New Blood is So Hard to Get Out of Fabric

Tags

character, combat, gender, NPCs, plot, romance

Some spoilers for early plot points and characters in Uncharted 4

Butch:

Ok, played Chapter 7, which was getting out of the auction and getting a cutscene and now I’m in Scotland.

Today’s theme: Being protective and overprotective.

So two things:

Nadine, huh? Now…here’s the thing. Part of me wants to think that whole bit was kind of progressive. I mean, weren’t we just talking about games making women fightable baddies? And it was rather ironic that it started with him a) flirting and b) saying “Good thing I’m a gentlemen” only to lead to a fight. But…here’s the thing: I don’t think you could win that fight. I think she was going to kick your ass, and you were going to fall out the window, and things would go on. Right? So really, she WASN’T a fightable woman, at that point anyway. That was basically a big interactive cutscene with a strong woman in it. The “you’re fighting a woman” thing was an illusion of gameplay.

So what to make of THAT?

Second: That wonderful, wonderful cutscene.

Here’s them all planning, and scolding Nathan about lying to Elena. And then….Nathan LEAVES, and we see Sully and Sam being PROTECTIVE. Sully saying “[I’m here because] Someone has to watch out for him” and Sam showing the guilt that that someone hasn’t been, and isn’t, him.

Nathan’s the hero of the damn game, right? The HERO. The PLAYER CHARACTER, and here we have two NPCs essentially protecting him, being paternal, and treating him like a big, careless child.

Dude. When was the last time that the HERO was sent out to make a phone call while NPCs talk about how to take care of him?

And here’s the line blur of the day: I found myself kinda agreeing with Sully. “Yeah, he DOES need someone to take care of him…yeah, he was a dick to Elena…yeah, you’re too old and you’re Sam…” which of course leaves you, the player. You, the player, are in on that conversation, too. You’re listening, nodding along, about keeping Nathan safe. And then the cutscene ends, and the game gets going, and you’re off to spend the next ten hours or so TRYING TO KEEP NATHAN ALIVE.

Playing these games in order, and playing TLOU recently, has been an interesting experience. You can pretty much see ND trying out new ways to use games to tell stories, how to blur lines, all the time. And they don’t always matter much to the game at hand, but I always get the sense that, someday, when we’re playing the next game of theirs, we’ll be going back to these posts and linking them.

Feminina:

That was a good cutscene. As you say, it’s interesting how you as the player are sort of allied with the other characters rather than with the PC. We’re all there thinking “Nathan, you’re being a doofus. Call Elena.”

It’s also interesting that even though Elena isn’t in this part of the game, she’s still present as a character. In this sense, she does avoid being totally the stock Worried Waiting Woman that you often see in this type of story (as I complained the other day.)

As you pointed out the other day, maybe he does have reason to think she’d flip out and leave him if he told her the truth: we know they did split up once already, and we sort of assume it’s because of his danger-seeking ways (although this is mostly because his danger-seeking ways are pretty much all we know about him…maybe they actually broke up because she voted for Trump and he was a die hard Hillary supporter).

Here, again, we’re with Sully and (to a lesser extent given he’s never met Elena and hasn’t seen Nathan in 15 years) Sam: WE find it obvious that he should just freaking call his wife, but we don’t know what their relationship is like from the inside. Only they know, and sometimes what looks like a great relationship to an outside observer can be a toxic mess.

Maybe he’s right to lie! Maybe it’s the only way he can keep himself safe from her terrifying rage!

I do think that this “there are probably good reasons we don’t know about” excuse is cutting the game a bit more slack than it really deserves, though. I mean, you KNOW that what we have to go on is only what you’ve shown us. You know this is a work of fiction and by convention, we trust you to show us the important things and leave out the stuff that doesn’t matter to the story. If you don’t show us a good reason to lie to Elena, it’s not really fair to expect us to just assume there is one.

The main conclusion I draw is that they don’t actually think the reason is important enough to show, which is fine if we’re going with “this is an action game, story is just an excuse to get to the shooting” but which is a little disappointing if you’re looking for a bit more than that from the story.

It’s not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, it’s just kind of unsatisfying to me from a character development standpoint.

Anyway…Nadine. Yeah. I also had those mixed feelings about that fight. I mean, yes, she’s a total badass, and that’s cool. But also yes, that was a fight we couldn’t win. We got beaten up by a woman, so that’s a sign that woman can be super tough–but we couldn’t have beaten up that woman, so is the game saying women have to be protected from a “fair” fight? (Not that there’s anything fair about a fight where one person can come back from the dead unlimited times until they finally win…)

I think this might be something the game couldn’t really win on: whatever they do, nitpicky people like us can ask these questions.

And in the end, I asked myself if the scene would have been significantly different if Nadine were a man, and I’m not sure it would have. There’s a long tradition of major opponents being unbeatable in early fights to show how tough they are. If a man had beaten up Nathan and thrown him out a window, the story could have proceeded exactly the same way. (And props to Nathan for not getting all wounded male pride and freaking out about being beaten by a woman: in his mind, apparently, she was tougher/better prepared than him and that’s all that matters).

Any stray thoughts about how Nathan and Nadine are almost the same name? Is she a kind of mirror version of him, with all the danger-seeking genes but more of an inclination to work with/command others?

Butch:

And this is so rare. We’re ALWAYS on the PC’s side, right? We ARE the PC! But no, not this time.

And the friends aren’t the stock “Hey, man, let’s go be men and ditch the ladies” either. Hell, here they are, smoking and drinking and heisting, and what are they doing? Saying “Call your wife.”

But man, don’t even joke on this election. We do this to get away from reality, man.

It was interesting that Sully said exactly what I said: “She’s been through all this with you and you still don’t trust her?” I was like, “Hey, Sully, way to read the blog!” Sully gets it! Sully knows she’s bad ass.

As to what it says on Drake’s character development…Hmm. I’m tending to think that it is just a reflection on Drake’s selfishness. We had some of this going on in 3, the whole “Why are you DOING this?” questioning. The ideas that all these adventures are really just about his pride, something in him, in his personality. We get a sense he likes having walls. He doesn’t want her to be a part of this, and that’s that. There’s no other reason, except the ones he has in his head.

I do find it interesting (and maybe this is because they changed writers) that we still don’t know what happened to them the first time.

The Nadine fight was strange in that regard (women/villains…). Especially when it dawned on me that I couldn’t die, or couldn’t win. I really was trying to both win and not die, but about two thirds of the way through I figured it out, and then it felt kinda cheap. It was both “protecting” Nadine, but it was also avoiding the inevitable ending of Drake winning, that is, standing victorious over the knocked out woman. I mean, that’s an image one doesn’t see much, for all sorts of reasons, and making this fight predetermined, they pooched out of having to show it.

And that scene, yes, would’ve been the same. Now, I suppose you know and I’ll find out if there’s gonna be a scene without a predetermined outcome later on, because, as you say, the whole “You’re gonna get beat by this strong baddie early” thing is usually followed by “You’re gonna kill said baddie much later in the game.” Right?

We’ll talk. Later.

Their names: Hmm. Didn’t notice that. She is a bit of a mirror, but also younger. I mean, this game has Nathan and Sully get on in years. She and Raef are younger versions, the next versions. The young badass and the young dude in the suit. (Well, Raef is the same age as Drake, but I’m comparing him to Sully here.) Maybe a dynamic of the old guard trying to hang on for one more score when the new guard is trying to take over? Tale as old as time, that.

Feminina:

Ah, so your take is that there IS no good reason for the lie (and that’s why they didn’t show it to us) and that Nathan is really just a doofus. I could get behind that.

It is true, though, that they’ve actually broken up twice before, between 1 and 2 and between 2 and 3, so there’s got to be something going on. Maybe it was the fact that he keeps freaking lying to her!

Anyway, we’re agreed with Sully and Sam that he’s being a doofus.

New blood taking over IS a classic story, and Nadine is new blood…Rafe not so much, since he was already involved with Sam and Nathan when they were first in that prison, and that was 15 years ago–but as you said, it’s true if we make him the Sully figure to Nadine’s Nathan/Sam.

Though it’s also interesting that both Rafe and Nadine have inherited their fortunes (a bunch of money, a private army). The brothers Drake have only inherited a name, which they actually stole. So maybe it’s an insiders/outsiders thing.

Lots of classic stories!

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We Demand More Heists and Parties!

Tags

combat, Grim Fandango, making games, mechanics, story, Uncharted

Very minor spoilers for the heist-y bit of Uncharted 4 (spoiler: there’s a heist-y bit in Uncharted 4!)

Butch:

Ok, Sam just grabbed the cross and I’m back outside.

Everything about that level made me smile. That was just shameless make you smile gaming. Wonderfully done, smile gaming. I got nothing on deep themes, and I don’t care. That was tense, fun, and made the player feel supercool.

As for tense, it’s pretty amazing that, after playing 3+ of these in a row, it still doesn’t get through my irrational head that shit isn’t timed. I know full well that (with a couple exceptions) that I’m going to have time to find the thing I’ll need to smash open the door. And yet, as I hear the bidding, and Sully going “C’mon, kid” I FEEL like I need to go go go. And I KNOW I don’t!

Can we agree Sully is pretty much totally awesome?

Feminina:

It was a good “I am so cool” level. A fun change from the shooty action. Games should have more fancy dress balls and more clever heists.

There’s a heist in the Witcher 3 Hearts of Stone expansion! Just FYI. Also a fancy dress auction that’s basically a ball. Also gwent.

I often feel the need to hurry even when I don’t really need to hurry, too. A sign of engagement with the story, in which some sense of urgency is certainly warranted.

I like to internally argue that even when I don’t hurry in a situation where urgency is warranted (say, an auction is about to start), it’s because I’m really hurrying all the time. I mean, it takes me 30 seconds to dash down that side tunnel and look for treasure. I am FAST. Even when I’m not in a hurry I’m running (unless I’m playing some nameless game with no possible option to sprint or move faster in any way or with any button…hey, did you ever finish Grim Fandango?), so that allows me to save up some time which I can then spend on exploring even if the clock is ticking. It’s almost like logic, this argument.

Butch:

Man, they so should have more heists. What is it about heists that are inherently cool? We should not think they are inherently cool. We are moral people, we are. Good people. Parents who are teaching our children well. Heists are, by definition, stealing, something we do not condone.

But they’re SO COOL. I’ve always been a sucker for a good heist.

As for the Witcher 3 expansions: Sold. I want to do those very much. Need to play. MUST. PLAY.

The unwarranted sense of urgency is a good sign of engagement. But it’s interesting that ND doesn’t see the need to put an actual gameplay element in there. I don’t think you could fail. I wonder what would have happened if we just sat there a while. Would we have failed? I doubt it. The only two times I think there was a fail point on time, that I’ve seen, was sliding down the bridge trying to shoot the yeti off Chloe, and shooting Talbot when he was trying to kill Sully (cuz I failed at each once). But things like breaking out of prison? I don’t think so. Other games, Assassin’s Creed comes to mind, you would have failed if you waited too long. Started over. The rush was from actual gameplay. I like ND’s way better. But you have to trust your own storytelling.

So you’re sprinting in games with no sprint button, but never finished Grim Fandango.

Your input is kaput.

I’ve given up on treasures. And there seem to be things called “journal entries” (cuz there’s a trophy for them) and I have not a one.

Feminina:

Hey, heists are (at least potentially, depending on how it all shakes out) more moral than all the casual murdering we do in video games. We’re trying to be BETTER people, by taking our criminal activities down a notch.

I think heists are cool because they are (at least in movies/games/books) clever and complicated, and we like to watch clever, complicated plans unfold. Perhaps that’s why they’re less common in games than the pure action of casual murder…I imagine it’s tough to

a) write a clever complicated heist in the first place, and

b) render it in game terms so that it engages the player.

Tougher, at any rate, than it is to write another shoot-fest in a cool environment. (Not dissing a shoot-fest in a cool environment. I dig those too.)

A lot of the action of a heist story is the kind of trying-not-to-be-noticed stuff–sneaking around, looking at plans, stealing preliminary pieces, talking out the details with colleagues, hacking safes, whatever–that can be a lot of fun, but doesn’t have the immediate “I’m IN this action” hook of a combat sequence. I personally love that change of pace, but I can see it being a lot of work, and in some games it probably seems like too much effort for a somewhat iffy return (what if people hate the sneaking?).

Also, and perhaps more to the point, I think there’s a way that the player can feel responsible for the action in combat–I just shot that dude!–that we can’t feel responsible for the planning involved in a heist. There’s all this intellectual work that goes into a heist that has to be basically exposition, and as you were just saying recently, good exposition is hard. The game can’t ask the player to actually come up with a whole clever heist plan on their own: that would require way too much information about all the variables in the environment, and honestly a lot of people would find it frustrating and give up. Most critically, it would no longer be an action game, it would be a heist-planning puzzle game (which could be fun, but would not be Uncharted).

So the game has to give us the plan already formed (and thus something we don’t automatically care about since we weren’t involved in it even though our character was), and then somehow engage us in carrying it out, even when the steps involved in carrying it out are less immediately involving than they would be if we had a simpler “go place, fight dudes” mission. Writing a clever heist that has enough meaningful things for the player to do that the player feels involved in the heist story is probably tough.

Therefore, very fun when you do see it.

And hey, DID you get around to finishing Grim Fandango? Because you should totally have written a thoughtful exploration of it for the blog. You’re falling down on the job.

Butch:

Fair point re: heists and morality.

But remember, I started out earlier in gaming, when things were not quite as criminal. I mean, Frogger was basically jaywalking and Pac Man was, at best, gluttony, which is just a sin, not a crime.

I’m coming full circle.

As for making an all-heist game, it wouldn’t be Uncharted, no, but it can be done. Witcher contracts were something similar. It wasn’t just Geralt going “Hmm….now I’ll say out loud that I should use strong attacks and moon dust, and now I’ll let whoever is controlling me do it.” The player had to do some stuff. Not really elaborate stuff, but we gotta start somewhere.

It is fun when you see it, and it works. And it ALWAYS helps when you’re doing it with supercool dudes. All heist dudes are supercool. I was thinking of “The Sting,” with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, and realized you don’t have to squint all that much to see Paul Newman in Sully. And he was cool. Made great salad dressing, too.

It’s funny we’re talking on this and players giving up because I did hear that Naughty Dog took some shit on the webs from fans who were complaining that it didn’t get “gamey” fast enough. I mentioned back in 3 that we went a whole 9% before getting a gun and shooting all sorts of shit and that was a long time in game land. Here, I don’t know exactly, but it’s more than 9% (no percentage clock, boo) and STILL no prolonged shooty shooty. Some people didn’t dig that. ND’s reaction was to shrug, point at the reviews and sales numbers, and move on.

Though it is interesting, the placement. I mean, narrative is narrative, and this fits, so hooray. But usually the ball/party/heist/thing that isn’t combat isn’t so soon. It’s in the second or third act. Usually second. DAI? TW3? We had killed all SORTS of shit before we went to the ball. Indeed, those balls were similar to the “You’re weak now” moments we’ve talked about in games, that come in the second or third act. Pretty unique to see it in the first act. And unique, as always, pisses off some people.

But screw ’em, they’re wrong, we’re right.

Of COURSE I finished Grim Fandango. Quickly, as I sprinted the whole time. And I’m NOT going to explain it, because someday you WILL play it.

Feminina:

It’s true, Sully IS Paul Newman! I don’t know how I never noticed it before. I guess I just haven’t seen any Paul Newman vehicles in a while (although I do drink his green tea), so he’s not at the front of my mind.

This whole game felt a bit less shooty than the others. Fine by me since I like all the other stuff they did instead, but I can see it being a bit disconcerting for people expecting more straight up murdering action. I really enjoyed the sneaking and pocket picking and so on, though, so I barely missed the firefights (of which there are still plenty).

Dude, I don’t need you to explain Grim Fandango to ME. That ship has sailed. I’ve moved on. Sprinted, even. You just should have given our faithful readers a few pithy thoughts on its narrative or sprinting power or whatever. They were counting on you, after my abject failure.

Butch:

Sully = Newman. I mean, once you see it, you see it.

This game WAS probably tough for those wanting more straight up murdering, and fewer cutscenes. I mean, ND does love it some cutscenes. Some people don’t like them. I like them. But there are long phases of this where you can pretty much put the controller down.

One thing about them, they’ve done an amazing job of transitioning out of the cutscenes. Amazing editing. There’s none of that flicker of black screen and a jump cut we’re so used to. It’s nice.

For Grim Fandango…The moment is lost. Most of them have probably already played it. It was before your time. They understand.

I’ll just say: It ended with a kiss. How is that possible? They don’t have lips.

There’s your pithy.

Feminina:

Lipless kissing. Pithy, thought-provoking, faintly disturbing…see, that’s all we needed!

They did do a good job with the transitions. There were moments when I wasn’t sure if I needed to start doing something or not, so Drake would just stand there pondering for a bit until I caught on.

Although he does tend to fall into his little slightly crouched action stance once you have the controller, which is a helpful hint.

Oh, speaking of this, you mentioned the occasional dialogue choices a bit ago and then we lost that thread…I like them OK, although I suspect that they’re a bit of a “give the player something to do in this long cutscene” tactic. They do give you a little bit of a choice to find out more about the characters or just move on, but they clearly don’t have any impact on the course or outcome of the game. I’m basically neutral–they were fine. Not necessary, not a bad addition.

Butch:

You asked for the pithy, dude. I can’t be responsible for the disturbing.

If I remember correctly, The Last of Us had some if those “hey wake up! People worked hard on this cutscene” moments. Which is sort of ok, but, in the end, unnecessary.

Though important. For some reason, this game doesn’t, in the main menu, give you the chance to replay cutscenes. I had that in the first three and it was handy.

How else am I going to get good pics of Chloe?

Feminina:

This is probably why there’s no Chloe in this one. They couldn’t break your heart.

I also kind of wanted a “replay chapter” button so I could go back and look for treasures I missed, but oh well.

Butch:

Nah. There’s no Chloe cuz they know I’d abandon the story and spend hours picking her pocket.

If you know what I mean.

Feminina:

Cue Marge Simpson: I don’t, but I loved hearing it!

I’ll Just Play ‘Crash Bandicoot’

Tags

character, gender, loot, plot, romance, Uncharted

Spoilers for early-game story of Uncharted 4

Butch:

Dude, I take it back, I love Pokemon Go!  And now we’ll talk about character, setting, gameplay…….

Oh, wait, shit.  I left some sentences out of that and it became misleading.  Silly me.  I apologize.  Let’s try that again.

Dude, I take it back, I love Pokemon Go!  Why, you ask?  Well, last night, after Baby and Middle Child McP were asleep, that’s usually the time where I have to calm Butch Jr. down, make sure he’s not fighting with Mrs. McP, make dinner, do chores, do all sorts of crazy shit, etc.  But LAST night I said to them “Hey guys.  Why don’t you guys go for a walk? Check out that Pokestop? You’ll get some exercise, have some quality time.  It’ll be great.”  And off they went!  And they had all sorts of fun.  And Mrs. McP burned enough calories that we could have rum drinks later on! 

And while they were doing that, I played Uncharted.  And now we’ll talk about character, setting, gameplay……..

There.  That’s better.  That’s really how it went. 

So, busted out of prison, lied to Elena, took off to Italy, met Sully, picked a pocket, met Nadine, now I’m looking for a waiter.

I’ll go in order.

1) Liked the breakout a lot. I mean, it was ALSO a nice little line blur: I remembered the layout…some….but I still got turned around a couple of times. Much like, oh, I don’t know, someone who had done it, studied it for real 15 years ago. Sam probably would have been like “Yeah, that’s it, there’s the rail, and the ladder is, fuck where’s the ladder, is it THERE it is!” and I was the same way. NICELY done.

And I like that the big ol’ baddie isn’t a) after Nathan and b) isn’t trying to find the thing himself. Nice twist. He’s more of a specter.

2) Lying to Elena sort of sucked. I felt bad. But cool that there was a whole chapter called “The Malaysia job” and it turns out all that is is an excuse to do the real game.

3) Sully you dashing rascal. We need more cool grey haired dudes in games. And balls. This setting is fucking awesome.

4) If there’s gonna be a game mechanic that makes me stare at asses put Chloe in it, not some waiter.

5) Nadine, huh? The fact that she seems to be the anti-Evil Helen Mirren yet still British and very probably evil makes me think this is the bad guy you mentioned back when we were talking on women bad guys. She’s gonna be an important character, yes?

6) If you ever find yourself waiting tables at a big fancy gala with crooks and stuff that crooks might want to steal, never, EVER get separated from the pack. No good will come of it.

Feminina:

Yay! Excellent progress.

That does sound like something that’s fun to do with kids, and while getting some exercise. Maybe I’ll have to buy a new phone and do it with O’Jr.

I also liked the way “The Malaysia Job’ was actually just set-up. Also the way that whole underwater expedition turned out to be a boring salvage job on a murky river. It was kind of a “work/life is what you make it” moment…because when we first get to that scene we don’t know where we are (could reasonably be Malaysia given the chapter title we just saw), and the water looks all blue and mysterious, we’re hunting for some mysterious lost thing…it completely fits with his previous life of adventure, and so when we find out it was just a blah job in a blah river, it’s kind of both a slap in the face (THIS is what the great Nathan Drake is reduced to?) and a suggestion that it’s possible to have fun with your work even if it’s not some wild adventure.

We don’t know, when he first comes up, whether Nathan is really satisfied with his life or not, and the way the scene opens gives us a way to think he could be. Hell, I almost wanted to take up salvaging myself after that–it looks so exciting!

It also prompts interesting comparisons with his usual activities. All the adventures we’ve been on with him before have been, in practical terms, the same kind of work/gameplay…only now he’s not getting shot at, and the pay is more reliable. It’s not particularly clear that he’s in the wrong place now, which makes his hesitation at taking the actual Malaysia job, or joining Sam when he shows up, seem a bit more poignant. I mean, yeah, we can also see that he misses the adventure (he’s clearly an adrenaline junkie, plus he probably misses all the casual murdering), but it’s also clear that he knows staying is a smarter choice, and it’s not TERRIBLE for him, so his being torn feels very real.

Nadine–yes, we will talk more about Nadine. Not because of any outrageous treatment or behavior of the character, so don’t think you have to be watching for something egregious to happen, but just because as a female character and a black character, neither of which are common in this series, she’s worth noticing.

Speaking of female characters, I did kind of feel that the whole lying-to-Elena bit was…meh. I mean, the whole setup is a trope (retired something pulled back in for one last job, deceiving the loving-but-disapproving spouse to do it), but that part FELT way trope-ier to me. As I said above, I thought they did a good job with the familiar retired-almost-satisfied-dude-now-has-to-go-back-for-one-last-job story: it had some genuine meaning and heart because you really see both the good and bad of his current mundane life.

I didn’t think they did nearly as good a job making it make sense for him to feel he had to follow the lie-to-your-wife-and-sneak-off part of that story. The very fact that they’ve done a pretty good job up to now making Elena a real and well-developed character makes it feel implausible that he would believe he couldn’t tell her about this. She’s adventured with him repeatedly and always held her own! She’s actively encouraging him to take more interesting jobs! She’s plainly not the stick-in-the-mud boring housewife you often see in this story, whose main purpose is to sit around worrying about her reckless husband, and yet that’s kind of what the game turns her into at this point.

I guess at least she can play Crash Bandicoot while she does it.

That aside, I liked the castle setting, liked all the climbing, liked the dashing Sully (it’s cool that they’ve made the characters visibly older), and liked the ball (it’s like we always say: more games should have a ball scene). Beautiful settings.

Are you finding treasures? I kind of liked the way they have that list in this one, but on the other hand it did just taunt me with all the ones I missed. “Damn it, there must have been another one under the water, and now I can’t go back!” Ah well. Finding all the treasures has always been a hopeless goal for me.

Butch:

Thank you, thank you. Good to be healthy again.

But no no no.  Make MR. O’ do Pokemon with O’Jr., so you can play with the PS4. 

I have taught you nothing with my story.

I thought it was Malaysia. I suckered. I mean, that was the title of the chapter. And in the end “It’s copper,” and the response “Hey, you get good money for that!” Is it treasure? Drake thinks not, but the other guy does. All relative.

That and the way the dude who WANTS him to the job is set up. I really thought that dude was going to be a major character, the boat captain or some shit. But now I think that’s that for him. Maybe not. But probably.

It does make you wonder. Very well written, very well acted. I also bought that it broke HIS heart to lie to Elena. He did not do that casually. It made one think a little harder about why, in 3, we know whatever they had in the first place fell apart. Perhaps he’s not only being dragged back into stealing, but being dragged back into being a dick to Elena. I got that he was choosing between her and Sam, and he thought it was a shitty choice, and he’s not at all sure he did the right thing.

As for the adrenaline, I thought it was interesting that through the whole scuba scene, he keeps getting reminded that he’s almost out of air. Then he says “Don’t drop it on me.” I felt myself kind of rushing (“Is this level timed?” and rushing out from under the truck (“Is going to fall? Be a QTE?”) even though there was never any danger. He made it, for him and the player, far more “dangerous” than it was. Here’s me being all on my toes, when, really, it was just a chore.

But as for the Elena-housewife thing, again, we have that gap where they were fighting. We also have him, repeatedly, protecting her, or trying to. Wanting to quit in 1, telling her to take the jeep in 3, etc. So his lying to protect her, even if, or ESPECIALLY if she doesn’t need protecting is still part of a larger pattern. He still doesn’t get it.

We also know he has lied, by omission, to her the whole time. He says to Sam “Come to dinner! Meet her! I can tell her all about you!” which implies he hasn’t. As there may well be some history of lying (see broken engagement in 3), perhaps what he really wants to hide isn’t the fact he’s going adventuring/stealing, but that he’s kept this very, very important thing to himself despite the fact they’re married and have been through so much together. He’s avoiding the awkward of saying “Honey, yeah….uh….so I have this brother…..”

As for the ball: such graphics. And the throwaway “Of course they play douchey Euro techno music” was great.

Heroes go to balls to mock them.

As I, too, am mocked by the question marks. But I do like how they used treasures early on. The first one I found was right at the start of the scuba chapter, and it was pretty obvious, which reinforced the whole “And now we’re finding the cool shit!” aspect of that level, which was a fake out.

And did you find the one on the salvage boat? It was “Antique arcade token,” a rusted piece of worthlessness. Like “Here’s where we are now. This is treasure.”

Good on ya, game, for making silly pointless collectibles have at least some point.

Games Within Games

Tags

mechanics, story, Uncharted

Some spoilers for the beginning of Uncharted 4

Butch:

Well. That was some exposition, wasn’t it?

I’m up to the bit where Sam is about to break out of prison.

Well then.

I gotta digest. But that was a HELL of a way to exposit, fill in the plot of old games, have a meta video game session with Naughty Dog’s first game (Seriously, that’s a ND game), show his longing (Nerf guns? Really? REALLY?) AND show Elena’s (she WANTS him and HER back in, in a callback to other games).

REALLY?

DAMN these guys are good.

Sorry Amy Henning. They’re better writers.

Feminina:

Ha! I did not know Crash Bandicoot was a Naughty Dog game. Makes sense, I guess: why not throw your own old game into your new game? That’s kind of awesome.

It made me wonder about the time frame for a bit–was that game supposed to be current technology?–but they have modern-looking cell phones, so I think Elena must just be into vintage games. And it’s kind of funny that they occasionally revert to the forward-view, pull-the-stick-toward-you move, as we’ve discussed before. It feels so odd and disconcerting in the context of the rest of UC, but it’s their own roots, in a way.

So the awareness meter showed up with the nun? (Apparently, I put maximum points into nun-avoidance, since I don’t remember this. I was a soundless wisp of smoke to her! Much like the smoke from her cigarettes, before I crept out the window she opened.) OK, that eliminates even the vague story-based explanation that it was a skill he’s learned with long adventuring practice. Oh well. We’ll just have to go with “this is a new mechanic they introduced in this game.” Boring, but extremely plausible.

It was a good summary of where they are right now, all right.

Butch:

Sometimes it’s just gameplay. T SHIRT!

A brilliant summary. And one that put you in Drake’s shoes so well. You got his own emotional state, and you did it with line blurring.

I mean, look at the progression. You get the facts from all the artifacts you pick up. Then you play nerf guns. When does nerf guns stop? When you, the player GET TIRED OF IT. When you, the player, are ready to go down to dinner (which you know you’re going to do because you hear Elena before you start the nerf gun bit). But then, when you’re down there, when things have been quiet, when you’ve poked your head into bathrooms with nothing in them, the game has you, and Drake, looking at that picture. And you BOTH know there’s more.

And then what does the game do? It puts a fucking GAME CONTROLLER in DRAKE’S hand! Sure, you’ve played nerf guns, you’ve gotten tired of it. You SHOULD be eating dinner, right? But the game says “C’mon….pick up the controller again….” and soon YOU’RE smiling, and YOU’RE thinking “ok…maybe just a little while longer…..” not because Drake picked up a gun, but because Drake picked up a controller. YOU want more. YOU want back in. YOU realize you’re not tired of it just yet. YOU keep playing. And, maybe not consciously, but in the back of your mind, you know exactly what’s going on in Drake’s head.

That’s just fucking brilliant.

I mean, the great artists use their craft to make points and make us feel in ways we don’t sometimes notice. Anyone can throw around a big metaphor. We learn that shit in high school. But only the greats can use their art so subtly.

I don’t like saying, in any medium, that one thing is the best ever. Too hard to compare. But I will say that, at least right now, based on their work, that Naughty Dog is the best in the business at using games in ways that only games can work. We’ve talked about how games can do things that no other medium can do, and ND is SO far ahead of the curve on that that they’re leaving the rest of everyone else behind.

Feminina:

I love your breakdown of the exposition, particularly when Drake starts playing the video game–it’s fascinating because that was not entirely my experience. Rather than being drawn in and thinking “I’ll play just a little more,” I couldn’t WAIT to get out of the Crash Bandicoot screen.

It was kind of like “this is not the game I want to be playing, so I need to get back to the game I do want to be playing ASAP.” I didn’t hate that the old game was there, I thought it was kind of a fun touch, and I was willing to give it the three shots it required, but once that was done I was out. (Largely, no doubt, because I was terrible at it.) I was in no way inspired to keep ‘playing’–though I was, of course, deeply interested in playing.

So you’re all noticing that cool line blurring and I was more noticing:

1) the slightly amusing irony of Drake, who points out that he does a lot of running and jumping, being terrible at a game of running and jumping;

2) the other line blurring of me the player being terrible at one game of running and jumping, but OK at another one, and wanting very much to get out of the ‘game’ game and into the ‘real’ game.

“Enough of this pretending to run and jump! Let me at some REAL pretending to run and jump!”

Which says, perhaps, that it’s all about graphics and story, and does really point out that players of games have little call to be feelin’ all superior to one another based on which specific games they play.

Butch:

Oh no, I didn’t want to play that either. More like I was ready to stop playing UC4, but that scene was so fascinating that I changed my mind and played the rest of the chapter (and then some). Maybe the moment of line blurring was more looking at the picture with him, THEN the game.

I was pulled back into the idea of going to Malaysia/jungles/wherever in that scene. As was he.

And yeah, that Elena was a trash talking video gamer was exceptionally awesome. They have fun, they do.

But no, it was a bigger picture idea of the exposition.

Feminina:

Ah, I see. Well, as long as I’m not the only one who’s terrible at Crash Bandicoot.

Maybe I didn’t notice that big picture stuff as much because I was not just about to quit for the night when I played this bit–I had pretty much just started. So that “pulling you in for just a little more” wasn’t quite as dramatic since I had every intention of playing more.

 

Moving Right Along to the Next Adventure

Tags

DLC, mechanics, story, The Witcher 3, Uncharted

Some spoilers for the beginning of Uncharted 4 and the Witcher 3 expansion Blood and Wine

Butch:

Hooray! We have something to talk about! I mean, besides all the experiences we’ve shared being friends for 20 years….our kids….that sort of thing.

So I drove a boat, was a kid, was in prison (nice transition), climbed a tower, solved a puzzle, I’m in a pirate’s cell.

Not too shabby.

Initial thoughts:

1) WHERE’S CHLOE???? (kidding) Let’s try that again.

1) It really is a gorgeous game, isn’t it? When you mentioned that, I must admit I was thinking “Well, she just played three games on the PS3, maybe she’s just adjusting back to pretty current gen graphics” but no, it really is that gorgeous. The detail? Adding sprinklers in the dorm room? The dust in the lights? Just that motorcycle! Damn, man.

2) So the first three, if you squinted, you could see that these were the guys who did TLOU. Don’t have to squint anymore, do we? MAN this looks, plays, feels like The Last Of Us. Especially in the orphanage, I kept expecting a clicker to jump out. Indeed, I was so in that groove that I thought, when that nun kept catching me, that I had to find a bottle or something to distract her like she WAS a clicker. Old habits die hard. (Not a nun joke. Ha.) Maybe it’s just a reaction to the little circle/triangle prompts to interact, but I think it’s more than that. The way cutscenes are blocked? The sound on them? (They get ambient noises like footsteps in cutscenes SO right. It’s the little things) I dunno. But holy cow, this is the same dudes.

3) I like the rope mechanic, I do, (I can just see little Nathan: “WAAAAAA! Lara gets cool rope arrows! Why don’t I get a rope? I WANNA ROPE!”) but I’m hoping, though not expecting, that the button prompt goes away after the tutorial bits. I’m not so into the button prompts. Lara didn’t need button prompts. She let the player just find nice convenient rope coils. The button prompts seem intrusive.

On that, I don’t think we need the little tiny circle that floats in space above things you can interact with. Same beef. Sure, I get they want you to find these things, cuz plot, but dudes. Trust your players. The last three games did.

4) One always gets nervous when a series, in any medium, introduces an important character that’s “been there all along” in the fourth installment. It induces eye rolls, it does. I’m giving this the benefit of the doubt, because they’re handling it ok so far, but I’m not 100% sold yet. I reserve the right to roll my eyes.

Ok, we can start there.

Feminina:

Hooray!

Alas, no Chloe. But yes, it’s a good-looking game. They’re still slacking a bit on the hair, but otherwise it looks pretty amazing. Lovely details, beautiful lighting. A pleasure to just wander around settings. I was particularly taken with the transitions from light areas to dark and vice versa…when you come out into sunlight from underground, or the opposite, it goes briefly white/black as if you’re momentarily blinded. Not for long, or too dramatically: just a nice touch.

There were definitely parts of this that felt very TLOU. I never got caught by the nun (one of my areas of expertise in games, in addition to staircases, is nun-evasion), but the stealth bits there were reminiscent. It would have been kind of awesome if you really could have distracted her with a thrown bottle.

On that, I quite liked being kid Nathan again, and the flashback was kind of a clever way of making us FEEL as though we’d known about Sam for a long time, even though this is actually the first we’ve heard of him. I tried to work out where this is in terms of his age, compared to the flashback in 3 where he met Sully. He must be younger, but by how much? The two kids don’t seem all that far apart in age, so what’s the chronology here?

I like the rope bits as well, but I have to disappoint you with the news that the R2 (L2? Was that it? This is how quickly I forget) prompt never does go away. It becomes a bit of a QTE at certain points, when you have to pick just the right moment to throw your hook, but otherwise it just kind of handholds for you the whole game.

I was also a little dubious about this late stage introduction of a brother we’d never heard of, but in the end I think it worked reasonably well. We’ll obviously talk later.

Meanwhile, I played some more witcher expansion, gradually getting the hang of combat and inventory again. So far so good. A decent basic main story hook, a bunch of side quests, an innkeeper with a whole bunch of gwent cards…oh, wait, that was you getting excited, not me. Anyway, looks like a good few weeks.

I’ve missed looting everything in sight. Broken oars! Mugs! A pile of gold coins left in an outhouse!

A guy who comes in and pees while you’re looting the outhouse! Ah, witcherverse, it’s good to be back.

Butch:

We talked on this when we played TW3, but MAN have games improved with the use of light. I mean, sunsets in that. Now, the way light comes into a room, or reflects off a car, or or or. Graphics for so long have focused on pixels and making things look real. Now, it seems that light and bad hair looks “realer” than flat light and good hair. Who knew?

I got caught twice (she leads you back to bed by the ear as it fades out, funny way to “die”), which is what made me think there was a trick or something else to learn. Like “Is this like the ‘how to throw things’ bit?”

Timewise, this has to be before. One figures that, after 3, he was with, or mostly with, Sully. In fact, there’s some banter with Sully where Nathan mentions that they got into jail soon after meeting up.

The prompt stays? Crap. I already had one such QTE, where I was sliding and had to chuck the thing when I got to the bottom of the slide before falling. Oh, well. Modern games, man. I hope RotTR doesn’t go that way.

One immersion breaker I kinda do like is the “detection meter” or whatever, that tells you how noticed you are, a la AC. Stealth was SUCH a bitch (how many “kill a couple then get seen and shoot 248” fights were there?) that this is a nice change. Indeed, it saved me from a nun in the end.

Also, it’s L1. Memory. We’re screwed when I play Life is Strange.

Witcher loot! Huzzah! Yeah, I do miss it. And it feels pretty “new game” like, right? Like, not just tacked onto a story that ended? It has its own story, yes?

And you played the first expansion, right?

While you had me at “new gwent cards,” this sounds like a must play.

Feminina:

I’ll take bad hair/good light. Hair isn’t everything, after all.

The awareness meter…yeah, this game reminded me more of Assassin’s Creed than previous ones (which felt similar mainly in the climbing mechanics and puzzles). That “someone is going to notice you” warning was not particularly realistic, but certainly handy. (I guess he’s been doing this sort of thing for so long that he just got a sixth sense for when he’s attracted unwanted attention? Which he then…forgot about for three games…and then remembered again…or did it come up in the kid flashback? I can’t remember. Maybe he’s only gained it after three adventures.)

In my defense, the which-button-does-what mechanics, while important, are not what we send most of our time discussing. If I can remember a few key plot points, we’ll still be good to go. Because there’s the internet!

The witcher expansion definitely feels like a whole game. A small game, compared to the main event, but a self-contained adventure with its own side plots and treasures, and of course a new crafter who can make grandmaster witcher gear, just to give us some new weapons and armor to which we can aspire. Potions too, I think.

Must…have…more…potions…

I played the first expansion (Hearts of Stone) and thought it was quite good. In terms of the main game, it feels basically like a “OK, we saved the world, but there are still all these monsters and a witcher’s still gotta make a living” kind of thing. It fit into the main game well, because that’s kind of how we left Geralt…doing his thing. And there’s no reason he can’t have more interesting adventures!

The story in Hearts of Stone was, I thought, very interesting. Good game. I haven’t gotten far enough into Blood and Wine to judge, but I have high hopes.

Butch:

The awareness meter did already come up. With the nun.

It is odd, but the noticing meter was so unpredictable and sensitive in previous games that I welcome it. If they want me to stealth, they gotta throw me a bone here.

As for the harassment about buttons…It’s because I still don’t forgive you for Grim Fandango.

I have high hopes for anything CDPR does. Yes, they’ve only done three games (and a couple expansions) but DAMN. They’re pretty much on my bioware list: They make it, I play it until further notice.

Useful Tip About Expansions

Tags

The Witcher 3, Uncharted

Spoiler: the tip is, you should make sure you remember how to play the original game. 

Butch:

I got nothing. It was hot, Mrs. McP came home early, had to cook, team got out to a big lead…..

But tonight, no game, no Mrs. McP, not as hot. Today! Today treasures! Hotties! That sort of thing!

There are hotties, yes? At least one?

Feminina:

I also got nothing.

Just…laundry and dishes and diapers and it’s hot and so forth.

Well, OK, I got about 15 minutes on Blood and Wine, stumbling around trying to remember how combat works, and then ran into a giant (a plot giant, not a wandering monster giant) and couldn’t get my thumbs into fighting shape to avoid getting repeatedly smashed, and those endless load screens after you die are still a thing, so I called it a night.

Valuable lesson I have learned: probably before you leap right into the expansion, you should wander around the map a bit and fight a few unimportant wandering monsters to get the hang of things again. Otherwise you’ll wind up like me, locked in combat with a significant monster and unable to remember how to equip bombs and potions, which might come in handy. Although they did slightly modify the inventory screen for the better!–now you’ve got separate columns for bombs, potions and oils, all neatly sorted out.

The graphics are different, too. Not in the game itself, but the inventory/character screens.

Butch:

Oh, shit, forgot the load screens. That’s another thing Uncharted has going for it. Right back into the action when you die.

Good tip. I’ve never played an expansion, so that’s never come up. I can see it, though. Keep trying to go into VATS and throw grenades.

I know they’ve been patching the hell out of it. CDPR can’t leave anything alone.

You know…..this gives you another opportunity to……

GET INTO GWENT!

Just sayin’.

Feminina:

Ah, gwent. You know, maybe I WILL…no. No, I will not.

I won every damn horse race in the main game, but I will not do boxing matches, and I will not play gwent.

Oh, and as for hotties, well, there’s…I don’t know if I should even tell you this.

Butch:

Tell me! Tell me!!!!!!

Feminina:

Um…there’s no Chloe. I’m sorry.

Butch:

Elena will have to do.

Can’t win them all.

Concise Pokemon Go Summary (Scroll Down)

Tags

location, Pokemon Go

No spoilers, unless you’ve never heard of Pokemon Go and never want to

Butch:

Caved and got Pokemon go. Now you have to. For the blog. And to keep me sane.

Feminina:

I would, but my phone is like “nope.” I tried! Not enough space. I’d delete something to make room, but all the memory-hogging stuff is locked in. There are about 10 things I never use but can’t get rid of. Google News, Google Music, etc. I suppose it’s what you get with Android. And a crappy phone.

I totally will when I get a new phone. Honest.

Butch:

Try uploading all your pictures and shit to the cloud. I was down to about 2Kb until I did that, and BOOM. Memory.

Cuz I need you on this one, Femmy.

Feminina:

I deleted all my photos (don’t have music or ringtones or any of that), and still don’t even have the memory to install recommended updates to all the stupid apps I can’t get rid of. My phone kind of sucks.

Butch:

I’ll say. You must be due for a free upgrade or five.

Feminina:

I don’t have one of them fancy ‘plans,’ so I don’t get your high-falutin’ ‘upgrades.’ I have the stupidest smartphone out there, for $35/month, no contract.

It’s basic, man.

Butch:

Fine. Here’s your bloggage on Pokemon go: This is the most batshit thing in the history of batshit things.

Sums it up.

Feminina:

A nice, concise summary. I’m going with that.

Butch:

I know I am prone, at times, to hyperbole.

This is not one of those times.

Oh good Christ.

So the things spawn more often near “Poke stops,” which, to me, sounds like places to get lovely Hawaiian seafood salad (because poke? Get it? Moving on). There happens to be such a stop at a local monument which is maybe 100 yards from where I now sit (which is at my dining room table), probably closer.

This means that, so far, my house is swarming with spearows (not a misspelling).

Which kinda sucks, as I’m still quite skittish about the very real bat that got in the other day.

Now I gotta stress about spearows.

Fuck this game, man. Fuck it.

Feminina:

Oh man. Plus, you’re going to have the place swarming with Pokemon hunters, too.

If only my phone were less sucky so I could share the wonder…

Serious Thoughts on Villains, Endings, Ending Villains…

Tags

character, combat, gender, Gone Home, plot, story, Uncharted

Spoilers for the end of Uncharted 3

Butch:

So that ending.

That certainly wasn’t as hard an ending as the last couple. No yetis. No zombies. The boss fight wasn’t all that hard. I liked it. Though Talbot….he was such a dweeb. Really, all we ever did was chase this guy.

Some thoughts!

1) So what was with the pattern on the thing that Drake sinks? It had that diagram. The game made a great deal about making sure you saw it had that diagram. Was that diagram in his notebook? Was that a puzzle that he was prepared to solve (and, thus, unleash the things) had he had the chance? What was that? Metaphor? They are us and we are they and we are all together? There’s been a lot of line blurring in this game, for sure.

2) You want an emotional cheat, I’ll give you an emotional cheat: Elena. Now, I get the ending. Putting on the wedding ring, leaving Drake’s ring behind, getting it from his father figure, it’s a metaphor for growing up. Settling down. Leaving this life behind. “So much for all that fortune.” “I have this.” “It’s not much.” “It’s enough.” Makes sense.

But if you’re going to do that, you can’t have the love interest AWOL though most of the game. She wasn’t even IN the first half of the game (because that part we were dealing with the woman he should have picked). Then she vanished again. So when she popped up in the last scene, it was obviously because “We need a woman here to resolve some metaphorical shit” and it lost its oomph.

3) And on this one I got nothing: The title of this game is “Drake’s Deception.” I really have no earthly idea what that might be referring to. I mean, I’ve kicked around some ideas, but…..huh?

4) We still haven’t, in this progressive age, gotten to the point where we can fight the bad guy like a bad guy if the bad guy is not, in fact, a bad GUY. I was wondering all along how there was going to be a climactic boss fight when the boss was an old woman. Would they really let us shoot an old woman? And……no. No they would not let us fight an old woman. Indeed, they had us trying to save an old woman. No, we had to fight dweeby running Talbot.

If every game has to end with a fight, and that fight has to be against the big baddie, and the big baddie has to be either a gruff dude or a monster, that’s going to put a crimp in some storytelling, it is.

We can start there.

Feminina:

I agree, wasn’t that big an end fight compared to the last two. Which is fine.

As for your questions…
1) I dunno, man. Your guess is as good as mine. Go with your line-blurring theory, it sounds deep.

2) I agree, we kind of didn’t see enough of Elena in this game for the ending to have the resonance it was going for. However, I cut it a little slack because of the key phase “in this game”: if we think of the story as a single piece spread over three installments, and hold in mind Elena as she figured in the previous sections, I can sort of make it work…We miss Elena, in the sense that we remark on her absence, and this stands in for Drake missing her in a more personal sense. More of that blurring of lines? Or just making excuses for the game?

3) I assumed the deception was Sir Francis’, in that he hid the existence of Sandlantis and the way to it…but that’s not particularly deep. Maybe there’s something more there that neither of us is seeing. Or maybe it’s just not that deep.

4) I noticed that too. It’s interesting to compare to the treatment of another female villain in 4. We’ll talk later. But it’s also arguable that Evil Helen Mirren was never a fighting kind of villain, so her non-fight end fit her character arc (why was she never a fighting kind of villain? Because of her age and sex…so it’s a bit of a circular argument, but still).

I mean, how cool does it really make Drake look if he successfully defeats an old woman in hand to hand combat? Of course, nothing says it had to be hand to hand, and she could easily have been a crack shot and made you struggle through a long gunfight sequence…I would have been totally into that. But as you say, there’s a sort of shying away from mortal combat with certain types of characters…basically anyone who’s not reasonably youthful, yet fully adult, and male. We’ve kind of talked about this before…my take is more or less that as long as those are the majority of CHARACTERS of any type in a game, it kind of makes sense that they be the ones who die. If you only have three women in your game, it’s iffy to make your PC personally murder one of them. Even if that one was a major villain, and by video game logic should definitely have died at our hands.

Now in Skyrim, where half your NPCs are female, I’ve got no issues with killing them. I dunno, it does get touchy, doesn’t it?

Butch:

It was a perfectly fine lack of hard fighting. Refreshing, actually.

And maybe a sign of when it was made. We talked about how games are moving away from the “impossible last fight” model. Maybe that shift happened in games in general around then.

1) By which you mean “I played this game so fucking long ago I have no idea what you’re talking about, so I’m punting on this one.”

2) I think it’s an excuse. I mean, a game can WANT a player to have played all of them, but can’t assume it. If you’re going to have things matter in the end, then I think you have to establish same in the game itself. Sure, it’s lucky if the player plays all three, but c’mon. They weren’t on the same disc when they came out.

3) I really have been thinking on this and I got nothing. Indeed, I was really, REALLY ready for a bigassed twist. Something that Drake had been keeping from us, Sully, everyone. But no. Very confusing title.

4) Yup. Circular argument. Her being a crack shot is what I was sort of expecting. Or even hand to hand. I mean, we establish the long ice pick knife in the opening scene. Maybe it was poisoned, or had darts or something. That seemed a good “Final boss” kind of weapon. But no.

Yeah, Skyrim or Fallout. Plenty of female raiders. If no mutants.

In Tomb Raider, we had a woman slaughtering men. Even Lara didn’t slaughter women. In The Last of Us, we had strong female characters, notably Maureen and Tess, and yet no female raiders. Hell, Tess was COLD. Remember when she shot that dude in the head in cold blood? So we can have women shooting dudes in cold blood, and we can have women dying, OFF SCREEN cuz they’ve been bit, but no raiders.

We still are prudes, we are.

Except for Bethesda.

Feminina:

1) You know me so well.

2) Yeah…you’re right, they really can’t/shouldn’t assume everyone has played the first two. Certainly not that they’ve played the first two recently enough to have character and relationship details fresh in their minds. All right, I was just making excuses for them.

3) If we’re done making excuses for them, maybe we should just conclude that the title had a nice alliterative ring to it, and possesses no deeper meaning.

4) Everyone should go the Bethesda route. It uncomplicates this whole question! I mean, seriously, if you have a ton of some type of character, you can do whatever you want with them. If you only have a token number, people are going to scrutinize what you do with the token/s (fairly so), and it’s going to be touchy.

Butch:

1) That I do.

Why do I have this feeling that if I ever do get around to Life Is Strange that so very much of our discussion about it will be along these lines?

2) You were making excuses for them. I mean, we play series games all the time. Games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age and The Witcher sort of make a point of at least trying, if briefly, to reestablish things that are relevant to the game at hand, and even more so if that relevance is crucial. You gotta do it. Remember, we’re skewed here in that we played them all in order. They weren’t made that way. Had we played them in the way they were meant, we’d be cheesed here.

3) We’ll have to go with that. Though it bugs me that there might be something I’m missing. We don’t miss things! We don’t! Not only do we not miss things, we often invent things that aren’t there, then we don’t miss THEM!

4) I don’t know why this is still so touchy. I mean, Bethesda’s been having female randits for years and years, and no one gives them shit for it, and their games are hits. I mean, it seems every developer is wringing their hands about this, sitting around going “What do we do?” and they look up, realize Bethesda isn’t joining in the hand wringing, and realize that’s because Bethesda is too busy counting its money to notice.

Strange.

Feminina:

Life is Strange…that was the one about teenage vampires and the French Revolution? I totally agree with all your interpretations of the things I don’t remember about it.

We totally don’t miss the things we invent that are in these games! And yet, I can do nothing with Drake’s Deception. I mean, maybe it’s a reference to the whole bit about Drake not being his real name? We pondered that earlier. (Or let’s say not his ORIGINAL name–I think we can argue that since he’s been using it more than half his life at this point, Drake is his REAL name.) The deception is in his very existence? His life, and this game, and everything we as players have experienced, is a lie? Which is sort of meta because duh, it IS a lie since it’s a fictional story? More line-blurring? Go with that.

Seriously, everyone–check out what Bethesda’s doing! You could do that!

Maybe other games fear that Bethesda only gets away with it because of the fantasy/post-apocalyptic settings, and that people would freak out if half the randits in a ‘realistic’ setting were women? I think we’d get over it, but I don’t know.

I mean, think about it. Imagine if half the mercenaries Drake/you just killed in Uncharted 3 had been women. The same indistinguishable features as the men in every way except some longer hair styles or a bit more curve under the drab uniform: basically just faceless bad guys we shoot without a second thought.

Would that be weird? It’s not particularly weird in Skyrim or Fallout (or no weirder than it ever is to mow down humans and humanoid beings without a second thought), but would it be weird for Drake?

I dunno. I mean, violence against women is a thing in real life. A totally non-funny thing that is obviously a sensitive issue to handle, even obliquely, in a game. People (if they think about it) probably worry about making a game where you can imagine certain types of guys getting a kick specifically out of getting to kill women. Because we can totally figure that those players exist, and that IS totally gross, and I wouldn’t want to imagine that my game was giving them any kind of kick either.

And Evil Helen Mirren being the only female villain…I dunno, certain players probably WOULD get that “haha, it was so great finally getting to kill that bitch” kick out of it, in a way that killing a male villain doesn’t do because…almost all villains are male, and it’s nothing special, and the type of player we’re imagining is also 99.99% likely to be male, and not to have the same kind of issues with men that he has with women. Even if that wasn’t written as any part of Drake’s motivation, it would play into certain potential players’ motivation in a way that the developers maybe just don’t want to have any part of, or even go anywhere near.

Let’s just drown her in quicksand! So much simpler.

And then Bethesda does it by having a ton of women villains (maybe not as many boss women villains? where the killing is more individual and personal? so maybe they haven’t completely worked out the issue either) and they aren’t as far as I know–not that I have explored the kinds of horrifying forums where this is undoubtedly discussed–hailed as having the go-to games for people who like to imagine how great it would be to kill women. Because it’s not that big a deal, there are just a lot of women around, and some of them are villains, and so in your daily villain-killing sprees you’re going to naturally kill a lot of women AND and lot of men, and it’s no bigger a deal than it usually is to kill a lot of people.

I don’t know. Touchy subject, that’s for sure.

Butch:

Teenage vampires–That’s the one!

Shit, that’ll be a bloggage wasteland, won’t it? Maybe I’ll do something else.

We have noticed absolutely everything that we’ve invented. Everything.

I give up on the title. Totally. I’m also going to preemptively give up on Horizon: Zero Dawn which, under no circumstances, can make any sense.

Back to 4) … Hmm. I suppose the obvious counter is that real life violence isn’t funny in any guise. Also, we’ve come to a point where women serve in the military, and actually ARE in harms way on a daily basis. But your point is taken.

But it can still be done in ways that aren’t nasty. I mean, we play violent games all the time without it turning our stomachs. That said, there are violent games that glamorize violence, and use it to titillate. Games like Hatred, Postal and Duke Nukem Forever are there SOLELY to make the act of killing fun, and nothing else. No story, no other gameplay, nothing. Just “Ain’t killing grand? Oh, and how about peeing on people (Postal) or taunting them (Hatred) or killing tied up pregnant schoolgirls? (Duke Nukem) That’s offensive. Period.

So there certainly is a difference between offensive carnage and inoffensive carnage, such as it is. Certainly a game that glamorized violence against women, or had, say, slightly sexualized death sounds (eww) would be repellent, but a game that just had the sort of violence we’re used to?

I mean, because people are awful, I’m sure there were weirdos that somehow enjoyed stripping corpses in Fallout. You left naked (or at least underweared) corpses in your wake. Corpses in underwear/lingerie is…..suspect. And that happened.

I still think that there is still a bunch of rather gender specific squeamishness. I mean, if we take the gameplay, PC doing the killing out of it: Tomb Raider caught volumes of shit for the death scenes. Gory gruesomeness on a pretty woman. TLOU caught NO shit whatsoever, despite the fact that Joel died in ghastly ways.

Indeed, talking on TLOU, even I am susceptible to the prudishness. I mean, late in that game, when you’re playing as Ellie, even I thought “Ok, a bit much” at the Ellie death scenes, despite the fact they weren’t as nasty as the Joel ones I had gotten used to.

Feminina:

But Life is Strange is good! You should play it! I’ll read the wiki to refresh my memory so we can discuss. Or if I finish the witcher expansion, maybe I’ll play it again!

Speaking of games you should play, I finished Gone Home the other night. It was a good use of 2-3 hours. Very interesting, different little game. Sort of like…OK, you haven’t done this yet, but near the beginning of Uncharted 4 there’s a bit where you just kind of walk around a place looking at things and occasionally commenting on them, which gives you a sense of what Drake’s life is like at this point. Also, come to think of it, the beginning of TLOU, when you’re Joel’s daughter Sarah, and you’re walking around the house looking at things before all fungoid hell breaks loose?

Anyway, this whole game is sort of like that. You walk around the house looking at objects and documents, piecing together what’s going on in your parents’ and sister’s lives and why no one is home. It’s pretty cool. It probably wouldn’t really sustain a 12-hour game, let alone a 60-hour one, but not all games have to be that long. Check it out. Sometime. I don’t know when.

The violence against women in games issue is a tough one. I think just not having women in games, or having a few and carefully making them die in ways the hero isn’t directly responsible for, is probably the easy answer but not necessarily the best one. But I can’t claim to know the best one. One thing that’s probably worth doing is discussing the question, though. So yay us! We’re part of the solution!

Offensive vs. inoffensive violence, however weird it sounds, is definitely a useful line to draw/discuss. There are absolutely games (and other media) that clearly and frankly depict violence (against male and female characters, no doubt in both gender-specific and non-specific contexts) in ways that I find gross and offensive and that I don’t want to play or otherwise consume. Where that line gets drawn when it’s less clear that “this is just that type of game” is an interesting question.

If a game is otherwise inoffensive in its violence but has slightly troubling death scenes…etc. I don’t actually remember noticing Ellie’s death scenes particularly, so I guess that to whatever extent I’d become used to the deaths from Joel’s perspective, that transferred to Ellie. Maybe I was less troubled because…I’m a woman and lack a man’s chivalrous instincts? Because I didn’t have children at the time? (No, wait, I had one…it seems like a long time since we played it, but it wasn’t THAT long ago.) Because I wasn’t paying attention? Because I kicked so much ass as Ellie that I never died? (Hahahahaha no.)

Hm…I could go back and read what we wrote about that, it seems like maybe we talked about it, but I don’t remember the details. And…I can’t find us discussing death scenes specifically, but here’s a lengthy chat about women. Some relevant points there.

Butch:

I WANT to play it! Not my fault you’re losing your memory in your old age.

I heard Gone Home was more of an exploratory experience than anything else. And short. That’s why I waited until I didn’t have to pay for it.

I’m glad because I have a plan: We’re off for our yearly week at the beach in August. Hopefully, I’ll have wrapped up UC4 by then (I’m averaging about one a month, so ok) and Gone Home. Then I can settle into the new school year (starts August 31 for fuck’s sake) and ponder the next steps. Maybe some more witcher. I miss Geralt.

4) Well, maybe “violence with a narrative point” and “violence for the sake of violence.” I mean, look at movies. We have the likes of the Godfather, and Clockwork Orange, and Schindler’s List, and Pulp Fiction, and I could go on. All violent as hell All are recognized as art, if not great art. Then we have Saw Six and Hostel 7 and Friday the 13th part 92 and Human Centipede which are violent as hell, and are tasteless garbage. And the first “art” set there HAVE to be violent to make sense. Schindler’s list without violence? Taxi Driver without the climactic final scene? Nope. Same as TLOU, Fallout, even Uncharted. Wouldn’t work. Not just from a gameplay perspective, but from a narrative perspective. It’s not just violence to gross out or shock or titillate. But Postal? Same as Human Centipede. Gross.

Ellie’s death–You are a woman, and lack those instincts, yes. And I thought I was progressive enough to lack them but no.

But I forgot something: Fallouts 1 and 2 let you kill women, and children, and anyone. Armed or not. Indeed, killed a couple kids by accident (grenades). And no bad press.

Get over it, games.

Feminina:

That’s a good plan. You can do it. I believe in you. After all, you must be on the upswing with this Lyme disease by now. You’ll have more awake time! You’ll tear through UC4.

Interesting that older Fallout let you murder women and children with impunity, and they’ve gotten more cautious with time (maybe some of their people got older and had kids?). And also that they did this and didn’t get rivers of bad press about it.

Bethesda: advancing the frontiers of equal-opportunity murder since 1997.

Wait, the original Fallout wasn’t Bethesda, was it? Too bad, that was going to be a major selling point for them at the 20th anniversary celebration next year.

Butch:

Oh, I’m over the Lyme. I feel good. Now it’s just running around cuz summer and it being hot. I mean, let’s face it: PS4=no AC, ballgame on TV=AC. Hmm.

And, well, there was also the fact that graphics have come a long way. Fallout 1 and 2 kids were not all that realistic. I mean, it was all top down, like Transistor, they were pretty pixelated. I mean, they didn’t even have faces. Today, first person, human characters, etc. More removed in the old days.

 

OK, OK…Pokemon?

Tags

Pokemon Go, Uncharted

Slight ending spoiler for Uncharted 3

Butch:

Haven’t finished. Haven’t played. Tired. Busy. What little energy I had last night got sapped when a bat got in the house. A bat. Seriously.

But here’s a thing that has had me thinking: When you had to, in the trippy flashback, pull the trigger on Sully, how long did that take? Cuz for me, about a tenth of a second. No hesitation. None. Saw the little white circle, boom. Pull.

Which I wonder, is that just me? Or not? And, if not, was that a point ND was making? I mean, I talked about how that moment with the kid, in the cutscene, when he DOESN’T shoot and we DON’T get the “And now he kills for the first time” cliche, was powerful. And here’s the “kid shooting,” but it isn’t, it’s the player, and THIS player, anyway, was cold as hell.

Interesting.

Feminina:

A bat! That’s kind of awesome. You never fail to make homeownership sound so tempting.

I didn’t shoot at Sully right away, but I didn’t let him shoot me first, so I guess it was kind of in the middle. Interesting point about the character/player being totally cold and focused by the end of the game, even though the game put you in the position of being less hardened at the beginning. Makes sense as a progression.

Butch:

Ok, in defense of home ownership, the bat had no idea if I was owning or renting. And it wasn’t exactly a huge cost. Financially anyway. Dignity’s another story. But, even had I been renting, I still would have been camped out on the deck, armed with a spatula and an oven mitt, with the door wide open, saying “No, no THIS way…” for altogether too long.

Feminina:

There was a bat in the office once, in my first job out of college. I and somebody else captured it in a blanket and released it outside. It probably met a horrible end there, since it was broad daylight in downtown Boston, but what could we do? We meant well.

It’s true that bats presumably have no way of distinguishing between owned vs. rented property. I will concede that point as NOT one against the very idea of homeownership.

So are you going to try Pokemon Go? I would, because something that’s this much all the rage this fast could probably use our thoughtful commentary, but of course I don’t have enough memory on my phone. My phone has enough memory for this message, and that’s about it.

Butch:

I might be in the same boat memory wise, but Butch Jr. might renounce the family name if I don’t get it.

Feminina:

I even bought this big additional memory card (a while ago, not specifically for Pokemon), but it turns out none of these apps can be stored on it, so it was pretty pointless.

We’re lucky O’Jr. is still young. He’s unaware of the hot new thing.

Butch:

Turns out I do have the room. Shit.

Keep him young as long as possible.

Feminina:

My heart goes out to you. Please provide thoughtful commentary.

Another Priceless Archaeological Find to Destroy!

Tags

location, plot, Uncharted

Some serious plot spoilers for the almost-end of Uncharted 3

Butch:

Well, played. And got to 95%, which is the “Let’s end this, once and for all” bit, and I got tired. So consistency.

That was trippy, wasn’t it?

I knew he wasn’t dead. And I figured out it was the fountain.

Interesting. I mean, makes slightly more sense than dressed up not yetis. WE are the prospector!

But I can see your emotional cheat idea there. And an ineffective one, as I didn’t buy it. (Of course, one reason I didn’t buy it is that I know he’s in 4, therefore not dead. Had we played this when it came out, we wouldn’t have known that).

Your thoughts on this sequence?

Feminina:

So trippy. The dudes who burst into flame were extremely trippy. Kind of a nice touch that they showed up before that fuzziness that let you know that Drake is definitely messed up, so at first it seemed at least possible that these were some sort of weird yeti-style thing taking over the Secret Order dudes.

On reflection, of course, it made more sense that he was just messed up before he realized he was messed up, but the brief uncertainty was kind of cool.

As for the cheat with Sully’s “death”…I sort of half bought it for a while, unlikely though it seemed, because it wasn’t immediately obvious that Drake was messed up. I was thinking “maybe his appearance in 4 was a flashback?” Then once it became clear that there was a lot of hallucinating going on, I figured his death was also a hallucination.

I didn’t mind the hallucinations themselves, that was an interesting sequence, but it did feel like kind of a cheat to try to get us all worked up about Sully and then say “surprise, he’s alive!”

I did find it interesting that this game pretty much backs off the whole idea that there’s anything supernatural going on. As you say, we are the prospector in the sheet! And while the explanation is weird, it’s presented as natural: some toxin in the water, we don’t know exactly what it is but it’s certainly not magic.

This makes me retrospectively think that the zombie Spaniards in 1 were also supposed to be explained by a weird but natural toxin (say, something like the fungus in TLOU) rather than an ancient curse, and of course the not-yeti turned out to be just dudes mutated by resin and wearing masks…way to take the mystery out of everything, game.

Still, I kind of loved Atlantis of the Sands. Cool environment.

Butch:

They did seem plausible as real-life weirdness. Especially as, if you’ve played the first 2, you know that once you get to the secret city place of COURSE weird shit happens. And, I mean, makes sense for Tibet to have cold yeti things, makes sense of the desert to have fire demons. Makes PERFECT sense.

It was a good moment of doubt about whether he was messed up or things were genuinely weird. And it was a nice way of getting the “late game harder thing” in without resorting to “Well of COURSE there’s weird hard supernatural things.” Because, from a gameplay perspective, it is kinda good to have a harder, different thing to shoot in the late game, and they managed to give us that without resorting to “weird city=weird monster.”

I did have a “maybe flashback” moment about Sully, too. But it didn’t last. It was all just too weird.

I agree completely about the hallucinations. They were a nice “make gameplay different” late trick that wasn’t just “Now it’s hard!” and they did refresh some mechanics. I thought the water puzzles, where you had to follow your own reflection, was extremely creepy.

And the callback to the childhood chase scene, where you had to do the exact same thing, only with spiders was pretty damn perfect. I JUST read our post about me saying “Oh, here’s the point where he becomes a killer and he didn’t, what a shock,” and here’s me redoing that scene shooting SULLY in the late game. THAT was one of those “Ok…THAT was nice” moments. There’s some themes. Why do I have a feeling that that particular theme of trust, and “Who makes you you” bit is gonna come up in the next game I play? Bravo on that.

Now here’s a thing: back to that puzzle where you followed yourself, then the sparkly thing became you: You think ND was making some point about games themselves? We’ve been talking about the ease in which we switch from “me” to “you” to “Drake,” and how PC and character blur. There’s no doubt ND has pondered that, as the weirdest, most interesting blur of that line was the bit in Left Behind where you and Ellie are “playing a video game” in the arcade there. Do you think this was some sort of proto line blur? Like, here’s game Drake, who follows your commands. You move the stick, he moves. But now, here’s a picture of Drake guiding you. He moves, then you, the PC does what HE does.

I’m not sure if that fits into the game itself, but then, we’ve talked about proto-TLOU shit all throughout. Am I reading too much into that?

True that this does suggest there’s nothing supernatural. I like, though, that we seem to be harder on “real” explanations. “Magic shit? Of COURSE!” versus “wait, how would they distill out a toxin? How would they use it? Seems so impractical. Why not just use LSD? Can’t they synthesize it? Why don’t they just look for magic shit like NORMAL people?”

But well, most adventures do try to add some sort of wrinkle to their weirdness to make it more than just “magic.” I mean, if magic were a thing, then we’d all have it. So what to do? Indiana Jones used religion, with the ark of the covenant and the holy grail. Of COURSE we all don’t have grails (“I told him we’ve already got one!”) so it makes sense we have to have an adventure to get one. This game is going for “Well, the ‘curse’ probably isn’t one, which is why we don’t all have them.” Of course, that glosses over why these curses make everyone immortal, and why entire CITIES that are hidden seem so damn common, but hey. What can you do?

Atlantis of the Sands is quite cool. And very pretty in the remaster.

Feminina:

Seriously…guys, just use good old fashioned LSD like everyone else!

One is a little curious about what this mystery water toxin brings to the party that they don’t already get from the mystery dart toxin they already have–that seemed to mess up Drake and Charlie just fine. But hey, maybe it’s really expensive to produce or something, and they’re hoping the Sandlantis water will be somehow cheaper despite having to be pumped from deep underground and then hauled hundreds of miles out of the desert. I’m sure they have a perfectly rational plan that they simply don’t bother to share with us because we keep shooting at them.

I did like the puzzle where you have to follow your own reflection. They were definitely playing with our expectations there. And the recreation of the early flashback, only chased by our old nemesis, giant spiders. Good, freaky stuff there.

Butch:

Ah man! I forgot about the dart! You’re right! Who’s tugging now?

Maybe they only have, like, ten darts left, and they need another source of darts. Or something.

And what was interesting about that flashback part? Did you die? Cuz if you get caught by the spiders, or go the wrong way or something, the fade to black death scene is you as a kid being caught by the security forces.

Cool.

Feminina:

Ooh, interesting…I didn’t die from the hallucinatory spiders, so I didn’t realize that the fade to black was the same as when he was a kid.

I guess they’re clarifying that this really all comes from his mind and memories…nice touch.

And I’m not tugging loose ends–I’m helping them tie loose ends up with my plausible explanations!

Butch:

Of course you are.

The flashback ‘death’ was a very nice touch. And a missable nice touch, too, which I always give props to.

He really did become a bit of a haunted hero. I’m interested to see how the last 5% goes. Is it quick? Or is controller throwing, going on the internet to cheat rage about to happen (like in 2)?

Feminina:

There’s a final fight with some of the usual “now hit square! Now fight! Now triangle!” It wasn’t really that bad, though, at least when I did it.

You’ll be fine. Done in no time.