You know, I constantly see you guys shitting super hard on games that try to be profound and 'deep', so now, I'm curious to see what you guys view as something that actually HAS emotion, beauty and heavy substance.
Could I see a difference between a game that is actually deep and powerful, and a game that is either DeviantArt tier trash or pretentious bloated hipster dogshit?
journey i guess but I'm far more interested in games that have interesting and enjoyable game play than games with "deep" stories. Stories are less than a tertiary element to games and should be kept that way.
i disagree. I think a well presented story and narrative provide really motivating context for players to go through games.
That said, gameplay is still more important, every time. But if you aren't going to do flavor text, do something creative and good.
Megaman Zero series.
You don't disagree necessarily, then. A good story or narrative element can add flavor to a scene, it is the lemon in the water, the water is there to quench the thirst and is ultimately the most fulfilling part. It is 95% of the experience, that lemon twist is just 5%.
Some games put great game play first and have creative scenes that a story gives some context too, or adds that little twist to it. The Astraea fight in Demon's Souls is a great example. It is an interesting fight, not a particularly challenging one, but a great scenario and Garl Vinland's unique AI where if you happen to get behind him is the most aggressive AI in the game, matched only by Old King Doran's. It is ultimately more beneficial to the game play, but the narrative twist gives it a bit of flavor.
I love the Zero games but I'd have to disagree. Sure, they have themes of robots coexisting with humans, people not willing to fight for themselves, and shit like that. But those themes are never explore d, just mentioned offhand. On top of that, it's all underneath a cheesy, over-the-top anime presentation where you fight clones of your best friend, read edgy dialogue, and [spoilers]fight yourself in a climactic twist.
A game wherein you are tasked to save an island full of innocent villagers. In this game, you must destroy evil monsters that threaten the land and gather artifacts to awaken the islander's god to fully destroy the menace once and for all.
A game where over time, you realize things are not as they seem. Yes, the monsters are horrid things, but the world around you is simply wrong. There are hints here and there that all that you see simply isn't real, that all you've come to know is just an illusion created by a sleeping deity, and without your assistance, the nightmare monsters will eat away at the psyche of the dreamer, eventually dooming the land to a darkness-riddled hell that no hero could ever hope to absolve. Given just those facts, there is no reason NOT to wake the god, true?
True, yes, if not for a girl.
A beautiful girl who you come to grow to love because she comes to love you. A girl who is sweet, caring, a little bit goofy and overall the kind of woman you could see yourself settling down with forever. And with that, the roads are split, and you must choose a direction: forsake your own happiness and wake the dreaming god, forever condemning the girl you love (and by association, the inhabitants of the island) to full nonexistence? Or do you let the monsters run free and let the nightmare take its hold over the island solely so that you don't have to say goodbye to someone you care about?
The game tells you there is only one path you can take. But it's up to you to decide whether or not you agree with that path.
Cryostasis
Cold is death, heat is life
Fear is cold, love is warm
I don't exactly know what makes something deep. However I find narratives and worlds in games much better when there are multiple stories going on. Morals aren't so black and white and you have a hard time figuring out if what someone is doing is right or wrong, without it just being retarded. It's also important that what they do is in character or the events that lead to the decision make sense. They could have multiple themes and references to reality, but they aren't in your face like Cape movies. They provide a message however it isn't shoved down your throat.
I think pretentious games are where they throw in a message but it's horribly executed. Also a message that's just a massive guilt trip yet it doesn't make sense for either the player or the characters in the story.
While Disgaea 5 isn't exactly pretentious. They try to throw in a small message of "You'll be just as bad as X if you do Y". In this case Usalia (pic related) got cursed by this one powerful child that made is so she must eat her most hated food or else she'll go berserk. Before this, the kid makes her family and entire kingdom her personal lapdogs. She send her people on suicide bomb missions, desecrated her halls, and then proceeded to kill her parents. To even add more to insult. She makes zombies out of her parents and friends as human shields when you get to fight her. She has been doing this for multiple underworlds. You do actually get to kill her though. Usalia goes for the killing blow and celebrates when she finishes her off.
Well actually she never died and just teleported away, injured. You fight her again and beat her face in. She pleads and begs for you not to kill her and her ally wants to destroy her. She stops him and says "If you kill her you'll be just as bad as her!". Which is utter bullshit for obvious reasons. Especially when she got joy out of thinking she killed her a few chapters ago. She didn't mention any sense of regret for doing it too.
It's for the better though. She dies anyway by the hands of her leader that she respected so much. Then he turns her into a zombie with her own spell. This was much better than just killing her right there.
Rule of rose is deep without being pretensious. Alot of early survival horror are. And some really early wrpg (pre 2000).
What game?
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
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There is no such thing.
Pathologic. The story is outwardly about investigating and defeating a disease, but you have to deal with the political chessboard of a tradition-ruled town, heavy supernatural elements, and a well crafted mythology. But the conclusion goes further than these elements, and then its story is told across the perspectives of three very different characters, showing events in different lights. It's the type of story you could re-read again and again to understand the cross-references, and it's already long as fuck the first time.
I think the problem with saying a game is deep is that being deep isn't just a thing that exists in a vacuum is a deep narrative is something that comes from a narrative that's good to begin with. Then you run into the issue of what someone considers good in terms of narrative can vary even between people who have critical nuanced taste. Then you layer that on top of video games not even needing good narratives to be good as a whole and how easy it is to bullshit "deepness" out of a bad or minimal narrative and it's just a clusterfuck. Then there's the whole issue of "deep" being kind of a loose slangy term, so before the discussion even begins you can have people getting caught up in arguing over definitions.
I think the issue of people trashing games trying to be deep is more that trying to be deep is a trap and video games for whatever reason are still plagued by pretty weak writing compared to other mediums. Probably due to story coming into conflict with some other aspect of the game like gameplay and the guy in charge saying "gameplay gets priority." Which, isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is when your trying to have a "deep" narrative. You can't have your cake and it too.
The whole idea of talking about something in terms of being "deep" seems really pointless to me when it would be much more useful to look at narratives and their pieces in terms of being good or enjoyable subjectively. Because, honestly if you ask me being deep or not doesn't really matter to me even in terms of narrative. I find I value other things more and if the narrative happens to be "deep" because it's well done that's a bonus.
I think the whole concept is more about how people perceive the intelligence of a given narrative than how intelligent it actually is. It's kind of subjective in that sense. People's experiences are different so they'll consider different things emotional, real, moving, or powerful where as others may not. Sometimes I get the feeling when someone says something is deep what they really mean is that it spoke to them on a personal level.
I couldn't agree more. You hit that subject in the bulls-eyes like a motherfucker.
The thing about deep games is that there are two kinds: surface depth and actual depth.
Surface depth is pretty much exactly that: it sells itself entirely on how "powerful" its message is. Think Spec Ops: The Line or Undertale, where it's hard to get actually invested in the world because the game is trying to hold your head down and say "LISTEN TO MY MESSAGE THIS IS FUCKING IMPORTANT". I'm not saying that these kinds of games can't achieve genuinely emotional moments, but any time those happen it's marred by the rest of the game.
Then there's actually deep games. I didn't just explain the plot to Link's Awakening for shits and giggles, I honestly do believe that Link's Awakening is one of the more emotionally deep games I've ever played, because it's not in your face with what it's trying to say. It presents you with the dilemma, and you play it through to the end because it's what you have to do, it's a game that exists to be beaten. The game lets you decide for yourself how you feel about what's happened, and by not focusing on the message it's given the opportunity to flesh out characters, which makes the point stronger.
Marin is a character I care about. Undyne is not. Marin bonds with Link (and by association, the player), establishes that she is an individual with hopes and dreams, and in so doing we see her love for Link blossoming near the end of the game (which, in turn, makes us actually care about what we're doing as far as the main quest goes). Undyne, on the other hand, is a caricature of anime tropes that attempts to justify itself by acknowledging the parody that it is without ever genuinely attempting to show why we as a player should give a shit about her, and the only reason we're supposed to like her is because the game SAYS we're supposed to like her.
It sounds like you feel Link's Awaken is deep while the other games aren't because the game let you decide what the plot was to some degree and you decided to fill it in with a deep plot.
I don't disagree with that. But, I have to question how much of that depth you ascribe to the game is you and how much is the game itself. That's true for every thing to some degree, but based on what I remember about Link's Awakening your describing the absence of a narrative that allowed you to insert something deep rather than a deep narrative.
I more or less agree about Spec-Ops, but I'm not sure Undertale was even trying to have a deep narrative. Of course yes that theme of friendship and pacifism are there, but felt like the game was more about the characters than the story itself. Where as Spec-Ops was really centered on trying to have a discussion about video game violence in the narrative.
> because the game SAYS we're supposed to like her.
Care to elaborate on that? I'm just curious since I want to respond to this, but I'm not sure I fully understand what your getting at. Especially in comparing her to Marin. I don't think any character in Undertale really has a role comparable to her in terms of the narrative.
Most of the information that I laid out is presented in-game, primarily through the owl and Face Shrine. Admittedly the "darkness-riddled hell" isn't explicitly stated so much as hinted at when the owl tells you about the danger the Nightmares pose.
I'd buy that if it wasn't for the fact that the game's tagline is "Undertale: The friendly RPG where nobody has to die" on Steam. In conjunction with how much open contempt the game has for you if you do decide to go the Genocide route, it's pretty obvious that they want to hammer home the message that "PACIFISM IS GOOD VIOLENCE IS BAD", which is actually fairly tame as far as vidya morals go. The issue is that it's not content to just let you do horrible things and let events play out, it actively breaks the fourth wall numerous times to say "Hey player, you're a jerk and here's why!" whenever you do something that is counter to the message the game wants you to learn. Perhaps it is personal preference, but I can hardly call a game "actually deep" if they don't have enough confidence in their game's message without resorting to openly acknowledging the player behind the screen.
I will concede that this part was mostly a pointless tangent because, like you said, Marin and Undyne do not fulfill the same roles as far as their respective narratives go. It just irks me how people praise the characterization of Undertale when everything you learn about the characters is fucking shallow. We're supposed to relate to Undyne because…she likes anime? Because she's a hot-headed lunatic? There aren't any moments where you just stop and say "Huh, I can relate to that" with Undyne, or with Alphys, or with just about anyone in the game. It's especially egregious with the non-main characters, because the Pacifist route implies that you've become friends with all the monsters in the underground. Tell me, what the fuck do you know about Snowdrake that a friend would know? What about Froggit? Hell, fucking Muffet? Undertale is a game that prides itself on being the game where "you can be friends with everyone guys! :)", when every fucking connection you make is superficial. That, I think, is what I was trying to get at with the Undyne/Marin comparison, because you actually form a connection with Marin through the course of Link's Awakening (but I recognize that it's pretty much unique to Marin, since none of the other islanders get as much characterization as she does, so there is a bit of bias on my part as well).
I looked it up to remind myself and yeah I actually had forgotten the whole twist.
I wish other games would have more contempt for me being evil or taking the generally less moral route. The genocide route in Undertale is one of the only experiences in a video game where I got to be the villain and I actually got to feel like an honest to god evil person. I think if the game really wanted to have contempted for you breaking it's theme it would just slap you on the wrist and not let you do it at all.
Does it? I mean it might literally have I just don't remember. In addition to that the game let's you just get an okay ending where if your a little violent and break the morality to a lesser degree everything still plays out in it's own way. I mean hell there's even a messages at the end for every combination of characters being dead in those cases.
I think in terms of characters yes they do hammer that message in. Most of the central characters believe in some sort of morality that's conducive with that overall theme. But, I'm not sure if you can say that for the game itself. The game never really forces you to play by it's morality.
I think someone could form a connection with any of the major characters of Undertale as much as they could with Marin. The tricky part of it is I don't just want to say "well, YOU just didn't like the characters." I can completely understand not gelling with Undertale since it certainly has a personality that it isn't ashamed of. Unfortunately as well I think in Undertale some of it comes from subtext, like in the case of the minor enemies, while the player probably doesn't feel strongly about them usually they have some form of direct positive interaction with the main character if you go pacifist.
Well, what constitutes a connection that isn't superficial? In the context of the plot at the very least for most of the characters they have a reason to want to stop or even kill the main character. In pacifist they all at least come to enough of an understand that they change their minds on that if not more. I feel like that constitutes a connection.
In terms of the player. Undertale has characters with very strong personalities, so it's a crap shoot in terms of whether or not a given player will actually like them or form any sort of connection on that level. Like I said before if the tone of the game doesn't gel I can see how someone could go "why would I like this character." But, that can happen with anything and isn't necessarily tied to it's quality. Not that I'm saying quality is irrelevant of course just that other things can be more relevant. I felt like for the context of the game there is enough to get attached to the characters, although you definitely don't have any situations where your getting really deep or personal with any given character. I would say in this case as well the little things are enough though. Trying to add that style of situation for every character would probably wreck the pacing as well.
Did I just step through a time machine back to september?
As for deep games, I guess that can really depend on who is experiencing it. Lisa is mentioned often as a game that makes you FEEL, but would you say its deep?
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Depth can ruin games.
I don't want to say No Man's Sky since I haven't played it, but it's a good example of putting too much effort into the wrong places.
I think I agree with your sentiment, but not your wording. Because, No Man's Sky definitely suffered from being too ambitious. Which you could say is them trying to have too much depth. The game does fail to actually have any depth though so being deep isn't it's problem it's the attempt to be.
Not many.
Games are pretty flawed as a story telling medium. They either end up having great stories with shitty player interaction and freedom, or trash gameplay, or vice versa. Anything halfway just makes both trash.
Holla Forums loves 2deep4u games as long as they can tolerate the fanbase. thats it, thats literally all it is
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A game is deep if it has gameplay with many, varied options that i can use at any time during the gameplay, none of which is overpowered and all of which are useful in many different situations.
If the only option i have to progress are two options, no matter what property those two options have on your story or not, that game is not deep.
If i can win the entire game spamming the one good combo or exploiting the one good glitch, that game is not deep.
If there is a piece of gameplay that serves no purpose, that game can be deep but not because of that element.
Calling a game deep because of its story is like calling an italian restaurant fine cuisine because of their cheesecake.
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