JONATHAN ENGEL
COMMUNITY WRITER
Poland_hetalia
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FEATURED POST
Beatles-rock-band-300x300
What make Super Smash Bros., Rock Band, and The Beatles so immensely popular with so many different people?
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 | Comments (0)
POST BY THIS AUTHOR (8)
Bungielogo
How Bungie almost killed the computer game
Ds_case01
The key elements of a frequent-flier's gaming library
Comic-con
A quick review of the games seen at Comic-Con this year.
2guys_1title
A preview of Maxis's Spore Reboot: Darkspore. Oh look a grungy trailer, so dark, so serious.
Team-fortress-2
It is twilight season yet again, but now, we have sticky bombs!
Do_not_press-thumb1
US Senators are proposing a bill that will let the president shut off the internet at will: Does this sound like a bad idea to anyone?
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Why we still love Valve, despite their frequent delays and their total lack of Cake.
COMMENTS BY THIS AUTHOR (3)
"I'm going to go ahead and disagree with the author of the article (though it is well written and thought out).

 

There is a legitimate time and place for movie-style storytelling in videogames. However, that doesn't mean we should rely on it. Ultimately, videogame storytelling will gravtitate to doing things that ONLY videogames can do. Movies don't give you in depth monologues about the thought processes of every character; that's what books are good at. While there are times when videogames SHOULD resort to cutscenes (See: end of Portal 2), this should be done sparingly.

 

The problem with a talking protagonist is that if they talk too much, they risk saying something that doesn't gel with what the player has in mind, causing a level of dissonance to fall between the character and the player. In Portal and Portal 2, Chell does pretty much what the player would do (or rather, would want to do). However, once the character starts talking, this can break. The simple fact is that there are different types of narrative (and this goes for movies too): story driven, and environment driven. A story driven game would be a game like Dead Space: Extraction, an environment driven game would be something like Bioshock. Dead Space: Extraction is about the story, with talking protagonists with clear wants and fears (as well as hallucinations). Bioshock, ultimately, is about Rapture. The stuff involving the player character is circumstantial at best: The thing that keeps everyone interested is Rapture, and without it, there would be no Bioshock.

This is true of movies as well. Some movies are about plot (okay, most), but others (Fargo, [insert Western here], Moon, Lost in Translation) are about settings. Their progression revolves around the bleakness/lushness/weirdness/interestingness of the setting. While none of these have silent protagonists per-se, you will notice that these types of movies will generally be less dialogue-dense and will spend more time focusing on interesting camera angles and shots of the scenery and the effect that it has on the characters.

 

Silent characters should not be ubiquitous, but they have their time and place."

Saturday, May 14, 2011
"Actually, if I remember correctly, one of the things about DA 2 is that relationships DIDN'T just stop after the sex sequence. They continue afterwards.

As far as the "doesn't stop hitting on you" angle, when I played through DA 2, Anders hit on Hawke once, but after a rejection he kept to himself. I chose to follow the romantic arc with Merrill (who also never really hit on Hawke except after the flirt-o-meter was shifted to 11 on his part, which I don't think counts). Aveline never flirted (though I have heard that even if you try to flirt with her, it doesn't work out), and Isabella never stopped flirting with Hawke, but this was despite the fact that she was only barely in the "friends" category (and in Isabella's case, incessant flirting would actually fit with the character).

That being said, I agree that the Carver relationship was interesting, and I was disappointed when it came to an abrupt end (though he was completely useless inside my party, so I didn't complain *TOO* much)."

Tuesday, April 05, 2011
"On this topic, I will have to echo Tycho Brahe (Jerry Holkins): I extremely dislike booth babes, simply because I feel very uncomfortable being in the company of someone has been paid to endure me."
Monday, June 21, 2010