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A weird thing about video game gratification

ChowChow Member Posts: 1,192
None of this has anything to do with Baldur's Gate, or necessarily any D&D game. It's just something odd that I've noticed and cannot quite put to words: for a reason or another, in spite of their graphics getting closer to reality and them managing to bring in better music and effects, playing and finishing the modern video games, dealing with their challenges, doesn't feel all that... great. I mean, it didn't always did even with the older ones, it's just... okay, let me put up an example, the thing that brought up this discussion in the first place.

Consider Skyrim, a game all about murdering dragons. The final climactic battle with the dragon-boss Alduin is one of truly epic scale: you are fighting in the literal Valhalla, in company of some of the mightiest heroes who ever lived in the history of that setting, while mighty storms rage in the background and he's flying around and being this huge jerk. He has been feasting on the souls of the dead, caused a lot of mayhem in the world of the living, and generally raised the stakes pretty high and made it quite a personal deal to finally take care of him. And when you do, it causes one final end speech, some more special effects, and the rest of the living dragons circling around you and declaring you Awesome. And yet, it was all sort of "Meh" for me... just really couldn't get into it.

Now, let's compare this to a game no less than a whole quarter of a century older, called Dungeon Master. It was a game I picked up only about a week ago (so there's no nostalgia goggles involved) and finished earlier today - and it too had a dragon. The battle was rather clumsy, clunky, everything moving in perfect squares and turning in ninety degrees, with very simple sound effects and no music at all. The dragon had very little in terms of attack animations, and you couldn't even see your own characters attacking, just seeing the results in damage numbers. Plot-wise he was of absolutely no consequence, with even a zero mention or build-up of him being there at all until you actually meet him. Once he dies, there are no fanfares or declarations or anything at all really: he just disappears unceremoniously in a brief puff of smoke. But in spite of all this, the battle felt thousand times more epic than the one in Skyrim, I was incredibly tense the entire time, and cheered out loud when I finally brought him down.

There are other examples, but this is obviously the one that brought up on top of it all. I can't name a single game from this side of the millennium that would have given me such vibes as the dragon battle above - really, not too many older ones either, but regardless.

The question stands: how can an ancient game with poor graphics, little sound, zero music, no context, no speeches, no special effects, no build-up, no nothing at all, make its combat so much more intense than a present-day game that's got all of those things pretty well down?

Comments

  • TeflonTeflon Member, Translator (NDA) Posts: 515
    I too always wanted to find out why I felt that way too. I think the developers didn't try out harder. The era you talking(no speech poor gfx nada) they had to improvise a way to overcome teh shortage of resources like graphic sound speech, come on imagine making skyrim in floppy diskette or let it run on 386 sx. So they had to try harder to make game interesting without the aid of stunning gfx.
    But then again I do not think the old game you refer is outdated since at that time they used best available graphic and sound and so on.
    In conclusion what I meant to say is I agree with you @Chow and what makes a good game is not what it looks but content itself.
    Good to see I am not the only one feel that way about some of recent games :)
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  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    "The question stands: how can an ancient game with poor graphics, little sound, zero music, no context, no speeches, no special effects, no build-up, no nothing at all, make its combat so much more intense than a present-day game that's got all of those things pretty well down?"

    Imagination.
  • ChowChow Member Posts: 1,192
    mlnevese said:

    This lack of development is actually what put me off Skyrim. I just couldn't care enough about my character or any of the NPCs to go on playing. In a way Skyrim is too huge for its own good.

    While I don't disagree with you, I have to say that in fairness for Skyrim and newer games, Arena and Daggerfall were even worse in this regard. They were literally randomly generated.
  • mlnevesemlnevese Member, Moderator Posts: 10,214
    @KidCarnival I think I'd play the game you describe in your last paragraph just because the insanity factor is absurdly high ;)
  • KidCarnivalKidCarnival Member Posts: 3,747
    Now that I read it again... So would I. :D
  • Chow said:

    mlnevese said:

    This lack of development is actually what put me off Skyrim. I just couldn't care enough about my character or any of the NPCs to go on playing. In a way Skyrim is too huge for its own good.

    While I don't disagree with you, I have to say that in fairness for Skyrim and newer games, Arena and Daggerfall were even worse in this regard. They were literally randomly generated.
    Yeah, this has been the Elder Scrolls Series' MO from its inception: Lots of exploration with just enough plot to make you feel like you have something to accomplish. Which just goes to show how "RPG" as a computer game genre isn't a very good descriptor.
  • AristilliusAristillius Member Posts: 873
    Oh man! Excellent thread @Chow
    I have been struggling with the exact same thoughts myself.
    Id like to make a comparison on Blizzard games: I just finished Heart of the swarm and was really underwhelmed, and the story meant really little to me. It was faily entertaining, but also immediatly forgettable.

    Now SC1 had an epic singleplayer campaign and I really started to care about the characters, I was really looking forward to Hots. Increased emphasis on multiplayer nonwithstanding they have 10000x more money to spend on the game, so its hard to find out why I feel like that. Similar things can be said about Diablo 1/2 and 3; epic story and real feeling of achievment is translated to "meh", and easily forgetable plot.

    And it is so weird, because they have more money, I think that the argument about story being more important in older games becasue they hadnt good graphics is good, but maybe too simple. They have far more money to use on creative writers and all that. And it is a trend (skyrim, heroes of might and magic, blizzard etc).

    So differences between old and new games:
    -Simpler (everyone can complete it)
    -Better graphics
    -Easier to learn
    -Forgettable story

    Dunno, maybe what sells in the capitalistic economy? X)
  • I think it isn't so much the better graphics as the fact that the AAA industry is relying too heavily on graphics which aren't good enough yet. They're basically trying to be Hollywood and play up the spectacle, but can't mimic the ability of real life actors to emote convincingly through facial expressions and body language as well as voice. So we end up with a bunch of characters who lack the emotive range to be anything other than flat. Fallout 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur are two instances of this I can think of off hand; the characters' faces are practically immobile masks, and no amount of fancy lip-sync technology or high resolution graphics can compensate for that. Whereas in a game where you know up front that you're working with 16 bit sprites or non-animated character portraits, the writers compensate accordingly (This might also be why I felt the non-human characters in the Mass Effect series were more compelling than the human ones; either that, or it's just the uncanny valley at work).

    I might also point out that music goes a long way to encouraging an emotive response, but that's getting into really subjective territory. Suffice it to say that the improvement of music technology in games is another area where it could make for a better experience but does not necessarily do so.
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  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    Good graphics and sound are also holding back games. Yes the technology is better, but it takes more to process that technology. When consumers scream for all voice acting for example, what they are also saying is shorten the story and different walk through paths because it isn't all going to fit on a disc.

    It is what I meant with imagination. When playing baldur's gate, you can imagine what your character is sounding like or doing with every choice on the screen. You as the player fill in that depth as though you are reading a book, where as with fully voiced games, the game takes that away from you and are left with what was budgeted for face rendering and voice acting.
  • ChowChow Member Posts: 1,192
    Regarding imagination, Nethack is probably the best game ever. When dragons are just capital Ds, you can imagine any sort of a terrifying creature to replace them, instead of looking at CGI monstrosities that get uglier each passing year.
  • JaceJace Member Posts: 193
    Chow said:

    None of this has anything to do with Baldur's Gate, or necessarily any D&D game. It's just something odd that I've noticed and cannot quite put to words: for a reason or another, in spite of their graphics getting closer to reality and them managing to bring in better music and effects, playing and finishing the modern video games, dealing with their challenges, doesn't feel all that... great. I mean, it didn't always did even with the older ones, it's just... okay, let me put up an example, the thing that brought up this discussion in the first place.

    Consider Skyrim, a game all about murdering dragons. The final climactic battle with the dragon-boss Alduin is one of truly epic scale: you are fighting in the literal Valhalla, in company of some of the mightiest heroes who ever lived in the history of that setting, while mighty storms rage in the background and he's flying around and being this huge jerk. He has been feasting on the souls of the dead, caused a lot of mayhem in the world of the living, and generally raised the stakes pretty high and made it quite a personal deal to finally take care of him. And when you do, it causes one final end speech, some more special effects, and the rest of the living dragons circling around you and declaring you Awesome. And yet, it was all sort of "Meh" for me... just really couldn't get into it.

    I must wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment about Skyrim's final confrontation, and the conclusion I have arrived is that, in the case of dragons, Skyrim doesn't really make you fear or respect them. Despite the game's early intentions to make dragon battles intense, the overall gameplay quickly escalates and establishes your character as a force who effortlessly steps on a dozen dragons' corpses as if they were an inconvenience. In the end, killing Anduin offered no sense of accomplishment whatsoever because of this.

    Compare now to Baldur's Gate 2. Encountering a dragon is a unique and rare experience and you quickly understand that they are fearful creatures far above your standing in terms of power, intelligence and cunning. Certain conversations with NPCs before those dragons even discourage you from fighting them because they assume you will not defeat them! After all, killing a dragon for a very first time in Baldur's Gate 2 requires a great degree of trial and error, preparation and execution (unless you followed some game guide to the letter). Defeating a particular red dragon after so many attempts overflowed me with a great sense of accomplishment that I haven't experienced in years.
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    edited April 2013
    Count me in with @Jace on the difficulty factor of battles being part of the eventual payoff and feeling of transcendence as being integral to the epicness of the game, and its replayability. This may be even more important than the character development, although that is certainly important.

    Let me elaborate. I played Dragon Age:Origins all the way through exactly one time. I thought the character interaction and development was just as good as in BG. I restarted several times to get my PC just right, and to try several different party combos, getting to know all the NPC's rather intimately. I was in awe of the characterization, the story resolutions on the different maps (one that sticks out to me is the elf map with Tim Russ/Tuvok vs. the werewolves and the spirit of nature), and the choices at the end. (I chose to let Morrigan and Alistair go at it and make a dragon baby, in order to save all our lives.)

    But - the combat. After learning a few tricks, it was all, well... easy. Even with the difficulty slider on nightmare. Every battle, from groups of Darkspawn grunts, to the final battles of the game with the supposedly most powerful creatures, traitors, and Darkspawn bosses, were, ... well, easy. Mana Clash against the mages, Crushing Prison, Crushing Prison, Sleep, Nightmare, Horror - battle basically over.

    I tried to replay DA:O a while back. I got through about the first one third of the game, and then, just, well,... lost interest. I went right back to playing BG and NWN, along with some ARPG's that I like for just the mindless hack-n-slash and exploration of them.

    I never could finish Skyrim - I restarted it two or three times with different character builds, and always lost interest after the first dungeon or two, (all the same - there's another factor for you - variety of challenges), and the first dragon fight or two (easy to beat, and totally underwhelming opponents, even on "hard" difficulty.)

    But, oh, Lord, in BG, and in Might and Magic (both the rpg's and the strategy HOMMs)! Every battle is different. Every battle has different conditions and different obstacles. The possibility of death at every turn makes you feel FEAR, as though you're watching a horror movie, although one in which you are not powerless to defend yourself. You need TACTICS. You need KNOWLEDGE of the kinds of threats you will face.

    I remember the very first time I played BG and encountered Tarnesh, back in 1998 or whatever year that was. I thought I was just following the linear, suggested path to head straight to the FAI. Mirror Image, Horror, Magic Missiles, Imoen and I were dead. I remember being angry at it - wtf? How are you supposed to deal with this? This isn't fair! I think I had to reload a dozen times, until I got lucky dicerolls. But when that bastard finally fell, I was whooping and yelling in jubilation, there, alone in my room with my computer.

    And, ooooo, my first dragon battle. Dozens of reloads. More anger at how unfair it was. Sometimes, I had to just take a break from playing the game, and play something else, or just do something besides play computer games. But when that first dragon finally fell - what a feeling of triumph! Those who have never beat a tough game scenario just can't comprehend it.

    The same goes for all the HommI and HommII scenarios I thought I was just NEVER going to beat, no matter what I tried. I worked on the HommI campaign for MONTHS. I just *could* not get past the barbarian's map! I *finally* beat it by playing a warlock, getting black dragons coming (which was a miracle to accomplish), and using Armageddon spells. I've only beat that map one time in my entire life. I've only beat the HommII campaign one time in my entire life, after which I also felt like I had worked a miracle.

    Ah, Might and Magic VI! I will replay it at least once a year from now 'til my life ends. I still remember the first time I went into the old temple in New Sorpigal, and to the caves underneath, filled with spiders and snakes and bats... and I got lost there! The mini-map was no help, as the place was VAST, and completely three dimensional, with winding passage after winding passage curving over and under each other. I remember vividly the feeling of hopelessness when I tried to retreat out of there, poisoned and diseased, no magic left, all four of us about to die; and I took a wrong turn and ran straight into a MOB of dozens of spiders, bats, and snakes! DEATH. I had to go outside and go jogging to get my courage back up to go back inside and reload to try again.

    Oooo, and the Temple of Baa in the Castle Ironfist area - fight until you're almost ready to drop, finally win your way to the altar after killing the priests, being blasted with lightning and fire all the way... claim the altar in triumph... and watch as 200 (that is NOT an exxageration) skeletons spawn out of thin air, surrounding you, blocking your retreat..! Now THAT is an rpg game!

    To this day, I have trouble beating ToB. I've only ever beaten it once. I get into trouble starting with the Reaver in the Pocket Plane battles, and the final dragon fights still scare me to think about.

    All that mystery, all that great art, all those branching possibilities - I'm *still* learning things about BG that I've never seen before.

    They truly just do not make games like that anymore. If you can point me to one, I will buy it!
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  • Kitteh_On_A_CloudKitteh_On_A_Cloud Member Posts: 1,629
    I think it's just a matter of searching for games which provide a challenge to the player. Dark Souls, for example, is all about a die-and-learn experience. You're sure to find feelings of accomplishment there after having defeated one of the tougher battles, like the fallen knight Artorius. The game also leaves room for a lot of imagination. Fancy graphics are part of modern games right now and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it, so just try to accept it. Yet I recommend you to try out the previously mentioned Dark Souls, OP. It definitely isn't a casual game.
  • tilly said:

    Maybe we really did make up for the cruder graphics with our imaginations? -_- Did anyone else read a lot more when they were younger? I would sometimes play out interactions of characters in my head -- characters that had virtually no characterisation in the game. Dungeon Master, Dragon Warrior, Ultima, Wizardry... it didn't matter. Party-based games with poor graphics (or hardly any graphics!) and no voices or character story. :)

    Is the abundance of character interaction in newer games ever a negative thing? Because the voice acting doesn't allow us to imagine how the character sounds? Or allows us to imagine how they'd interact

    I like having it both ways. When I play The Elder Scrolls games I'm always making up a storyline in my head that informs the way I play. But then, I do that with a lot of games, especially strategy games. I once played a game of Civilization where I imagined that my entire society was built around a "promised land" style mythology which led to aggressively colonizing another continent when it was discovered. When that didn't lead to paradise, they concluded that they needed to go to space.

    At the same time, I really enjoy games with strong characterization, because they draw characters I never would have imagined on my own. I suppose you could make a similar observation about graphics. The spectacles you imagine in your head are all well and good, but a game like Shadow of the Colossus can show you something you wouldn't have imagined on your own.

  • reedmilfamreedmilfam Member Posts: 2,808
    I think they overdo the modern games so much that the production level is high, but the replayability is near nil. I have tried to repeat DA and ME, but lose interest, as customization is just mere dressing changes rather than deep differences in the game/story. I love the Origins part of DA, but then it's basically the same, beginning to end.
  • ChowChow Member Posts: 1,192
    The more cinematics, non-interactive events, and pipes to run with no sidequests or exploration there are, the less reason there is to play it again. Those things are always the same, after all.
  • Kitteh_On_A_CloudKitteh_On_A_Cloud Member Posts: 1,629
    @reedmilfam: I think it's a bit unreasonable to expect 6 different storylines in one game. You only pay for one game, afterall. Also, Baldur's Gate is basically the same game over again also. You can make a different character each time, but the story and gameplay mainly stays the same. Same with Dragon Age and Mass Effect. If you want multiple games, buy a Collector's Edition or something.
  • reedmilfamreedmilfam Member Posts: 2,808
    @Kitteh_On_A_Cloud - I didn't, at any point, say I expect different story lines. My point was that the film-like production limits the game and turns it, essentially, into a direct point-to-point and limits (or eliminates) replayability. BG has more ways to approach (from terms of strategy) the story and game, making it more interesting. Fewer classes (and needing each of the roles met) in DA/ME leads to a less diverse experience for me.

    I mean, in BG, you can go 1 tank, 3 tanks, 2 tanks. Heavy rogue, not so heavy rogue. Pretty much whatever. DA is far narrower, while ME is essentially Soldier, Biotic, Tech - one each (or a hybrid halfsie). That is what I mean by 'same, all the way to the end'. Not that the game isn't different (heck, the whole BG thing is the same every time you play it). The experience is essentially the same and changes little as you go in the more modern games I've played. High level of quality/production, but also high level of redundancy.

    I hope that explains what I meant a little better. The 6 story thing was more a compliment for the origins part of DA than an expectation for other games to follow suit.
  • Kitteh_On_A_CloudKitteh_On_A_Cloud Member Posts: 1,629
    @reedmilfam: Oh, I see. I guess I misinterpreted your post then. My apologies. So, you would like less cinematics and more character options, then? :o
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