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[Neonivek]

My favorite take on human sacrifice as a method of staving off the apocalypse is The Wicker Man.

Though that does bring to mind Life Is Strange as well. You ever check that out, Neon? Not the kind of storyline you mean, really, but with certain common elements.

I've seen it but unfortunately the Sacrifice has a huge glaring problem with how the story is told...

Namely the problem only exists due to the apathy of the main character. It is honestly the one thing that makes the story... not that good.

That and age old "Time Travel activates final destination" but that is more narrative causality.

Though I honestly think it could have been fixed. It suggests that they either changed the script while making the game, or forced a plot development saved for WAY later into the start of the game to entice people to buy the other episodes.

Namely

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The main characters knows exactly when a huge disaster is going to destroy the town... She knows precisely that it is going to happen and the game puts evidence of this in the game constantly.

Yet she never EVER acts upon this knowledge until it is too late... and not for any particularly good reason.

My theory is that this was meant to be a twist... but due to marketing they had to put it in the first chapter

[Harry Baldman]

Namely

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The main characters knows exactly when a huge disaster is going to destroy the town... She knows precisely that it is going to happen and the game puts evidence of this in the game constantly.

Yet she never EVER acts upon this knowledge until it is too late... and not for any particularly good reason.

My theory is that this was meant to be a twist... but due to marketing they had to put it in the first chapter

Well,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The trouble there is that if you did predict a horrible tornado was about to destroy the town, what exactly are you going to tell the town to convince them of this, even with sudden snows and whales beaching themselves and what have you? It's not even entirely clear for the most part if this is a literal cataclysm, or some kind of spiritual metaphor (well, until it shows up, of course). Bear in mind that one of the actual themes here is that people with actual power around the area tend to be kind of useless for the most part.

I think it's handled reasonably well in that Max does keep the whole impending disaster in mind, but is completely clueless on what exactly to do about it (do something differently to prevent it? solve some kind of moral issue? evacuate the town?) because the entities involved used very exact, yet cryptic means to inform her of the price of obtaining nifty time powers.

I dunno, that a person would forgo trying to solve the vague looming threat in favor of figuring out all the things she can wrap her head around easily, hoping that it'll all sort itself out, that seems pretty relatable as far as thought processes go.

[Neonivek]

Except the big flaw is

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

She does nothing

[Harry Baldman]

To that I would ask,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

what would you propose she should have done instead?

[Neonivek]

To that I would ask,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

what would you propose she should have done instead?

Ok how about

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Hey Chloe, the town is gonna be destroyed. Can you stay out of town for a bit?"

Don't get me wrong it is an excellent game! but goodness is this the one black mark that prevents me from honestly calling it a "Great game".

Though maybe I should lower my standards since all Quantic Dreams games break down into incomprehensible nonsense... and frankly this is no where close to as bad as that.

Then again... this is my "Great game" standard... as in the game I'd use as an example of the best a genre can provide... and GOODNESS with that plot hiccup...

[Harry Baldman]

Ok how about

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Hey Chloe, the town is gonna be destroyed. Can you stay out of town for a bit?"

Spoiler: Now With Extra Spoiling (click to show/hide)

Eh, you can save Chloe regardless if the town is going to be destroyed. In fact, that's the entire final choice. Do you accept the bargain of the town being destroyed to save your childhood friend, or do you let her die, resolving all matters, but at the cost of her life and all the misery that her death brings? She either survives unharmed, or dies by gunshot wound. All the other possibilities are eliminated by time travel as you go through the week.

Of course, you could be referring to that bit where Max goes to the exhibition, only to refuse the present this creates due to Chloe getting killed by the tornado (although the principal would definitely live in that timeline, so there's that). But that's just a variation on the theme, and one of the possibilities eliminated.

So Chloe's kind of irrelevant in terms of being saved. Who else could you definitely help get away? Warren, maybe? And that's provided you do actually have a handle on what exactly is going to destroy the town - you obviously would in hindsight, but despite time travel being a thing, hindsight isn't really something you benefit from in this case. I got the sense that Max was kind of hedging her bets on the idea that rooting out the evil in town would satisfy whatever terrible Indian elder god was responsible for the supernatural meddling to begin with.

[Neonivek]

Personally I got the impression that

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Teen drama got in the way.

and no I am not joking. There are types of stories where a much more important plot is subverted because the characters involved are much more preoccupied with their own problems.

Max cared more about what was immediately an issue then the nebulous concept of the entire town getting destroyed by a super tornado because the immediate issues were more personal

And... it CAN work. Though I like my "They weren't planning on revealing it that early" theory more...

Since honestly the game is immediately improved 10 fold if you just eliminate that starting intro. Like really every single problem with the game? fixed.

Well ok... Final Destination and all that... but ehh that is a lot more bearable.

[Harry Baldman]

Personally I got the impression that

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Teen drama got in the way.

and no I am not joking. There are types of stories where a much more important plot is subverted because the characters involved are much more preoccupied with their own problems.

Max cared more about what was immediately an issue then the nebulous concept of the entire town getting destroyed by a super tornado because the immediate issues were more personal

And... it CAN work. Though I like my "They weren't planning on revealing it that early" theory more...

Since honestly the game is immediately improved 10 fold if you just eliminate that starting intro. Like really every single problem with the game? fixed.

Well ok... Final Destination and all that... but ehh that is a lot more bearable.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh, teen drama totally got in the way. And also a weird not-really-serial-killer plot that took me out of the whole thing a little with its bizarre David Cageness (though considerably better delivered than his schlock). I guess it feels more natural to me because it sounds reasonable that you'd get time travel powers to set right a terrible wrong, and thus entirely correct for Max to expect it to work that way as well (I do recall her mentioning trying to figure out what all this weird weather business is, only to realize that nobody else seems to know either and it's not like this is Twilight where you can just google that shit and get the full correct answer from a sketchy website), when in truth the elder gods don't really give a shit and were just looking for the explicit permission of a mortal to wreak righteous havoc upon a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

But yeah, I guess it comes down to what feels right in the end. Felt pretty sensible to me how things developed overall, and there definitely is the possibility that many of the implications of what's shown are actually accidental and I'm reading too far into things. But I had fun with it regardless.

[Neonivek]

I played with someone who got sad everytime they failed to save a bird, in a game where birds dying is a theme.

It was funny

[Neonivek]

I think Fallout Shelter (a IOS game... but basically what I call a "Facebook game") is probably one of the saddest games I ever played.

In that it has some very good concepts and ideas right down to having each "dweller" have a specific array of Special stats.

Why is it so sad?

Because honestly... This deserves to be a REAL game.

[Egan_BW]

Bethesda would have you believe that FO4 is that game.
But it's not, of course.

[Neonivek]

Bethesda would have you believe that FO4 is that game.
But it's not, of course.

Is it sad that I think Fallout Shelter is a better colony management game then... Fallout 4s colony management?

[Egan_BW]

Yup. You're not wrong though.

[Leafsnail]

Re: magical mysteries from a while back you should also remember that your culprit may be able to do things that aren't possible in the real world to help even the score. Like maybe the bad guy is obvious but can't arrest him until you figure out which combination of spells he used to create an apparently airtight alibi.

[Neonivek]

Ok I am enamored or I guess fascinated would be more accurate by one kind of videogame.

It is those that put the gameplay as its secondary goal to its theme.

Now I am not referring to MMOs or even Storybased games (though some are). But rather there are two specific types of games I am referring to.

1) Simulation games: Most of these are exclusively classic games from at most the 1990s, though there are ones that exist after that point, and while many of them aren't part of the "Simulation genre" they still take pages from it and want to actually simulate its topic. Now I am not going to lie the REAL reason most of these are classic games is because what makes a fun game was pretty much pure speculation at this point so they went "Well, Cops are cool. What about a game where you are a cop?" So it is more incidental then anything else. Heck some of the more fondly remembered games like SimCity were outright intended as simulation quasi-educational games that just HAPPENED to be good.

2) Art Games: My personal definition of an art game is a game where the "art" is more important than the gameplay and where this is noticeable. Now I won't lie, the vast majority of these are tripe and the way I put it is if you could fit the entire game on a post-it note, then start over.

I'll continue this post later with notable examples...