So I'm finally seriously playing through Mass Effect (the first) and I'm loving it. I appreciate any and all forms of encouragement as it's a rare moment (3N3MY can testify to this) that I find myself on a single player kick, and continuing as long and as consistently as I can would be awesome.
I feel like posting a review or something, but I really don't have anything specific to talk about. The best part of the game is the conversational system. It's really an engaging process, as predictible as it can be sometimes. Dialogue trees have been along forever (ME even calls them "trees") but the conversational wheel adds a small subtle flavor of creation to the process that a list doesn't do. The principle might be the same, but the execution is much more engrossing for me. It makes me really excited to eventually get my hands on Heavy Rain, which looks like it's basically built a game around the premise that making choices and dealing with those consequences are the most interesting parts of open-ended gameplay.
It's an interesting personal belief intersection that I've arrived at. It would be quite logical to assume that if one likes open-ended choices, that I would dislike linear processes - not true, however. I know I've enjoyed the story-telling in simple, linear games - Halo, Bioshock, Half-Life 2, etc.) and those are anything but open-ended. The common thread in them all is how the experience draws in the player, i.e. immersion.
This isn't new, so forgive the revelation. It's just so amazing to me how these games we play... they draw us into their worlds. We let our character's lives become our lives. We let their world become ours. Sony even tried marketting their share of the industry with a slogan to this effect (For the PS2 - Live in your world, play in ours"). It can be an intense experience at times. We trivialize it all the time with statements like "it's just a game", but the things that are going on in our minds are so much more real than that, and thus deserve a better treatment.
I have experienced this before, though, and it's on the stage. I was an actor (Theatre Performance major) in college and high school, and it's an amazing thing to, well, become another person for a brief period of time. It's something to watch Hamlet, but it's another thing altogether to be Hamlet. I get to be the Master Chief and save Earth. I get to be Commander Shepard and save the galaxy. I get to be Mario and rescue the princess. Obviously the principle isn't the exact same, but I bet the narrative treatment a game company gives a story would change dramatically if the design team was made entirely of Actors.
I've rambled long enough. This post was to let some of my thoughts about games out, and to prove to 3N3MY I was still alive. Done and done. Thoughts?
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Oh, please refrain from talking about the ME1 plotline also. I'm really digging it, and I feel like knowing the consequences of the choices I've made (or am going to make) would really ruin some of the magic.
ReplyDeleteBooyah! Yeah, stories in games are amazing and Mass Effect 1 and 2 are the 2 most successful games to ever pull me into their world (Half Life 2 is the only other game close). I've felt like I was living in another world and been completely immersed (ie Morrowind and Oblivion), but not by their stories.
ReplyDeleteI remember when you were first trying out Mass Effect and you were having a hard time deciding what to do and I said "Just play Shepherd as if you were him. How would you react to that situation or what this person said to you in real life?" That game lets you do that much more successfully than any other game I've ever played. Bioshock is basically just good and bad, but there is a gray area in most Bioware games.
Half-Life 2 rocks! I love that story and the characters are so believable.
ReplyDeleteThe payout for investing one's self into Mass Effect's galaxy is a true accomplishment. It makes me curious if they were even aware of how it would work when they made it.
ReplyDelete3N3MY has a really awesome book of mine about Half-Life, and the storytelling process they went through during production. They did a ton of research and general work trying to make it as real a narrative as it could, from using psychological studies on facial expressions, to finding unique ways to let the AI move around the room naturally, despite where the player might find himself, to going to local "real" people (i.e. not all actors) for the character models and voices for the game. More than a well told story, it's a well put together narrative process, very reminiscent of how larger companies like Pixar create their art.
That's really cool! I didn't know all that... probably why they've produced some amazing games. I can still play Half-Life 2, which is several years old now, and be amazed at how the characters move and react, especially Alyx as she seems to interact with Gordon the most.
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