Report: Frostbite 3 games to be 'optimized exclusively' for AMD cards
Candy Crush dev exploring IPO
Castle of Illusion preview: more than a repaint
Steel Diver sequel is Nintendo's first free-to-play game
Why Pikmin hasn't made the jump to handheld
Weekend Confirmed 137 - Halo 4, Assassin's Creed 3
by Andrew Yoon, Nov 02, 2012 11:00am PDTHalo 4 is pretty darn good. And hosts Garnett Lee and Jeff Cannata have to agree. They talk all about the single-player campaign in this week's show. Then, Andrew Yoon talks about why Assassin's Creed 3 disappointed him, and special guest Christian Spicer talks about the Vita spin-off, Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation Weekend Confirmed Ep. 136: 11/02/2012 Subscription Links:
Here's a handy pop-up player so you can listen from right here on the page. Let us know how it works for you.
If you're viewing this in the GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 137 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, Part 1 - 00:00:26 - 00:12:36
Round 1, Part 2 - 00:13:14 - 00:28:39
Whatcha Been Playin Part 1 - 00:29:06 - 00:58:27
Whatcha Been Playin Part 2 - 00:59:09 - 01:28:15
Listener Feedback/Front Page News - 01:29:18 - 02:07:48
Tailgate - 02:08:23 - 02:19:12
Follow the Weekend Confirmed crew on Twitter, too!
Weekend Confirmed @WeekendConfirmd
Garnett Lee @GarnettLee
Jeff Cannata @jeffcannata
Andrew Yoon @scxzor
Christian Spicer @spicer
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.
Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest Album, Club Tipsy 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.
Comments
Yes, it gets up it's own ass a tad. No arguments there. Ever seen Prometheus? Or played Mass Effect? This is not exactly a rare thing for sci-fi.
As for the fact that it's a 'love story', I think that's a pretty reductive way to look at it. The characters care for one another - that doesn't mean it's romantic. Was Shawshank Redemption a romance because it had too characters that cared for one another?
The relationship between Cortana and MC seems like a totally valid means to explore and expand on the characters personalities, and the lore of the universe (AIs, Spartan program, etc).
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 16 replies.
It's not just something that happens in sci-fi settings; it just happens that in sci-fi it's often of a self-created universe, thus it is always tempting to add to the lore of "how we got there".
To me, Deus Ex works because it doesn't try to overwhelm you with "the burden of the forefathers" type of story, but rather with the recent one you experience roughly where it began, and got a sense of the world setting and universe.
For Borderlands 1 and 2, Gearbox basically throws you in their world and you basically live it, instead of them telling you what happened years back. Same with Binary Domain. If you really wanted to know more of the world, you can through dialog or the audiologs, but often they aren't compulsory; just something that adds to the experience. Half-Life 1-2 (and all the episodes) do this well. Oh and of course the Fallout series.
Strategy games like Command and Conquer, Starcraft and Warcraft for instance, are already based upon a galaxy-wide experience. Moving from planet to planet, the scale of it already makes the job easier, and seemingly a less of a need to go back to the "thousands of years ago" crutch. When it does refer to ancient history, it is something that is not dwelled on often, used as a crutch, nor something that is focused on (excluding the bonus missions for the Protoss in Starcraft 2... now that I think is something that is pretty creative and rare).
This is something that can happen in fantasy too. Diablo I think has decent lore, as does Elderscrolls, Witcher, Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment, etc. This history is often put on as a point of interest, but not something that is forced down your throat.
Having said the bonus stuff that adds to the experience, I think it is absolutely unfair to say to the player (directly or indirectly) that if they want the full experience, they have to read some of the fiction based in the universe, outside of the games themselves. The story should be concrete enough to stand on it's own, without having you to go "Who is this? Why are we starting the game here? What the heck is this thing that guy was talking about?". Gears of War has a little of this, but I feel that some Halo and Mass Effect fans have gone with this same argument of "you have to read X to fully get it". No. The reading should be a bonus on top of the game, not a pr-requisite to enjoy the game.
I think that part of this is just a difference of how things are presented to you. In the mindset of a good writer, one should present to you all the facts, but it is up to the reader to make up their minds and put it together. In this case, when one considers something that is bordering to right on pretentiousness, it is most often due to you getting the information about what the developer wants you to know about their world, forced upon you, before you even get a chance to take a step back to experience it yourself.
You must be logged in to post.