Will Black Ops 3 Change Videogame Stories Forever? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2024
- Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: to.pbs.org/DonateGAME
Skipping Levels in a Call of Duty Campaign???
Subscribe to PBS Game/Show! bit.ly/1BPJ2VE Tweet at us! / pbsgameshow
↓ More info and sources below ↓
On Today's Vlog, Jamin shares his thoughts on the recent news that you'll be able to play Black Ops 3's campaign missions in any order. Does this means people will care even less about the story of games, or is this actually a good sign that traditional narrative conceits of videogames are finally shifting? Watch this week's vlog and find out!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hosted by Jamin Warren (@jaminwar)
See more on games and culture on his site: www.killscreendaily.com
This isn't anything new. The original 1993 Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem 3D both let you pick what episode you wanted to play first from the get go. Black Ops 3 letting you pick any single player level from the beginning is nothing groundbreaking at all.
Yea but it didn't ask if it's new. It said did it change gaming. The Beatles didn't do anything new, but they were the first to popularize techniques. They were the first in pop music.
+BRAMCRACK3R None of those games have much in the way of a narrative focus. And while the CoD series generally isn't known for it's groundbreaking stories, each game does have a clearly defined plot and some of them, especially those developed by Treyarch, have a history of experimenting with how they tell their story.
Conrad Korbol That's the thing though I don't think it's gonna change much. I mean isn't this the same thing as playing sidequests in a RPG out of order?
Yeah it might not change anything. It is too early to tell.
This title is a bit over the top, don't you think?
+Slpk meh - its the only way to lure people to even watch this crap anymore
+Slpk have to agree with you there.
+Slpk Agree, I am disappointed in them now.
easiest question in the world. No. The idea of CoD changing something story-wise is incredibly laughable because CoD's focus is in online multiplayer, making their stores boring and repetitive. Most of my friends who play CoD don't even play the single player modes because that is not what they are buying the game for. Expecting CoD to change stories is like the expecting the GunBlade from Final Fantasy VIII to change shooting mechanics in other games.
They used to call that cheat code
Well argued, but I have to wonder if the better way to address people not finishing games is to make them more engaging or to design the difficulty so that it better prepares the player for those rough moments, rather than to let them skip content altogether. That seems like a cheap way to put a band-aid on the issue rather than fix it altogether. It also kind of makes the narrative feel segmented and pointless. If you can skip large sections of the game without losing an impact on the story, then doesn't that make it feel like those sections don't have a lot of meaning to them?
"But it won't skip the cutscenes"
Ok, but then that just leads to a further segmentation of story from gameplay, whereas in an ideal world, you'd be learning about the story and world as you play.
+SelfAwarePedant I think you're absolutely right on this. It's tricky to find that perfect line where puzzles and bosses are tough enough and well-integrated into the story without being painfully obvious or too easy. For instance, even though I love the game, there are clearly a ton of puzzles in Skyrim centering around the rotating rune stones, but they begin at a point that is completely obvious and never really get tougher than "mostly obvious", and I remember one puzzle in half-life 2 where I believe I missed one detail in someone's speech and was wandering around an area for over 2 hours trying to figure out what was a really easy puzzle that I just didn't even realize was there. Once I looked it up online, I felt ridiculous that it was such a simple puzzle.
Also, I love your statement that if a huge part of the story can be skipped, then was there a lot of meaning in that part anyway? In fact, as you said, if leaving the cut scenes in would actually satisfy anyone, then ultimately why not just put a cut scene only version of the story on the disc as a sort of digital movie? Few would be satisfied with that, because even gamers like myself who focus much less on multiplayer and more on story know we're buying a game and want the interactivity instead of the more passive consuming of a film.
I think this is a singular action of a unique game, I don't think it will "Change Videogame stories forever". Books are meant to be read in a certain order, movies are supposed to be watched in a specific order, and games are very similar. True each and every section might be unique and interesting, but in order to make sections more exciting and have more weight they are meant to be watched before or after other, connected actions. There might be a few exceptions that break this format but that doesn't necessarily invalidate the overarching way we consume media.
+SnowBreaker but you can chose in books to skip chapters, to skip a scene in a movie, why shouldn't games have that option
+marlonyo The current structure is kind of based on the original sense of progression due to the game supposedly preparing for the next kind of challenge with bosses tying your techniques together, but many devs adopted this neglecting the preparation part and only made a narrative tool. Probably what led to the chapter select menu and how that's the standard replacement for the ability to skip.
+marlonyo I think it's nothing wrong adding that option in many games (some games with things like inventory, experience or about taking choices may have problems with skipping chapters), but it's nothing groundbreaking.
+marlonyo why would you ever do that? Why would you skip to chapter 8 in a book? Why would you skip 1 hour into a movie? It makes no sense, and if you just want to know the ending then you can easily find clips on RUclips.
These works have meaning and weight due to connected actions and their connection in the over-arching story. Don't get me wrong, this is a different and just as valid system, but I don't think this single exception will revolutionize a model that has made up our entertainment for years.
+SnowBreaker I would never say it's as valid
even though those movies may be non-linear chronologically, aren't the events necessarily presented to the audience in a linear way? if our emphasis is on story-telling, would level selection still suggest a chronology of events?
if call of duty could put forth a story that is exciting regardless of the order in which events are presented, I would be genuinely impressed.
Betteridges law of headlines. No
Wow, a ton of salty dislikes on a Cod video, how original.
I disliked not because I don't like the game (I don't mind it actually) but because of the clickbait title. Also, the idea of having all levels unlocked is nothing new, but he still talks about it as if it's groundbreaking
Veselin Hristov I mean you're right that there's really nothing new about being able to pick levels freely, but how is the title clickbait? It poses a question that the video explores. There's not anything deceptive about the title. Sensationalist, a bit yeah, but thats SOP for just about everyone at this point, you really can't reasonably get mad about mild exaggeration in the title.
+Hen Barrison Yeah i can. Also what's the diference between sensationalist and clickbait? Also will this comment change RUclips Comments *FOREVER* ?
Wait ,this gives me an awesome idea.
Hear me out.
What if there was only one large sprawling level. And there is a rally or event going on and the character you play in the tutorial is the main speaker who ends up dead by the end of the tutorial. The rest of the game you play as members of police, security detail, etc. and you can play as any one of them from the get go after the tutorial as you try to prevent the main speaker from dying.
One of the main features would be the ability to change particular things in the other missions by your actions in the mission you're playing in. For example: you are chasing a suspect as one character but lose him in a crowd. But you go play the cop's mission and you are able to keep the crowds at bay so, when you play that first mission again, that crowd he lost you in the first time isn't there so you capture him and learn info you can use on one of the other character's missions.
So, your thoughts? Kind of a jumble, but it just came to me
+CalicoVall it would take a diffrent type of conglomerate story to make it work well, the separated parts add up to make a whole.
I'm pretty sure the difficulty level of games may be _a_ reason among many, but the biggest reason for so few people finishing games is that there is just so much stuff to play these days, on top of RUclips, movies, tv, social life, etc. and most people don't want to have to sink 30, 40, 200 hours to reach a game's full conclusion/proper ending. Which, I would think Call of Duty's typical solo campaigns would be great for that crowd since they tend to be like six hours long to begin with.
_Pride_ might have something to do with game completion as well. My brother is the king of not completing games (the only one I can remember him finishing in this century is Fable II), and every time I just tell him to turn the difficulty down but he always says "If I can't beat it on normal then it's not worth my time."
+payableondeath7 I feel like collectibles inside the games make the time-sink even worse. Assassin's Creed games for example, have a ridiculous amount of useless stuff to collect, which draws out the gameplay even more. I bet most people would have enjoyed those games without the flags/feathers/maps/chests. This seems to be a problem with open world/sandbox games in particular, since the developers think we will get bored with the game world if there isn't something to do every 2 minutes.
Could a game introduce a free flowing story that lets users experience the narrative in a in creative nonlinear level system? Yes. I anticipate at least some gave will provide this experience in a well developed and thought out way in the near future. Will that groundbreaking story telling development be a Call of Duty title? My guess is almost definitely not.
+CamoCam0 But at the same time it will make it easier for developers to market games with non linear story telling. "Call of Duty, the best selling game of last year used a similar non-linear story telling element" will be a great way for Dev's to push their ideas to companies. An idea that normally would scare off companies gains a lot more validity when CoD uses it
+Joe Andrews certainly, at the very least, from a perspective of corporate risk/reward potential.
Publicly-traded entities are generally risk averse, which is why we can see so much of the same old, regurgitated, "safe" content time and again. They're beholden to their owners/shareholders.
Private studios are able to take larger risks and are not afraid to innovate, though this doesn't mean they always do, of course. Their vision and skill at crafting a narrative and world people want to enjoy may be equivalent to a AAA publisher (let's just say Activision versus Valve, for the sake of comparison), but it's much more likely that Activision would want to publish their next mild-to-moderately-changed CoD title, whereas Valve could put out something potentially paradigm-shifting, such as Portal.
+Joe Andrews I don't see anyone calling COD like "non-linear story telling", it just all the story unlocked since the beginning. Like a DVD of a movie, you can see scenes from the middle of the movie without having to see the previous ones and no body call that "non-linear story telling".
I'm not sure if your example of pulp fiction or reservoir dogs really applies here. the thing about those two movies is that while the story was not in a conventional chronological order, the scenes were still ordered in a very deliberate manner. If you were to watch those scenes in a different order, whether that order is chronological or not, you would get a very different experience than the one Quentin Tarantino had in mind. This idea of being able to experience a game's story in any random order doesn't facilitate for artistically deviant plot structure; it facilitates for no plot structure whatsoever. This game is not the first game to use this strategy of allowing the player to play the campaign in any order they choose, but I think it's no coincidence that just about all other examples of this idea are not very narrative-heavy games (left for dead 2, various old 2D platformers, things like that). Nonetheless, you gave an interesting perspective and I am, at the very least, curious to see how this plays out.
From what I understand, the story will still be fairly linear. The developer mentioned in that interview that playing a later level might not make sense and you might spoil it for yourself. This implies that you still need to play it in chronological order. The main reason for unlocking every mission at the start is because they structured every mission as this open arena you can play with your friends. So if you get the game a day later than a friend, you don't need to play 4 hours of campaign on your own just to join your friend.
+Marth Shepard So basically what you are saying is they structured the game to be non-linear but not the story.
What a bunch of idiots.
Scheefinator Pretty much, yeah.
Books let you flip through any page. Movies let you fast forward. I hated how old Rock Band/Guitar Hero games made you play the career to unlock songs.
All that magic on the right of the screen. 3:50
this Black Ops idea makes me think of the Vietnam War novel "The Things They Carried." That book told all of its stories out of order, and it made the narrative really unique. with Black Ops, you could potentially choose your own narrative order, and you could draw your own conclusions from the order that you choose.
1:35 that's why there's the difficulty option.....
I'm excited for this, when I get BO3, I'm playing it out of order in a Momento-like narrative.
An important point to make clear is that many people don't complete games because they require a huge time investment. Even a "small" game is around 4-6 hours, which is enough time to watch a couple movies, read a book, go through a season of TV, etc.
It'd be interesting to see if people make "Play through orders" where they make a list of sections to play to give the game an interesting non-liner story line.
Telltale's TWD 400 days allows you to play the chapters in any order. Often times whats even more rewarding than finding the next piece in a straight line, is finding out where in a puzzle a certain piece goes.
Normally, I would think it's a bad idea for a game outside of the fighting and adventure genres to do this. More so when considering that the majority of games that have done this before either do it poorly or are not very clear when they actually do it. However, past Call of Duty games have so many perspective switches that playing the game out of the intended sequence can actually make it more understandable. For the most part, I do feel like most people don't like campaign mode because of how disjointed it can feel due to the perspective switches.
Modern Warfare, for example, has the introduction that is from the perspective of an overthrown ruler, then switches to a new recruit, then switches to one of the people who taught the recruit in a typical flashback level (if I recall correctly), then switches back to the recruit. Of course, there's also the famous nuke scene and end game plane level, which are different perspectives as well. Unless I'm mistaken, that's five different character perspectives on one game. This is the common formula for Call of Duty and it can feel disjointed if you have difficulty following the story.
Although the "all chapters unlocked" option is rarely done well, I can actually see it working for the better with Call of Duty. As to actually revolutionizing narrative in games, I don't think so. Much like with Call of Duty or some fighting games, the perspective switching makes "all chapters unlocked" something that can benefit the game. If you don't have the perspective switching or worse, a significant difference in difficulty between chapters, then it can be a disjointed mess that could leave the player confused and dissatisfied. So dissatisfied the player may actually feel like the game was made by a troll.
Since narrative isn't usually a main focus for the CoD games, I can see how this structure would fit well.
I don't finish games because I either get bored because I'm a completist or I want to start a new save with another class. Something like Oblivion is huge with a lot to do. (especially wit quest mods) I got to the point of sidequesting before finishing the main quest that I just watched the ending on youtube.
oh wow that's actually really interesting. I'm making a narrative heavy game at the moment and might make it so every level's unlocked by default and you can do it whatever order you want. that could be awesome
Discovering a story piece-meal like this is itself an interactive mechanic in games such as Her Story, which you mentioned, or Gone Home or Analogue: A Hate Story, etc. These titles make that act of discovery more deliberate by wrapping story pieces in a larger interactive situation, and careful design choices put into how the pieces can be revealed. In CoD's case, it seems more like simple chapter-selection (which the poorly-received Alone in the Dark reboot also tried). This seems to imply that each chapter stands as a short story on its own, with the player's choices in a given chapter not affecting any others.
For MOST longer stories, the author's chosen order is quite particular (probably absolute), and is key to shaping the audience's experience. For games with more lasting choices (where the plot or character relationships, etc. change form depending on your choices), a chapter-select structure would make no sense. I'd go so far as to argue that as a structure it PREVENTS a whole branch of interactive story possibilities.
Treyarch generally tells the most interesting stories within the CoD franchise and have been known to experiment with how they tell them, so I'm at least somewhat intrigued to see how they pull this off.
I feel that it could be an opportunity, for the writers of video games, to change story arcs, within the gaming structure, based upon the players choices. For example, if the player decides to do the last level, so to speak, and kill off the end game boss... then the story arc changes, having a Lieutenant; or something; rise through the ranks to take command and trying to continue the legacy of his boss. This could make stories a lot less linear and allow for writers to create multiple story lines and endings within just one game.
Glad to know I'm one of the 15% to complete Alien Isolation, but I mean come on, it wasn't THAT hard.
+Zuma Rida i think it was mostly because it become non scary and boring later
+Zuma Rida It's usually not difficulty that leads to low completion rates, just having to bother finishing it. For instance, To The Moon is only like a 90min to 2hr long game, and it's Steam completion rate is clocked at under 50%. And it has ONE achievement, which is to beat the game. So there are legitimately people that can't be bothered to finish a 2 hour game. But also it's often a misleading figure, as most places calculate it by earned achievements vs total, unless the game has an explicit "you beat the game" achievement to compare to. Which unsurprisingly isn't in a ton of games lately. According to Steam I only complete 40% of my games, but in my library of 400 something there is less than 20 I've not beaten, but I don't achievement farm at all and Steam completely ignores completion achievements for that tally. So always take this stat with a big grain of salt.
+OgreSamanosuke if the game has an easy achievement that is earn very early like finish the first level, then the best way to calculate true completion rate is to divide the people(or percentage) who get the ''complete the game achievement'' by the people(or percentage) who get the easy achievement. thereby eliminating people who have the game but have never play it. a common stuff in tittles that have ever been part of a bundle.
+FinnyIicious Great explanation, I totally understand your pov.
It's not a big deal. It's been done before, several times by other games.
The 2008 remake of Alone in the Dark presented the game in a television type format where various sections were presented as "episodes" of a DVD. The player could skip to whatever section/episode they felt like. The game itself was certainly below average but the idea was novel. What Black Ops 3 is doing narrative / gameplay wise is a little old already.
I never understood why people hate the idea of others skipping content. When I play a super hard racing game, I always play it all the way through from the beginning to unlock everything. But in some games, like GTA V on the other hand, I just want to mess around with everything unlocked. If people want to skip parts of a game, let them, its no ones loss but there own.
Especially for multiplayer focused games, I hate the idea of having to unlock stuff, I don't want to have to grind for weeks to get my preferred load out. That is the difference with most racing games, you play the single player to unlock the content and then take it with you when you go online. If I could unlock everything by just grinding against bots I wouldn't mind having to unlock it so much, since bots don't make fun of how bad I am and come with adjustable difficulty!
I remember Asterix and Obelix XXL2 had that exact same system too, back in 2006 when it was released (I think it was 2006). It was a fun feature, but the novelty wore off quite fast, and I ended playing the game the classic way back then
Hey Jamin, find a video or article that explains the Bioshock Infinite ending. I was confused by it as well, but once I found out what it was about it went pretty deep.
This will also give the designers more options for achievements, I suppose.
Granted, it makes sense - you can skip ahead in a movie or book, so why not in a video game - but given the video title I was hoping of hearing something more profound than simply having all chapters available right from the start.
I'm so lost why this is still news or why its popular enough. It's like cheat code or game genie and doesn't make a huge difference for Call of Duty. I mean it's just an option in the tool box for games for players to play what levels or scenes people want to. We're not exactly crying out for it in every game but I do hope level select after game completion becomes way more norm on the future.
I like the idea of being able to skip over the hard parts.
Look at Metal Gear, in chronological order it goes: MGS3, MGSPW, MGSGZ, MGS5, MG, MG2, MGS1, MGS2, MGS4
pointedly games have had this structure of story telling before, the most memorabl being alone in the dark, which allowed you to skip to any chapter and any part of any chapter from an ingame menu, the creators referring to it 'like a dvd'. honestly wasn't even that bad, I know I experienced way more of that game thanks to that system, and it's not like games usually have 'hard' stories to figure out, so it's fairly unlikely the system will confuse people. oh and of course to any detractors, nobody is forcing you to skip content in a game, that is literally your own choice, and you have to let other people make that choice as well.
Call of Duty campaigns haven't been difficult since MW2.
I would sure like to experience life in a non-linear chronological order. I'd skip past all the vast boring bits and relive/replay all the exciting stuff. Of course that would make me more prone to reckless behavior since I could skip past all the boring consequences-of-your-actions parts but it sure would be a lotta fun. Oh well guess I'll have to wait until they invent a version of The Matrix with that type of loophole/feature.
heck, The Great Gatsby gets a bit dry a times and a lot of high schoolers don't finish it. Read the end first. or not, because it undermines the entire book. In games, you aren't unlocking levels so much as you arenprogressing through the time line. That is how a story works.
But when you watch something like Pulp Fiction, you aren't supposed to fast forward to the bits you like and skip the parts you don't - that's not appreciating the movie.
This is why difficulty levels were invented. I mean, its CoD so the chances of actually having story is next to none.
Bioshock Infinite doesn't have an ending. The whole point of Elisabeth drowning Booker is to make sure the whole story never takes place in the first place. After that there is no and has never been a floating city, or a prophet, or Elisabeth herself. Nothing ever happened in Infinite.
As a comment: Iñárritu wasn't inspired by Tarantino but by latinamerican authors. He worked alongside Guillermo Arriaga in his first movies, and he was inpired by writers like García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Cortázar, and specially Juan Rulfo.
I think I'd rather have my narrative structured for me in an optimal way. I don't mind level 1 being an intro but level 3 going back to being a flashback, if that is the best way to tell the story.
The closest thing to I can think of to choosing the order of a story is when you recommend which order to watch Star Wars in. Not the individual movies, just the trilogies. Eps 1-3 spoil the twists in Eps 4-6 and vice versa. These are self contained narratives and do not need you to have seen the other trilogy to understand them.
If you were to apply it to games, so that you could play any level in any order, then each lv would need a self contained (shorter) story, so that you wouldn't need to have played any other levels to understand what is going on. An overarching narrative would then be much harder and any end boss would loose any awe, since you may have already defeated them before hearing about how awesome and dangerous that they are from previous levels.
+iamaniPod if you add the sub-stories together to form a greater tale then it can work to develop a full campaign. playing things form diffrent views that add to the whole would be an interesting example of this concept. or having a concept of jump missions that add to an Intel pool that adds to a completed story would be another method.
An overarching story can exist, its just that a climactic battle, which should also be a story climax, will not necessarily have the same climactic impact if you just just play that level without the built up or the context.
My point is, to have an effective overarching story, it would best be told in a particular order. Take a book and just read the last page. It will make no sense. Then read another random page.
Sure, some games would work, like a game about investigating a town's dark history, piecing together the story would be the fun.
A game like COD may not need an huge story and individual missions /stories would suffice.
At the end of the day, a game with a strong story would suffer from being able to pick what parts you consume.
I sort of see what you're saying but...
Well, first, I think the first point about stories being used as a carrot-on-a-stick... yes, but that's not really the stories' fault themselves, is it? That's the designers fault. It's not a problem with the game itself.
And also, I think it just depends on how well they utilise this. But a story like this is not really comparable to something like Pulp Fiction, because although the story is not told in chronological order, it is told in *a order*. Which this will not be. Now, I guess "Her Story" proves this is possible... but I don't know how well it will work in a more "normal" game.
This won't really change anything for games, as much as Treyarch wants to believe it. If a story is written or designed to use an out of order or episodic narrative, the game will find a way to stick to that. Recently Until Dawn sort of did a discontinous narrative, I don't foresee a gaming equivlant to a completely out of order story like Haruhi or something anytime soon. Where I think this method should be used more is non-narrative focused games. A game like Super Mario World or an FPS were you may have one particularly hard level blocking progression for a player that could feasible beat the rest of the game.
I'm not against the idea, but it depends how it's implemented. If each part is like an episode that could be cool. But once you beat it does it take you back to the menu or just serve up the next part? What's the incentive to not just play it in order? If it was a post modern story and you could go back to piece the game together to play in the chronological order that could be cool (and an awesome achievement ) But nothing of the writing of the few Call of Duty games hits me as anything that dense. They're action stories with a thread to follow. Of course the game could be different, but I don't see this opening up much for narrative potential because to write a story with that many points of entry that can be consumed in any order is a feat I don't think has been ever delivered upon.
what will this mean for fallout 4's story? Is it also now going to be considered archaic?
For some games it could work. But for games that want deep stories and characters, it will make it so you're less invested in those things. If you could just skip through Final Fantasy 7 to when Aerith died, you wouldn't have cared, because you didn't spend the time to get invested. If you could skip to the end of The Last of Us, you wouldn't appreciate the ending, because you didn't follow through with the lead up.
+ThePlushielord kind of my problem i have not played ff7 and that old stile rpg combat is now boring to me and i know almost all of the plot. but i think the reason for skipping is mostly for co op gameplay rather than any story reasons
+marlonyo ಠ_ಠ
Yeah, I picked FF7 because it's old and everyone knows the plot. But if there were a modern day equivalent that had a huge twist, or crushing death, it wouldn't mean as much if we could skip past all the bonding time. Like I said, it works for some games, but not really for games where the story has depth. in my opinion, of course.
I personally think perhaps this could be seen as an option from the start of the game, where you can turn on and turn off unlockable content. Why? Because the player might want to see the story as is intended by the developer without the temptation to skip ahead or the player might not even care and turn off unlockable content. The point being that both kinds of players might play the same game, so having an option would increase inclusivity of players with different desires.
Of course, there's also more to this issue than meets the eye. For instance, there are a lot of games where the line between gameplay and story isn't so visible and segmented. Very often, a moment of difficulty within the game is a moment of tension and conflict (like in Dark Souls.) I'm pretty sure there are more creative solutions to this problem than to just allow the player to skip ahead. Because there's already a way to do that: It's called cheating
wait black ops has a story mode i thought it was just shooting zombies
No.
But seriously: The main point here is... not wrong. It *is* kinda... peculiar that video games are the one medium that gate-keep their own narratives.
I mean, it's more than *understandable*, considering arcade roots and all, but still.
I look forward to watching this just because I actually did my MA thesis on some modern video games that are game-changers for narrative structure in the genre (as opposed to relying on film and prose structures), but from the comments I'm afraid I'll be disappointed. If it really is just that all chapters are unlocked from the start, that's certainly not terribly innovative. I'd look more to the open-world games like Skyrim and GTA and games that bring in a new game mechanic like Shadow of Mordor's nemesis system.
But then, as I said, this is being one of those people who's commenting before even watching.
that is an odd approach to start with all levels unlocked.
Could this be because the player is not playing a single character but a single role that is filled by different characters in different missions? so while the levels connect they may not be as directly related as we are used to.
This also means that it will be much harder to have a single overarching narrative. But as I do not play these games and probably won't this one also this is just me speculating.
I look forward to finding out whether this is a new way to present narrative or just a forget plot focus on action run.
how about gtaV? where you could skip a mission.
One could skip all and play any of then in any order, right?
isn't this the same?
This won't work in a lot of games, because of their structure.
Also - if you want to see the end of the game, then play it all the way to the end. Simple as that.
I think I take issue with comparing the way Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction is presented to Call of Duty.
You say that cinema doesn't fit in that chronological box where you are forced to go from beginning to end but you are still being forced to experience the film the way Tarantino saw.
Technically, the original Black Ops does the same thing. The entire campaign is a series of flashbacks showing how it all came to this. Is that not the same as Pulp Fiction being out of order because that's how it was intended?
Wow, Cod did something that other games have been doing forever, this is almost as big an advancement as button remapping for the Xbox.
when I started playing SWTOR, I played it for the stories. Character, faction, and companion. Then, as the game started to lose money and subs due to bad replayabilty, they shifted to pvp and less story. When they came out with Makeb ans the latest one, I felt they really wimped.out. They made two versions, one empire and one republic. for those of us that has other characters cause we wanted to see the class story, it was weak. very disappointing. some gamers LIKE story. deep rich stories. If I want to play something without that, I'll play ddo or some strat game
The problem is that literally NOBODY buys Call of Duty for the campaign.
Wait wat? Since when did Call of Duty have a story?
Since "Call of Duty" on the Xbox 360
Xbox 360 came out in 2005. Call Of Duty was 2003.
jim gordon I was being somewhat sarcastic...
Omnipotent Potato what's that?
4th
maybe
Bluh
The zombies has a lot better story actually that spans multiple games and timelines nothing really like it
In my opinion, I don't think Call of Duty even needs a story at all, just give them more money already
Ok, serious opinion now.
Games always had a story line behind them, whether they were sandbox (e.g minecraft) or limited to your choices (e.g TES: Skyrim). at the end, you sometimes find yourself in a story without your intention, but SKIPPING that story is like buying a game just to see the end of it, I'd rather watch it on internet. There are many games out there where you don't need to skip story. Instead, just instantly spawn better gear so you can legit go through the story after all.
What I think is that games evolve by influence. Whenever a new conceptual (and popular) game is released, it starts drawing attention to real industries thus it gets copied forming a new game gen.
I await the game where it really depends on your choices in a legit way that you get to see an actual unique ending.
*hears Call of Duty and changing video game stories* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *no*
I have not seen the vid yet
Nope, just nope. The first mistake was thinking there ever was a "plot" to CoD games. Current CoD are the Micheal Bay of FPS. Other than the first Modern Warfare, I've failed to try to connect the convoluted cut scenes that bark military jargon and started counting the times something blew up in my face to trigger the slow-motion. The percent of gamers playing CoD for the campaign have been dropping every title and it's time that Activition restructure their campaigns to mini Ops Missions a la Armored Core.
As for the other games mentioned, you have to consider the games v. the gamer. Like you said Pillars is a very narrative heavy game, swaying most players used to a quicker narrative or voice overs from finishing the first 2-4 hours. Aliens on the other hand falls into the Dark Souls category where the game is too hard for the average causal player. The problem with both games is that it was made for a key player in mind. A little restructuring is need if they want more people to play. Think back to 2004's Ninja Gaiden. This game was known for it's difficulty cause many to quit early on. Tecmo had to re-release the title with an easy mode to sell more copies.
My last problem was to the idea of an unstructured narrative. All narrative is structured even if you don't see it or not chronological. Though I've never played it, I would even say that "Gone Home" tricks you into the creator's loose outline by catching your eye to a note or letter. A simple word or phrase can nudge you into the next clue. One narrative still dear to my heart is Phantasy Star Online. You're only given one main quest, "Find out what happened." But you learn that the side quests are the main plot. Like a detective you unravel the multiple truths about the characters you thought was only stock box art. By simply pushing the narrative away from the main plot, it removed the urgency that plagues modern RPG plots.
It's easy for anyone to jump into the middle of a movie, but it's never as satisfying as watching it from the beginning. And once you've done that, the movie will feel right again.
So the gist of this video is "if you suck at videogames you can't reach the end and that's a bad thing", right?
If that's the premise, I disagree. Look at Starcraft II. The final mission was so intense, because every plot line merges in that mission for one epic showdown. All the characters come back together. Imagine playing that mission first. It makes no sense, you're not invested into the heroes of this story, it's just... not a rewarding experience.
I don't see how it changes antyhing at all.
This is no different from the ability to read the last chapter of a book first, and just as uninteresting. The more interesting and important question is why people don't finish games. You picked two games, and they have different completion rates. Why is that? In this case, I'd guess that pacing and length play the biggest part.
Instead of throwing in the towel, game developers should re-examine their basic assumptions and do the hard work of figuring out how to make a game that people will complete. Letting people read the last chapter first doesn't address the fundamental problems.
I thought the story was trash
no
I think this just goes to show how poor the CoD writing has become. The "unlock as you go" method is so that the story unfolds in the way the writers perceive it. By removing this system of progression you might as well just have a Peter Griffon short narrative saying "dudes shoot things and this guy was really a bad guy, the end."
Now there is no reason some games like CoD cant have it if their story doesnt really matter/fit. So it's fine to have it for those, but overall if you want a real storyline mission like Spec Ops The Line you simply cant allow this lazy system.
Zombies COD zombies one of the best storylines that spans multiple games and goes through multiple dimensions and timelines with ciphers and easter eggs
For once i think you're looking too far into it. It's Call of Duty, no one really plays it for the story. And as other people have mentioned, you could pick different episodes/chapters in games for a while now.
Interesting you should mention Pulp Fiction, because in all honesty, the plot of Pulp Fiction is really nothing special, the only thing unusual about it is the order it's revelaed in. The basic plot is the most uninteresting thing imaginable. As is often the case with Tarantino (and a similarity to many videogames), it triumphs with style, not story.
I honestly really dislike the idea of this. I also really doubt a game like call of duty could now make any major changes to video games in general.
Difficult boss fights, Deus Ex Human Revolution ? Lol you scrub ...
+Yasser Dammak yeah the only one you really had to use your brain on was the last boss.
+SuperFreeEducation and that was the only one that I could beat without losing any single time :P.
The boss fights of that game can be really difficult depending of the weapons in the inventory.
If you're playing stealth, then the boss fights can be very difficult. The second to last one completely ruined any immersion I had due to how long it took me and hearing the same lines over and over again.
+Yasser Dammak Bosses aren't designed for stealth builds. It's one of the big problems with the game. They're easy if you're playing it as an action game but BS if you're playing it as a stealth game.
They can become very easy if you have enough grenades, but if you are playing stealthy it's unlikely that you have them because of the limited inventory size.
That's particularly unfair with the first boss, with the other ones it's more likely to have some grenades in the inventory only for the boss fights.
Absolutes make no sense.
No.
It won't.
This is a horrible idea. Imagine Metal Gear, but backwards, it doesn't work. It's a horrible idea, if it catches on, I will be annoyed as hell.
nope
This style of storytelling removes a creator's ability to control context. It is a pragmatic measure given the habits of gamers, but it offers little to no potential to advance the art of storytelling.
Side note; You get a down vote on this video for the first time, The click baitey title was just too much. I expect better from you.
You are getting a bit of glare off your glasses..and the rest of everything in your office.
HA A COMEDY HAS MORE WRITING THEN THIS
+Armoredcody *THAN THIS
+ThePoptartster thxs m8 !('-')!
Armoredcody \m/ (>_
worst idea ever
BWAHAHAHA, really?
PC gamers for the most part do NOT buy COD for single player, they buy it for coop ZOMBIES and MP ONLINE.......... It is typically CONSOLE peasants that buy it for single player