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[Fualkner]

I'd like to address point 1:  Books are a classic medium for storytelling, but they are not the only medium for storytelling.  In fact, movies and video games can be far more vivid and engaging than any book.  That's not to say they necessarily are.

Also, on the last point:  Given the same resources, yes, a linear story can be much deeper than a branching and/or non-linear one.  However, I don't think the average game storyline receives the attention necessary to benefit from linearity.

Both true. Thank you for your peaceful and, dare I say it, nice response. It's refreshing to not have one's intelligence insulted for having different opinions.

Games that tell a good story are great, agreed. But some of my favorite games: TF2, GMod, SSB, etc. have no story at all. This is also the same person who likes Deus Ex. So I don't hate story in games, but I don't think it's necessary. Of course, if this story sucks, it will be disappointing, but we don't know if it'll suck yet. Dispite all the bashing it's been getting, the Megaton/Tenpenny Tower story is interesting and creative. Yes, the choice seems to be BLOW SHIT UP Y/N but we haven't seen the possible quest branches after that. What if you do the quest for the evil guy, then you are part of some sort of post-nuclear mafia? Then you can continue the quests in the mafia, assassinating targets and gathering lots of bottlecaps. But within the mafia is a mole, you could rat him out, or work with him to take down the mafia. From there, the story branches can really spread out.

All I'm saying is, don't bash on a story that you hardly know. Don't judge a book by it's cover. A lot of great books have really shitty covers.

And yes, linearity can help a lot, see Bioshock. Or it can suck, see any game with a story you hate.

[Soulwynd]

I can tell you are one of those "GAMES ARE ART" guys.

Games aren't art however games are meant to be fun. I lashed out at you because your comment was stupid and deserved lashing. Telling people, "Oh hey, this is what you want! Go do that and quit bitching" is bitching at someone for bitching. I simply returned it in a cynical way.

I could also stop this reply here, but you even try to tell me who I am and what I should do. Notice a trend of controlfreakness[sic] here?

I try to value my time and money. When I relax I want quality. This goes for games as much as it goes for when I go out with my friends. We drink expensive booze and talk. We used to play rpg, now we spend 50 bucks in a single bottle of expensive beer. (Try Gulden Draak or Utopia if you have the monies). When I go out with my girlfriend, I don't measure any expenses to give her the best. She likes wine and fancy meat and that tends to get expensive. I may not care about expending money and sometimes do it on a whim, but if I have to measure between buying fallout 3, or spending a neat night with my girlfriend, or going out with my friends and drinking one liter of gulden draak, you betcha they will win in this case.

Course, I could do all of those but the only one that would probably make me feel like I wasted money would be buying yet another crappy game.

And look, I don't say it's a crappy game because it's screwing with fallout 1 and 2, I say it because it seems like a crappy game. Emphasis on the word seem, I will pirate it first and tell you what I think. If I am wrong, they will get 50 bucks from me, if not, well, booyah.

[McDoomhammer]

I think games are art.  What kind of guy does that make me?

[Soulwynd]

I think games are art.  What kind of guy does that make me?

A romantic gamer?

[McDoomhammer]

I don't think it's romanticising the phenomenon to describe it as an artform.  Being art does not mean that something can't be fun, or simple, or any of the things it was before you called it art, if that's what worries you.  Drawing and cinema are art, and that includes the DF sketches on the General Discussion board and Leonardo DiCaprio movies- deciding gaming is an art does not mean every game has to be Planescape: Torment or You Have To Burn The Rope. 

Nor does it mean that it cannot serve another function than just being artistic.  After all, architecture is an art.

My belief is that all art is an attempt to take a picture, or an image, or a feeling out of one person's head and transplant it, through another medium, into someone else's.  Literature uses words, scultpture uses light and space and shape, music uses language and sound, dance uses rhythm and motion.  Cinema can combine almost any of those aspects.  Gaming can do all that, and let the player control some of what they experience- it has the potential to be more immersive than any piece of cinema (discuss, 90 marks).  I don't see how it can not be art.


tl;dr:  Saying "Games can be Art" is not romanticising gaming.  Saying "Games can't be Art" is over-romanticising art.

[Micro102]

i cant wait to play fallout 3. the elder scroll series is still my favorite game. the amount of stuff you can do them is beyond countless. decorating your own house with things from all over the continent is so much fun, i hope you can do this in fallout too. they even have their own books in it. if fallout 3 is gonna be oblivion with different content then im getting it. the only reason i stopped playing oblivion is because the +1000 hours i put into it let me complete most of the stuff.

[Soulwynd]

Saying "Games can be Art" is not romanticising gaming.  Saying "Games can't be Art" is over-romanticising art.

It was a joke, but I agree with you.

i cant wait to play fallout 3. the elder scroll series is still my favorite game. the amount of stuff you can do them is beyond countless. decorating your own house with things from all over the continent is so much fun, i hope you can do this in fallout too. they even have their own books in it. if fallout 3 is gonna be oblivion with different content then im getting it. the only reason i stopped playing oblivion is because the +1000 hours i put into it let me complete most of the stuff.

Mister reviewer said his friend finished it in one afternoon.

[Micro102]

lol maybe the main story, but finishing every quest and all the guild storyies plus the expansion packs is gonna take you a couple of weeks.....that is IF you can walk the entire continent and find them all

[Fualkner]

I can tell you are one of those "GAMES ARE ART" guys.

Games aren't art however games are meant to be fun. I lashed out at you because your comment was stupid and deserved lashing. Telling people, "Oh hey, this is what you want! Go do that and quit bitching" is bitching at someone for bitching. I simply returned it in a cynical way.

I could also stop this reply here, but you even try to tell me who I am and what I should do. Notice a trend of controlfreakness[sic] here?

I try to value my time and money. When I relax I want quality. This goes for games as much as it goes for when I go out with my friends. We drink expensive booze and talk. We used to play rpg, now we spend 50 bucks in a single bottle of expensive beer. (Try Gulden Draak or Utopia if you have the monies). When I go out with my girlfriend, I don't measure any expenses to give her the best. She likes wine and fancy meat and that tends to get expensive. I may not care about expending money and sometimes do it on a whim, but if I have to measure between buying fallout 3, or spending a neat night with my girlfriend, or going out with my friends and drinking one liter of gulden draak, you betcha they will win in this case.

Course, I could do all of those but the only one that would probably make me feel like I wasted money would be buying yet another crappy game.

And look, I don't say it's a crappy game because it's screwing with fallout 1 and 2, I say it because it seems like a crappy game. Emphasis on the word seem, I will pirate it first and tell you what I think. If I am wrong, they will get 50 bucks from me, if not, well, booyah.

So you value your time, yet you come here trying to change my opinion when you must know by now that it won't work? There's a sweet, sweet smell of bullshit here. You wouldn't even care about this game if it wasn't called FO3. You would just pass it off as "another FPS" and leave it at that. The title caught and held your attention, you must admit this to some degree. And a control freak? Yes, I can be. You wanted a game where you could have those 3 things, so I gave you an idea. And I called my idea a theory. It's a loose guess, if I'm completely off, then I'm wrong. Calling someone else's idea stupid because it's different then yours is complete shit. I haven't called your opinion bullshit, if you don't like the game, stop caring about it and quit being a god-damn buzzkill. Lashing out at my response like that was completely out of line. I didn't attack you personally, I just questioned your motives and opinion. If that's lashing out, please read the last 100 posts of this thread, and tell me any place where people aren't lashing out nor are they agreeing.

[Soulwynd]

I didn't try to change your opinion, I don't even see a single phrase I said that would hint that.
(There needs to be a bigger period than that)

[Zironic]

I think inbetween the pressures of my daily life, dealing with 4 AP classes, and being an Active wrestler and socialite, the idea of having a place to have fun and imagine life in a different role, provides artistic expansion in it's own self. I liked oblivion, but it lacked an edgy feel to it. I grew up too late for Fallout, and find the humour and the atmosphere of the game a little dumb and pointless from a forward perspective. I want a role in games were my choices and decisions are appropriately measured. I want to feel a part of the world, not some distance, disconnected hero. I have enough of that shit in my own life. I want to play fallout 3, but the whole idea of, blowing a place up from the get - go seems dumb and silly.

[Skyrage]

In Fallout 1/2 you were supposed to feel disconnected from the whole world. Specially at the beginning. The character that you are is after all someone who's got no clue whatsoever about the outside world.

As for the humor, in Fallout 2 they might have gone a bit overboard with all the different special wilderness encounters for instance, but generally it's all there to add a contrast to an otherwise extremely ruthless and brutal world where pretty much the weak are preyed by the strong. Generally I like the cynical overtone that the world has in general. I mean, humans pretty much screwed up the whole world with their greed and there your character is - an outsider to it all, ending up thinking that humans are pretty stupid after all.

And in the end you do play a part as well, depending on the choices you've made etc, you do see the outcome of those choices per an area basis. All major areas on both games that you visit have at least one good and one bad ending after all. However you aren't that kind of hero that becomes world famous and glorified or anything like that, more like the lone gunman type, which I personally think was the right choice considering the setting.

Fallout 3 is obviously gonna neglect all of this and just be another FPS shooter

[Micro102]

I think inbetween the pressures of my daily life, dealing with 4 AP classes, and being an Active wrestler and socialite, the idea of having a place to have fun and imagine life in a different role, provides artistic expansion in it's own self. I liked oblivion, but it lacked an edgy feel to it. I grew up too late for Fallout, and find the humour and the atmosphere of the game a little dumb and pointless from a forward perspective. I want a role in games were my choices and decisions are appropriately measured. I want to feel a part of the world, not some distance, disconnected hero. I have enough of that shit in my own life. I want to play fallout 3, but the whole idea of, blowing a place up from the get - go seems dumb and silly.

dude you just made me realize why a liked morrowind in a way i didnt oblivion. morrowind had a place to fear going to....red mountian i belived it was called

[McDoomhammer]

so Oblivion (the hell-like plane, not the whole game) was a walk in the park for you?

[Sean Mirrsen]

It wasn't "Oblivion" as the plane, it mostly was scattered throughout the wilderness as small chunks. The little bits posed no challenge whatsoever once you understood some principles and took advantage of some design flaws. I suspect they are the reason levitation was excluded - you could pretty much just fly from the start point to the tower, whack the deaddaedroth or whoever it was with an assortment of deadly spells (paralysis.. mmm. You could cast paralysis on the bugger and throw him down to the bottom of the tower.), take the orb and skedaddle. Morrowind also eventually fell to the thing (completed in 16 minutes?), but I suspect the alchemy is to blame.