Tom Chick responds to Wired piece
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archont
It Wandered In From the Wastes
And how many bethesda games have been purposefully and deliberately designed with a complex storyline, intricate characters, and deep underlying moral and philosophical questions in mind as they key selling points of the game?
Oblivion wasn't meant to have a better storyline or writing than Planescape Torment. From a marketing perspective, that makes sense as most casual gamers (a lovely bracket term for 13-year old Neo-wannabes and soccer moms) can't be bothered to go through all those boring letters.
F3 is targetting the somewhat more hardcore audience though. Not the casuals, that's for sure. But not the basement-dweling Nethack/Slash'em player who refuses to play anything other than textmode either.
Oblivion wasn't meant to have a better storyline or writing than Planescape Torment. From a marketing perspective, that makes sense as most casual gamers (a lovely bracket term for 13-year old Neo-wannabes and soccer moms) can't be bothered to go through all those boring letters.
F3 is targetting the somewhat more hardcore audience though. Not the casuals, that's for sure. But not the basement-dweling Nethack/Slash'em player who refuses to play anything other than textmode either.
Ehm, none including Fallout 3. Although they did consistently overrepresent the amount of this in Oblivion.archont said:
Also, you'd think that if these were the hallmarks of Fallout 3, they'd show them off in the previews.
It isn't? Because all of the previews so far are aimed at the casual player, as is the gameplay very obviously.archont said:
Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
archont said:
todd said:
archont
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Sander said:
No, not really. You can post a screen that shows off the graphics or a trailer that shows the gameplay, sound, whatever. How are you supposed to demonstrate moral problems or complex storylines without actually seeing them unfold?
Those are the kinds of things you can't demonstrate, unless you choose to do so in a very distasteful way. And that means treating the gamer like an imbecile who needs to be told just how complex and rich the storyline is, or how immersed he will be.
I've played my share of games. And I'm sure of one thing - if I were to rate Planescape: Torment or the Soul Reaver series based on just 30 minutes I couldn't say anything positive about the immersion nor the storyline.
The gameplay does look pretty casual, that's a fact, probably thanks to the engine. Then again, I said the same thing about Stalker: SOC, a day or two before I fell in love with that game.
Bodybag said:
To be honest, if you had posted it, I would probably have vatted it as cross-site trolling
Bodybag said:
Funny how they themselves foul up by calling it a review, which it isn't.
Anani Masu said:
Aye, it's a fair cop.
Still, it's nice to have a balance in idiocy, and I like the type of Wired for that purpose. But good? Eh.
Anani Masu said:
7 times, you say? I went and looked for those particular words and found five instances of them. Four of them obviously could be appended with a redundant "of what I saw", unless you decide that's not what he would have meant - what people would usually mean when writing a preview. The fifth - "The entire world is..." - exists in a positive context (as does one of the others), and heck, even that could easily be given the "of what I saw" treatment. Picture a Vault escapee spreading his arms and looking out across the wasteland while referring to it as "the entire world" - would your first reaction be to ask whether this specifically encompasses the hidden closet in the buried fallout shelter across the next hill that you happen to know about but he doesn't? So it certainly takes more than a fair bit of wilful interpretation to conjure up the image of the previewer explicitly casting his verdict of doom across the unseen corners of the game, and then lead in to the conclusion that the doom couldn't be properly applied to what was seen, either. Hence the question, why was this preview picked out for picking on in this particular regard?
shihonage
Made in USSR
archont said:
The reason people open books in the bookstore before buying them is because they can determine the general quality of writing from the first couple of paragraphs. They may not know the "plot twists" but they can still tell if the author has skill or not.
If you open a detective novel and it earnestly starts with "It was a dark and stormy night", that alone can be a telltale sign about its quality.
Yeah, but you may be able to determine that the writing is not complete crap, or at least be somewhat intrigued about the promise of its setup. Of course I am not sure what Soul Reaver is doing in the same sentence as Planescape: Torment. Wasn't that a Playstation action game, as opposed to an RPG ?
Anani Masu
Still Mildly Glowing
I'd say Morrowind was their best to date. I really liked the kind of Rashomon esque ambiguity over the events surrounding the death of Nerevar and the disappearance of the dwemer. As far as characters go they aren't as good as F1/2 but then they prioritized having thousands of NPCs over lots of depth. Still there were a few like Crassius Curio that stuck in my mind. And I think the self made godhood and subsequent revisionist mythmaking surrounding the Tribunal is pretty interesting stuff when it comes to your final point.fedaykin said:
I've also heard good things about Redguard but that was a more structured action/adventure and I've never played it so I can't really speak to it.
EDIT TO RESPOND TO PER:
You're falling into the trap of seeing it as a problem of positive/negative as opposed to the real problem of impression/declaration. The Shacknews article for instance is pretty mixed, he says he ran into some wooden dialogue and none of it really grabbed him the way fallout's did. I still think this is one of the few good articles to come out thus far. If he had extrapolated this out to "All the voices in the game are wooden and there are no characters that grab you" then I would have the same problems with it as I do with the wired blog. As to the "entire world" bit, what he experienced would be more akin to your hidden closet example.
archont
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Make that Legacy of Kain but yes, that was an action game. Released for the PC as well. One of the best storylines I've seen, excellent writing and simply brilliant voice-acting, combined with innovative storytelling. It may have been a linear action game, but after a while it was clear that the story dictated the gameplay, not the other way around.
It didn't have the quantity, but it did have the quality.
Bodybag
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Brother None said:
I'm fucking psychic. I should write for Wired!
Brother None said:
In the BB blog guy's opinion it was a review. Argue with him, not me. But since I know you really want to argue with me anyways, I'll just state that the Wired guy's opinion certainly does smack of absolute finality. I'd say there's as much review in his impressions as there is preview. So there!
Anani Masu said:
My angle here was more about who gets to say what's impression and what's declaration. I won't argue with you for a second if you point out that people here point and laugh at positive reviews, call the negative ones "refreshing" and so on. But that's us, we've long since been pegged as the angry haters of hate who hate so much that if someone shoved an objectively awesome Fallout sequel up our <s>ass</s> nose we'd respond with hate, ire, anger and wrath. So when this forum of balanced journalists agree to slam this one other preview which doesn't really stand out that much except in its negativity (though I suppose people can and will disagree on this), you can't fault people for at least peeking curiously in the direction of positive/negative to see if it's moving.
Half an hour is not enough time to come to negative conclusions about a game.
But apparently, it's plenty of time to declare it "game of the year"....odd how that works.
eta: How much do you really need to see to make a comment on the quality of the writing?
But apparently, it's plenty of time to declare it "game of the year"....odd how that works.
eta: How much do you really need to see to make a comment on the quality of the writing?
Bodybag
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
More like "Best Game of the Show."
Don't worry, it might still make some "worst of" lists in a few Eurpean mags
Don't worry, it might still make some "worst of" lists in a few Eurpean mags
Seymour the spore plant
Still Mildly Glowing
Bodybag said:
There's actually quite a few sites out there throwing the "game of the year" line around already, and some from even before E3.
I really can't tell how credible this piece from Wired is, but at the very least all these people gushing about the game are just as bad. The funny thing is, the only backlash they generate comes from fansites, while this one was from the gaming media.
I actually took the time to slosh through the swill of that Qt3 thread, and they repeatedly defend the fact that you can't give a negative preview because 'the company will fix everything so it's unfair'.
It's really sad that this is how far game journalism has fallen.
Honestly, I'd take fox news over some of the lame excuses for arguments they try to make.
It's not too hard to divine the real reason there can be no negativity in previews, which incidentally have nothing to do with fairness.
If you called a game developer on the flaws in it's game, then they would just go to a different publication that's willing to suck them off more by way of an undeservedly positive piece.
The gaming journalism system is broken except for a few aberrant cases.
If the industry in general had a pale semblance of integrity, then the developers wouldn't have the leverage to refuse coverage as very few would stoop to the enforced positivity that occurs now, and thus they would get no coverage for their previews.
But that would take courage and a proper understanding of ethics.
It seems most of the writers on Qt3 though are hacks and media mouthpieces who are too cowardly to come and discuss their opinions with us here and would rather wish death on us or label us with undeserved perjoratives from their closed forum.
Shame though, would make for interesting conversation.
It's really sad that this is how far game journalism has fallen.
Honestly, I'd take fox news over some of the lame excuses for arguments they try to make.
It's not too hard to divine the real reason there can be no negativity in previews, which incidentally have nothing to do with fairness.
If you called a game developer on the flaws in it's game, then they would just go to a different publication that's willing to suck them off more by way of an undeservedly positive piece.
The gaming journalism system is broken except for a few aberrant cases.
If the industry in general had a pale semblance of integrity, then the developers wouldn't have the leverage to refuse coverage as very few would stoop to the enforced positivity that occurs now, and thus they would get no coverage for their previews.
But that would take courage and a proper understanding of ethics.
It seems most of the writers on Qt3 though are hacks and media mouthpieces who are too cowardly to come and discuss their opinions with us here and would rather wish death on us or label us with undeserved perjoratives from their closed forum.
Shame though, would make for interesting conversation.
DarkUnderlord
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Fact: It uses the Oblivion engine.Jesuit said:
Fact: It has guns.
In half an hour VoodooExtreme were able to:Tom Chick said:
GamesRadar only had 20 minutes:
I'll ask the question: What would've happened if they'd decided to talk to those characters instead? They wouldn't have had to reset and start again and they'd have gotten a taste of the dialogue.
CrispyGamer were able to say:
Now is that the whole game or just the first 30 minutes? Should he have said "shaping up to be but we can't be sure yet" or added any other kind of disclaimer? Where's the Tom Chick reply to what clearly must be an anti-smear campaign?
Crave made the entire game related statement:
Filled with them. Where are the complaints about that? How can he possibly know the game is filled with them after only half an hour? Yet they too were able to mention Megaton and state "we could talk to the denizens, make deals, and get jobs, while outside, we had to fight off violent scavengers, who shot at us on sight".
VGCHarts made the sweeping statement:
Chock-full? Really? Half-an-hour lets him say that? Where's the Tom Chick anti-nerd outrage?
After their half-hour, WorthPlaying said:
He only saw half an hour and yet, he's already saying it'll put Oblivion to shame. RAGE!
I could go on. I couldn't find the ones I thought I read which said "Game of the Year" but almost every other preview which is positive makes sweeping statements and generalisations about the content that exists in the entire game. Wired dare have a different opinion and suddenly, they've been infiltrated by NMA and they must be stopped!!
EDIT: I see Seymour found them.
Logic has no place in the world of video game journalism.
It's a scary and bewildering world of lies, the absence of sex and poor quality streaming video.
It's a scary and bewildering world of lies, the absence of sex and poor quality streaming video.