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Re: No Man's Sky

#594
Aiha wrote:I never really knew what to make of my expectations for this game, but I gotta admit, it's different now that I've heard about the space opera influence. Even down to specific authors. I haven't seen games draw inspiration quite like that so now I have to pay more attention to this one... lol
:o I'm surprised to see the post, Aiha, but I'm not surprised by what prompted you to make it. ;) :) For someone who appreciates good science fiction you would find it hard to dismiss the influences cited for the lore to be found in the game. :angel:

Get excited! :D
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Re: No Man's Sky

#595
I don't like lore in games, however NMS could end up being the exception. (Who knows?) Besides, Dave Gibbons is one of the creators of Rogue Trooper, one of my favorite comic characters. (And the favorite comic book of one of my best friends since we were kids.) My preferred part of the video however was having the chance to watch a few more examples of that random buildings and spaceships generation. I'm interested on seeing how many variation you can really get from swapping pre-made parts. (So far we have seen basically the same ships over and over again.)
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: No Man's Sky

#596
I like lore to a degree. I know daft statement but I'll explain (maybe). The problem is not so much lore for the current game but what then happens say 2 or 3 iterations down the line. You have to be very careful what you put in place now because if there were to be a NMS 4 it would have to continue the lore. And for me it is really disappointing when a game has rich lore but completely over-rides it to introduce fancy new features.

I really liked the video, they seem to care about what they are doing and hopefully that will show through in the game. That said, still not 100% convinced this is the game for me, I'll hang back and see what some of you lot have to say about it! As I've said before, you can never have too many space games :clap:
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Re: No Man's Sky

#599
Cornflakes_91 wrote:and then you set out to make a heavily storybound game?

contradiction much?
No contradiction at all. First you need to understand that when I say "story" (in the case of a story-driven game) I'm taking about something that is happening now, as we play, a narrative of some sort which is determined by the resolution of a series of conflicts. (A conflict is a critical situation that requires to be solve eventually and only when the resolution is unclear.)

When I said "lore" I was referring to background and setting history, like every secondary character having five hundred pages of background and every location having a rich history of its own. (And example being those heavy setting books that used to be made for some very old role-playing games.) If something is not part of the game is just a drag for me, dead weight, with no use. A counter-example of this could be the background information for the main characters of Alien that Ridley Scott wrote to help the actors. However all that information is basically useless for the public once sitting in the theater watching the movie. I may even have a different idea of who every character was o what they were doing before from that background history written by Scott and I can only do that because is no there, in the movie.

Trying to figuring out what's the history behind the alien for example can make more harm than good. (Think Prometheus for a shameful example.) I prefer to think that the alien is an indigenous life form for that weird planet -as it is from the script-, so old and ancient that it doesn't have a name, so primitive that it doesn't have a form, and that's why it steals from other creatures forms, other creatures features, propagating in the most primordial way possible: as a sexual parasite. And I can do that because the movie doesn't actually say otherwise. (In fact, I prefer to think that we can't actually think about it, or speak about it, because is authentically alien, far beyond human experience, a real lovecraftian nightmare made flesh.)

Another example would be that man with no name that Clint Eastwood brought to life so brilliantly. We actually don't need to know all about him, his history, his past deeds and regrets. It's even better if we don't, and only when is need it, like in the prequel, is when we finally see more about him without ruining the mystery.

I have a friend who wanted to create a role-playing game, long ago, and she started writing all about the world, the characters, the landscapes and such, but she actually didn't make the game. (If I would want to create a role-playing game I would create the game, and let everything else to the players. They could fill in the gaps much better than me. I would give them a playable space instead of boring them with supposedly rich history and background drag.) Even as the writer, I prefer not to know much about every single stuff. If it's a mystery for the player it probably should be a mystery for me too, at least I'm planning to revealing it later. Then is not the mystery what matters but the anticipation. But sometimes is the mystery that matters, and in those occasions is much better to never know.

No Man's Sky, as a videogame, is pretty much different from my game, or any story-driven game. It seems to be mostly an exploration game. Story-driven games have a lot to do with competitive or challenge oriented games, and very little with exploration games. (I'm talking about the focus. Any game can have exploration, story and challenges, but in my design philosophy one must be the focus and the others too are there to make the core better.) As an exploration game, I understand that having a rich history to uncover can be of primal importance, however we can see how "history" (everything that happened before) is there to make the focus (exploration) better, so it serves, or seems to serve, a purpose. In my game it would be only dead weight.

Do I need to know who was the previous owner of this used coffee mug I'm drinking now, his name or motivations, why he left? No, I don't, and maybe I don't even care. But there is a peeling sticker from an old soccer team from England in the mug, so maybe he or she was from England and liked soccer? And then I may find a body later on, in the snow, far away from the base, and you may notice that there is a sticker from an old english soccer team in his frozen jacket. Could it be the same guy? Is it possible that he went missing and no body ever told me? All of this tells a story of some sort, but I don't need to write a book about it, or five hundred pages of background information. I only need a frozen body, a coffee mug and a sticker. Everything else is in my head.

I have read a lot of setting lore over the years, almost every single piece of history scattered over lots and lots of books, documents and talking NPCs, in every single game with a rich history of events and characters, and in almost every case this information was useless to generate any kind of meaningful story or drama. It's only value is in its own quality, that's all. But in a story game in which the narrative must be determined by the player actions the only thing that matters is the here and now, so if some background information is not useful to inform the here and now, if it's not helping me in what I need to do right now, is useless, and I don't need it. (It's a distraction, and when you are playing a game about solving immediate crisis, distractions are no good.) In the same way that those old setting books were no games, where just fictional books disguised as game books, setting background in a no-exploration game is just white noise. It doesn't help, and it's in my way, preventing me for doing whatever I am supposed to do in this game. (Whatever game I'm playing.)

Setting lore can be a powerful tool, but it has to be a tool, something that supports the game and makes the experience of playing the game better. Otherwise, and usually, it just useless junk.
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima

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