You joke, but at least one game posted here was like that. In the plot twist reveal at the end, MC was basically high, hallucinating, and basically jerked himself to death. I mean quite literally, he died. And then that dev somehow made a popular game that had none of that.
Yea, there is a pretty big difference between a game I'm done with after a wank and a game that stays with me after I've finished it or end up waiting for more. I don't have good memory to giving out examples, but one thing I can remember is The Agony of Healthy Sleep, which stayed in my head because of the story for much longer than because of the porn. I'm also gonna remember games that I liked playing, not the ones I went along with to get titties on screen occasionally.
The weakest part of DoL for me is the characters. And it's not that I think they're bad or that I don't like them (just the opposite!), but rather I think the lack of concrete structure around a central story is why it's difficult to really put them through the ringer and grow to truly love them like you would in a more traditionally told story. In more traditionally told stories, a character is either a major component of the work, or they're not. If they're not, maybe they're a particularly memorable/helpful/lovable supporting character...or maybe even less than that, just a cute/interesting one-off. But the open structure of DoL, the player being able to choose with whom they want to associate/spend time with (and there's a pretty good-sized cast of characters), and not having a real timeline for a story to occur because of the number of things you can choose (or not) to do which is pretty much required by the gameplay loop...well, they all conspire to make it so that regardless of how much the player might like an individual character or how much said character might, by their very nature, realistically write themselves into the narrative of a more traditional story, they don't, they can't. The player could simply choose to never run into them, ever, so no part of the game's story can ever be dependent on a character being a big part of it no matter how much sense it might otherwise make. You run into pretty much the exact same thing in other games with similarly open structure like Stardew Valley. Really, it's a basic truth of most any game where you have choice: if you have a choice about something, then nothing substantial that happens in the future can be determinant upon that choice, beyond maybe just an ending scene where the impact to the game (from the point of view of the developer) is very limited. It's the unfortunate little paradox of developers trying to make choices that feel like they matter. The exceptions are rare and they usually come with very noticeable limitations like the game splitting off into distinctly labelled branches, but I still appreciate it when games give it an earnest try.
at least he went out having a good time lol
but not if theyre exclusively there to throw a huge "go fuck yourself" at the reader, at the very endWell lets be real here though. The game is fiction and you dont really have to justify fiction unless you want to. Why is all this happening? Who gives a shit? Its happening regardless. Sometimes trying to justify or explain something just ruins it and the best course of action is to just roll with things. Getting too involved trying to rationalize things just gets you stuck in the weeds and doesnt really do anything constructive. The game isnt trying to be realistic or explain any of the underlying rationale of its setting and it is better off for it.at least he went out having a good time lol
saying its all in le head is so often used as a cheap cop out to avoid thinking of actual coherent scenarios, that are able to be reasonably connected to each other
i actually do rly like the concept of hallucinations and loss of reality
btw what game :0 im curious now lol
In other words:
For everyone else, don't click if you don't want spoilers.at least he went out having a good time lol
saying its all in le head is so often used as a cheap cop out to avoid thinking of actual coherent scenarios, that are able to be reasonably connected to each other
i actually do rly like the concept of hallucinations and loss of reality
btw what game :0 im curious now lol
I'm so close to agreeing with you here, if the same couldn't be said for reality. Reality is an incoherent mess full of curios that often lead nowhere. There's no story, no end goal, and no inherent reason to continue interacting with it besides our instincts stopping us from self destructing. People are inclined to make sense of it anyway, whether through spirituality, studying the mechanics of the world, or just making shit up. Reality only maters because we're a part of it.
Not everything needs or warrants some kind of philosophical breakdown. A piece of media can just be a piece of media thats meant to be consumed and discarded. Someone could write a the thousand page dissertation about how the game is all an allegory by the author to express his deep seeded peanut butter sexual fetish but that doesnt mean that the argument actually means anything says anything constructive or even actually exists in the content. There is just no reason that every single piece of media to ever exist has to say something meaningful or be deconstructed so far to find meaning.
Does dying in a watery grave and being brought back by an undead godlike wraith as a ghost count as water based?
