Minor spoilers for some character bits in Ghostwire: Tokyo
Loothound:
Well, I finally prayed to see a ninja and I'm sorry to report that no ninja appeared to ask me what I wanted for Christmas. KK made a snarky comment like, 'you know, anyone who actually sees a ninja dies,' and Akito's all 'what, oh no!" Funny enough, but then it occurred to me that other times when Akito prays KK will ask if he actually said a prayer. So does KK know what is going on in Akito's head, or not?
In fact, sometimes it's almost like KK can't even see what Akito is doing. Like when you go into a kitty convenience store to buy something, and KK asks if you got him anything. Can't you see what we're doing,KK? You certainly seem to when you yell at us for messing up in fights. This seems pretty inconsistent to me, so I ask you two—how exactly are Akito and KK sharing this body/consciousness? Because I'm getting mixed messages here.
Butch:
This is usually where I defer to Femmy's incredible mental gymnastics to explain what is probably just inconsistent writing, but I'll offer some gymnastics myself.
We see Akito, in the occasional cutscene, talk to his glowing hand and then that glow poofing away. Maybe KK sort of comes and goes. We can't see the hand glow in first person, right?
I'll let Femmy take the gymnastics from here.
Loothound:
Sounds good, but I'm perfectly willing to accept inconsistent writing. They need to create opportunities for the two to say things to each other, fate all.
Butch:
They should've given KK and Akito more time to talk. They flirted with it. There was the bit after the DLC, I got the netherworld oil, sorry, AROMATIC netherworld oil last night and there was that bit where KK asks who he'd like to meet in the underworld, etc., but they didn't really follow through. It certainly would've been possible. I think Johnny Silverhand was the best character in Cyberpunk (sorry, Judy, love ya), and KK is pretty much that, the old guy in your head driving the story.
The devs, I think, spent too much time with KK being functional to gameplay. He, at times, sounds more like a tutorial pop up than he sounds like a character. You don't have to tell me to block, KK, that's what those pop ups that take up half the screen in ubisoft games are for. Even without that, he does a lot of explaining. Maybe that was for an American audience. They needed someone to be all "A kappa is a spirit that does so and so and likes cucumbers so do this" because people are too lazy to read the codex.
When you lean on a character to be a codex and a tutorial, that eats into the amount of time you can spend making that character a...well...character, and leads to inconsistencies in the writing.
Feminina:
It IS always kind of amusing to me when Akito looks directly at his hand while talking to KK, as if KK lives in that glowing spot, so maybe he does.
However, I usually take it more as KK being throughout Akito's body, but sometimes not really paying attention. Like with the convenience stores, sometimes he'll say "I hate waiting for people to shop," so I kind of assumed he just tunes out when he gets bored.
Akito seems to say things out loud that he wants KK to hear (talking to the hand!), so I don't get the sense that KK can read Akito's thoughts, and although KK's words do seem to be inside Akito's head since he doesn't have a physical larynx of his own, they're words as someone would speak them, not as train-of-thought – we don't get a lot of random musings from KK drifting around the background all the time.
My theory is that they can't read each other's minds, and while KK is in Akito's body and can see and hear what Akito does when he pays attention, he doesn't always focus on it. Obviously he's more likely to pay attention in combat than while shopping, so...it doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.
Loothound:
Akito/we certainly don't have access to KK's thoughts, as such, and I mostly operated under the impression that KK didn't just know what Akito was thinking. Sometimes, though, he does. Some of the things Akito prays for, as one example, but he also seems to be aware of when Akito is hearing Mari's voice in his head. Since that's happening in a sort of spiritual sense, though, it could just be an extension of his affinity powers. I do like how Akito 'talks to the hand' a lot when he's addressing KK. It makes KK seem more like an 'out there' thing, as opposed to an 'in here' one.
If KK does sort of get bored and mentally check out, I wonder what he thinks about.
Feminina:
Maybe KK can 'overhear' a prayer because it is, conceptually, an outward-directed thought rather than an internal one. Akito isn't just musing to himself "I wish I could see a ninja," he's thinking 'out' to the universe or whatever, "hey, I want to see a ninja!"
When we pray to the Jizo statues, we're not asking for anything in particular: maybe that's more of an internal thought, and/or one addressed specifically to the statue and not to KK, and therefore hidden to him (and us).
Butch:
Maybe it's like when I'm listening to the hockey game on the radio in the car, and there's a bad call, and I yell at the radio. I will look at the radio and address it. Why do I do this? Because I am odd. It's just where the hockey game is.
There's another inconsistency, too. Sometimes, in cutscenes, we see Akito talking to his glowing hand. Sometimes, like after the school, we actually see KK. There he is, walking around, doing the scene. He wasn't all separated in that bit. He just...did the scene. There was no reason for that except dramatic effect.
Inconsistent.
Loothound:
I distinctly remember KK asking once whether or not Akito actually prayed for something, so even just in the prayer box instances it's irregular. I think they like for KK to have something to say, and they don't really have a set system in place.
As far as us actually seeing KK sometimes, I think that's also just done when it's convenient storytelling. This whole game has kind of a buddy cop movie vibe (alongside the creepy horror movie vibe), and I think they want to remind us who the buddy is. Plus we get to admire how hard boiled KK really is. It makes the contrast with the guy who gets squicked out by dog tongues (so, he can also FEEL what Akito feels?) much funnier.
Feminina:
Yeah, KK sometimes being visible is a bit odd, and doesn't necessarily seem to be associated with any specific event like them being separated (although the first time we saw him, it was, since he'd been yanked away and we had to go get him out of that cube).
I just read it as KK being particularly invested in something at that moment, to the point that he kind of manifests to Akito – not that he's actually outside of Akito objectively, but that he's able to appear to Akito at certain times as if he was separate, and we, being sympathetic to Akito's viewpoint, can see him as well...kind of like the version of Cylon 6 that lived in Baltar's head in Battlestar Galactica, and was visible to him and often us but not to anyone else.
Loothound:
Given the way that the rebooted Battlestar Galactica was marketed, I think it's fair to point out that that was probably a little bit of a contrivance, too—in order to give Tricia Helfer more on-screen time as well. A bit of both things in both cases, perhaps.
Butch:
Agreed. Contrivances be contrivances. This game has a lot of them.
Granted, I haven't finished the story, so I won't go there in terms of total story analysis, but there's a lot, thus far, that makes me think that the contrivances were necessary because this was a game concept that was in search of a story. We've talked a lot about mood and gameplay, and rightly so. It's good! So good, in fact, that I can imagine a bunch of developers brainstorming and saying "Dude! Let's make this moody game in deserted Tokyo! And there'll be all this Japanese mythology, but modern! And...OOO!...the bad guys will be all these negative emotions! It'll be such a commentary on Japanese culture!"
And then, someone else saying "AWESOME! So...what'll the story be?"
And then dead silence.
Five minutes later, some dude all "Uh...a guy...saving his...wife? Sister? Something like that."
When you get your setting/mood/gameplay/metaphor FIRST, you end up with a story full of contrivances.
Do I know that happened? No, I do not. But we've seen it before in games, and we'll see it again.
Feminina:
This is likely true, and I imagine definitely one of the things that can happen when you design game mechanics/setting first.
On the other hand, if you start with the story you can wind up with games where the gameplay elements feel a little superfluous (some of the Life is Strange games had this sense at times), so it's probably just part of the balancing act.
Some games get it just right and you feel like you have the perfect amount of both (though this will vary from player to player depending on preference), and some feel like the game is better developed than the story, and in some the story is better than the game. Though honestly, I think that's much less common than having the game aspects be the highlight. Story is hard. Fitting story into a game is probably especially hard.
Loothound:
Yeah, it has to be a really tough balancing act between gameplay and story. The two things have different needs, in terms of being engaging, and having them both synch up well might not always work out practically. This is probably especially pronounced when you're pitching a game based on a general concept, which is something we see on design projects all the time. 'Let's have a spooky supernatural action game where a dead paranormal cop possesses a kid with family trauma, and they use magic powers to fight demons in a desolate Tokyo to save the world from an evil techno-wizard, while investigating hauntings and bringing emotional closure to the protagonist' sound simple in principle (did I just say that?), but there are a lot of places where that rubber meets the road when you try to actually execute it. They're hard to all make fit in a fun, sensible, and interesting manner.
This is why I love the early Assassin's Creed games, because the whole conceit of the Animus machine made a lot of things that would have been strictly for gameplay mechanics actually make sense in terms of story. Mwah, chef's kiss.
I think it's also worthwhile to consider that games like this are developed by teams, and that the teams probably aren't always balanced in terms of skill or clout within the company. The compromises that make everything fit can be made for non-game related reasons, too.
Feminina:
"Let's also make sure we include a lot of things that a bunch of different two-tailed cats want, and have the cats mew adorably and clap when the player fills their wish lists. That will make up for a multitude of flaws in other areas, if we were to have any."
[Emphatic Japanese grunts of agreement all round the table]
Butch:
Interesting you bring up AC, because another point I was going to make is that story often changes based on changes on, well, everything else. This is certainly true in series oriented games (raise your hand if you think they had all the story of AC mapped out to this point in time when they sat down to make the first game. Anyone? Anyone at all? No?) but I imagine it's also true in one off games. Development happens, technical glitches happen, finances go this way and that, scripts get changed umpteen times.
Maybe that's why we often get more impactful stories in shorter, simpler, plainer games. Less chance for technical whatevers to go sideways and change the intent of the writers.
Loothound:
Totally agree. A lot of the artsy (not a knock) games that get hype for amazing storytelling seem to be on the shorter side, or have much simpler gameplay mechanics. That's probably a direct result of this dynamic we're talking about. I think it's exacerbated in this game because there are SO many different elements at play. It's a horror game, but also a noir detective action game. It's based in Japanese culture and mythology, but also super high tech and urban. You can get XP from missions and beating enemies (pretty regular), but also from collectibles. Also, XP aren't the only way to advance skills—you can get skill point from different collectibles, but only up to a certain point, because you need YET DIFFERENT collectibles to unlock them!
I mean, look how many trophies there are for collectibles: statues, artifacts, outfits, music, spirits, voice recordings, freaking FOOD. There's a trophy for having gotten every kind of food. It's a lot, man.
Also, since we're talking about AC and Japan…AC:Red anyone? A game I have been waiting for ever since Brotherhood is finally looking like a real thing. <<ecstatic shiver>>
Butch:
Still, I think it's valid to knock a game for cramming too much in. Maybe this game would've benefitted from fewer cat toys and more focus on narrative.
Modern gaming is chock full of games that try to cram too much crap in. As Femmy knows, the game I often point to is Mass Effect Andromeda, a very, very good ten hour game with 55 hours or so of crap they jammed in to make it a "true open world game." I think it's very valid for knocking it for that.
I often find myself wanting to say to game developers "Yes, it's true, you could do all that. Doesn't mean you should have."
Loothound:
It's content bloat, like in just about every other media these days. It's a cheap and easy way to inflate the number of playable hours so that the game looks like a better value when you notice the $70 or whatever price tag. Story and interesting and unique gaming challenges, the stuff we really care about, all needs to be crafted by talented creators. The Hollywood strikes last year are making it abundantly clear, companies don't want to pay big money for good creative. Especially when people seem to be perfectly willing to pay good money (or at the very least not cancel their subscription to something) for mediocre content, so long as there is a constant stream of new stuff.
Femmy has heard me go on this rant a ton, so I'll not dive all the way in, but this is the big problem with everything being subscription now. Companies don't focus on making new good stuff that convinces people that they want to buy it. They just need to keep making stuff that isn't so bad that people cancel their shit. The default is that you pay, and it takes intention to not pay, and people are generally governed by inertia.
<<Hard stare at Rebel Moon>>
Feminina:
But the cat toys, man! You can't lose the cat toys!
I mean, I get and agree with all these points. Games with good, tight story that really hangs together and feels like the main event tend to be shorter. In big, sprawling games with a ton of stuff to do, it's hard to keep the story so much at the top of the list of things that stand out.
But the good story costs money, and then you feel like you need to add more stuff to justify the cost.
And then you get more stuff to do than there really has to be...more than really serves the game...and this is especially a problem for people like us who feel kind of compelled to try to do everything because we want to make sure we're not missing out on something cool.
We get tired of trying to do all the things, and yet we have a hard time saying "hell with it, I'm not going to do all the things."
And one could argue that's on us, though I think it is legitimately also on the people making the game—that's a thing they can consider when they think about user experience. The same way we might say of a movie "that was good but had too many scenes of cats" (as if!): even though in this day and age it's easy to fast forward through the cat scenes, the director didn't design it to have you fast-forward through scenes, and maybe game directors also shouldn't be designing content to have players skip it.
Although they're also trying to appeal to a wide audience that they want to try to hold onto for 20+ hours, which is way more than a movie ever asks of an audience, so it's obviously not exactly the same thing.
Maybe we're just stuck too much in an old-fashioned movie-watcher mindset where we think there's one specific experience that we're 'supposed to' have with that piece of media. We're supposed to watch an entire movie, that's how it works. We're not really supposed to play an entire game in the same way, and could perhaps benefit from chilling out more about this and just going into games with more of an expectation that there are going to be sections we don't care about and aren't going to do and refuse to worry about. (I do this with racing and fist-fighting when these are options. Maybe I should do it with more things.)
Loothound:
Whereas I'm usually all-in on the racing and fist fighting parts of games. Also, you like racing plenty when it's Ezio running around on ancient ruins. Cars on the other hand…
Totally valid point about our expectations of the game being a bit out of the norm these days, but I think that works in both directions. There are gamers like us, fitting it in around the more demanding aspects of adult life, who could probably be more take it or leave it about aspects of the game. The lure of magpie play is strong, though.
There are also the people who make playing the hell out of these games their lives (more or less), and are really just looking for more stuff to do. I'll admit that when I'm talking about bloat, it is from the standpoint of the former type and that I tend to overlook that there is the other type out there who really just wants the more stuff to do.
I guess the question is, then, can you actually have both in a way that satisfies both types of player? Does the need to add more stuff to do for the sake of more stuff to do make it harder for a game to satisfy the 'just give me good story and tight gameplay' crowd? Does story need to be loosened up to allow some semi-natural way for the more stuff to do to be included? Also, I can't help thinking that game design is favoring the more stuff to do aspect because it's easier and cheaper to produce.
Butch:
I've been in the "pick your audience" camp for years. Games that try to be everything to everyone usually wind up just annoying everyone. Usually.
For folks who say "But then the market isn't big enough for your game," I say "Meet John Madden." There's a game that mints money, essentially built EA into a powerhouse publisher, and is the same thing EVERY SINGLE YEAR: Play football. Don't want to play football? This game ain't for you. It caters to one group, and one group only, and it mints money.
Decide what your game, at its essence, is. Then go after that audience and that audience only. Gamers will thank you.
Feminina:
I think some publishers would probably come back with the argument that there's a bigger audience for an annual update of a game where you play football, which is a really basic concept and can use the same mechanics over and over, than there is for a more complicated game with a focus on story or climbing puzzles or non-football action or whatever.
The Life is Strange series has done pretty well focusing on small stories, and I'm a fan, but it's no Madden in terms of money, right?
So it's probably a fair point that if you want to make the big money, you can't afford to be as choosy, and do need to try to get that larger audience by being more things to more people.
Which means inevitably some of the things you try to be, are going to annoy some of those people.
And we could say "well, just realize that you're not going to make the big money!" which is fair but also, I don't necessarily want to lose ALL the Triple-A stuff that big money pays for, so...I don't know.
Loothound:
I totally agree with your point, Butch, but Madden is a slightly different animal since it ties in with the NFL in a lot of ways that make it a bit unrepresentative of where games can go in general. There are a lot of people who ONLY play Madden, as far as video games go, because it's essentially an extension of televised football and fantasy football. The FIFA games have a similar thing in Europe. Without those huge, built-in audiences to tap into I don't think many other types of games can afford to be so focused. Military based FPS games kind of do as an overall genre, I suppose, since some people only play that type of game.
I think Femmy has a point, too, about games at that AAA level needing a slightly larger net to be profitable, so expecting them to be as crafted and tightly made as we might prefer them to be isn't necessarily doable. Personally, I feel like with the DLC model being the way it is there's room for there to be a kind of tiered model for these games. Like, there's a base game that's a bit more carefully crafted that people buy, but then there are expansions and DLC to pad it out for the people who like that sort of thing.
I doubt that it will ever happen that way. The padding stuff is relatively cheap and easy to build in and make you pay for if you want the game at all. Why run the risk that some people won't feel the need to buy that stuff.
Feminina:
Don't get me wrong, I love me a nice small game. I don't need to only play AAA games. But some AAA games I do want to play, and these days it seems like that means having a lot of stuff to appeal to a lot of types of players.
There are even times when I like having a lot of stuff. I have thought, not that long ago, about the very game we're playing now, something like "it's nice that you can get into fights, but if you're not in the mood you can just wander around collecting spirits and cat toys."
I like all the things! I want all the things! And then I complain that there are too many things. I'm like a toddler. No wonder game developers don't pay any attention to me.
Loothound:
When it comes to playtime, I think maybe we're all a bit like toddlers. We can accept compromise and trade offs on all of our real world stuff, but dammit we just want to plaaaaayyyyy!
I'm going to step back from this particular discussion, since some of the complaints I'm tapping into here relate to my feelings about parts of the game that Butch hasn't played yet. Some of them…
Butch:
Ah, but the DLC is WHY they pad. They want you to keep playing and playing so you're still playing (or, at least it's fresh in your mind) when the DLC drops.
As for the large amounts of money needed, true, LiS doesn't make the millions Madden does, but what about margin? LiS doesn't have to make that much to double its money, right?
And wait, I thought I was almost done? There's more new stuff that you want to comment on?
Loothound:
You are almost done, but you haven't seen everything yet and some of my griping on this point might be a bit spoily. It's kind of what got me on the whole 'but there's so much stuff!' whinging.
I'm just gonna focus my attentions on getting the combat related trophies left up on the board. I've figured out most of them, but extracting 5+ cores at once is going to be very tricky. I've pretty much given up hope on finding any tanuki that I can't pray my way to.
Feminina:
Although I've found a lot of them, the tanuki can be really tough. I wandered around one district where I'm missing one for an hour and a half last night, trying to be very thorough and logical and go back and forth like a search party covering all the ground, and I found nothing.
Well, except a few spirits I'd missed before and a couple of examples of graffiti.
I'll keep trying...want that trophy!
Butch:
I shall have nothing tomorrow as it's hockey night.
Game should've had a level here. Lots of negative emotions. Visitors born from the rage of teammates who saw someone fuck with their goaltender. The emptiness of parents sitting in uncomfortable chairs. The smell. Just the smell. That is all.
I just looked over there and there's a big red sign over the bench that says "visitors."
Place is ready.
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