies that get the director attention and a mainstream career or indie bands that sign major label deals because they were discovered on YouTube don't really have a counterpart in the gaming industry. It's an entirely different beast.

That isn't to say it's impossible (in some ways the development of Portal can be compared to those above examples, but even then it's still not exactly the same.), but the nature of the indstry and the medium itself means that you're playing by a totally different set of rules. I know the fad right now is for everyone to compare gaming to film, but the reality is that outside of games becoming more cinematic stylistically, they're completely different industries with different focuses.

Yet the Wii mocks your idea of a balance between artistry and mediocrity.

Even the Gamecube took risks.

And that's why innovation isn't always great. A lot of developers are still looking at the Wii Mote and trying to figure out what the fuck it's good for.

Interactive porn would be a wonderful twist.