Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2018-08-04 12:44 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2018-08-04 12:44 pm
Entry tags:
Plot Developments Have No Impact On My Ghost-Smooching Opinions.
Beyond: Two Souls: You and your partner have been captured on a mission for the CIA! Now the captors are threatening your partner with a knife in order to get you to talk! Will you press the 'talk' button to save him from his terrible fate? Will you? Will you???
Riona, not even bothering to touch the controller: oh no, a shirtless man in pain, what will I do
Beyond: Two Souls, or Teen Ghost Misery Simulator, as it's become known in our household, is an extremely bad game and I don't recommend it. It controls frustratingly and is relentlessly miserable in a way that just isn't fun, and the non-chronological timeline means that you get all the problems of David Cage's writing without the one thing David Cage is actually good at, i.e. ambitious branching storytelling. At one point I walked into a run-down bar, went 'there's no way Cage hasn't written an attempted sexual assault scene here,' left the bar immediately and checked online to find I was absolutely right.
(I feel a certain unwanted kinship with Cage because I too am incapable of keeping my id out of the things I write, although I hope I'm at least slightly better at giving the impression that I have at some point met and interacted with an actual human being.)
The 'you're a girl tethered to a ghost' concept is vaguely interesting, but YOU CAN'T SMOOCH THE GHOST, WHAT'S THE POINT.
Although at one point a guy was making out with the protagonist on the bed and I could swoop in as the ghost to bop the guy's foot, as a way of saying 'hey, I'm here too, just hanging out and watching,' which was pretty good.
WHILE I'M COMPLAINING ABOUT DAVID CAGE, under the cut are a few gripes about Detroit: Become Human. (Plot gripes, specifically, although those certainly aren't the game's only faults. Both Detroit: Become Human and Beyond: Two Souls have some really glaring instances of going 'I'M TOTALLY CAPABLE OF HANDLING THIS HEAVY TOPIC' and fumbling it hideously. In the case of Beyond: Two Souls specifically, there was some shocking mishandling of a topic I have very strong personal feelings about.)
The Alice plot twist was EXTREMELY BAD. It made the whole of Kara's story less interesting! 'Is it possible to care about... AN ANDROID?' Detroit: Become Human demands to know, when we've spent the entire game caring about androids and the 'how do androids and humans relate to each other?' question feels severely underexplored.
Also frustrating: the 'deviancy can be spread through a touch' concept. It's so much less interesting than the cases we see of androids making the effort to break their programming because it contradicts their desires. I'm actually inclined to think of 'organic' deviancy and deviancy through a touch as entirely different things. Androids who rebel against an order and break their programming have free will; I'm not sure that's the case for those who are converted with a touch. There's a point where Markus expresses discomfort at the fact that the androids he's converted are willing to follow him without question, and I thought that was setting up a 'surprise! you're not freeing them; you're just reprogramming them to obey you!' revelation, but apparently not.
The three protagonists didn't interact nearly enough! I was really hoping more would come of the storylines coming together at the end. Connor and Kara had such an intense moment of eye contact through the chain-link fence when he was chasing her! I was really expecting them to connect somehow later on! (There's a brief and difficult-to-get scene where Connor apologises to Kara for chasing her across the road, and it's good, but it's not enough!)
All that said, despite the game's flaws, it lets you stroke a dog and (for some outcomes) it concludes with a hug, so it can't be all bad.
Although it's frustrating in many respects, I could actually pick out a fair bit to like in Detroit: Become Human. It had interesting ideas, and by a long way it's the most ambitious branching narrative I've ever seen in a videogame. It also had characters I actually liked! This genuinely shocked me; I didn't like a single character in Heavy Rain and had sort of assumed that David Cage couldn't make characters I cared about. But I like Hank Anderson enormously, and I like all the three playable characters a reasonable amount. Also, Sumo is a very good dog.
I can say exactly one thing for Beyond: Two Souls, and that's that it's good to play with a friend watching so you can laugh at it together. (That's actually a quality Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human all share, so there's definitely a place for Quantic Dream games.)
Oh, all right, and I was happy with the ending I got, where Jodie returned to her friends from when she was homeless and they all lived together and there was lots of hugging. That was cute. I'm glad (and surprised) that it was possible to get an ending that wasn't entirely miserable.
A couple of days ago, a videogame journalist put out the call 'Are you in Detroit: Become Human fandom? Wanna talk to me for an article about what attracted you to the game?' My friends tried to get me to participate, but what on Earth would I say in response to 'what attracted you to the game?'
'Android limbs are so intriguingly detachable.'
'I'm prepared to overlook how horrendously this game misuses civil rights imagery because it gives me a great opportunity to write self-indulgent fanfiction about the horrible consent issues inherent in android programming.'
'I don't have many fandoms where I can plausibly write about one character repeatedly murdering another until the murdered character starts to get turned on by it.'
Maybe not.
Basically, what attracts me to Detroit: Become Human is that it has interesting characters and concepts trapped in a bad story and I want to rescue them by putting them in a worse one.
Riona, not even bothering to touch the controller: oh no, a shirtless man in pain, what will I do
Beyond: Two Souls, or Teen Ghost Misery Simulator, as it's become known in our household, is an extremely bad game and I don't recommend it. It controls frustratingly and is relentlessly miserable in a way that just isn't fun, and the non-chronological timeline means that you get all the problems of David Cage's writing without the one thing David Cage is actually good at, i.e. ambitious branching storytelling. At one point I walked into a run-down bar, went 'there's no way Cage hasn't written an attempted sexual assault scene here,' left the bar immediately and checked online to find I was absolutely right.
(I feel a certain unwanted kinship with Cage because I too am incapable of keeping my id out of the things I write, although I hope I'm at least slightly better at giving the impression that I have at some point met and interacted with an actual human being.)
The 'you're a girl tethered to a ghost' concept is vaguely interesting, but YOU CAN'T SMOOCH THE GHOST, WHAT'S THE POINT.
Although at one point a guy was making out with the protagonist on the bed and I could swoop in as the ghost to bop the guy's foot, as a way of saying 'hey, I'm here too, just hanging out and watching,' which was pretty good.
WHILE I'M COMPLAINING ABOUT DAVID CAGE, under the cut are a few gripes about Detroit: Become Human. (Plot gripes, specifically, although those certainly aren't the game's only faults. Both Detroit: Become Human and Beyond: Two Souls have some really glaring instances of going 'I'M TOTALLY CAPABLE OF HANDLING THIS HEAVY TOPIC' and fumbling it hideously. In the case of Beyond: Two Souls specifically, there was some shocking mishandling of a topic I have very strong personal feelings about.)
The Alice plot twist was EXTREMELY BAD. It made the whole of Kara's story less interesting! 'Is it possible to care about... AN ANDROID?' Detroit: Become Human demands to know, when we've spent the entire game caring about androids and the 'how do androids and humans relate to each other?' question feels severely underexplored.
Also frustrating: the 'deviancy can be spread through a touch' concept. It's so much less interesting than the cases we see of androids making the effort to break their programming because it contradicts their desires. I'm actually inclined to think of 'organic' deviancy and deviancy through a touch as entirely different things. Androids who rebel against an order and break their programming have free will; I'm not sure that's the case for those who are converted with a touch. There's a point where Markus expresses discomfort at the fact that the androids he's converted are willing to follow him without question, and I thought that was setting up a 'surprise! you're not freeing them; you're just reprogramming them to obey you!' revelation, but apparently not.
The three protagonists didn't interact nearly enough! I was really hoping more would come of the storylines coming together at the end. Connor and Kara had such an intense moment of eye contact through the chain-link fence when he was chasing her! I was really expecting them to connect somehow later on! (There's a brief and difficult-to-get scene where Connor apologises to Kara for chasing her across the road, and it's good, but it's not enough!)
All that said, despite the game's flaws, it lets you stroke a dog and (for some outcomes) it concludes with a hug, so it can't be all bad.
Although it's frustrating in many respects, I could actually pick out a fair bit to like in Detroit: Become Human. It had interesting ideas, and by a long way it's the most ambitious branching narrative I've ever seen in a videogame. It also had characters I actually liked! This genuinely shocked me; I didn't like a single character in Heavy Rain and had sort of assumed that David Cage couldn't make characters I cared about. But I like Hank Anderson enormously, and I like all the three playable characters a reasonable amount. Also, Sumo is a very good dog.
I can say exactly one thing for Beyond: Two Souls, and that's that it's good to play with a friend watching so you can laugh at it together. (That's actually a quality Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human all share, so there's definitely a place for Quantic Dream games.)
Oh, all right, and I was happy with the ending I got, where Jodie returned to her friends from when she was homeless and they all lived together and there was lots of hugging. That was cute. I'm glad (and surprised) that it was possible to get an ending that wasn't entirely miserable.
A couple of days ago, a videogame journalist put out the call 'Are you in Detroit: Become Human fandom? Wanna talk to me for an article about what attracted you to the game?' My friends tried to get me to participate, but what on Earth would I say in response to 'what attracted you to the game?'
'Android limbs are so intriguingly detachable.'
'I'm prepared to overlook how horrendously this game misuses civil rights imagery because it gives me a great opportunity to write self-indulgent fanfiction about the horrible consent issues inherent in android programming.'
'I don't have many fandoms where I can plausibly write about one character repeatedly murdering another until the murdered character starts to get turned on by it.'
Maybe not.
Basically, what attracts me to Detroit: Become Human is that it has interesting characters and concepts trapped in a bad story and I want to rescue them by putting them in a worse one.
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'Is it possible to care about... AN ANDROID?'
...if it wasn't possible, the game would be fundamentally misconceived.
There's a point where Markus expresses discomfort at the fact that the androids he's converted are willing to follow him without question, and I thought that was setting up a 'surprise! you're not freeing them; you're just reprogramming them to obey you!' revelation, but apparently not.
Ooh, that would have been fascinating! And really consistent with the game mechanics! Like the idea that free will comes from facing and overcoming the automatic programming about who and what you're expected to be in order to do what you really want is pretty cool, and "We made Deviants! ...actually, we made imitation Deviants who act the role of Deviant, but are merely reprogrammed by what's effectively reprogramming!" would be cool. Especially since how hard would it be to get someone to turn Deviant when what they'd have to rebel against is being programmed to act the part of an individual with free will?
But I like Hank Anderson enormously, and I like all the three playable characters a reasonable amount. Also, Sumo is a very good dog.
Yes! Hank is compelling and has a very good dog!
'Android limbs are so intriguingly detachable.'
THAT IS A PERFECTLY GOOD REASON TO BE FANNISH ABOUT SOMETHING WHERE THE ORIGINAL CANON IS OF UNEVEN QUALITY AND HAS SOME FLAWED WRITING, EXCUSE YOU!
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Then someone could detach a few of his limbs. Meanwhile, Hank fusses over his dog in the background. Perfect fic.
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...that would be the absolute best fic ever!
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(Anonymous) 2018-08-04 01:01 pm (UTC)(link)You must now complete the catalogue of David Cage games by playing Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy. You definitely need the friend watching for when the plot dives off the rails and out into space and you spend half the game going "WTF?". Fahrenheit also is the game which wins the contender of the "MOST CREEPY PS2 HANGING AWARD", when my PS2 hung on a really creepy angled close up of a dead ghost who hated the character I was playing as at the time. It was like he was staring into my soul wanting to murder me. BRR. It has some interesting ideas/gameplay, counterbalanced by some not so fun stuff. But seriously, if you've got someone who doesn't know it, it's WAY better than Detroit: Being Human for sheer wtf value for whoever is watching.
Hey look, it's on Steam now! (I love that the trailer starts really boring, then it's like LOOK AT OUR CRAZY PLOT TWISTS, ALSO SOME MATRIX POWERS.)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/312840/Fahrenheit_Indigo_Prophecy_Remastered/
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(Anonymous) 2018-08-04 01:03 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
Oh, wow, look at those remastered PS2 models. I still remember being absolutely overwhelmed by how realistic the graphics of Final Fantasy X were.
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I have more of these than I thought.
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I laughed very hard. Heavy Rain was one of the most hilariously terrible games I've ever played, and for that reason I alone I really don't want to ever play Become Human but I also really want to watch Squeem play it because I expect it would be amazing. I really have fond memories of my Heavy Rain playthrough, but for completely different reasons than the developers intended.
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I'd love to hear your and Squeem's thoughts on Become Human, if it does get played in your household!
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Rei is correct.
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(Anonymous) 2018-08-06 08:29 am (UTC)(link)no subject
I did like some things about the game, mostly the fact that it was a female character doing things I rarely get to see female characters do, but so much of it was so ridiculous. I liveblogged it (and haven’t gotten around to crossposting it here, whoops) but overall it’s just not a good game. i enjoyed it and had fun with it (well, as much fun as one can have with those A W F U L controls), but a lot of my enjoyment came from my love of nonlinear narratives and my general interest in the sci-fi concepts in the story. the game itself, not so much.
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during the interrogation sequence i was just like “lmao please go ahead, do whatever you want, i don’t give a shit about this guy.”
I'm delighted that we both cheerfully abandoned Ryan to his fate.
I definitely considered the 'live on alone' ending, but I wanted to check up on my homeless pals! It was very cute that they were all living together. For all the ridiculousness in this game, I appreciate that there was a 'go to your friends!' ending rather than just an assortment of 'CHOOSE YOUR BOYFRIEND' ones.
(The controls were so bad! They were so bad!)
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why did i decide to replay this on hard. why.