Temporary Hiatus

So between finding a new job and having to relocate for said job I'm going to be rather busy for awhile, so posts are going to become rather sparse and sporadic for the next few weeks. Once I get settled at the new location I'll be moving back to updating weekly (or more if time allows).

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause my three regular readers. Rest assured my long winded nit picking will resume with time!

Pacing and Padding: Decreasing Value to Increase Price

Image © escapistmagazine.com

We've all played games that seem to drag on far longer than it should, or played those tacked on sections that are completely irrelevant to the rest of the game. As expectations rise for grand, expansive games so does the tendency to add more features and content into games beyond the initial vision. Budgets and scopes of games are becoming so grandiose that play times can stretch well over 100 hours before you come close to seeing everything the game has to offer.

But when does additional content shift from being an added bonus to annoying filler?

Narrative in Games Part 2: Mixing Oil and Water

Not every game is consistent between the cutscene and gameplay narratives.

Last week we took a look at narrative in games, splitting it into two concepts: explicit and emergent narrative. Explicit narrative referring to the type of story generally told in books, film, and other traditional media, and emergent narrative referring to the story that emerges due to the choices and actions taken by the player within the game's mechanics. We looked at the strengths and drawbacks of each and touched both on why these are often very isolated from one another and how they can still reinforce each other even when disconnected.

This week we'll take a look at a couple ways that developers are already trying to integrate the two together more directly, as well as a few example games that demonstrate these methods.

Narrative in Games Part 1: Cutscenes vs Gameplay

Don't worry, in another 10 minutes you'll remember this is a game.

Video games have had a rather mixed history when it comes to storytelling. While many games certainly make attempts at telling grand, meaningful stories most of them tend to exist primarily or entirely inside either cutscenes or dialogue dumps. Despite the fundamentally interactive nature of games their actual narrative tends to be strictly non-interactive - or at best with only slight variance along a small number of discrete paths. As a result many in the gaming community heavily criticize cutscenes in games, claiming that they instead try to mimic films rather than utilizing the inherent strengths of the medium.

So, are cutscenes a crutch that less innovative or skilled developers rely on, or do they have merits within video games?

Bit Rant: Leveling Into Atrophy

Bit Rant is a parody series intended to overstate issues with specific elements in gaming for comedic effect. While some points are valid to a degree it is not intended to be taken literally.

Experience and leveling systems have become so ubiquitous in games that you'd be hard pressed to find any game released in the last several years that didn't have leveling in some form. Despite constant jokes about the pervasiveness of mechanics like shooting and sandboxes, leveling systems largely sidestep major criticism despite being arguably the most overused element in all of gaming.

It's unfortunate that the most manipulative and least interesting mechanic in the history of gaming is the aspect that has been propagated through the entire medium.

Simplification of Games: Dumbing Down vs Focused Design

The "dumbing down" of games tends to be a pretty polarizing topic for many gamers, and it's easy to understand why. In order to be interesting or fun games have to engage with the player on some level, and one of the most common and effective ways of doing that is a challenge - and a game being too simplistic or easy can fall flatter than the disk it ships on.

With all the ire and venom the gaming community throws at dumbed down titles I think that gamers have lost sight over what they're trying to fight for. A lot of people will cite specific game elements or tropes as crutches for dumbed down titles rather than trying to understand what makes a game engaging or not.

Rather than argue whether specific games are or aren't dumbed down, I'd like to take a look at what does (and doesn't) cause a game to feel dumbed down.

The Elder Scrolls Online Beta Weekend: First Impressions

Well, I was lucky enough to get a beta key for the Elder Scrolls Online beta event last weekend so I dove right into it. Most of the press I've seen regarding ESO has been from the perspective of long-time Elder Scrolls fans looking for their next fix rather than an MMO player checking out a new entry in the genre, which seems a bit unusual to me. Now I certainly have some experience with the past Elder Scrolls games but I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore fan of the series.

So, here are my first impressions of the game from the perspective of a fan of MMOs rather than Elder Scrolls specifically.

Thief Impressions and Comparison to Thief II

With all the old franchises receiving reboots I'm somewhat surprised that it took so long for Thief to get the treatment. Because the Thief series has always held a bit of a niche appeal there's been a lot of speculation about the reboot and whether or not it would carry the spirit of the older games or fall into the trap of over-simplification for mass appeal.

I decided to do as fair a comparison as I could between old and new, so I replayed several hours of Thief II: The Metal Age before touching the new Thief. I examined both old and new with a critical eye, trying hard not to let my own nostalgia of the series cloud what it actually was in order to give the reboot a chance to stand on as even ground as possible.

Here are my thoughts and impressions after playing the first 5 hours of each game side by side.

Dark Souls and Punishment

Prepare to die - we literally designed it to be unavoidable.

Dark Souls and Demon's Souls get a lot of well deserved praise because they do so many things right. In a time when most games will shy away from difficulty or challenge in the name of mass appeal these games will kick you to the curb, hold a knife to your neck and make you beg for more. They have great combat feel, immersive worlds, variety in gameplay, and epic bosses.

But I'm not here to tell you what the Souls series does right - I'm here to tell you about the few things they do wrong and how it sabotages the entire experience.

Bit Rant: Guns and Disempowerment

Today I'm going to try something a little different with a new series I call Bit Rant. Basically this will just be a humorous rant against popular mechanics or topics to approach them from a different point of view. As such everything here should be taken as parody rather than literal critique.

With that out of the way, let's talk about how horrible the mechanics in modern FPS games are and how they directly undermine their narrative themes!

To The Moon and Interactive Storytelling

To the Moon is an indie game that came out in November of last year. I think for most people it flew under the radar - in fact the only way I discovered it myself was by chancing across it while perusing the indie section of Steam during one of their (in)famous sales. The game itself is quite good and I highly recommend it to anyone that is interested by the trailer, but what I'd really like to discuss isn't the game itself but where it (and games like it) belong in gaming.

Bastion: Choice, Morality, and Metaphysics

When I first played Bastion I was expecting a fairly competent hack and slash game with an artistic aesthetic - what more could you reasonably expect from an indie title for $15? Once I got into the game however I began to realize that Bastion was far more than that; it engaged me in a way that I haven't been in years. Every facet of the game feels deliberate and necessary, culminating in one of the most powerful moments in gaming I've ever encountered.

But before I get too far ahead of myself...

Spoiler Warning

I'll be talking extensively about a lot of the major events in the game as well as all of the relevant context. If you haven't played this game yet I cannot overstate the need to stop reading and go play the game for yourself - the game is a work of art and worth every penny of the cost and every minute of your time.

Xenogears Retrospective Part 3: Fei and Freud

In part 3 of this retrospective I'll be examining the character of Fei a bit more closely and his relation to the part unification theme in Xenogears. I will of course be talking about elements that occur late in the game, so if you haven't played the game you might want to skip this one.

Spoiler Warning

DMC Demo: First Impressions

So I've been a fan of the Devil May Cry series for quite awhile now. They've always had a great mix of tight and challenging gameplay with unique and humorous characters, settings, and situations. The series drops all pretense of realism in the first few minutes and never looks back, allowing for some truly hilarious spectacles in an environment without the need to question them (of course you can keep an enemy floating in mid air with bullets, it makes perfect sense if you think about it).

When the prequel/reboot of the series was announced I was very excited - that is until they released the teaser trailer for it. Capcom passed development of the new game off to Ninja Theory (previously development had been handled internally) and the design direction was clearly a deviation from previous titles, especially regarding Dante. It was revealed later that this was a conscious decision as Capcom wanted this to be more of an origin story, depicting Dante as a very different character than in the first four games.

While there was a large backlash from fans (as was expected) I was cautiously optimistic. Having an origin story to show the growth into the established character can be very interesting. My primary concern was that it showed a distinct shift of focus onto the story itself, something that had never been a major concern in the previous games. I worried not that the new direction would be negative but that the change in focus would result in a decrease in attention to detail in the aspects of the game that had been so central before.

With the release date fast approaching Capcom released a demo for DMC recently, giving gamers their first real look at the game. Were the concerns of the fans justified, or was it all just fear of change? Let's take a look at how the DMC demo stands as it's own game and in contrast to the series as a whole.

Xenogears Retrospective Part 2: The Morality of Violence

In part 2 of this retrospective I examine how each playable character relates to the theme of the morality of violence. I will be talking about events that happen throughout the game, so anyone who doesn't want to see any spoilers for the game should avoid reading this article.

Spoiler Warning

Inventories and Trash Mechanics

Check out my new 20 slot bag!

Inventory systems have been around almost as long as video games themselves. It's pretty much given that if your game has items or equipment that you'll need some way for the player to manage them, and there have been several minor mechanics that were created to either improve the inventory concept or to allow for more varied or interesting ways for the player to interact with their inventory. Unfortunately not all of them have been positive. With that in mind let's take a look at one of the worst offenders - trash items.

Xenogears Retrospective Part 1: Review

For a long time I've heralded Xenogears as having one of the greatest narratives of all time in games. I first played through this game when I was 13, but even at that young age I remember being extremely surprised and impressed with how complex and believable the characters were.

A few weeks ago Xenogears came up in discussion with a friend who had far less stellar impressions of the game than I did. He had tried to play the game much later than I had and thus asserted that the only reason I held such a high opinion of it was due to nostalgia. This got me thinking - I hadn't played the game through to the end in over a decade, and truth be told the details of the last third or so of the game were a bit hazy to me. Was this game that I have long maintained as a pinnacle achievement of narrative in gaming really as good as I remembered?

Final Fantasy VII and the Kübler-Ross Model

For many gamers Final Fantasy VII marked an introduction into the JRPG genre, and it is widely stated to be one of the best (if not the best) JRPG of all time. While it wasn’t my first JRPG nor did it turn out to be my #1 favorite this game holds a very special place in my heart for one very specific reason.

Spoiler Warning

Welcome to Bit Rate!

Thanks for visiting my blog! Some of you may be wondering what it is I'm trying to do here and why you should care. Well, my goal here is to take aspects of games both new and old and analyze them in depth. This could range from dissecting the buildup and result of a particular moment in a game, exploring some of the potential metaphors or themes, or just picking apart a common mechanic and discussing the pros and cons of it's modern usage.

I'll likely be playing around a bit with the exact format and presentation, so any feedback you have (positive or negative) is welcomed! Do you think I'm too long winded? Would you prefer some video content? Do I not explain certain concepts very well? Would you prefer I stop posing theoretical questions to you?  Anything at all, just let me know in either the comments or by throwing me an email at tevoul@gmail.com!