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Weekend Confirmed 87 - Zelda: Skyward Sword, Halo Anniversary, Skyrim
by Garnett Lee, Nov 18, 2011 11:00am PSTLink's next adventure, the Legend of Zelda: Skyward sword kept Billy--who also penned the Shacknews.com review--enthralled for over fifty hours. Jeff also dusted off his Wii to play it and the two of them have plenty of praise for the game to get the show started. Xav also returns to round out the rest of the cast joining Garnett this week. He's been adventuring in Skyrim and rediscovering Halo, in the ten year anniversary HD remake. With the momentous time on everyone's mind, we look back at the original Xbox, and lest we be remiss, Billy makes sure we remember the GameCube as well as it too turns ten. Along the way we also talk about how the big games of October fared at the register, which of them now reigns supreme online, and more before wrapping it up with Finishing Moves and weekly football tailgate.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 87: 11/18/2011
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If you're viewing this in the GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 87 directly.
Weekend Confirmed comes in four segments to make it easy to listen to in segments or all at once. Here's the timing for this week's episode:
Show Breakdown:
Round 1 00:00:00 to 00:26:07
Whatcha Been Playing Part 1 00:26:41 to 00:53:15
Whatcha Been Playing Part 2 00:53:43 to 01:17:05
Listener Feedback/Front Page News 01:17:33 to 01:50:38
NFL Tailgate 01:51:21 to 01:58:42
Join our guest this week Billy Berghammer and many others on the Second Annual Nintendo World Report Live Podcast Telethon for Child's Play and help out a great charity. It's taking place Sat 11/19 starting at noon Eastern.
Official Bethesda contact form for submitting Skyrim technical issues.
Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest Album, The Wait is Over on iTunes. Check out more, including the Super Mega Worm mix and other mash-ups on his ReverbNation page or Facebook page, and follow him on twitter delriomusic.
Jeff Cannata can also be seen on The Totally Rad Show. They've gone daily so there's a new segment to watch every day of the week!
Follow the Weekend Confirmed hosts on Twitter, too! Garnett Lee @GarnettLee, Jeff Cannata @jeffcannata, and Xav de Matos @xav.
Remember to join the Official Facebook Weekend Confirmed Page and add us to your Facebook routine. We'll be keeping you up with the latest on the show there as well.
Comments
Jeff appears to think Skyrim has good story telling is because he grafts together many disparate elements to make "his" story. But just because you traversed the world with the game mechanics to see different story elements, doesn't make those elements inherently relevant to one another.
And while forcing the player to make an inference about a situation is a perfectly valid form a story telling, forcing a player to imagine why a situation is relevant is extremely crappy story telling.
If the game has no way, or makes no attempt to connect its details into a coherent thrust, filling in the gaps with your "imagination" merely highlights what is fundamentally broken about the game world.
Again, I have to emphasize, first hand experiences, and story---ie narrative, are NOT the same thing. Retelling a first hand experience (as in "tell me your 'Skyrim stories'), is a form of story but actually living that experience is not a form of story.
Also, there's no accounting for taste, but I'm thoroughly Song of Ice and Fire, and the books in Skyrim are fucking boring as hell and not particularly well written at all. That said, I can't even get through a one of those in its entirety.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 14 replies.
Very few games have been able to accomplish both, and off the top of my head, Red Dead Redemption is one that achieves this. The main story (aside from the drag of Mexico) is great, but the stranger missions are also stuff that have very little bearing to the main story (aside from one) but do a great job in further fleshing out the world. However I do believe that this game was only able to do this due to the amount of time and money put into it.
For these open-world/sand box games, I often go in expecting it to be a pure experience venture. For one, talk to anyone about Skyrim, and the majority will talk about various experiences rather than anything specific from the main story arc. It's not necessarily lazy writing or bad stories. The stories are serviceable for the most part, but ultimately I just feel that the gaming experience is the priority.
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