Evolution of Storytelling, Part 3

Fifth videogames consoles generation

The fifth generation witness the start of 3D graphics for videogames, that would be the norm for that point on. The race for more realistic graphics was going to start and some of the most famous franchises would either make the change to 3D or dissapear. The three most famous videogame consoles were the Playstation, the first console release by Sony, the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Dreamcast, the last console Sega would ever release.

Nintendo 64

Dreamcast

Playstation

This generations would also be remembered for having some of the most importants and influent games and the start of story driven videogames. One of the genres that found his golden age in this generation were RPG. Thanks to the better technology, a great quantity of dialogue lines could be added, the 3D graphics offer the posibility for spectacular and emotional scenes and complex combat systems.

Final Fantasy VII, and IX - The Final Fantasy saga, famous for being some of the first and more prominent games when it comes to storytelling, had in the fifth generations probably three of the most famous and better remembered games ever created. Final Fantasy VII was the first 3D game of the franchise, and is probably the most famous one. Although probably looking back now it  hasn't aged that well, your mileage may vary, by its time it presented an huge world, full of secrets all rendered in 3D. It was long and have a considerable amount of dialogue, psychological drama and, for the first time in the saga, sci-fi elements. It also presented a very controversial for the time twist, the death of Aerith, one of the first time a playable character, protagonist and love interest of the main character died, murdered by the antagonist, Sephirot.

Final Fantasy IX was a tribute game, made to celebrate the saga. It was set in a medieval fantasy scenario. It was the third Final Fantasy in 3D and considered one of the best, even if it is not as famous as Final Fantasy VII. Beautiful crafted 3D graphics, music composed by Nobuo Uematsu and art by both Tesuya Nomura and Yoshitaka Amano, the game was full of references to past Final Fantasy. Its plot was not only long, but touched numerous themes, talking about what is the meaning of life and what living is, fancing the fear of death and how we deal we the lost of those we love, while also presenting the player a world full of wonders and adventures, free to explore and with numerous things to do. All of this makes Final Fantasy IX, one of the last games of this generation, probably the best example of what RPG of this generation strive for and an example of game as a media capable of telling compelling stories.

Shenmue I and Shenmue II - Released for the Sega Dreamcast, Shenmue follow Ryo Hazuki who after witnessing the murder of his father, decided to persue the killer to learn why the motive behind the crime and claim justice. Shenmue is the precurso of storydriven videogames, presuming of top-notch graphics, a lot of spoken dialogue and introducing QTE (Quick-Time Events), cinematics playable sections where the player have to press the buttons in a specific way or speed to overcome challenges, that let the player still have control on the outcome while offering the most cinematography experience possible. The world of the games was open, letting the player to talk with all characters and interact with the scenary while also maintaining a high degree of realism.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora´s Mask - Although not nearly as popular as its predecesor when it was released, with the pass of the years Majora´s Mask has become one of the most recognised entry of the saga, presuming of a more dark, unique and mature plot and by the interesting way of telling it's story. The game features Link, our main protagonist, who arrives at the land of Termina, after following and strange masked boy who had cursed him, trasforming Link in a humanoid plant called Deku. There he meet a mysterious man who calle himself the Happy Mask Salesman, who reveal to Link that the mask the strange boy had was called Majora, and it had a dark power enough to put an end to all life. Furthermore, Link also discover that the moon is falling from the sky because of the dark influence of the mask and in three days it would impact and end the world. Thankfully, thanks to the magic of his ocarina, a gift from his last adventure, Link is able to return to the third day before the end, letting him time to find a way to avoid the impending doom.

Although at first sight the game may look simply in its plot, the deepness of the same only come to light when one immerse himself in its world. Instead of  letting all the important details in what could be called the main plot, each character of the game follow their daily routines, having each one a personal story, their own problems. Here we can see a masterfully combination of game mechanics and storytelling. By letting the player live the same three days over and over, not only it creates the feeling of a living world, but also let the playerexplore in a way never done before and that coulnd't be found in any other media, making actions and experimenting to see what consequences they bring making the story an active experience. The care put in the making of the characters and their deed personalities and problems not only would surprise the players, but also let them create a unique and strange bond with them, the player just as Link is an stranger at the start of the adventure and once it ends, Termina becomes a part of the player, and experience hard to forget.

Its numerous plots touch a lot of themes. The lost of loved ones, the weight of responsability, the pain caused by people not trusting each other and misunderstandings, how we face the end and accepting death as a part of life and much more all told with subtlety, in a bizarre and emotional adventure.

Of this three examples, Shenmue and Final Fantasy types of storytelling would be the most influential in following generations, specially in games made by big companies, From here games would strive to become more and more cinematic, and this trend is still visible nowadays. Any random trailer of triple A games  would remember to big blockbuster movies, realistic characters, renowned voice actors and bombastic music.

Majora's Mask influence can be found instead in the called indie games, wich tend to be more simplistic in thier presentation and focus more on game mechanics that cinematography. Still, some big company games have also opted with this style of storytelling.


In next part, we will still deal with some expamples of the fifth generation that marked a change in the way games tell stories.

The diversity of videogames and why it makes it hard to define the standars of what a good videogame is.

Videogames are a very particular form of media both in the way they tell stories and how the interact with the audience, making them hard to understand for the general public. Furthermore, the standars for what makes a good game can vary greatly, sometimes being fun and entertained  enough to be considered very good and other times is the stories they tell, the message they send or the experience they offer what define their quality.

One of the reasons of this is the diversity of videogames themselves. Not only they test the player skills, but they also may offer enganging mental challenges and capacity to make good decisions. This alone create an stimulating experience, where the player will not only try to best the game, but also improve himself or find new and creating ways to tackle the differents situations the work may offer.

The other very important aspect of a videogame is the story. Thanks to how the media work, stories may present themselves in different ways. The most common one nowadays is basiclly the same as with films. Actors giving their performances, both with motion capture for facial and body animations and their voices, presenting the usual structures and techniques seem in film-making while also spicing it up with a bit of interactive cinematics, letting the player "live" the scene by giving him some limited control or mixing exposition with gameplay.

The other method of storytelling that is not as common we may find is the most particular to videogames. Using the games mechanics, music and visuals, they get rid of classic cinematical scenes, dialogue and instead makes the experience become fully interactive. Each element of the gameplay becomes not only an exercise of good gameplay crafting, but also they tell a little bit fragment of a bigger story that only comes to being when the player puts the pieces together. This makes understanding the ploth both an stimulating experience and another challenge that fits together with the gameplay, making for a very complete and harmonic work.

Because of this variety, judging what makes a good videogames becomes incredible hard. Players tastes are as diverse as videogames themselves, some prefering gameplay above everything else, story or wanting to strike a balance between the two. This makes the debate about videogames as art a very problematic, and the critical review of the sames more complex. This make it even harder to understand for those foreigners to it, who wouldn't have the capacity to appreciate the subtlety of a games' design both in its gameplay mechanics and narrative techniques, because there is hardly a consensus about what makes a videogame good.

Evolution of Storytelling, Part 2

We continue from where we left it last time.

Fourth videogame consoles generations.

Although there were multitude of consoles in this generations, we will focus on the two main competitors of the generation: Super Nintento Entertainment System ( or SNES for short ) and the Sega Genesis or just Genesis. When they were first introduced their 16 - bit graphic processor was heavily marketed. This technical upgrade brought with it games started to aspire for more than just mere entertaiment. Games with more dialogue and more complex mechanics were released. Their improved sound chip allowed composers a wider array of posibilities, and despite the limitations of the systems, a variad of memorable songs from of genres could be found in games, from opera to rock, all composed enterely of sounds simulating real instruments.

                   Super Nintendo Entertainment System                      Sega Genesis


Some examples of videogames and the evolution of storytelling:

Super Metroid - Developed by Nintendo, the third entry on the Metroid Saga would become regarded as the best 2D Metroid of all time. Beautiful crafted sprites, impresive soundtrack and a minimalistic way of storytelling wich focused in the experience created a game with an unique ambientation unheard before in videogames. It would become an inspiration for an entire genre of videogames (the generally called Metroidvania, a combination of the names of the Metroid and Castlevania videogame sagas) and an example of good storytelling in videogames, with its emphasis of showing and no telling.





Final Fantasy VI - Also known as Final Fantasy III in North America as a result of being the third Final Fantasy ported there, the games is regarded as one of the best Square Enix game and one of the best RPG of its generations. Masterfully composed music, lovable characters, a script of a considerable size for its time and top notch character made it one of the most iconic videogames of the Final Fantasy Saga and generally cited as one of the first example of videogame as art.

Clock Tower - Although it was not released outside of Japan till the port for PS1, the original Clock Tower was a game for the Famicon, the Japanese NES. Belonging to the Point and Click genre, if is often calle as the predecesor of the survival horror genre. In the game we take control of Jennifer, an orphan was adopted together with her friends, who were also orphans, by an mysterious rich man known as Mr. Barrows. But when they arrive to their new house what the find instead is an deformed man, wielding a giant scissors who hunt them one by one. The objective of the games is to save your friends and escape the mansion. There were no combat, and the player didn't have direct control of the character, instead using a cursor to make Jennifer inspect and interact with objects. The main objective was to run away from the murderer, solves the puzzles obstaculazing your path and exploring the house. This odd choice of gameplay is not coincidental, its setted a feeling of vulnerability in the player, that coupled with the smooth animations, dark and detailed graphics and the lack of music created a dark and creepy atmosphere.


Another remarkable thing about this generation was the released of the Sega CD, an add-on for the Sega Genesis that let it play games in CD, marketed heavily as a fusion of movies and videogames thanks to being able to play videos of live footage. Sadly, not only the video were low quality, but for the most part most of the games were either little more than low quality movies or bad games with videos and nosensical plot.

Yet there were exceptions. One of the most famous ones was Snatcher, a Sci-Fiction thriller created by the famous Hideo Kojima, father of the Metal Gear franchise. Taking inspiration from other works such as Bladerunner and Terminator, we play as an amnesiac junker called Gillian Seed. Junkers are a special form trained to hunt Snatchers, a mechanical form of life that murder humans and take take their physical aspect and memories and taking their place in society. Being more similar to a visual novel that a videogame, we have to investigate, take the right choices and in ocassions fight the snatchers, all while learning about their origin and our past.





To be continued...

Social Justice and censorship.

The fight for equality of all kind has always been a neverending struggle. Artists, philosophers and the average person, all have an opinion and all of them fight for what the believe, being it equality of gender, race, the defense of the rights of handicapped people,  respect and freedom of people's sexuality or the defense of those who suffered crimes against them. All forms of media play a vital role in this debate and if we were to look the changes of books, films and the such, we could see the changes of mentality of society and the different ways the creators tackle the subject matter.

No one would openly speak againts equality nor could make offensive comments without being confronted by an inmense number of people. Afterall, nobody wants to be dicriminated and equal opportunities for everyone is, as far the moral standars of our modern society stand, the pinacle of justice and good. Social justice tackle this matter, and has been in the foreground of thousands of debates through history. But what would happen if we take this just endeavour to its logical extremes ? So is born a recent movement, very present on the internet but with palpable effects in real life, the Social Justice Warriors or SJW.

The name Social Justice Warrior is a derogatory term that makes references to people who supposedly defend equality, not matter how extreme or radical their ideals are, with dogmatic dedication, yet most of the time they themselves do not believe in what they defend, do not understand it or have any logical aproach about it. They use a flag of equality to hide their true goals, a shield that they believe make them impervious to any form of criticism or attack, proclaming themselves defensor of the people, the voices of those who are disciminated. But most of the time none of what they said represent the group they claim to understand and just want social recognition or pushing their own agendas. Their ideal of equality is in true the opposite, a strong desire to differentiate people, a bias againts those they consider the privileged group and to segregate the statement of society they favored from them.

Some example of this buffoonery are activist againts Cultural Appropiation, which means the adopting of customs  or elements of other cultures, generally one who had been discriminated in the past, by the labeled privileged cultures, going from music to celebrations, religions, ways of thinking or even hairstyles, deemed all of this as stealing and dominance of one culture over other, a true pirouette of logical thinking. Ableism, not in its true meaning of discrimination againts disabled people, but in this case refering to terms that may offend handicapped people, reaching ridicolous extremes as accusing words like crazy or dumb. Or the Thin Privilege, accusing thin people of discriminating fat people and activelly encouraging people to stay fat, saying that they are beautiful that way with disregard of the health problems obesity carries.

And as is only logical, the SWJ tackle the matters of equality in the media. Going from nitpicking words, imagery, any single dettail they consider offensive and blow it up out of proportion, labeling the authors of the works bigoted, sometimes even insulting them and believing themselves with the right to censor what they desire.They won't try to understand why it is the way it is, nor care about if it is logical for the work in question to be that way, they will ravish it without a caring, claiming that the ideal goals they upheld are above freedom of expression. Any term can be deemed a "trigger", a word that triggers feelings of memories that are either hurtful or uncomfortable, from words like "rape" and "retarded" to "stupid" and "silly", all are fair game for them, without the context they are using in mattering at all.

This movement of censorship is not new. From the longest time there have been debates about the subject matter, people complaining about the content of something. Too violent, too sexual, too dark, too gritty and the list goes on. Age clasiffications were created to regulate the consume of media and still there was censorship to avoid offending people's sensibilities. There is an obsession to overprotect every member of society, no matter the age or the background, but this is more an insult to their inteligence. It do not matter how uncomfortable the topic tackled in the media may be, we as adults are able to take it, think about it, face it. Sometimes that what we deem offensive could actually move people to think, even to act, to reflexionate, not matter how hard or how bad it makes them feel.

Equality is a noble goal, but SJW undermine it with their misguided radicalism. To reach true equality and justice in the media we have to matured, we have to confront the fear of being offended, of thinking and making questions. To use reason and not only heart when debating and denounce the crimes againts freedom of expression. Not to focus on attacking the media we consider racist or sexist nor trying to censor it, but instead use reason and understanding why is the way it is and then, if there have reasons enough to do so, confront the creator or even the society as it's sources, being the work a tool to see what social injustice lay whithin. To not have fear of being label as bigoted to claim againts this mockery of justice and wield reason as a blade in this fight. To teach our children to think by themselves and to confront their problems, not overprotect them. The only way to slay the monster of discrimination is to face it, fight it and claim victory after receiving one or two scars, but hiding in our castle of ignorant security and "holier-than-thou" actitude facing imaginary dragons and avoiding that what makes us feel a little uncomfortable won't solve anything.

Review L.A Noire

Developed by Team Bondi, distributed by the recognised Rockstar Games and released in 2011, L.A Noire transport us to Los Angeles of 1947 where we will take the role of Cole Phelps officer of the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department)  investigating a series of crimes while we unreveal a dark conspiration. The game is crearly a tribute to the noir genre of stories, with a plot full of mysteries and a dark and sordid ambientation. 

The main storyline of the game is divided in multiple chapters, each one of the dealing with a new crime with resolution is reached at the end of the chapter. At the same time, a bigger story arc develope in the background and as we reach the end of the game it will slowly take more importance until finally reaching an exciting climax. Each crime themselves are very interesting, full of twists and even some action sequences here and there, but focusing mainly on the dialogue between the characters. There are also a great number of sidestories wich are very short, but fun and help to take a breath and change the pace once in a while.

And one of the strong points is the dialogue which is not only well written, but it also is the core of the gameplay. The main objective of the game is to find the right solution of the crime and for that there are two main course of actions: finding evidences and interrogating. The last is the most important and is a masterful combination of graphics, story writting and gameplay. Thanks to an impressive game engine and state of the art facial motion capture technology, the characters of the game have an oustanding range of realistics emotions, full of little tics and subtle gestures and it will be the player duty to find out if someone is lying by examining the way the suspects act and the inconsistencies of their declaration. All of this leads to a very inmersive expirence, where the player has to actually solve the mistery by himself and as a side effect grab his attention to the plot.

While the story itself is very good, full of interesting characters and a intricate plot, it is not without is flaws. There are some dramatic actions taken by the protagonist that may come out of the blue and feel inconsistent, created by the lack of exposition by the writers. The climax feels a little bit rushed and the number of action sequences increment suddenly, letting the main atraction to the game, the mistery solving, a little more in the background at the end. The ending itself, while surprising, may leave the spectator unsatisfied and feels a little too sudden.

There are also some problems with the integration of the plot in the gameplay. While we have control over the investigation of the individual crimes and change some of the sequences, in the end the consequences for failing is a scold from our superior and lower points, while the plot overall is unaffected by this, although not learning the truth may be incentive enough for the player to try their best.

All of this shows that there is a clear tendency on imitating and recreating a movie or tv series and make them interactive. Although this per se is not bad, it do not take advantage of the unique capacities of videogames to tell a story, limiting greatly the range of choices the player can make and decreasing the significance of the choices he make.

Despite all of that, I really recommend this game. Not only is easy to play because it does not requires great skill of experience with a controller, Is also, by itself, a very interesting and unique noir story and videogame. The characters are well written and feel genuine, but with little nods to the classic characters archetype of classic noir. It may be a little short but completing all the side stories and getting the best result in each case help prolonging the life of the game. Sadly, by the nature of the game, it does not offer to much replayability value, atleast not more than a good thriller film may offer.

Storytelling punctuation: 6.75 out of 10. A very good  and interesting plot, but the integration with the gameplay could have been better, lack of consequences in our decisions.

Overall punctuation: 8 out of 10. The gameplay is good and easy, the graphics outstanding and the plot really interesting.

My favourite Place

My favourite place

My favourite place would be quiet, somewhere where you can rest anytime of the day. You will have quick access to all sort of facilities, but at the same time be able to go to natural places like big parks or even forest. The weather would be mostly wet and rainy and the sky woulb be of beautiful grey color, with the soothing shadows of the clouds being only broken sometimes by the weak warm lights of a lethargic sun. My work site would be close and from it's windows you could admire the relaxing surroundings.

The natural life will be of vast greens plains with some smalls forest of lush vegetation, with some smalls hills and even mountains. When it comes to the urban area, the building would be for the most part of medium size, taking as big size New York buildings and small size houses like bungalows, and they will stand out for their beautiful architecture, a mix between practicality and estetic. The roads would be wide and their layout simple and easy to remember.

The people living there would proceed from very differents cultures and backgrounds, but at the same time they wouldn't feel any strong nationalism nor they would let prejuices of any kind affect how they interact with others. There wouldn't be too much poblation, but neither too few. The teaching centers of this place would strongly encourange kids to be creative, to study and be good person, all in equal value, respecting all kind of beliefs and point of views but also encouranging rational discussion and reflexion.

Describe someone

The suited man

The strange suited man of cold eyes was sitting in the corner of the pub as always. Despite sporting such stranges and inappropiate clothes adn being so physical imposing, he seemed to never attracj any kind of attention. His icy blue eyes, always looking around the room as if he was searching for something. He smiled occasionally, always very slightly, enigmatic, without rhyme or reason, as if he had just remembered something funny. The few times he stood up and walked across the room he did it with elegant yet decesive steps, and when he spoke, his voice was deep, strong, it sounded like he was trying to be friendly, but  ended coming of more like somekind of threat, even when he was just asking for a glass of water.