You're not wrong. (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Friday, June 03, 2016, 23:22 (3099 days ago) @ Korny

The thing is, I love The Last of Us, and I think the beginning is perfect. It's intriguing and makes me want to explore the house. The Order makes the fundamental act of controlling your character unbearable. Every time he stumbles and wrests control from me it's annoying. It's not dramatic or tense. It's just bad design... I'm a firm believer that games should open on strong points that highlight the good things about the gameplay.

But the first five minutes of The Last of Us are just watching a child walk around the house. The next five minutes are a slow car ride that only lets you look around, and the next five minutes are just helplessly running. Given that none of these segments remotely resembles the gameplay of the rest of the game, by your own admission these are three consecutive instances of the game "not respecting your time" and "not giving you what you want".

I can't argue with any of that. It just worked for me in an way that The Order definitely did not. Maybe TLoU caught me on a good day and The Order on a bad. I don't know. I do know that I do not like the way The Order opens, to the point that I nearly actively resent it.

Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Should we say that the film is garbage after the first ten minutes, because the pacing is slow (doesn't respect your time), and is not representative of the rest of the film (not giving you what you want)? Who are these people? Why should I care? They're not important, so what's the point? 2001 is garbage!

I wouldn't call someone wrong for thinking that. 2001 is a great movie, and I think the opening of the film works well in context of the whole. But taken by itself? It's terribly boring and overly long. I wouldn't judge anyone that didn't make it all the way through the opening before turning it off and calling it quits, and I wouldn't argue with someone that says it doesn't respect their time.

Maybe it's the same with The Order. Maybe the opening needs context from or provides context for the greater whole. I don't know, but I instinctively doubt it.

Nobody likes people who make exaggerated opinions as if they were the absolute truth; it can skew one's perception of something that they don't know anything about.

Now I know how Cody feels. (:

But point taken. I've worked pretty hard over the last few years to be less cynical and less of an asshole both in person and online. It's easy to forget that tone is hard to convey in situations like this, and I'll try to do better to keep that in mind.