With Flames In My Hands.

[rionaleonhart]

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy really brought home to me how tired I am of open-world games. I love the Assassin's Creed series, I love Red Dead Redemption, but I think I'm suffering a sort of open-world fatigue; I'm not really getting anywhere with Horizon Zero Dawn, even though it's staggeringly beautiful, because I'm just exhausted by how much there is to do. It felt so good to pick up Lost Legacy and play through a fast-moving game where you're constantly driving things forward.

One of the many reasons I am looking forward intensely to Danganronpa V3's release at the end of the month. Dangan Ronpa games are ALL PLOT, ALL THE TIME and it's great.

I'm feeling more generous towards Final Fantasy XV than I am towards most open-world games at the moment, because that game isn't really about the plot; it's a game about arsing around with your friends. Of course you should waste time on stupid sidequests; wasting time with people you care about is important!

Wait, maybe the problem isn't open-world games; maybe the problem is games where the protagonist is alone. In Lost Legacy, you spend most of the time hanging out with Nadine; in Final Fantasy XV, you've got three pals with you. I just want constant dialogue! And that's just not something you get in, for example, the Assassin's Creed games. (As much as I love Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, I'm sad that it went, 'Twin protagonists! You can choose which one to play! But the other twin doesn't tag along with you, sorry.' I want Evie and Jacob to snipe at each other while I'm running around London!)


...okay, I wrote the above in part because I was dithering on whether to play Infamous: Second Son, as a means of passing the time before Danganronpa V3's release. On the one hand, it had good reviews and my housemate had it, so it would cost me nothing to try it out. On the other, I was so tired of open-world games, and I'd tried the original Infamous once and hated it instantly.

I needn't have worried. I came to love Infamous: Second Son just as instantly as I'd come to hate Infamous. Turns out that this game is all about siblings who don't really get along but love each other nonetheless, i.e. my ultimate weakness. Almost at the very start of the game (twelve minutes into this walkthrough video), there was the perfect cutscene, cramming about six things I love into fifty seconds, after the protagonist Delsin got extremely stigmatised superpowers.

And it's so fun to play! Delsin can run so fast and can jump so high and has assorted zooming-and-hovering skills, so you can fly from building to building! He sometimes gives a little giddy laugh as he shoots up into the sky, and it's really endearing. It does suffer a little from Videogame Morality, where it's morally fine to kill the occasional civilian so long as you make up for it by stopping some drug dealers later, but I'm not taking it too seriously. I'm pretty used to suspending my moral disbelief in videogames.

This game further supports my 'maybe the issue is a lack of company in open worlds rather than open worlds in themselves' theory, because Delsin and his brother occasionally have little sarcastic phone conversations while you're running around the city, and it's great.

I'm only two hours into the game, so it's possible my opinion will change, but they have been a thoroughly enjoyable two hours.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, it sounds like you want companion interaction. Which makes sense. There are a lot of shows where I'm kind of "meh", but then a character gets a exasperated-but-protective parter, and I'm sold!

[batman]

Yeah, that's my problem with open world games too. There are some that I'm okay with where there's only one protagonist, but for the most part I just find the world empty and unengaging.

I am seriously considering getting DRv3. I initially wasn't going to, based on what spoilers I had heard re: Kaede, but on the other hand the series is pretty absurd and I do love a good blackly absurd game in my life... (Also I ended the demo shipping Kaede/Makoto/Hajime and now I want all the fic.)

[rionaleonhart]

I'm sad to hear there are discouraging spoilers! Even in my desperate efforts to avoid learning anything about this game, I've picked up a general impression that There Are Things Some People Don't Like, although fortunately I haven't heard anything much more specific than that. But, even if those things prove to be things I don't like either, I'm expecting some engaging murder mysteries, and I'm excited about those. I loved piecing together clues in the few second-game cases I hadn't already experienced via Let's Play, so I can't wait for an entire game of cases I don't know the answers to yet! (Plus, you know, my increasingly worrying Teenagers Suffering Horribly videogame collection could always do with expansion.)

I am so, so pleased to have a companion in this terrible Kaede/Makoto/Hajime 'shipping.

[rionaleonhart]

'Exasperated but protective' seems like exactly the attitude Delsin's brother has towards him. I'm highly in favour of this.

To my knowledge, 'characters chat to each other frequently while you're actually running around and playing the game, not just in cutscenes' became widespread in videogames relatively recently; I think I first started to notice it in PS3 games. In a way, I feel spoiled by current games. I can't go back and play older ones now; there's too much silence!

[wolfy_writing]

That's the entire reason why I watched Gotham long enough to get to the adventures of Adorably Awkward Teenage Batman. I wasn't wild about how they wrote Jim Gordon, but he has a partner who's equal parts "I have your back no matter what!" and "Why are you like this?"

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe you're right about the companion thing. I don't play a lot of open world games, but I've played a few - and the companion thing is interesting to talk about even if not in open world games.

The reason I connected to the characters in FF13 - and I think I recall you saying something similar - is that while there weren't necessarily tons of cutscenes or segments where all the crew were together, there was plenty of characterisation. A lot of it came from your general exploring of the environment, where the characters would also run about on their own and chime in with conversation (a far cry from FF8's silent moving in a perfect line strategy). FF13 isn't really open world obviously for much of the game, but I think it's an interesting one to talk about.

Deadly Premonition is a great example of a more open world game using this concept, though. It presents deadlines, but they're lax deadlines. For instance, a character may say "Be at Location X by 17:00!". What day you do it on really doesn't matter - it could be five days from then unless it's an event with urgency. The only difference if you do it on another day is the character will be mad at you for being late, haha. You can do sidequests, follow people's daily routine. There are some fairly long car drives, too - which is where it gets interesting.

Without spoiling anything as to the whys, the protagonist of Deadly Premonition talks fairly incessantly in a one-way monologue to somebody called Zach during the game. Sometimes you can trigger this yourself. Driving on a boring car journey? You can listen to York talk to Zach about random B-movies! Here is a random example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7mExQETbEo I think it's a great bit of characterisation and fills in those long gaps. It also makes it feel like you're never quite alone, even when you're the only character on the screen.

Deadly Premonition isn't always successful with what it does (it's also low budget and looks it), but I think it gets characterisation right the majority of the time (there are a few noteable exceptions). Not relevant to the main discussion we're having here, but you can even introduce yourself to character before you're officially meant to meet them, which is an entirely different conversation and again triggers a different conversation later given you've already met them. (I'm sad that most players won't get to see the optional introduction to Olivia where York nerds out about Olivia Newton John and weirds everyone out.) I came away from the game extremely fond of York because he's such an unusual character but it really, really works and a lot of that is due to the equally unusual methods of characterisation.

~timydamonkey

[rionaleonhart]

The out-of-cutscene chatter in Final Fantasy XIII was one of the first things that struck me about the game, actually! As you say, it really added to the sense of characterisation. Characters spoke as you were running around; they weren't just moving in grim silence to the next cutscene!

Being able to introduce yourself to significant characters before the plot requires it sounds like a really interesting optional detail.

That is definitely more information on B-movies than I was expecting from a videogame! Wow. I feel York is the sort of guy who's well-meaning, but who you'd intensely regret getting into a conversation with.

In return, I was looking up some articles on videogame dialogue earlier today, and one of them introduced me to this great conversation between a couple of enemies in No One Lives Forever.

[(Anonymous)]

That is definitely the right description of York. He has absolutely no social skills and his conversations are awkward as hell. Here is a small example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmPw47JRrw8

York is the best. (Some people think some of the awkward dialogue in this game is bad translation; this is a great example that it's not; it's just in York's character to be really weird.)

That's an interesting conversation! Dat fourth wall.

[batman]

I'm pretty sure we will have lots of Teenagers Suffering Horribly, and I am really tempted to see what kind of trolling they give us this time. I have been making progress on my gaming backlog, so maybe I will join you in NDRv3 hell.

I REGRET NOTHING WITH THIS SHIP. It'd be cute!

[thenicochan]

Anything even somewhat considered "linear" gets a bad rep with current gaming trends, but I, too, enjoy a nice solid narrative driven experience. Plus good companions. Good companions are a major plus.

Did you hear about Square-Enix's plan to release free story based cutscenes in 2018 in patches for FFXV? Maybe it'll fix the narrative issue so many have had with the game, so we can have both a story about hangin' with bros plus a competent narrative. I'm dreamin' large here.

[rionaleonhart]

Exploring is fun, but, yes, there's room for the occasional linear game. I can understand the criticisms of Final Fantasy XIII's linearity, but the pacing was so good!

I did hear about the story updates! I'm looking forward to them. If nothing else, they'll give me an excuse to replay this charming mess of a game, and I'm in favour of that.

[spindizzy]

That's about as far through as I got into Second Son as well, and I really enjoyed Delsin and his brother too! But yes, not having people to talk to and overwhelming amounts of Stuff sounds like a pretty good explanation for burning out on open world games to me – I have a similar problem!

(Did you like AC: Syndicate? It's in the steam sale so I'm considering picking it up while it's cheaper.)

[rionaleonhart]

I'm starting to get the open-world fatigue with Second Son, but I do really love the ridiculous fast-moving skills you get for traversing the city. Want to get up this building? You could climb, ooooooor you could just run straight up this wall in half a second.

(I loved Syndicate! Strong candidate for my favourite Assassin's Creed game. I really loved the relationship between the twins, even if I wish they could have hung out with each other more. And running around London was great, although I'm probably biased because it's my home.)