Life is Strange polarized mean (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, October 21, 2015, 16:39 (3120 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I wish I were further along but I was too tired / sick to even make it back through episode 1. It might even be the weekend before I make it through 5. As much as I'd love to talk about the story and end and everything I refuse to use whatever generic save point they offer just to skip ahead. Nothin' stopping me from discussing the more general issues though.

On story/decision based games never pulling it off:

I agree. And at risk of sounding too much like a know it all, I don't understand why it's so hard to do right. Ok, writing a story is hard. Coming up with a single scene can be really hard. Connecting scene after scene, motivation after motivation together in a flow that simply makes sense let alone has ongoing themes and likable or hateable characters and intriguing or shocking or inspiring story beats... Yep. It's hard. I saw a funny quote the other day. It went something like:

A writer is someone for whom the act of Writting is harder than it is for other people.

But, if you can pull off a compelling story, isn't pulling off a branching story mostly just... more writing? Change this or this and then see how your characters and world would play out? Write that down and repeat. I think maybe two things get in the way with games: Budget (which can be monetary or available time) and the inability to demote the best endings so that they exist simply as a few equal possibilities among many.

Budget, because if some decisions lead your characters to completely different places you might not have the resources to design new locations or hire quality voice actors for characters who did not come into the story until it took a substantially different turn. Things like that. Showing every possible branch with your available budget would see a huge drop in overall quality so you prioritize. And, of course, the more characters and decisions you have the more and more budget you need.

Inability to demote storylines, because even if you had the time and money to produce everything the story would need... you don't want to. Ending 1 & 2 are awesome, connect with all your themes, highlight and reveal all your characters or cleverness or twists. Ending 5? It sees your lead character give up the fight and hiding from the world in a scared and depressed state that doesn't even allow them to reach the brilliant struggles you had in store for them. You'll happily see ending 1 & 2 to the end, but ending 5? Instead of committing and following the character through the misery and cowardice of their once again ordinary life you throw up a Game Over. Continue? screen and direct the player back to the "real story."

What would be neat is if some studio had both the budget and fortitude to fully commit to everything.

On Life is Strange being better as a movie:

Didn't you enjoy the anticipation and speculation of seeing how decision x would affect the safety or friendship with character y? The thrill of not knowing if I'd made the "right choice" across any number of decisions will stay with me even if the ending can't fully live up to everything it should. And I value the chance to make those choices instead of watching one linear sequence play out over the course of a single movie. Movies absolutely have their place, but don't games have theirs too?