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Dead Space Highlights Disparity Between Plot and Gameplay
Gamasutra is running an opinion piece praising recent horror-action game Dead Space for its pacing and gameplay while simultaneously criticizing the plot and the attempts to scare the player. Quoting:
"What Dead Space is, is carefully and stylishly unoriginal. You'll love playing it, but when you aren't playing it, it's hard to say what's so great about it. It has some really great set pieces, some sweet effects, solid gameplay, an amazing interface and that's all. Anything and everything having to do with dialogue and story comes off as rote. ... You get the feeling the developer are trying very hard, though. When I see a dark shape in the distance, which turns and disappears, I don't get scared. I know he'll pop out of a vent later! Likewise, when I find a scientist who promptly slits her throat because of the horror, I just check for an item drop. None of the survivors ever surprise you and go hostile (which I think would have been a brilliant scare), so you never have to worry."
The plot is not that important. That's the answer Dead Space demonstrates.
"Likewise, when I find a scientist who promptly slits her throat because of the horror, I just check for an item drop. None of the survivors ever surprise you and go hostile (which I think would have been a brilliant scare), so you never have to worry."
Worry is when the characters break the fourth wall and come after you.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Saves me $60.
Don't know what FPS games you've been playing, but there have been some great ones or at least well fleshed out ones. Halo has a strong plot that I found interesting. The half life games as well. I'll give you that most FPSes have little plot, but most games of all genres are crap that should not be purchased or played.
Also, I have issues with saying final fantasy games have great plots. They seem to be nonsensical japanese poetry about an apocalypse revolving around androgenous bad guys with liberal translation errors and vagueness giving the impression there's more going on than there actually is.
From the article:
> "You get the feeling the developer are trying very hard, though. When I see a
> dark shape in the distance, which turns and disappears, I don't get scared."
I thought the F.E.A.R. developers did this very well... when Alma would scuttle by in my peripheral vision it was almost always good for a start of surprise. Now if only my laptop had been able to play it with all the dials turned up...
The Army reading list
While I felt the story was not very interesting I felt the mythos of the story was. How the unitologists came to be, and their beliefs and the mausoleum ships. How the marker came to be on the colony, and how it seemingly aids the original science station into preventing the spread of the necromorhps and others to stop the spread. I like the semi dystopian future earth has, it has the height of technology but many live on dreary space ships like the ishimura just to get enough resources. All the log drops from the other engineer on the ishimura is the story the game should be, the story would be better if you were that other engineer and had audio log drops of the woman you are trying to save.
Sure a lot of this is just basic sci-fi or veiled criticism of scientology but combined with the entertaining gameplay and pretty and dreary scenery of the planetcracker and aegis 7 I feel like it is a great universe to play games in.
You're right.. Just like I've never seen a FPS in the last year and a half with no plot whatsoever, and a JRPG with no gameplay.
Seriously, just because ice cream's banned, the only person with ice cream is some guy whose offering you free ice cream with his shit on it, doesn't mean you have to enjoy it or eat it.
The problem I see with most FPS is the fact that you'll end up shooting the same thing over and over, with little surprise because, dun-dun-dun, after you pull that lever, a monster pops out. I mean, whatever happened to the gold old days of Nemesis, the guy you couldn't kill in Resident Evil? You'd run like hell if he was chasing you, because you couldn't beat him (until the very end, that is).
That being said, the gameplay of Dead Space is, at the very least, above average. I mean, it's got real-time puzzles that you have to solve (puzzles being how to splatter another enemy) with all kinds of stuff coming at you. That's probably why it's more fun to play than it is to watch. I mean, is it more fun to act in a movie or watch it being acted out?
While I understand the points made in the article, I have to disagree with their conclusions about the "horror" elements, as well as their assertion that it is unoriginal.
I found the 3rd person aspect framing very unique, having your character near to the left. I also enjoyed the lack of a HUD, and found their solution of displaying the health of the character along his spine very creative. This technique created a far more immersive experience as you are always looking at your environment and not a radar screen or ammo count. Also, typical menu items like maps and inventory are displayed in front of your character in a holographic display. While this is a nice stylistic choice, it also changes the gameplay, as you are still in the game environment and thus not safe while using them (see: things can still kill you while you browse your inventory).
As for the horror, you will get as much out of this game as you can to put into it. Play it on a 32" tv with the lights on in stereo sound, and it's not so scary. Play with the lights off on a big display with 5.1 surround turned up, and it does a great job with ambient sounds to keep you on edge. Yes, you get used to things jumping out of vents, and thus you tend to be less surprised when something bursts out of one. But the level design, inventive game elements (zero gravity is good stuff), and amazing audio production make this a great title for fans of the genre. For me personally, this is the best survival horror title I have played since Resident Evil 4 (and that includes F.E.A.R).
Too much work is done creating some story that surrounds the game and not enough on the game itself. I thought we learned our lesson in the 90s with FMV games putting more importance on that, but these days we just call the FMV "non-interactive cutscenes" and do pretty much the same crap as before.
I miss the days where you hit start and BAM, you're playing the game. Maybe a small story gets told at the beginning (preferably skippable without losing anything, just some framing story that says why you're there or something) but in general you play the goddamn game and not have to worry about the designer's delusion of grandeur that he's making some awesome interactive movie (Metal Gear Solid, I'm looking DIRECTLY AT YOU, though thank goodness the scenes are skippable!).
I seriously believe that gaming has reached a terrible low point in the last five years and that it will take a crash like the one that happened in the early 80s to make it all right again. Sadly it won't happen, because today's "gamers" have been fooled into believing that this is how gaming should be.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
Games don't tend to be genuinely scary. It's because there's no genuine danger.
Dead Space is an example of a game that completely succeeded in everything it was trying to do. The game mechanics were fun. Even in a year full of games with superb graphics and sound, those elements in Dead Space stood out. The story tied it all together well.
No one complains about what Dead Space was. You'll read complaints about what it wasn't. And sometimes you'll hear that someone just couldn't get into it.
Games are something you play for fun. If you're playing them to write self-aggrandizing articles about how you're above it all and ahead of all the rest of us, then Dead Space is a good choice because it's a great game. But it's not the best game at everything every game does well. And you can pat yourself on the back noticing that.
Personally, I might have enjoyed it more if it were a rescue story instead of an escape. But the story belongs to the authors, not to me.
Japanese games, written primarily for the Japanese culture.
If you don't dive into the culture, you'll miss a lot of the relevance of the games (though they're still great entertainment, as a personal opinion).
"It has some really great set pieces, some sweet effects, solid gameplay, an amazing interface and that's all."
Oh really, that's all!? Well damn, I much rather play and talk about something with dull sets, cheap effects, cruddy gameplay, and a confusing interface. What do you consider a good game if you seem to think that these don't bundle into a decent play?
I know the article praises the game as well, but really, that quote is the epitome of someone wanting to criticize something just for the sake of criticizing something!
At last I know I'm not the only person to realise what a mediocre game Dead Space is. It really is survival horror by the numbers. In fact, it heavily rips off Event Horizon. I remember wandering back to the ship at the beginning of the game just knowing it was going to blow up. And it did. And then there was the stupid way you were conveniently separated from your fellow crewmen again and again.
I haven't been scared by a game since Heretic :) And it was pretty much completely from the sound effects.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Games don't tend to be genuinely scary. It's because there's no genuine danger.
Dead Space is an example of a game that completely succeeded in everything it was trying to do. The game mechanics were fun. Even in a year full of games with superb graphics and sound, those elements in Dead Space stood out. The story tied it all together well.
No one complains about what Dead Space was. You'll read complaints about what it wasn't. And sometimes you'll hear that someone just couldn't get into it.
Games are something you play for fun. If you're playing them to write self-aggrandizing articles about how you're above it all and ahead of all the rest of us, then Dead Space is a good choice because it's a great game. But it's not the best game at everything every game does well. And you can pat yourself on the back noticing that.
Personally, I might have enjoyed it more if it were a rescue story instead of an escape. But the story belongs to the authors, not to me.
"Disparity between Plot and Gameplay" is an example of an article that completely succeeded in everything it was trying to do. The literary style was outstanding. Even in a year full of articles with superb wording and syntax, those elements in Disparity stood out. The statements of each paragraph tied it all together well.
No one complains about what the article was. You'll read complaints about what it wasn't. And sometimes you'll hear that someone just couldn't get into it.
Reviews are something you read for fresh insights and general reading pleasure. If you're reading it to write self-aggrandizing slashdot comments about how you're above it all and ahead of all the rest of us, then Gamasutra is a good choice because it's a great game review site. But it's not the best review site at everything every review site does well. And you can pat yourself on the back noticing that.
Personally, I might have enjoyed it more if it was in 13375P34k instead of English. But the story belongs to the author, not to me.
Try the Deus Ex or System Shock series. Good plot, good atmosphere, good action.
For something more recent (and with better graphics) Bioshock.
I got quite a few new games when I built my new gaming rig. Dead Space, Fallout 3, Red Alert 3, Bioshock, C&C Kane's Wrath. A few of the games that just reached the limits of my old system look and play quite a bit better, Doom 3, Quake 4, Half-Life 2, C&C 3.
So when I got stuck early on in Dead Space and the little puzzle was too much for my FPS brain to handle (especially with all the new stuff), I just moved on to Fallout 3.
I've been getting Starcraft back up again and touching on Fallout and Quake in between. I'll probably get back to Dead Space and continue on. We'll see :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
My take on Dead Space is that it was made to be the most awesome homage-in-game-form to sci-fi horror ever. The two most obvious influences are the Alien series and Event Horizon, but it's also got a lot of Solaris (the original and remake), Sunshine, and virtually every other film in the genre.
The author of TFA basically admits up front that it succeeds at this. Is it possible that it could be even more awesome if it had a more original story? I guess, but then it wouldn't be the same kind of game.
It seems to me as if someone went to see Michael Bay's Transformers or Armageddon, and then complained that the giant robots should have had deeper and more believable motivation or that they saw Bruce Willis' tearful goodbye a mile away.
I like originality and interesting stories as much as (nearly) anyone, but I also think that it's OK for a game or movie to be fun without a lot of either of those things, as long as the execution is top-notch. It's one of the reasons I love The Criterion Collection - the same company releases films as disparate as Solaris (the original) and Armageddon, and they treat both equally in terms of additional content.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Get off! Your crushing him!
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
It has some really great set pieces, some sweet effects, solid gameplay, an amazing interface and that's all ...and my lamp.. just my lamp.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
are we talking about the same halo? a strong plot? what the fuck did you smoke before you played it?
I had to take breaks from the game, often at fifteen minute intervals, because I was just less comfortable than I wanted to be for a game.
Next time, try HARD level.
the guy you couldn't kill in Resident Evil? You'd run like hell if he was chasing you, because you couldn't beat him (until the very end, that is).
Dead Space had a boss you couldn't kill until (his) very end who chased you around for awhile.
It does have Bruce Boxleitner, which is why we watched it in the first place, but should have turned it off after he died 20 minutes in.
Lots of blood, guts, and gore, and some weird religion element that they don't bother explaining. Maybe if I made it through the game I'd learn what that was all about.
But you'll be praying the main character dies the whole time, because she's annoying as hell. Yeah, it's one of those movies.
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
I did enjoy Dead Space a fair amount. I felt like they actually pulled off the camera perspective better than just about any other game that's tried it, the combat was pretty fun and the weapons were fairly unique and handled in interesting ways. The basic plasma cutter's vertical/horizontal switch was really neat.
It was also really quite a gorgeous environment, and came with an interesting backstory - that unfortunately really had no bearing on the actual fetch-and-shoot gameplay. The interface was also genius, and lots of interesting things to look at and listen to. The suit "powers" were fairly neat, though could've used maybe a little more "explaining", because some folks didn't seem to understand that the industrial suits were equippable with these as a matter of course, turning every worker into a sort of walking forklift with the levitator and able to do maintenance on fast-moving equipment without a total shutdown with the slow-beam. A little unusual, but plausible enough for me to think about as an interesting technological side-path.
What got me, though, was the extreme bowing to horror convention - after about 20 minutes of playing I could point to every single place a "scare" was going to happen. "Gee, I wonder if I turn around right here, if something's going to jump out at *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMSPLAT* me. Oh, would you look at that." It got old real quick if you've ever seen a horror movie in your life. Like clockwork, every vent that would "feel right" for a trap? Bad guy pops out. Every enclosed space? Gee, "alien life form warning lockdown" coming. Repetitive, predictable, over and over. The alien variety wasn't bad, but I'd also expected even more than I did. It only came down to a few types most of the time. Though admittedly gruesome and pretty well-designed types. But for a game that touted aliens are being sort of random mutations of dead flesh, they were less random than I would've hoped.
And while there were new and pretty environments to go to, the rest of the gameplay pretty much just consisted of "Oh my god we're all going to die if you don't go find the thing and bring it here! OH NO! NOW THE OTHER THING IS MISSING! Oh my god we're all going to die if you don't go find the thing and bring it here! OH NO! NOW THE OTHER OTHER THING IS MISSING!" ... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
*****Spoiler alert for the coming paragraph*****
And the bit with the "oh sigh everything's ok now, time to let the guard down OH MY GOD MONSTER CHICK IN THE COCKPIT LURCHING AT THE SCREEN CUT TO BLACK" - how generic can we get? I mean, seriously. Try a *little* harder for us, OK? We've only seen this style of ending in about every other horror flick or game ever made since the beginning of horror flicks. The plot as a whole, in fact, is so weak that it can be summed up extremely briefly: Stop the stupid space religion turned death cult that wants to impose its vision of rapture on everyone. It feels like they took a half-hour concept and stretched it out to about 8 hours, which is about 4 hours after I started getting the feeling of "been there, done that". Don't even get me started on the upgrade item collection and money system, generic spawn of a thousand survival horror titles. I did like the node system, though, in that it reminded me of the final fantasy X sphere grid system dumbed down. I may have been one of about 8 people who enjoyed the sphere grid, though.
*****End spoiler*****
In all, it was a decent title but afterwards I left it with a bit of a dusty feeling in my mouth, like it was a great concept but.. unfinished. And with the ending above I mentioned, I'm still unsure if I'm looking forward to a sequel, unless they use it as a springboard into something really more innovative story-wise. It kind of made me mad that they thought they could even get away with that.
I'm not saying all FPSes are bad. I love Halo, and I love Half-Life.
Nor would I suggest all JRPGs have good plots.
But your examples prove my point -- how many games are there like Halo?
90% of everything is crap...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Don't know what FPS games you've been playing, but there have been some great ones or at least well fleshed out ones. Halo has a strong plot that I found interesting. The half life games as well. I'll give you that most FPSes have little plot, but most games of all genres are crap that should not be purchased or played.
Also, I have issues with saying final fantasy games have great plots. They seem to be nonsensical japanese poetry about an apocalypse revolving around androgenous bad guys with liberal translation errors and vagueness giving the impression there's more going on than there actually is.
score!!!!
"Victory can be anticipated, but not assured" - Sun Tzu
The game might have a boring main character, the completely silent and faceless protagonist Issac, but they is no reason to pigeonhole the entire game's storyline as boring.
The history of Unitology within the game is truly fascinating, a worthy back-story for any science-fiction universe. Combine that with the unique interstellar industry of 'planet cracking' where entire planets are explosively separated into giant floating rocks and you have an exciting premise for a futuristic dystopia.
I've recently been thinking that too many games operate in the shadow of Aliens, especially in the atmosphere created by that movie's characters.
The author doesn't offer one other title and fails to offer any specifics. What games is he talking about that borrow from the Aliens franchise? Super Mario Galaxy? Metal Gear Solid 4? Virtua Fighter 5? Madden 09?
I know Starcraft and Brood War had immeasurable references to Alien and Aliens but those games came out in like 1768...
Perhaps I'm not as perceptive as the author in spotting Alien ripoffs, or perhaps he's full of himself and offers no proof like a professional caliber columnist for a legitimate news source would.
Let's take our hero and avatar, Isaac Clark. Mr. Clark (whose face you can only glimpse for a moment or two from start to finish) is a voiceless middle-aged white man it would appear, who specializes in heavy breathing and killing things. You are ostensibly interested in the plight of the Ishimura because your ex is on it, but we never really care about this "relationship."
Well the author fails to miss a major component of the plot and game. That during the last sequences of the game, your ex, Nicole, gives you advice and contacts you, aiding you in returning the marker, aiding you in escaping the Ishimura and getting the hell out of there.
And *SPOILERS AHEAD* the first letters of each mission of the game are an acronym spelling out Nicole is Dead.
Meaning the marker was slowly driving you insane the entire game.
The problem is that Isaac has been saddled with modern video games' most ludicrous trope: the "everyman" silent protagonist.
I guess the author forgot to play Grand Theft Auto III, Half Life, or Fallout 3, or Oblivion, or ....etc.
There are many games where the protagonist is silent, faceless, and has little to no insight in the protagonist's personal window.
Not every game needs to have 300 million cut scenes of back story like the Metal Gear Solid series or insane amounts of back-story and narration to introduce the player to the newest massive Final Fantasy world that they'll be plunging into for the next 70 hours.
When are people going to stop beating this dead horse? It wasn't a good idea in the first place, and it has become less of a good idea as games have evolved. I don't see how you can relate to a character that does not exist. I guess it lets you make stuff up about him or her; it lets us call him a "blank slate" or some other foolishness.
This is so ridiculous. So because I know that Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid) is a chain smoking Japanese/American spy modeled off of Snake Pliskin and created in a lab who has a mysterious nanotechnology aging disease I'm supposed to be able to easily identify with him?
I related to my Fallout 3 character far more than I did with Old Snake as the Fallout 3 character I get to name, design, and choose his actions across most of the course of the game. Solid Snake has only one single way to play through the game......beat the bad guy, save the world, get the girl. Oh no that's not cliche, that's not beating a dead horse........
It's consistently entertaining, something I can't say for some survival horror and action horror games that outstay their welcome (see BioShock and RE4). I'm sure I can forgive it its faults for another run through its scary spaceship.
Video games are like porn. The plot only serves as an excuse to play. It's going to be that way until consumers demand better writing. Don't hold your breath for that day.
We love better writing. But not in our fucking action games.
ACTION games are like porn. For plot, we'll play a cRPG.
Lies.
So, was he not a boss or did he not chase you around for awhile?
Apparently millions of teen and preteen zombies swearing at each other and tea bagging the dead in multiplayer is what passes for a strong plot in an Xbox game these days.
Well, that would be the multiplayer plot I guess, I was talking about the single player "story" mode.
What you said was like saying "I just watched the 'citizen kane' dvd. What a terrible movie! It was just text saying 'DVD menu: Play, Options, and Directors commentary!'"
are we talking about the same halo? a strong plot? what the fuck did you smoke before you played it?
Look, of course not everyone is going to like any given plot. I'm assuming you didn't. You have to admit though that Halo had more plot than say, Doom, Super mario bros, or metroid. There was an actual story. Characters. Stuff happened. Literary devices even. That's not the case for many games, current games included. Even the newest Mario and Metroid games had almost zero plot.
If Halo had little plot, then theres really no way for an FPS to have much of a plot and still be a game.
I mean, is it more fun to act in a movie or watch it being acted out?
Few places are more mind numbingly dull than a set (except for the few minutes every hour when something actually happens). So that's a no brainer.
If watching films was as exciting as making them the whole movie industry would have died out in the 1910s...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
True been told the story isnt there but am i the only one who die on purpose 2 or 3 time for each kind of monster to see every different way of being slaughtered ? the funnyest imo is the monster that grab your legs and slowly pull you toward a hole... well i kinda liked getting shred apart member by member by the freaking regenerating freak. Well the game is more gore than frightening thats true, i pissed my gf because she saw me slaming the ground with my feet to dismember every cadaver i was finding "just in case" some mosquitoes come and transform it into a huge shitbag ... spent like 45minutes in the whole game doing that ... maybe im just necrophiliac eh ? Anyway the end was just a merge of halo and first horror movie on the shelf :x
stalker: shadow of chernobyl
excellent shooter, good graphics, coherent plot, and a sandbox environment. they created an interesting world, and you get to deal with it however you want to, for the most part. i haven't played the new one yet, so i can't vouch for it.
Yes, Halo. Yes, a strong plot. Just because a game is on a console doesn't mean that it lacks depth. Remember that this game is coming from the developers of Marathon, one of the richest FPS universes ever created.
The Halo games provide a fantastic lens for focusing on one aspect of the plot. The books provide another. The audio drama provides yet another. Honestly, there is actually quite a bit there. Moving, inspiring, and with tremendous gravitas; Halo presents the story of the supreme soldier and his transformation from that defining occupation to thoughtful hero.
Not to mention the completely fantastic music.
I second Deus Ex, excellent story, quite engrossing although I'd argue it wasn't an FPS but a 3D adventure game with shooting (just because you don't spend _most_ of your time aiming at things to shoot).
Bioshock tried too (I know, I know, some people loved it), and Half Life does fairly well too.
Personally, I liked the minimalistic story telling in the Resident Evil series as a perfect balance of "why you're doing this" and the shooter/horror mechanic.
That said, Dead Space has an excellent lead-up story (the comic series) and back-story written for the game which helps a lot for understanding what's going on.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Not all Final Fantasy games are about androgynous bad guys and an apocalypse. In fact, that's pretty much just FF7. Sure, the crystal series, games 1-5, which you've probably never played, are about the destruction of the world due to the corruption of man abusing the power of the elemental crystals. However, 6, and 8-12, are more about political action and the consequences of war. Final Fantasy will always be about saving the world, hence 'Final', but they don't necessarily have to be about an apocalypse.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" -Voltaire
If Halo had a plot, I completely missed it. Half-Life has an great plot; if only they'd give it a friggin' ending.
Come hear me sing!
Kudos on the System Shock reference. I have only played the second one, but to this day I still fear the sounds of lil primates yelling at me, fearful that they may try to telekinitically throw "things" at me.