Saints Row 2 and Cohesion

Disclaimer: This rant will openly discuss spoilerific story elements. It is not a gameplay review, although gameplay will be brought up if it is important to/detracts from the story.

Dragon's Dogma Demo - A Word on Barks

So, a few nights ago, the Xbox 360 dashboard was cramming the Dragon's Dogma demo down my throat - not that I mind the advertisements. It's nice to know what's coming out, but I'm always interested to see what games are getting a big push.

From a story perspective, I have next to nothing to say about Dragon's Dogma. The glimpse of the story in the demo came across as extremely generic. But there's more to writing than plot. Dragon's Dogma stands out as an example of how bad writing and battle speech design can completely overshadow everything else.

I didn't dislike the game. It had some fun and interesting elements, and I generally like hack-n-slash games. I'm a sucker for powerful character creation. However, all I walked away from the demo with was "Jesus Christ, these people cannot write barks."

You have a dedicated sidekick (or 'pawn') who will not shut the hell up. He (or she, but in the demo, we're stuck with the default guy) has to shout every time he sees a monster. He has to announce what the monster's weaknesses are, how it compares to other monsters, what he's planning to do in the battle, what he wants for dinner, how much money the cobbler charged him for his latest pair of boots, and so on. And none of this is done concisely.

"Look, Master, a goblin!"
"We shall fell them in a single charge!"
"I'll provoke it!"
"It shall feel the heat of my flames!"
"A hobgoblin approaches! These beasts are stronger than the goblins!"
"I shall hold it in place while you deliver the killing blow!"

Every fight becomes a wall of text while your pawn natters endlessly. And because the barks are so long, half the time, the situation is no longer relevant by the time your pawn finishes announcing it. More than once, my pawn was giving his introductory speech about a particular monster while I was already fighting said monster. Thanks, pawn. I noticed there was a hobgoblin approaching. That's why my sword is in him.

And to make matters worse, you're not just expected to haul your pawn. You get two others (that you can rent out from other players or something). And the game does not par down their speech based on how many people are in your party. So every time you see a goblin, three people will simultaneously  barf out their commentary on the situation. Trying to parse what everyone is up to in battle is nearly impossible, especially in the more hectic fights. Not to mention that it is just plain annoying to have every scene, fight, and corridor be the subject of multi-line voice clips.

I know that the Dragon's Dogma demo is, well, a demo, but I give the developers no slack for that. Seriously, we have had voice acting in video games for a long time now. Back when six Deus Ex guards would shout out their I-think-I-heard-something lines in tandem, this sort of thing was annoying and silly but somewhat understandable.

It's been over ten years, and we still get subjected to this stuff. Big name developers with big budgets and large QA teams somehow still overlook the fact that long-winded, layering barks are just as annoying in their game as they were in every other game. I thought the incessant repetition of "That's it. Bag 'em, and tag 'em."
in Mass Effect 1 was bad. Dragon's Dogma brings bad bark writing down to a whole new level.

Bastion

Disclaimer: This rant will openly discuss spoilerific story elements. It is not a gameplay review, although gameplay will be brought up if it is important to/detracts from the story.

Dialog Wheels Require Time and Effort

Okay, game designers, here's a pro-tip on the house:

Unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time and money fleshing out branching dialog, DON'T PUT A DIALOG WHEEL IN YOUR GAME.

Yes, everyone (but me) loves Mass Effect. Yes, the dialog wheel did wonders for moving the branching choice system past the point-and-click snorefest of older games. No, this does not mean you need one in your game.

Although I'm sure they're not the only ones, I'm directing this at two games in particular:

Kingdoms of Whatever: Generic Title and...

Lord of the Rings: War with the Gamebreaking Glitches

There is a key difference between Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Lord of the Rings: War in the North, and Mass Effect. Mass Effect is a story-driven game about asserting your influence over the universe, immersing yourself in conversations with alien creatures, and discovering the depth of the dangers facing Earth. I don't think Mass Effect succeeded at everything it was trying to do in that regard, but still: The purpose of the game reflects the need for a dialog wheel.

Kingdoms of Amalur is some unholy knock-off of Elder Scrolls, God of War, and Mass Effect without managing to capture the depth of any of them. At its core, it's much more Elder Scrolls. You gain levels, you take quests, you wander around a huge countryside, and you kill chickens for fun just because you can. It's a dick-around game, and there is nothing wrong with that. As long as you recognize that you are making a dick-around game, it's a perfectly legitimate genre.

But don't try to draw out your mysterious, generic fantasy plot like anyone cares. And definitely don't force me to fumble through dialog options. Remember how, in Diablo, when someone had a quest for you, they would give you a brief but colorful story behind their request and then send you on your way? This was a good thing. No one ever said, "Man, I wish I could ask Ogden why he called it the Tavern of the Rising Sun. That would have added so much depth to my gameplay experience."

"It's a very long and uninteresting story. Why don't you have a seat..?"



Brevity is key. We're here to dick around. Give us our quests, give us some color and character to make it memorable, but don't drag us through pages of text about Hobbit #5's backstory or about the barely thought-out ecology of your generic fantasy world.

War in the North, on the other hand, is a co-op hack-and-slash RPG. It's a loot game that you can play with your friends. I love this genre, but like Kingdoms of Whatever: Generic Title, the game has to recognize its own purpose.

War in the North has no characters. The three mains just pop into existence for the sole purpose of running around and gathering loot. They occasionally bump into characters from the novels so that hardcore Lord of the Rings fans can get excited, but none of this has any depth or purpose. There are a lot of talking to eagles for some reason.

None of this matters. The dialog is stilted and weak, it serves no purpose, and there's absolutely no reason to have a dialog wheel. All it does is bring the game to a screeching halt every time an eagle decides he wants to soliloquy about just how important the mission is.

And given that the game has multiple game breaking glitches, maybe Snowblind should have put more budget into QA testing and less into recording tons of unnecessary voice acting.

Bioware planned Mass Effect as a game with branching dialog. The project, as a whole, was constructed around this game mechanic. They were prepared to record countless lines of dialog, write tons of quips and replies, and the game mechanics as a whole reflect the importance of the dialog wheel.

Snowblind and Big Huge Games/38 Studios threw a dialog wheel onto their games because they're mimicking Bioware. They tagged a mechanic onto their game for the sole purpose of copy-catting a blockbuster title, like a younger sibling throwing on her teenage sister's clothes.

And the effect is just as awkward and embarrassing.

Mass Effect 2

Disclaimer: This rant will openly discuss spoilerific story elements. It is not a gameplay review, although gameplay will be brought up if it is important to/detracts from the story.

Assassin's Creed 2

Disclaimer: This rant will openly discuss spoilerific story elements. It is not a gameplay review, although gameplay will be brought up if it is important to/detracts from the story.

Games, Stories, and Me

It turns out that I like to rant about video game stories. So I'm going to do that here.

Cool.

(Also, bear with me while I settle into this thing. It's ugly and plain right now. I'll settle down and make it look pretty and divide posts up into segments at some point)