I’ve noticed a trend—particularly in some recent RPGs—of, well, let’s call it ‘Netflixiness’.
Dialogue designed to leave absolutely nothing to interpretation, to exposit information in the most direct way possible, devoid of any real character or context. There’s an assumption that any moment the audience spends confused, curious, or out-of-the-loop is a narrative disaster.
I hate to keep knocking Dragon Age: The Veilguard about, especially since I still had a decent time with it all told, but the thing that made me break off from it after 60 hours really was its story. It’s a tale that does get (slightly) better, but it gave me a terrible first impression I never quite shook.
Devil’s Advocate: This is for the adult gamer set who only have a prescribed amount of time they can spend on gaming. They get a chance for a few hours every few weeks. Their lives are overwhelming with details and information they need to remember regarding every day life. They simply don’t have the mental capacity to remember all the details from a game they spend two to three hours on once every few weeks, not when their mental focus is given to you know, real fucking life.
While I understand the frustration with such writing, because it bothers me as well… I don’t have a job where I work 60 hours a week nor do I have children. I’m kind of the exception to the rule when it comes to being able to give a game my full attention. Further, I have always had an incredibly good memory and attention to detail. Most people I have met in my life simply… do not have incredibly good memories or attention to detail. That doesn’t make them bad people who are living life wrong, it just means their brains work differently or they’re putting that mental energy to different things.
If we want people to pay attention to these stories, well, we’ve got to change fucking society from the ground up so they have the free time to actually be able to do so. Whinging about it like this isn’t going to magically make people pay better attention when they have to split their time with taking care of their children, which obviously should take priority over a fucking video game.
People act like the Netflixication is because people are all busy staring at their phones… I posit that it’s actually people cooking meals, doing dishes, doing laundry, ironing clothes, and a thousand other tedious daily activities where they’re trying to squeeze in some entertainment while also paying attention to something else entirely.
What’s even the point of playing story games then if the story is condensed and simplified to such a degree? If all explanations are spoon fed to you and the story if so primitive that the bar is on the floor it just becomes boring. At this point you are better off playing games that focus on gameplay instead, it will be a more fun experience.
It’s like reading a summary of a book of just watch a short clip about it on TikTok because books are “too long” and then calling yourself a reader.
It is only boring if you get to play it from start to finish in a couple of days.
It is not boring if the same story is spread out over months because of limited playtime.
Games with complicated or involved stories just need to go back to having a comprehensive log or journal. That used to be a staple of big games, to the point where it could take you days to read all the lore and journal entires. That might not be fully ideal for those adult gamers either but theres definitely a comfortable middle ground where your active missions page has a little brief for each objective telling you who gave the quest, what they wanted and why. Lots of games these days can have like 20 active quest markers and give you no information about any of them beyond some random npc you talked to once wants 10 of something for some reason.
Talking about lost feature, I feel like like less modern games like to give their players a comprehensive map.
It used to be that map is a basic feature in games that involve any kind of navigation but nowadays some games just…don’t?
I like the way the new wave of CRPGs — Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, etc. — deals with this problem. Of course you have a journal with a quest log and a lore encyclopedia. In addition to that, if you hover over highlighted words (names, lore things) during dialogue, it shows you a short explanation.
I remember back in the day, when a lot of the time you had to keep your log/journal yourself with pen and paper. Getting back to Lands of Lore after a week without any notes? Might as well start over.
Some games still do encourage that! Have you met a little game called Blue Prince?
I am ashamed to say how long it took me to get the pun in the title for this game.
It’s actually a triple entendre.
Blue Prince
Referring to the protagonist, Simon P. Jones
Blue Prince
Blueprints, which enable the drafting mechanic the game is centered around
Blue Prince
Ilex x meserveae, a species of blue holly of which the male version is called Blue Prince. (referring to Mt. Holly, where the game is set)
That’s a good point and, for lack of studies about it, it’s impossible to tell which is the most pervasive.
As a counterpoint, and this might be an “unpopular opinion”™: not all games are (should be) made for as broad an audience as possible and different attention (investment) levels should be expected depending on the game. That obviously won’t resonate with the business side of the gaming industry, but I think everyone needs to be aware of how much time they can dedicate to their hobbies and pick them accordingly.
I’m thankfully not in a position where I have to work 60hrs a week and I’m childless as well, but some weeks might leave me with less free time than others and I pick entertainment/media accordingly. That might not be what others do and I know my experience is likely purely anecdotal, but if I feel I don’t have enough time to properly enjoy a game or remember its premises as I play, I’ll simply do something else, even if gaming is my favourite hobby.
And to be clear, I fully agree that society needs to change dramatically either way. Everyone would benefit from better work-life balance.
The problem is that when a AAA game costs three hundred million dollars to make due to all the performance capture and famous actors and high fidelity graphics and whatnot, you have to reach as broad an audience as possible in order to make that money back.
I think this is what’s killing the blockbuster movies, too. Everything needs to be lowest-common-denomenator to have a hope of turning a profit.
Sure, and that makes financial sense, but that’s only one specific subset of games.
Smaller productions/games still have ways to turn a profit with smaller intended audiences and can in turn offer more complex storylines.
Im really hoping clair obscur rocked the market enough to change their ways