@themightyant If you like that kind of games you'll absolutely love As Dusk Falls. The art style is original and feels fresh for a narrative game. The story is like you play an episode of Fargo in a game. The replay-ability is very high since your decisions can have a big impact on your play through. It's one of my favorite games i played this year.
@Balta666 I just call them narrative games. but the official term seems to be interactive story games. Walking sim also has some negative sound to it. But i can understand people call them that if they are not into that.
@Banjo- No worries, I realise it's not a big deal, but may be an interesting talking point.
@Lavalera Yes that's what I tend to call them too. Narrative games or narrative-led games but even within that there is a huge difference between something like Dear Esther, The Walking Dead and Immortality. I like Interactive Story Games too.
@Lavalera@themightyant that is fair but I would say the Witcher 3 or mass effect are as much narrative games as those so that is why there is no naming that really suits it...
@Balta666 As I said, it's just how I call them but you and @themightyant can call them as you please, no big deal 😁. I never tell anybody what to do or think, just express myself freely 😊. I have always thought that "walking simulator" is kind of a joke, now that you mention it, but defines some games properly.
@themightyant Not really a discussion topic because I'm not being totally serious. It's like when I call some Sony games I've played cinematic experiences, because they're more films than games to me. The main reason I do that is because even though they're games, the gameplay is awful (first Uncharted games), mediocre at best (The Last of Us) or very shallow (Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy), but the cinematic element is kind of good. I love some games that aren't games, The Walking Dead is number one on my list, my only complaint about it is the technical performance, nothing to do with the game not being a game.
"Interactive story games" is a very good definition @Lavalera. One of the worst I've ever played is Gone Home. I didn't enjoy any minute but I beat it because it was an old Gold game.
@Balta666 Agreed but I think part of the trouble is that games span across so many genres nowadays that it can be hard to pin them down. Witcher 3 is definitely an Role Playing Game, but it is also a narrative game, and probably more (card battler for Gwent). I remember chatting with someone (I think NEStalgia) about the death of Stealth games and Immersive sims, and they rightly said that many of the elements in those games are just systems within others nowadays. E.g. Most of the third person adventure games have a stealth element, it's no longer a genre... mostly. (Though i'm looking forward to Ereban)
@Banjo- For the record I wasn't telling anybody what to do or think, sorry if it came across that way, I was only stating that "i'm not convinced about calling them 'Games that aren't games' ". You are of course free to call them whatever you like but common wording is helpful so we are all on the same wavelength.
EDIT: I really liked Gone Home, it told an interesting story in a unique way through puzzles, a sense of exploration and intrigue, but can fully understand why many wouldn't at all. Different strokes for different folks.
@themightyant No problem at all. I don't agree about "common wording" in this context because we might not agree about how to define games and I'm not going to change how I do it. I agree, however, about the "narrative" genre not being very useful because most games (and games that aren't games LOL) have a story. Is Xenoblade Chronicles a narrative game? It's an RPG but it has a veeeeeeery long story.
Video games genres are more useful to define very clear examples such as fighting games, racing games... but the "games" we're talking about, adventures and RPGs have become a combination of genres. People then started using sub-genres. It's fine if the choice is correct because it gives me an idea of what to expect.
I remember how Rare started combining genres within a game when I was a kid, like the shooter mini game in Banjo-Tooie. Many of their N64 games combined different genres.
@Lavalera I loved As Dusk Falls as well. Sadly it ends in a cliffhanger and to my knowledge there's no word yet on Episode 3 or how many episodes it will have in total.
@Magabro true but I saw the kinds funny spoiler cast they did with Caroline marchal from interior night and when she was asked about the ending and if there will be a sequel the way she smiled almost certainly showed there will be one. Especially since the game was so well received it wouldn't surprise me if Xbox game studios will green lit a sequel
AHHHHHHHHH! I am now possessed by an Immortal! I have seen the end of this game now and it's like a creepypasta lol. I accidentally triggered the end of it while reviewing clips for Minsky and I clicked through and found the final fiery death clip (I'd seen the what I now know to be penultimate bleeding from the head scene before). But I kinda ruined the ending because I didn't actually watch that "final" clip fully. I carried on reviewing scenes until the clip menu started bugging out. I assumed it was an actual bug because this game had crashed/glitched on me a few times but then I put 2 and 2 together as more of the immortal ladies face was revealed and I'd realised I'd watched a bit of the fire clip (knowing from an earlier clip I'd seen of the Other transferring into another character that watching one of them burn allows them to enter the watcher)
So yeah! I've completed the game but I've still got the 2 of everything clips to review which I'll do tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get all the clips during that time, I'm really close to completing both Ambrosio and Minsky and I'm not far off on 2oE.
Minsky though. Has anyone seen that film Performance with James Fox and Mick Jagger? Directed by Donald Cammel and Nic Roeg. It's really similar to Minsky in some respects and I am guessing the makers of this game have seen the film too because it can't be coincidental.
It's about a gangster taking refuge in a bohemians home and it's supposed to draw parallels between the violent crimes of a gangster who thinks he is civilised and well-to-do and a hippy guy who just accepts his nature and does similarly human-base-instinct things like fornication. Throughout the film, the bohemian tears away the gangsters facade and self delusion until you (and the gangster) see the two characters aren't so different after all. I suppose it's a bit on the nose but I still loved the film when I first saw it in my late teens/early 20s. I suppose I thought of myself as a bit of a bohemian back then 😂
Edit: Oh yeah the other thing that was interesting about that film was all the rumours and backstory behind it. I don't know how much of it is true and how much of it is embellished just to make the circumstances around a mysterious film even more mysterious (more similarities to Immortality!). I think Cammel couldn't finish the film for mysterious reasons (likely Cammel wasn't experienced enough) so Roeg had to finish it hence the co-credit for director. Also Jagger apparently messed with established actor James Fox so much for real that Fox didn't work for decades after it. Again probably BS and easily debunked by his IMDB page but it added to the excitement and atmosphere of the film itself
You can probably tell how cynical I've become in my early 30s as I brutally debunk all the rumours and mystique that I lapped up when I was in my early 20s 😂
@voxshrapnel heya do you wanna join the thread? I can add you to the tag list if you like so you get notifications each month of what games we play etc. You don't have to but you're more than welcome or you can just stick around and have a chat about this game, up to you!
@Lavalera I think I felt the same as you as it didn't grab me even after 5 hours of playing it. I think once I understood how to progress in it as if it was an actual "game", i.e. the collectathon aspect of it trying to find all the clips, then I became more absorbed. Through that conduit, I came to enjoy the story and the characters and even the films themselves (especially Minsky because of the reasons explained in my post above). I've ended up playing the game like 3 days in a row, much more than the supposed 7 hour run time! 😅
I think the choosing the order of the clips can make it more interesting too, whether you are more interested in the films' plots or the secret plots of the Immortals. Pressing RT let's you switch between them. My tactic was getting as many clips as possible to review by clicking on objects repeatedly and then reviewing all the clips in the Film Order and piecing the secret clips together out of order.
On the topic of game genres, I feel it's too vague to call lots of games a narrative adventure because they have a story. Almost every single game has a story whether it's Space Invaders (the story is in the title) or Uncharted.
I am pretty sure the actual genre of "Narrative Adventure" which is what the mid-late Telltale games and the Dontnod games fall into is very much born of the point and click genre that was epitomised by Monkey Island and other LucasArts titles. Mainly because Telltale literally used to make point and click games from their inception like the CSI games, the Sam and Max revival and even a Monkey Island series.
When they started getting licenses for stuff like Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones etc, they evolved the Point and Click Genre into something more akin to an interactive film because it fit those properties better. Hence "Narrative Adventure".
WRoEF, Anna and Dear Esther and I am sure many more that I am yet to play are definitely "walking Sims" as a genre and it's no sleight against them. It just best describes how the games are played. You walk around and experience the story with very little control of the character beyond movement and interaction. It's similar to "Narrative Adventure" but not the same, I think it's less filmic and more "gamey".
You could say that in Uncharted you just walk around and interact with things but its not the same. Uncharted is a platformer (see the pedigree of the studio that developed it) at its heart and is best described as an Adventure game because it incorporates both platforming and 3rd person combat into a cinematic adventure.
The first 8 or so games in the God of War series were 3D beat 'em ups. The first game had some puzzles and platforming but the series devolved into being pretty much exclusively 3D beat em ups. I've heard the Norse era ones have been described as "Melee Combat" games in the vein of the FromSoft titles, not that I can confirm because I haven't played God of War '18 or any Souls games but apparently that's the genre that it moved into when it was rebooted.
I think genres are clearly defined but games, especially modern games don't fit easily into a single genre. It's the same with films and even music though. Blockbusters are so successful because they literally combine action, adventure, romance, comedy etc into one film that has broad appeal. Same with the success of pop music, it combines rock, hip-hop, classical, jazz etc into a mash up that will get even the most jaded music enthusiast nodding their head.
But still, genres are literally just words that are tools that enthusiasts like us will use to describe games. It's good to have the tools to discuss games in this way because we can say things like Immortality is similar to Tell Me Why for xyz reason.
Having said all that. I haven't played a game like Immortality before! At least in terms of its gameplay mechanic. I had to look on Wikipedia to see what genre it was under and it just says "Interactive Film". I suppose it is but the gameplay mechanics are vastly different from the choose-your-own adventure mechanics that have typified FMV games in the past.
Oh yeah and there are two types of genre for games. One that describes setting and one that describes mechanics (but a couple are both). The setting genres are borrowed from films, stuff like horror, action, adventure, comedy, romance, thriller etc. The mechanics genres are things like platformers, first person shooters, shootemups, beatemups, action, adventure, survival, simulation, fighting etc.
Also I know that one genre term can actually describe two different genres. Like I described Uncharted as an "Adventure" game in my previous post but point and click games are also described as "Adventure" games even if the misadventures of Nathan Drake play a lot differently to Day of the Tentacle! Also First Person Shooters and shootemups used to be used interchangeably here in the UK back in the 90s, but something like Ikaruga (shootemup) is obviously very different from Duke Nukem 3D (an FPS)
@themightyant cool, added your vote for APT and no worries. Life comes first! I've barely participated for so long because work has just consumed my life. Having an extended break now so actually got some time for some games 😅
@ralphdibny Well the reason i said i feel the term walking sim feels so negative, is since i absolutely loved WRoEF and calling it a walking sim almost makes it feel like it's something extremely boring. Sure you walk around from story to story, but that's not what makes that game so brilliant. It's the way the stories are told and tied together what made WRoEF so great. And if someone calls it a walking sim, it makes it sound like all you do is walk around, which makes it sound like a boring game and people are underestimating the gameplay in it. So it's more my personal feeling with the term.
I do agree that, especially modern AAA, games are lot harder to divide into 1 genre nowadays. Most triple A games are a mixture of adventure/action/RPG games. Sometimes they are 2d sometimes 3d and sometimes open world/open zoned/linear. So to describe what a modern AAA game is nowadays it will be something like: A 3d story driven open world action adventure game with RPG elements.
@ralphdibny Enjoy the extended break and gaming. Well deserved bud!
@Lavalera Agree I don't particular like the term 'walking sim' either as it was first created as a pejorative, a contemptuous insult, suggesting experiences like Dear Esther are not 'games' at all they are merely dull 'walking simulators'. I get that some people truly feel that is all they are because they don't get enjoyment from the genre at all, and it is fine to feel that way, we all like different things. But it would be like me calling genres I don't generally like Multiplayer FPS 'aiming simulators' or Fighting games 'button sequence games', it's dismissive and deliberately antagonistic.
That said we've come to sort of call them walking sims over time and rise above it, but it still low-key grates, the origin of a term is important.
Ok I've got two clips left to find. If anyone has these clips and can tell me what's in them that's clickable so I know what to click on in other scenes so I can find them. The clips are 2OE 40*D* 6/26/1999 (probably a pick up shot of some scissors from the previous clip 40A on the same date) - (got this one too now my clicking the clapperboard again!) and 2OE 69B 8/6/1999 (no idea on this one) - ( got this one now from a clapperboard) A helpful list on Reddit has helped me work out which are the final clips I'm missing but I'm struggling to get to them!
@Lavalera@themightyant cheers and yeah maybe it is a bit reductive to call those games walking Sims. It's weird, I've definitely heard the term used as an insult but I really really fail to see it as an insult. I don't find walking (for leisure) to be mundane and I have actually really enjoyed the walking Sims I've played. Sometimes you just want something low stress, low difficulty but still entertaining to play. Even though I completely understand why people find the term walking Sim insulting, I don't think I will ever personally take it as an insult because it has no negative connotations for me, I just find it an apt description. It's quick and reductive but probably as much as any other genre description like FPS when you consider the difference between Doom Eternal and CoD or platformer when you consider the difference between Mario world and Mario 64. Just needs an extra descriptor to tie it in better to the game. WRoEF probably is a bit more than a walking Sim though considering the various forms you take on and game mechanics that come up as you play through the various family members' experiences!
@Clankylad absolutely no problems posting external links in this forum so here is the interview you mentioned.
Unless of course it's your name on the byline 😀😂, in which case I don't think you can post it because it's advertising/promoting your own work. But if it is your name on there then you have got around that rule by having me post it! 😀
Ok and that's Immortality 100%ed! With full gamerscore. Wicked!
Weirdly I got the achievement for getting all the alt scenes but as I was looking for the last few clips for the cinephile and assembly achievements, I found another clip that had an alt scene. Weird!
@Clankylad haha cool I was sure I clicked on the interview from my Google search but clearly I didn't proof read. This also proves that I am not a Guardian journalist 😆. Probably!
I've rolled credits and I think, have a pretty good sense of the story, yet I can't actually stop thinking about this game!! I think I'm going to have to go back though quite a lot of scenes as I only recently twigged that to rewind, sometimes you need to use the dpad rather than the analogue stick to uncover additional scenes. @Clankylad, thanks for sharing that link, the guardian tends to put out some decent gaming stuff.
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