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ThoseDeafMutes · Jul 20, 2017

Lionel Richie said:
Like every action movie hero ever? It gets into some really subjective territory, like saying the morality of the situation isn't analyzed when the work isn't about moral reflection. It starts to miss the point.

Ludonarrative dissonance as applied to Uncharted is a critique that was focused mainly on the second game, at least as I recall it. This is because Uncharted 2's ending specifically draws attention to it by having the villain say "You're no different from me! How many men have you killed, just today?" and then Nathan is moved by this and is unable to kill him, instead leaving him to the Yeti monsters to finish off, as if that was some kind of mercy that makes him the bigger man.

Frankly, the scene made no sense regardless of which reading of Drake you take. If Drake was there to stop an evil warlord getting the power, and therefore morally justified, he should have shot him. If you think Drake is just a heartless plunderer, he should have shot him. In either case Drake has shown no signs of hesitating to kill these people before; as the villain says, he has indeed killed countless people that day alone.

The game also opens with the scene where Drake tells everyone he doesn't like guns and doesn't want to take it into the opening mission. Not wanting to kill civilian security guards makes sense, but this whole "I don't like guns" thing is divorced from the ease with which he picks them up and starts slaughtering later on.

If you're unwilling to take criticism for your character killing a lot of people, maybe don't draw attention to it in your own story.

Turin Turambar · Jul 20, 2017

I never got why some people didn't like the 'ludonarrative dissonance' term. It's true that it exists. The term was created criticizing Bioshock, but more than Bioshock, I think the poster boy example is something like Tom Raider (the new one, I mean). Where the cutscenes always show a vulnerable Lara and the gameplay you had a badass Lara. In the cutscenes all was grim and dangerous, the kind of world where a small cut could be lethal because she could die from an infection, while the real game you had health regeneration in 4 seconds. They *could* have made a real action/survival games, taking some gameplay ideas of other indie survival games, but they chose not to.

I think maybe people doesn't like it because they believed game designers were going to change the gameplay of their favorite game to make it less 'dissonant'.
That's silly. It's the other way around, the problem should be fixed by changing the tone of the story, not the gameplay.

In fact while some people have made videos or articles about ludonarrative dissonance but I don't remember reading anything about the obvious origins. How before games didn't have any kind of deep story, there was only a single page in the manual, or a video intro, after that it was all gameplay.
At some point people started putting more realistic characters and plot in video games, in an attempt to make them more mainstream, to Hollywood-ize the industry. But video games are still mostly the same, the most popular genre in action: you slash or shoot your way around. That's what lots of games are about. It's a totally unrealistic setup, same as Super Mario Bros isn't a realistic setup, so if you try to shoehorn a humane story in that, you can get ludonarrative dissonance.

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

EatChildren said:
Yeah, I've always used Red Dead Redemption as one of the strongest textbook examples of legitimate ludonarrative dissonance. It's something Rockstar didn't find balance with, and probably intentionally; the narrative is one story, the free play in between story beats is just whatever. Ergo, dissonance. But I'm not sure people care as much in the context of huge open world agency driven games like Red Dead.

But yeah; in RDR you can go from mass slaughtering entire towns, to emotionally driven cutscenes about breaking away from a violent past and finding redemption.

That's basically GTA4 and 5. Even with 5 they tried to make you play a psychopath, but he's such a piece of shit that I never enjoyed being forced to play Trevor.

The real problem is that no one has found a way to make all the exposition developers dump into cutscenes interactive or interesting to play, and nearly every AAA game is a combination of gameplay where you murder people and cutscenes where someone is trying to force you to watch a movie that's trying to make you cry.

TatteredHat · Jul 20, 2017

I wouldn't apply it to Uncharted but I think that the RDR example is a good one, the Tomb Raider reboot is another one where the dissonance between Lara's narrative and her gameplay was also really obvious.

TheRedSnifit · Jul 20, 2017

joe_zazen said:
Games are only funded if the publisher believes it will sell. Right now, that means shooting and sports. I bet ND would love to take a crack at a non shooter with a big budget, but are there ten million potential purchasers for that?

Maybe not, but we should at least stop pretending that their games are anything more than unambitious murderfests.

mrklaw · Jul 20, 2017

One of the problems I think with the term and its interpretation, is that we aren't actually using gaming vocabulary and context when applying it.

Eg 'oh Drake kills so many people'. While Uncharted is trying to tell a story, and to get you to follow Drake's story, it is against the backdrop of a third-person shooter/action/adventure game. Part of that vocabulary will understandably have you fighting lots of enemies in some way. IMO you apply the equivalent of 'suspension of disbelief' at those points because they are necessary to move the game part along. They don't detract from the story or break my immersion because I understand the relationship between 'story' and 'game'.

Of course like with any movie where I'm asked to suspend disbelief, there are limits and if pushed beyond those I think they are fair game for criticism.

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

TheRedSnifit said:
Maybe not, but we should at least stop pretending that their games are anything more than unambitious murderfests.

Something something The Last of Us is the game of the generation something something. lol

Javier23 · Jul 20, 2017

Furyous said:
I'm too scared to deep dive for this in Kojima games. Does the Phantom Pain have any LDND?

There's pretty much a degree of this in most games, and MGS games are no exception, but this series actually addresses it in cool ways in every entry. As opposed to the Uncharted series, the villains in Kojima games critizicing and getting under the main characters' skin for being mass murderers and enjoying all the killing and it being the only thing they are good at is a staple of the series. The MGS games delve in themes of pacifism a lot more than you'd think for a military themed series.

Jangowuzhere · Jul 20, 2017

ThoseDeafMutes said:
Ludonarrative dissonance as applied to Uncharted is a critique that was focused mainly on the second game, at least as I recall it. This is because Uncharted 2's ending specifically draws attention to it by having the villain say "You're no different from me! How many men have you killed, just today?" and then Nathan is moved by this and is unable to kill him, instead leaving him to the Yeti monsters to finish off, as if that was some kind of mercy that makes him the bigger man.

Frankly, the scene made no sense regardless of which reading of Drake you take. If Drake was there to stop an evil warlord getting the power, and therefore morally justified, he should have shot him. If you think Drake is just a heartless plunderer, he should have shot him. In either case Drake has shown no signs of hesitating to kill these people before; as the villain says, he has indeed killed countless people that day alone.

The game also opens with the scene where Drake tells everyone he doesn't like guns and doesn't want to take it into the opening mission. Not wanting to kill civilian security guards makes sense, but this whole "I don't like guns" thing is divorced from the ease with which he picks them up and starts slaughtering later on.

If you're unwilling to take criticism for your character killing a lot of people, maybe don't draw attention to it in your own story.

When does this happen? It's explicit that Drake doesn't want to kill innocent guards, but I don't remember anything about the opening implying that Drake was against using guns in general.

Turin Turambar said:
I never got why some people didn't like the 'ludonarrative dissonance' term. It's true that it exists. The term was created criticizing Bioshock, but more than Bioshock, I think the poster boy example is something like Tom Raider (the new one, I mean). Where the cutscenes always show a vulnerable Lara and the gameplay you had a badass Lara. In the cutscenes all was grim and dangerous, the kind of world where a small cut could be lethal because she could die from an infection, while the real game you had health regeneration in 4 seconds. They *could* have made a real action/survival games, taking some gameplay ideas of other indie survival games, but they chose not to.

This is also a great example.

The narrative being shoved down our throats in the modern Tomb Raider is completely at odds with the actiony gameplay. The character of Lara Croft is so fucking lame. Nothing about her is believable or relatable.

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

mrklaw said:
One of the problems I think with the term and its interpretation, is that we aren't actually using gaming vocabulary and context when applying it.

Eg 'oh Drake kills so many people'. While Uncharted is trying to tell a story, and to get you to follow Drake's story, it is against the backdrop of a third-person shooter/action/adventure game. Part of that vocabulary will understandably have you fighting lots of enemies in some way. IMO you apply the equivalent of 'suspension of disbelief' at those points because they are necessary to move the game part along. They don't detract from the story or break my immersion because I understand the relationship between 'story' and 'game'.

Of course like with any movie where I'm asked to suspend disbelief, there are limits and if pushed beyond those I think they are fair game for criticism.

That's the problem though. Video games are the only medium where you are forced to sit through two different types of media mashed together in a forced manner.

It would be like during the middle of the next Marvel movie the action stopped and you had to read a 30 page comic book in the middle of it.

the_darkness · Jul 20, 2017

Lafazar said:
Please also read the description of the video:

Seriously, please stop with this "It's just a game, stop thinking about it" mentality. It's really fucking tiresome.

If you personally don't want to talk or think about a subject, that's perfectly fine. But in that case shut the fuck up, don't even post in such threads and don't leave a comment.

Don't discourage others and try to stifle an ongoing discussion only because you are not interested in it.

You read it here folks. If you disagree with this term or its application, get the fuck out of the thread.

Alienous · Jul 20, 2017

Ludonarrative dissonance really has nothing to do with kill counts - otherwise every shooter set in an approximation of the real world would draw criticism. Kill counts are a accepted conceit of being a video game.

It's a writing flaw, pure and simple. Nathan Drake suffers from it, Joel from The Last of Us doesn't. John Marston can suffer from It, Max Payne doesn't.

Put simply, Nathan Drake's eagerness to kill, despite it being a primary gameplay element, isn't justified by the other parts of the game. This relaxed, "aw crap" character in the cutscenes becomes a dude who can sneak up behind someone, snap their neck, and still quip in the next cutscene.

Compare that to Joel - in gameplay and cutscenes he's the same character. He isn't mercifully holding people up in the cutscenes, but shooting them without a second thought in the game - he's a cold killer throughout.

And it doesn't take a post-apocalypse to write a character without ludonarrative dissonance, and your protagonist doesn't have to be a soldier. Look at Max Payne, in his third game - he's a dude whacked out on drugs, as bodyguard for a high profile client, with a death wish. The way he acts in the non-interactive parts of the game don't contradict how he acts in gameplay.

GTA V was also smart with this. Red Dead Redemption's John Marston and GTA V's Michael DeSanta are family men, but due to the nature of an open world game they can be played in a way where they're crazed lunatics. Red Dead Redemption doesn't set up any context that accounts for that possibility - it doesn't make sense. GTA V, however, does something genius - in Michael's cutscene therapy sessions it adjusts the characterization of Michael to fit how the player is playing him. If you're playing him as a good guy, it's reflected there. If you're playing him as a crazed killer the therapy sessions present him as suffering from a mental breaks, giving onto violent urges he can't control. Ludonarrative dissonance averted.

It is a thing. Its importance will vary between people, but fundamentally ludonarrative dissonance is a writing flaw. It's hard to make sure the interactive and non-interactive parts of a game line up, but it's still worthwhile.

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

the_darkness said:
You read it here folks. If you disagree with this term or its application, get the fuck out of the thread.

There's a difference between having a difference of opinion and thinking that the term is not legitimate in the first place.

It does get tiring seeing people, including people who work in the industry, dismiss the idea out of hand without any discussion.

joe_zazen · Jul 20, 2017

TheRedSnifit said:
Maybe not, but we should at least stop pretending that their games are anything more than unambitious murderfests.

Aside from the Last of Us dlc, I agree.

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

Alienous said:
Compare that to Joel - in gameplay and cutscenes he's the same character. He isn't mercifully holding people up in the cutscenes, but shooting them without a second thought in the game - he's an cold killer throughout.

I had a big problem with this in that they were afraid to have Joel kill women and children in that scene where he sets fire to the settlement to rescue Ellie. We know that he's slaughtering them, but we never get to see it or even participate in it. It just felt like a coward's way out, all in the effort to make sure Joel stays "likeable".

the_darkness · Jul 20, 2017

firehawk12 said:
There's a difference between having a difference of opinion and thinking that the term is not legitimate in the first place.

It does get tiring seeing people, including people who work in the industry, dismiss the idea out of hand without any discussion.

The reason I think some game creators dismiss it as a critique is that it's inherent to the medium.

Unless your narrative is unnecessarily vague or absent, or your gameplay unreasonably restrictive, you can't prevent players from exercising free will and creating dissonant scenarios.

TheRedSnifit · Jul 20, 2017

Skinpop said:
Thematic dissonance is just the top of the iceberg. I guess people aren't really paying attention because discussions on the topic rarely seem progress beyond shallow details of that kind when the core issue is that the interactivity of games - in terms of coherency - is fundamentally incompatible with the static nature of authored narratives. Gameplay inherently generate narratives while authored narratives are immutable, that gap can't be bridged. All of this points to narrative and story as a focus for games is a dead end, a gimmick. A successful gimmick that will continue to be around for as long as games, but impotent in terms of progressing the medium meaningfully.

This is honestly my stance on it.

That article from a while ago about how story-driven games don't advance the medium was correct.

ThoseDeafMutes · Jul 20, 2017

Jangowuzhere said:
When does this happen? It's explicit that Drake doesn't want to kill innocent guards, but I don't remember anything about the opening implying that Drake was against using guns in general.

After reviewing the footage, conceded, but the rest still applies.

CloudWolf · Jul 20, 2017

It's interesting how much that single part of the Errant Signal video undermines itself. "Games are looked at as a whole, therefore ludonarrative dissonance is a stupid criticism", but criticizing ludonarrative dissonance is looking at the game as a whole.

SolidSnakex said:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture...mann-on-nathan-drake-sexism-in-games-20160524

It's funny he brings up The Force Awakens, because that was one film where I really had a problem with the way it portrayed violence against Stormtroopers with the way the story was set up. In the very first scene with Finn you see him being shocked that one of his buddies is killed, so shocked in fact that he refuses to shoot his blaster and betrays the First Order later. Then in his escape he easily kills 30-40 Stormtroopers and officers without any remorse. That is like the complete opposite of what his first scene set him up as.

TheRedSnifit · Jul 20, 2017

mrklaw said:
One of the problems I think with the term and its interpretation, is that we aren't actually using gaming vocabulary and context when applying it.

Eg 'oh Drake kills so many people'. While Uncharted is trying to tell a story, and to get you to follow Drake's story, it is against the backdrop of a third-person shooter/action/adventure game. Part of that vocabulary will understandably have you fighting lots of enemies in some way. IMO you apply the equivalent of 'suspension of disbelief' at those points because they are necessary to move the game part along. They don't detract from the story or break my immersion because I understand the relationship between 'story' and 'game'.

Why are we assuming that every game must be a shooter? Why can't companies make games that actually work with the narratives they're trying to tell (or vise-versa)?

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

the_darkness said:
The reason I think some game creators dismiss it as a critique is that it's inherent to the medium.

Unless your narrative is vague or absent, or your gameplay restrictive, you can't prevent players from exercising free will and creating dissonant scenarios.

Designers need to figure out what they're trying to do though. Red Letter Media calls some developers, like the guys who made The Order 1886, "failed movie directors" because they cram their games full of cutscenes that have absolutely no connection to the gameplay.

You can control player actions though, starting with the genre of the game you want to make. If you are trying to tell some deep character-driven story about a character trying to escape their violent past, then maybe don't make a third person shooter.

dan2026 · Jul 20, 2017

TheRedSnifit said:
Why are we assuming that every game must be a shooter? Why can't companies make games that actually work with the narratives they're trying to tell (or vise-versa)?

Personally I always thought that Uncharted would work better as an RPG or some sort of adventure puzzle game. Rather than a straight shooter.

jmartoine · Jul 20, 2017

firehawk12 said:
I had a big problem with this in that they were afraid to have Joel kill women and children in that scene where he sets fire to the settlement to rescue Ellie. We know that he's slaughtering them, but we never get to see it or even participate in it. It just felt like a coward's way out, all in the effort to make sure Joel stays "likeable".

It really struck me when playing through the game but none of the non-infected enemies are female. Surely over the course of the game there must have been a few females that make up the bandits/ David's group? The only time the game allows you to kill females is when they are infected, when they are no longer considered "human".

Alienous · Jul 20, 2017

the_darkness said:
The reason I think some game creators dismiss it as a critique is that it's inherent to the medium.

Unless your narrative is unnecessarily vague or absent, or your gameplay unreasonably restrictive, you can't prevent players from exercising free will and creating dissonant scenarios.

There's no expectation that a game will be able to avoid ludonarrative dissonance 100% of the time. If a player aims at the sky and spins in a circle for 5 minutes any game would struggle to explain that in the context of the character and narrative.

But there are still games that handle it better than others. Nathan Drake is an example of it handled poorly. This character who'll get behind someone and tell them to put their hands up in cutscenes is presented as the same character who'll get behind someone and snap their neck in the gameplay. That's avoidable ludonarrative dissonance.

Earthpainting · Jul 20, 2017

I won't be able to watch the video until this evening, but judging from the reactions in the thread, it appears like he falls on the same side of the issue as I do.

The first time I bumped into the concept was when playing GTA4. Niko Bellic's tale was strongly at odds with most missions in the game. This was partially intentional I'd assume, since Niko's story was one of him trying to flee his former life and start fresh in America. Between certain missions, the writers made a point of highlighting that Niko is doing the exact things he ran away from. You'd think that this type of story set-up would prevent ludonarrative dissonance, and instead frame it as an internal conflict. Sadly enough, that's not really how it came across to me. Cutscene-Niko and Gameplay-Niko felt like two distinct people, and nothing that happened to Cutscene-Niko had any effect on Gameplay-Niko, who'd quip, taunt and revel in some of the aimless mayhem he causes. The times the script brought up Niko's conflict just ended up as reminders that this divide existed. I don't blame the writers for trying, but their attempt to have their cake and eat it too just didn't really pan out for me. I think the game's successor, GTA 5, ended up being more successful at this by incorporating multiple playable characters. They gave certain types of missions to the characters it suited most, which just ended up strengthening their characterisation, rather than cause a disconnect. It's still present to a certain degree, but it's been alleviated comparatively.

TheRedSnifit said:
I've always wanted to see Naughty Dog actually make one of their character-driven stories without bolting it onto a ten-hour shooter where the protagonist murders thousands of people. But they have not done it, they obviously do not wish to do it, and I honestly believe they are incapable of doing so.

I fear their hands are tied either way. They're one of Sony's most important first party studios these days and they sell systems. They always seem to make highly polished crowd-pleasers constructed from what's popular. I'm not sure if Naughty Dog has the creative freedom to deviate from that, even if they wanted to. It's a shame too, because the village section in Uncharted 2 really spoke to me, and made me wish Naughty Dog could have explored that sort of thing further.

Gradly said:
I'm actually interested to know if this really has any impact whatsoever. Do companies sell less games if their games or maybe sequels seemed to have this issue? Do gamers avoid buying such games that are known/expected to have it? If the answer is No to both then I don't see it as an issue, and even if it's an issue I don't think they would bother fixing that

I'm guessing the answer is indeed "no", and you're probably right that they won't bother fixing it as a result. I still think it's worth bringing up though. It helps gaming move forward as a creative medium.

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

TheRedSnifit said:
Why are we assuming that every game must be a shooter? Why can't companies make games that actually work with the narratives they're trying to tell (or vise-versa)?

The problem is that the verb metaphors are underdeveloped for anything other than violence. Think about how the modern controller is essentially based off a gun's trigger action.

So attempts to try to tell story driven games are limited to visual novel experiences or QTE experiences like David Cage games. VR might change that, but who knows if VR will be around for the long term.

jmartoine said:
It really struck me when playing through the game but none of the non-infected enemies are female. Surely over the course of the game there must have been a few females that make up the bandits/ David's group? The only time the game allows you to kill females is when they are infected, when they are no longer considered "human".

I think the cheap cop-out answer that they gave was that it was too "resource intensive" to have female models or something, but it was a huge omission to me and still stands out to this day as a big flaw of the game in terms of the story it was trying to tell.

Tunahead · Jul 20, 2017

My ludo-narrative dissonance issue with Uncharted actually goes in the exact opposite direction: It's the gameplay that makes the story seem stupid. Why is it a big deal that a guy in a cutscene is pointing a gun at Nathan Drake when literal hours of the game previously have featured over half a dozen people pointing guns at Nathan Drake, and also firing them. Some of those people had rocket launchers. This guy and his shitty pistol aren't really doing anything to impress me.

Lafazar · Jul 20, 2017

mrklaw said:
One of the problems I think with the term and its interpretation, is that we aren't actually using gaming vocabulary and context when applying it.

Eg 'oh Drake kills so many people'. While Uncharted is trying to tell a story, and to get you to follow Drake's story, it is against the backdrop of a third-person shooter/action/adventure game. Part of that vocabulary will understandably have you fighting lots of enemies in some way. IMO you apply the equivalent of 'suspension of disbelief' at those points because they are necessary to move the game part along. They don't detract from the story or break my immersion because I understand the relationship between 'story' and 'game'.

Of course like with any movie where I'm asked to suspend disbelief, there are limits and if pushed beyond those I think they are fair game for criticism.

But that's just it: Uncharted does not JUST use the vocabulary of a third person shooter. If it was just that it would be fine. The problem people have with the game stems from the fact that it ALSO heavily uses the vocabulary of a hollywood movie (and explicitly not the cheesy self-aware James Bond kind but the kind of action/drama that takes itself and its characters seriously). This is why people question both the merciless killing without any comment whatsoever by the characters AND the high bodycount. Because the gameplay is in opposition to the serious story part of the game. No one would have any problem with the former if the latter was absent or intentionally more silly/less realistic to better fit the former.

the_darkness said:
You read it here folks. If you disagree with this term or its application, get the fuck out of the thread.

I don't even know how to respond to this. So I won't

bosseye · Jul 20, 2017

GTA V is an obvious one for me, playing Franklin, a fundamentally 'decent' character simply doesn't fit with all the psychotic shit you do in a GTA game. I think the whole game is horribly written anyway, but this really stands out as jarring. It's why Trevor (and possibly Nico from 4) is the only character who fits the GTA world, he's already a psychopath so fits with whatever nonsense the player is doing.

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

Earthpainting said:
I'm guessing the answer is indeed "no", and you're probably right that they won't bother fixing it as a result. I still think it's worth bringing up though. It helps gaming move forward as a creative medium.

Gaming is growing, but what's happening is that people are just being left behind by the AAA space. For the emergent narrative people, you have games like PUBG. For the "story-games" people, you have Night in the Woods and Oxenfree and other indie games that aren't hamstrung with making a FPS/TPS.

hotcyder · Jul 20, 2017

Furyous said:
I'm too scared to deep dive for this in Kojima games. Does the Phantom Pain have any LDND?

Depending how you look at it, it sort of rolls with the idea of having a disconnection from your character and your actions and contextualises it.

End Game Spoiler -

When you get to the ending and find out that you were Big Boss' body double - and that the two of you in tandem would create his legacy; he'd drive the actions behind the scenes, and you'd be making moves out in the open.

Javier23 · Jul 20, 2017

bosseye said:
GTA V is an obvious one for me, playing Franklin, a fundamentally 'decent' character simply doesn't fit with all the psychotic shit you do in a GTA game. I think the whole game is horribly written anyway, but this really stands out as jarring. It's why Trevor (and possibly Nico from 4) is the only character who fits the GTA world, he's already a psychopath so fits with whatever nonsense the player is doing.

Callinf Franklin a "fundamentally decent" character is quite the stretch. Pretty much every main character in the game is an amoral sociopath.

Candescence · Jul 20, 2017

I really can't disagree with the video's assertion. Ludonarrative Dissonance is a thing, and while it may be misapplied and mocked, it's here to stay.

firehawk12 said:
That's the problem though. Video games are the only medium where you are forced to sit through two different types of media mashed together in a forced manner.

It would be like during the middle of the next Marvel movie the action stopped and you had to read a 30 page comic book in the middle of it.

Averting this is one of those things I like about the Half Life series and most Valve games in general - the designer isn't going to unceremoniously restrict your controls or boot you from your character just to "tell" their story. If the player is restricted in some way, there's always a sensible reason for it, nearly always in-universe (with the ending of Portal 2 being a reasonable exception). Sure, the execution might not be amazing (lack of ability to skip narrative scenes is a black mark, for example), nor as interactive as it could've been (there's a nice moment in Black Mesa East with the board of newspaper clippings that you can look at and trigger some exposition from Eli, but aside from that...) but Valve prefers to respect the player's intelligence in this area, even if it means some players will start fucking around because they can.

the_darkness said:
The reason I think some game creators dismiss it as a critique is that it's inherent to the medium.

Unless your narrative is unnecessarily vague or absent, or your gameplay unreasonably restrictive, you can't prevent players from exercising free will and creating dissonant scenarios.

I think the problem is in games where designers expect players to 'play a specific role' but have no control over how players handle that. The only solution to that problem is to just hand control over to characters that have no set character in the first place, and thus the fact that their behaviour is based entirely on the whims of the player is entirely intentional. Of course, that's not feasible for all games, but that can't be helped anyway.

firehawk12 said:
The problem is that the verb metaphors are underdeveloped for anything other than violence. Think about how the modern controller is essentially based off a gun's trigger action.

So attempts to try to tell story driven games are limited to visual novel experiences or QTE experiences like David Cage games. VR might change that, but who knows if VR will be around for the long term.

The fact that point-and-click adventure mechanics haven't transitioned over to other game genres to expand gameplay possibilities by now is a fucking travesty. You could do a lot with a simple one-button menu and a list of verbs.

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

Javier23 said:
Callinf Franklin a "fundamentally decent" character is quite the stretch. Pretty much every main character in the game is an amoral sociopath.

Franklin felt like he was being dragged along into the Michael/Trevor shenanigans. He just didn't really fit with the other two.

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

Candescence said:
Averting this is one of those things I like about the Half Life series and most Valve games in general - the designer isn't going to unceremoniously restrict your controls or boot you from your character just to "tell" their story. If the player is restricted in some way, there's always a sensible reason for it. Sure, the execution might not be amazing (lack of ability to skip narrative scenes is a black mark, for example), but Valve prefers to respect the player's intelligence in this area, even if it means some players will start fucking around because they can.

This is why 2007 was supposed to be the year that gaming changed. Bioshock, Modern Warfare, Portal... it was going to be the birth of a new generation of video game storytelling. Instead, AAA gaming has regressed and all the innovation is in the indie space.

The fact that point-and-click adventure mechanics haven't transitioned over to other game genres to expand gameplay possibilities by now is a fucking travesty. You could do a lot with a simple one-button menu and a list of verbs.

I guess David Cage's games are the closest big budget modern analog. It's why I still find his games interesting, even if I don't think he can put together a story to save his life. lol

dan2026 · Jul 20, 2017

firehawk12 said:
This is why 2007 was supposed to be the year that gaming changed. Bioshock, Modern Warfare, Portal... it was going to be the birth of a new generation of video game storytelling. Instead, AAA gaming has regressed and all the innovation is in the indie space.

I guess David Cage's games are the closest big budget modern analog. It's why I still find his games interesting, even if I don't think he can put together a story to save his life. lol

Detroit is going to be such a glorious mess of a story.
I can't wait to watch the innevitable Best Friends LP.

plasmawave · Jul 20, 2017

ThoseDeafMutes said:
Ludonarrative dissonance as applied to Uncharted is a critique that was focused mainly on the second game, at least as I recall it. This is because Uncharted 2's ending specifically draws attention to it by having the villain say "You're no different from me! How many men have you killed, just today?" and then Nathan is moved by this and is unable to kill him, instead leaving him to the Yeti monsters to finish off, as if that was some kind of mercy that makes him the bigger man.

Frankly, the scene made no sense regardless of which reading of Drake you take. If Drake was there to stop an evil warlord getting the power, and therefore morally justified, he should have shot him. If you think Drake is just a heartless plunderer, he should have shot him. In either case Drake has shown no signs of hesitating to kill these people before; as the villain says, he has indeed killed countless people that day alone.

The game also opens with the scene where Drake tells everyone he doesn't like guns and doesn't want to take it into the opening mission. Not wanting to kill civilian security guards makes sense, but this whole "I don't like guns" thing is divorced from the ease with which he picks them up and starts slaughtering later on.

If you're unwilling to take criticism for your character killing a lot of people, maybe don't draw attention to it in your own story.

You're making shit up about Nate not liking guns. Also I read the UC2 ending as Nate not giving the villain the satisfaction.

Gsnap · Jul 20, 2017

I think the discussion of ludonarrative dissonance as it applies to uncharted is really interesting because at this point it's not something naughty dog can solve without changing the game's genre or working really hard at parts of the games that they haven't done enough with in past games. Which, naturally, isn't something a big company is going to do with their award winning, money making series.

The current solution (more walking, talking, and climbing with less shooting) is a half measure that'll never really work out. The real solution isn't to increase the amount of boring stuff in your fun action adventure game. The real solution is to increase the number and quality of fun activities that don't require over the top murder. Better puzzles to solve, better treasure hunting with a wider variety of tools the player can use in unique ways, better stealth with a wider number of options that drastically encourage the non lethal approach, better chases. Etc.

But they don't do it. And at this point they probably can't do it.

Javier23 · Jul 20, 2017

firehawk12 said:
Franklin felt like he was being dragged along into the Michael/Trevor shenanigans. He just didn't really fit with the other two.

If we are to seriously analize a GTA story, no one gets involuntarily dragged into the kind of shit Franklin was doing just to make money.

Candescence · Jul 20, 2017

firehawk12 said:
This is why 2007 was supposed to be the year that gaming changed. Bioshock, Modern Warfare, Portal... it was going to be the birth of a new generation of video game storytelling. Instead, AAA gaming has regressed and all the innovation is in the indie space.

It's telling that the closest thing to HL2's narrative sequences we've seen in AAA gaming are just sequences where the player can walk slowly and do nothing else. Bloody frustrating, really. I want to feel like an actual actor in the world, not a fucking camera dolly.

Gradly · Jul 20, 2017

Earthpainting said:
I'm guessing the answer is indeed "no", and you're probably right that they won't bother fixing it as a result. I still think it's worth bringing up though. It helps gaming move forward as a creative medium.

Yea It's something we can just talk about and discuss.

I see this issue plagues mostly if not all the shooters/killing games, but when you look at it, most games are shooters or about killing in general, shooters sell more, and the majority of players play shooters, not all of them similar to God of War where the protagonist is an antihero in essence, so no way to get rid of it

firehawk12 · Jul 20, 2017

Javier23 said:
If we are to seriously analize a GTA story, no one gets involuntarily dragged into the kind of shit Franklin was doing just to make money.

I mean, Franklin is supposed to be the player surrogate into the Trevor/Michael conflict. I have to imagine it's why the last part of the game puts you in Franklin's shoes and asks you to choose which ending you want to see. It's just too bad you can't tell them both to fuck off and choose neither.

dan2026 said:
Detroit is going to be such a glorious mess of a story.
I can't wait to watch the innevitable Best Friends LP.

After Cage's weak "this is just about robots" statement a while ago, I started losing hope for Detroit. I guess we'll see, but I'm sure it'll be terrible.

Candescence said:
It's telling that the closest thing to HL2's narrative sequences we've seen in AAA gaming are just sequences where the player can walk slowly and do nothing else. Bloody frustrating, really. I want to feel like an actual actor in the world, not a fucking camera dolly.

Basically down to games like Gone Home and Soma, and I'm still not sure where I stand with so-called "walking simulators".
Titanfall 2 had its moments at least, but in some ways, they were just remaking Modern Warfare's campaign.

EGM1966 · Jul 20, 2017

Personally I don't see it as anything new and the concept applies to other mediums too. I feel aspects of videogames throw it into more obvious and sharper relief than other mediums hence why it got focus and a specific term relative to them: and to be fair compared to film and novels I certainly feel I've experienced the effect most strongly in videogames.

I also feel it gets the pushback because to be blunt videogame medium has one of the most vocal defensive minorities who dislike "criticism of what they like".

Like everything there are degrees of it but for me as per the original application it boils down to many games struggling to balance perceived gameplay goals (we need constant player interaction and the mechanics must repeat and increase in intensity over the span of the game to allow growth of skill and perception of player success in mastering the game) and percieved narrative/thematic goals.

Most of the time it's simply that the developers want to use a popular game genre - FPS/TPS with combat being an obvious one while also wanting to have a strong narrative and to actually have themes and characters.

Bioshock Infinite is probably one of the most obvious and extreme cases for me. The themes and narrative are really, really at odds with being an exciting FPS but given the budget and development time and the commercial goals to be a huge success it's also trying to be a a hugely popular FPS with non stop action.

Bottom line unless you're superbly talented you're not going to pull that off: rather the end result will be loaded with dissonance. Objectively if your focus was the themes and concepts of Bioshock Infinite you wouldn't be making a FPS out of them.

Obviously like suspension of disbelief and other aspects of experiencing something like a game or film or novel people will react to it to different degrees. Some won't care or even notice much, some plot then some shoot/bang then some plot is fine to them and they happily move from one to the other fairly untroubled. Other's will feel the grinding of gears between the two and still others will find it really hurts their experience.

Part of the issue with discussing it I feel is the propensity on the internet to try and boil things down to right/wrong and simple binary positions when that's inherently impossible.

By its nature ludonarrative dissonance will vary as an effect from game to game and from person to person experienceing those different games.

It's a broad specturm that defies easy yes/no arguements.

That said I do think - just as with films to give the obvious example - it should be looked at when criticizing a game.

One thing I'll note that as see a big difference between film and games is intent. In films the dissonance is often deliberate. They know they're doing it and they're doing it to mediate and direct your experience. In Force Awakens they know they're cheating thematically by both personalizing Finn and de-personalizing Stormtroppers as "cannon fodder" for the action scenes. Films have been doing this since the beginning.

Games though seem to struggle with it. Often it seems to be happening despite the developers rather than instead of them.

That said I find Druckman's comments interesting. Uncharted to me shows they do understand the concept and like films they are deliberately using it (or abusing it depending on your viewpoint).

I wonder if that's really Druckman's point: it's not some unique videogame concept it's just standard audience manipulation that only stands out in games because most developers fail to use it "properly".

Plum · Jul 20, 2017

SolidSnakex said:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture...mann-on-nathan-drake-sexism-in-games-20160524

Wow, my respect for Druckmann as a Director dropped quite significantly after reading that. What a childish way to view things, taking what could be very useful criticism and gloating about how you don't give a shit about it because of some terrible comparisons. In fact, those two series have been criticized for the exact same thing at times. When Indy moved to the more grey area of the Cold War people took notice when the Russians were treated as Nazis, and the exact same thing happened when Finn was introduced and the film kept Stormtroopers as nothing but cannon fodder.

What makes it worse is that Druckmann himself managed to direct a game that nails the synergy between player, character and story. He has experience yet, in his first time doing Uncharted, he chose to ignore the criticisms because they're difficult. I'm getting tired of people dismissing this form of criticism outright instead of looking at why it's happening in the first place; a failure to couple writing with gameplay is not "petty" it's a barrier to realising game's true potential as a medium.

Also, this line:

It's a stylized reality where the conflicts are lighter, where death doesn't have the same weight.

Doesn't quite work when Uncharted 4 shows that

Drake's entire career as a thief was kicked off because of the tragic death of just one of his dead mom's coworkers/researchers

Tunahead · Jul 20, 2017

mrklaw said:
One of the problems I think with the term and its interpretation, is that we aren't actually using gaming vocabulary and context when applying it.

Eg 'oh Drake kills so many people'. While Uncharted is trying to tell a story, and to get you to follow Drake's story, it is against the backdrop of a third-person shooter/action/adventure game. Part of that vocabulary will understandably have you fighting lots of enemies in some way. IMO you apply the equivalent of 'suspension of disbelief' at those points because they are necessary to move the game part along. They don't detract from the story or break my immersion because I understand the relationship between 'story' and 'game'.

Of course like with any movie where I'm asked to suspend disbelief, there are limits and if pushed beyond those I think they are fair game for criticism.

The people who criticize Uncharted for its ludonarrative dissonance also understand the relationship between the story and game. That's literally the thing ludonarrative dissonance is a criticism of. "This relationship is dysfunctional."

In any case, I don't think "well he kills like a million people" is something that ruined all of Uncharted for anyone all by itself. It's just a breaking point, where the trust between creator and audience is compromised. Once someone reaches that point, they naturally start to scrutinize all the other parts more closely, and then a lot of questions arise.

Why does Nathan Drake kill so many people when he isn't any kind of sociopath? Why does one person with a pistol pose a more significant threat in a cutscene than dozens of soldiers with assault rifles in hours of gameplay? Why is so much of the climbing just holding a direction on the analog stick? Why is the shooting so simplistic and repetitive when there's so much of it? How did this pre-industrial elevator remain functional for hundreds of years? How is it that this monument has stood for centuries at the mercy of all the elements, but a guy walking on it just immediately makes it fall apart? Why is it that these "I'm pointing a pistol at you" scenes are considered necessary at all when it's been previously established that the Uncharted series is perfectly capable of actually credible threats, such as ghosts, demons, ghost demons, demon ghosts, collapsing ceilings, collapsing floors, collapsing marriages, collapsing suspension bridges, collapsing suspension of disbelief, etc.?

If you think about any one of those questions individually, they don't really matter much. Not in a video game, and not in a movie. But when you suddenly start thinking about them all at once, they do matter, and ludonarrative dissonance is the catalyst that causes this.

SentryDown · Jul 20, 2017

To me it all comes down to the fact that designers & writers have different goals because gamers don't know what they want (well, the market as a whole). Mass killing people is insanely fun but somehow we don't want to play as the bad guy. Many games work around this by pitting you against evil opponents and while most of them do not deserve to die, you accept it a bit better. Still, the character isn't written as a psychic murderer who'd kill anyone that comes as an obstacle.

Nowadays the issue is even bigger as we want games to be open and give as much freedom & coherence as possible, people would be pissed if civilians were invincible in a realistic context. Let alone being forced to deal with consequences of your bad actions ("killing all cops until they forget you" doesn't count). And that's just for the violence part but it also works all the "it's urgent but I might do side quests before", gamers have their own agenda and don't want to be forced into doing something.

Ultimately, it feels like gamers have now accepted the issue, they want to be treated as kids gameplay-wise with experiences that are more like open toys than strictly-ruled games, yet they also want adult stories. The problem as a whole is insolvable to me, people will always talk about it like they complain how death doesn't have the same meaning in comic books compared to other form of writing, but it will be accepted.

Candescence · Jul 20, 2017

firehawk12 said:
I mean, Franklin is supposed to be the player surrogate into the Trevor/Michael conflict. I have to imagine it's why the last part of the game puts you in Franklin's shoes and asks you to choose which ending you want to see. It's just too bad you can't tell them both to fuck off and choose neither.

Well, to be fair, Franklin wasn't exactly given the choice to just ignore the whole issue, especially since he was basically being threatened by two separate organisations (one directly and one indirectly, but still, Devin Weston was quite blatantly threatening Franklin). Though, at that point, being given the chance to off Steve Haines and make Weston suffer a miserable end made keeping Michael and Trevor alive and still getting involved with them an acceptable price in my case (though I didn't really hate them even if I acknowledge all three GTAV protagonists are assholes).

Basically down to games like Gone Home and Soma, and I'm still not sure where I stand with so-called "walking simulators".
Titanfall 2 had its moments at least, but in some ways, they were just remaking Modern Warfare's campaign.

It's something I'm personally trying to fix in my own project - Half-Life 2's style of 'cutscene' but considerably more interactive, on top of having point-and-click adventure mechanics. If nothing else, it'll be fun to experiment with.

Spudnik Sweetheart · Jul 20, 2017

Glad this has been brought back up and discussed in the manner this vid does. Not sure it's something you can ever fully get rid of, but sometimes it's just too jarring.

The Lara Croft reboot was probably one of the biggest examples for me since as soon as they tried to humanise her by making her overly sympathetic and reluctant I was confused. The whole arc making her reluctant to kill made no sense. As soon as I took control it was all arrows in all the other humans and blowing things up.

I don't really think it's an issue of narratives and killing being opposed, it's just some games trip themselves up. DOOM has already been cited as working thanks to its main character embracing his position as a one man army. You can still humanise the character to an extent as well. Dishonored's Corvo kind of fits here. He has his plights and his agenda but they're never in opposition with the gameplay.

ViviOggi · Jul 20, 2017

firehawk12 said:
I mean, Franklin is supposed to be the player surrogate into the Trevor/Michael conflict. I have to imagine it's why the last part of the game puts you in Franklin's shoes and asks you to choose which ending you want to see. It's just too bad you can't tell them both to fuck off and choose neither.

I'd argue that for the vast majority of GTA players Trevor is the more fitting surrogate. Franklin is how we may want to see ourselves, but the second we pick up the controller we turn into the demented hillbilly and we love it.

redcrayon · Jul 20, 2017

dan2026 said:
Personally I always thought that Uncharted would work better as an RPG or some sort of adventure puzzle game. Rather than a straight shooter.

Me too, mainly as I found the puzzles either ridiculously easy or that they solved themselves, when Drake is supposed to be working this stuff out from his journal, but the game thinks nohting of forcing you play out yet another wave of reinforcements just like the last one. TPS is obviously a fun, popular genre, but minimising any climbing or puzzles to solely focus on the shooting missed an opportunity for Uncharted to step into the adventure genre where the characters, story and tone feel a bit more comfortable to me. TPS was in vogue at the time though.

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