Skondo wrote:

Have to disagree with tiger. Didn't find Life is Strange emotional at all, but maybe that's because I didn't like the characters. Max was okay, if a little whiney, but the girl with the blue hair was horrendous. Standard teenage angst with additional whining, but she's really cool or pretends to be and she doesn't really have close friends and oh being a teenager is so difficult. Fuck off and write a better character. Hmmmm....it appears that Life is Strange elicits an angry response from me.

You played through the whole thing without any liking for the characters? Why would you do that!? For me, it's essentially a teen TV show with characters to go with that. And it does that well. Not for everyone, certainly, but it hit notes with me.


More down to the directorial side than the depth of the characters though. But hey - I like blue haired wannabe punk-rock kids and nerds who read Ray Bradbury and play guitar and chill in their room listening to twingy-twangy music.

Hmm, I suppose. 

Perhaps I mean 'any engagement' with the characters. Which is more important, particularly in a narrative driven game.

I played to the end because I was intrigued by the story and wanted to know what would happen. The ending was nearly as badly written as Chloe. Garbage.

I have played through three Gears games and every single character is a twat.

AJ wrote:

Engagement with media is bigger than with the characters, though. Could be the narrative interests you, or you like the themes and aesthetic.

Neither are as important as the characters in a narrative, for my money, though there are examples, sure.

Core driver for Gears is the gameplay loop (hide 'n' shoot). Life is Strange isn't driven by mechanics. Very different.

Anywho, different strokes. Ending worked very well for me (the very ending, mind. Final episode was nae great).

Oh, quite. I just don't understand people who discount something simply because they don't like the characters, that's all.

@tiger, obvs.

Kow wrote:

It would be hard for games to have an emotional impact in between mashing buttons and qtes. As well as that you need some kind of character development and quality acting, neither of which games have. They just don't have the writers or the actors to do it, and even if they did then they'd just be imitating films and could only come out worse in comparison.

This has probably already been covered but I think it's an interesting point.

When we think about eliciting emotions- specifically, in this case, sadness - we often get bogged down in matters of performance. It's true that a lot of game writing and performance is not up to much, and indeed the same is true of a lot of film and books.

But games have one intrinsic advantage that the other forms of media cannot, for one second, hope to emulate - agency.

The director of a film can frame a shot or telegraph a performance to imply guilt on the part of the viewer - for example, Funny Games - or leave one shot going for an uncomfortably long amount of time - Irreversible. They can even involve the viewer thematically as in Shortbus, where a key theme of the movie is that voyeurism is participation, thereby pulling the audience into the movie.

And yet the audience can never do anything beyond what is presented to them.

I actually think that games can elicit certain emotions better than other media because of this. Guilt, because the action is your own. Anger, because someone is trying to hurt your friend. Fear because the monster is trying to find you. I have felt possessive and protective of characters in films and TV, of course, but never as much as I have for Trico, Nanako, Elle and the rest.

Games have their flaws, aye, but they also have an unemulatable strength. And that is what can helps them deliver emotions as powerful, if not more so, than anything else.

Is it really agency when there is no other option? 

Looking at two games in particular, one which I have played, the other I have not.

MGS3 asks you to finish the mission with a single press of the square button. The other game is that Spec Ops game where you are told off for killing digital enemies. The latter example really doesn't sit well with me and comes off as preachy - was the right moral choice not playing or even not buying the game? I don't think that carries quite as much weight as it thinks it does.

Now, another game I haven't played is Nier. Going again by what I've read, that game comes with a very cool twist that comes right at the end and maybe that comes close to holding some form of significance. Almost like Links Awakening.

I'm not playing the right games. I need to play those two post-haste to see if I'm right.

I really didnt gel with Bioshock. The reveal towards the end reminded me too much of the Master Miller/Clark Kent glasses reveal in Metal Gear Solid, so the impact was dulled by loss of novelty.

I will grant you the SOTC example as a fine one. The giant creatures are weird enough in appearance to allow the player to anthropomorphise (is that a verb) them. That game does a good job I feel of making you feel guilty for destroying something ancient, and essentially innocent. It's the merciless nature of the slaughter that helps, even though you are playing David to the Giant. 

There are two more examples I would like to raise. 

Firstly, a simple vignette from Captain Toad. The mid-way chapters where Kinopio is sitting down at a campfire, with a serene sunset in the background. There's something quaint about that which almost humanises a very simple character. 

The second example is where my thoughts on "games as art" diverges from many (perhaps your view, Cinty). To me, the art of games is in the play as opposed to the narrative, relationships and aesthetic which I believe is what got to you in TLG? My idea of the art of a game is when you are empowered by skill. Perfecting levels like Championship Road in Mario 3D World, mastering Witch Time in Bayonetta or similar Kamiya titles, or the feeling when you get beyond Zen in WipEout HD and stop consciously playing. That emotional response if it can be called one, is one aligned to feeling beyond competency and closer to a feeling of mastery. 

Does any play elicit any feelings beyond pride for anyone else?

I'd fully agree that games do some things better - no film can equal the tension of participation. I also think games have the potential to expand fully into other stronger emotions, but they won't do it if they try to emulate films - ie through cutscenes and linear story. Then they'll always only be good - for a game. I've said it before but the best story telling is Dark Souls, because it tells a story that only a game can tell and only makes sense in gaming terms. If gaming wants to draw on emotions it needs to do it its own way, otherwise it's just a poor second fiddle.

Necromancy itt.

Kow wrote:

Then they'll always only be good - for a game.

Naughty Dog says bollocks to that. Both The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 have scenes that aren't just good 'for a game', they are good in their own right, and easily better than a lot of TV and films.

It's a mistake to put a limit on which route games take to elicit emotion. Some will do it through gameplay, but plenty are already doing it through narrative, too. It's ludicrous to rule out one avenue and say it won't work when it already is working.

Last of Us is one of those games that really could have done with alternate endings.

They don't have to. They browbeat empathy into you via a controller for twenty hours then when Nathan drake is having an emotional moment, Whether it's top class tv or not, your hooked in.

Any game where you've felt joy and relief at beating a boss after ten goes is not going to look like good tv. If tv aped the dying ten times aspect it'd look stupid as fuck (unless it's done with variety ala Groundhog Day). If it's done perfect first off there's not enough investment for a rebounding payoff.

@crayon the problem for me is that it is trying to ape tv/film. Most of the attempts at emotion are done through cutscenes so you only see them once. In between, you're off massacring small armies so any little emotional depth gained is quickly lost. My point is that putting cinematic attempts at emotional depth into games doesn't work for me at all.

I don't get particularly emotional about anything in games because games. As opposed to reality.