BiGBoSSMk23
A company being excited for their new game is a huge slap in the face to all the fans that liked their old games.
Have you ever played a section of a game where you're being fed exposition that could have been enjoyable had it not been ruined by unnecessarily ominous music blaring in the background or some other distracting element, like a giant gameplay set piece taking place over the dialogue? Or those not-really-cutscenes in certain games that are poorly framed and staged, with music cutting in and out, and boring camera angles?
My question is (and this is coming from someone who genuinely enjoys reading newspaper entries and "logs" in videogames), what are good examples of engaging, effective exposition in games?
I can give a bad example off the top of my head, and it's Prince of Persia (2008).
Many people thought Elika was a bore of a character with as much personality as a plank, but had her background story been more intrinsically integrated into the game's narrative (visual and otherwise) and not limited to the player's willingness to break up the pacing (which is what's good about this game, it's Journey-esque flow), then maybe we'd have had a better time relating to her, or hell, caring at all about their world and what they're supposedly getting back to once everything is fixed.
Disclaimer:
This is not a thread where on-rails, "cinematic" games get praised/torn apart (I like and dislike many aspects of the Uncharted-type games). I wanna see how (and which) games characterize their worlds without boring the player while engaging them with convincing dialogue and acting interwoven with rich, player conscious gameplay design.
My question is (and this is coming from someone who genuinely enjoys reading newspaper entries and "logs" in videogames), what are good examples of engaging, effective exposition in games?
I can give a bad example off the top of my head, and it's Prince of Persia (2008).
Many people thought Elika was a bore of a character with as much personality as a plank, but had her background story been more intrinsically integrated into the game's narrative (visual and otherwise) and not limited to the player's willingness to break up the pacing (which is what's good about this game, it's Journey-esque flow), then maybe we'd have had a better time relating to her, or hell, caring at all about their world and what they're supposedly getting back to once everything is fixed.
Disclaimer:
This is not a thread where on-rails, "cinematic" games get praised/torn apart (I like and dislike many aspects of the Uncharted-type games). I wanna see how (and which) games characterize their worlds without boring the player while engaging them with convincing dialogue and acting interwoven with rich, player conscious gameplay design.