MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Portal. Final Round--Fight!

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Portal. Final Round--Fight!

perrinbar — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:27:38 GMT

Oh how Portal makes me dislike other games. There are many things about Portal's sparseness that should be a landmark in gaming design, but I think ultimately won't be. There are several issues of the economy of video games that prevent that from being a reality. One of the biggest problems is that we "hardcore" gamers seem to attach a value to the amount of time it takes to beat a game, even if we aren't having fun during all of that time. I've been playing Assassin's Creed and I think the comments of one of the 1up Show contributors, I believe it was Michael Donahoe, are accurate. They seem to have tried to make a "full game experience" by stretching their gameplay out too much. The game is fun and the parkour is the most fun I've had in an environment since Prince of Persia, but the portions of gameplay that are repetetive, the parts before a main assassination, are too much and should have been pared down. The second problem is that games are able to post large sales almost solely through hype and without actually backing it up. I don't think I've ever successfully gotten a refund for a crappy game, meaning despite the utter lack of delivery, the dev's still got my money. It makes it almost more important to have good marketing than to deliver a great product. Yes, word of mouth is important, but most video game purchase are made soon enough after a product's release that if the game bogs down, no one has played that far yet, or at least not enough people to negatively effect sales.

As to character/avatarness and story/narrativeosity, I think N'Gai may have more of the measure of it in that Valve has provided a bare bones path for the player with a limited amount of information. It is story-like, but not enough to really be a story. The player creates their own narrative in more ways than Valve does. I think part of the genius of this approach is, it doesn't kill the player's enjoyment with cheesy narrative cliches, bad dialogue, and poorly realized characters. GLaDOS is amazingly well written and the voice acting is perfect. Going back to Assassin's Creed, I think most people with a critical eye/ear towards narrative will find the story a bit overly dramatic, the dialogue to be very cliched, and the voice acting to be hit and miss. The sheer bulk of the content is likely to blame. Video game writers still haven't reached a general level of excellence that is found in some other areas; movies, television, etc, and thus it's hard for the writing to rise above the gameplay or even stay with it when the gameplay is excellent.

That may be what Portal's legacy is. Portal doesn't attempt to do what it can't. The gameplay mechanic is sheer brilliance. Could they really have developed a fully fleshed out story with the same level of quality? Maybe, but more likely than not they would have been off a bit. The dialogue that is present is fantastic. Would more characters with more dialgoue have derailed the beauty? Probably. Even Valve strays into cliche territory and cliche's and bad writing can pull the gamer out of the game. While wearing the mask of Chell, I never did anything but live in that world. I wanted out, I wanted to solve the puzzles, I wanted to find out what was going on. Less really was more, but I wouldn't hold your breath looking for more high profile games following that path. The industry still believes in cinematic blockbuster titles, imagine trying to market Portal all by itself. What a nightmare for EA that would have been! I'm sure it could be done and done well, but would it have been?

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Portal. Final Round--Fight!

SuperEffective — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:30:58 GMT

Shadow of the Colossus has something to say on the subject of 'player as puppet' and 'player as mask'. Your actions (like in Portal) are dictated by the structure of the game. To progress, you must act, and the puppeteer part of your gamer brain accepts this without question in the early stages. As the game progresses, however, your actions take on an ambiguous moral quality. And in the last act, you briefly reverse roles with your antagonist. The game starts in puppet mode and eggs you into mask mode for the final payoff.

Anyway, I think this storyline (and Portal's) form a very elemental kind of game story, just like a Greek chorus is to theater. Both start like games and finish like dramas. The transition between the two is what makes up the emotional journey for the player.

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Portal. Final Round--Fight!

Borut — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:35:07 GMT

The classification of puppet vs. mask or avatar vs. character is a fairly gross oversimplification, like telling a novelist they can only write in first or third person. Even if you write in third person there's quite a lot you can do to bring the perspective of the writing from being close to one character to omniscient. Unless we start talking about the gap of interpretation between a completely pre-defined character, and a completely player-owned character as the spectrum it properly is, don't expect to see many games that fall outside the black or white designation.

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Portal. Final Round--Fight!

panpeter — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:43:23 GMT

First of all, this Vs. Mode was fantastic. I think you two touched on great subjects, and now I got to ask you something: Do you, having said that Chell is but a mask, think there is a character named "Gorton Freeman"? Do you think there's a story in Half-Life series at all? Or are they all but narrative?

One tidbit on Portal: If you go to Aperture Science's website, you can access tons of background on the company, as well as some test for you (or is it Chell?). That, along with Portal game itself, I think provides enough elements you listed to be justified as a "story." What do you think?