Castlevania Lords of Shadow (Hideo Kojima and MercurySteam)

Great.

Hideo Kojima takes his hack storytelling technique that doesn't work outside of the adventure genre IMHO (Snatcher and Policenauts did it right, but even then....) to a game series that simply doesn't need it at all.

Wonderful.



Seriously...I know I'm in the minority here (sadly), but I'm sorry...MGS has a great story, full of twists and turns... but... the method in which it is conveyed, via monotonous exposition and a plethora of badly written non-interactive cutscenes, in an interactive medium no less (way to use the very strength of the medium, Kojima-san ), is simply not the manner in which to create a vocabulary and language for the video game medium to stand on its own merits and be wholly unique in the way it captures the audience and conveys story.

Although, to be fair, he's moved ever closer to what, IMHO, he should be doing. Even the little inclusion of giving the player the ability over moving the camera during cutscenes in MGS3 was a sign that he was finally "getting it". But he hasn't totally "gotten it" yet.

I just hope he's able to move past such "juvenile" attempts at storytelling (not in personal maturity, but in maturity as a storyteller in the medium of video games) with this game.

Kojima...it's player/character, not player...character. There's a difference.

 

Bringing dead loved ones back from the dead. It's not like Star Wars III had that VERY SAME PLOT POINT! It's starting to become a cliché.

 

I've never been totally on board with the 3D Castlevanias, but this one looks pretty tight.

Kojima lost my attention 3/4 of the way through Metal Gear Solid 2. I love the first one to death, even with the hugely non-interactive storytelling (mostly because it was really good), but I think something in my brain just exploded while playing through the second one. Hopefully Castlevania will be much easier for me to digest.

And if not, oh well... still looking forward to the next 2D Castlevania.

 

MGS series is awesome. Yeah I lost it a little with 2 (just got around to finally playing that and snake eater) but after going back and playing the series again recently, I'm completely blown away. Not so much by sons of liberty, but of MGS3 subsistence. The game is ridiculously good. Never could I have imagined after beating solid 1, and hearing the message between ocelot and the president, that the story would have become so complex yet at the same time, so simple and elegant. It's not the story of snake. The whole series is the story of Big Boss. Yet he's not even in solid one and two. In that, I applaude kojima and his story telling

 

This is what I keep hearing. I need to go back and play MGS3, once I finally get through this huge pile of unbeaten games at home.

 

Yes but try to get the subsistence version as it has a free roam camera

 

See...I think he did one right thing in MGS2:

When he broke the fourth wall, and it actually went somewhere. And it wasn't just conveyed through dialogue like most games that make sad attempts at breaking that fourth wall. No...instead it happened during that part where the communicator went on the fritz and the game's environmental graphics themselves started getting distorted, revealing the artifice of the wire frames underneath. That's when I thought "yeah...Kojima's got something here...now why didn't he do stuff like this throughout instead of making me sit through 5 -10 minute long non-interactive badly written fluff?"

See, there's the thing:

I like the story Kojima is attempting to tell...I just don't like the way in which he is going about telling that story. And unfortunately the method he uses the majority of the time takes away from what should be my enjoyment of the story.

I'm left thinking "wow, that's a really cool, deep, and resonate bit that happened...but WHY did it have to be told to us in this manner instead of something that uses the strengths of the medium?"

I've got no problem with what is being conveyed, but rather my issue is with how it is conveyed.

Look at something like, say...that new Splinter Cell coming up. Is the story going to be as "deep" as MGS? Probably not. But look at how UbiSoft is attempting to convey the story to the gamer. The bit they showed at E3, in the bathroom where the player interrogates an enemy character. While you're beating the crap out of the enemy for info, he gives some up, but instead of cutting to a cutscene where you have no control to show you the info UbiSoft instead projects the info, if text, onto the environment, or, if a flashback or something along those lines uses a sort of double exposure to show that while you are still actively playing the game. You interrogate the suspect, he starts talking about this other guy and what he saw the other guy do, and while you are still holding and beating him up a double exposure shows up on the screen that shows what the suspect is talking about.

They never "cut" the gameplay in those bits. That's how it should be done. Not in that manner, perhaps, but with that sentiment in mind.

Game designers instead do something along these lines:

You, the player are not only in control of a character, but you are the character (hence player/character). So they let you play, and then a non-interactive cutscene comes up and you are no longer in control, you are no longer the character, you are no longer playing as that character but instead are watching that character.

It's akin to having you play King Richard in Richard III, and then when that big battle happens at the end you actively play the role during it, but just before you utter the famous lines "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" they rush on stage, strip you of the costume, put it on another guy, rush you off of the stage and sit you down in front of it to watch this other guy play the role you were just playing. It's...it's a silly way to do things, IMHO.

 

Your right, it would be great to have the "video game" used as an exclusive medium. There is a lot that can be used to craft an amazing experience that cannot be applied to movies or written arts. With such an eloquent reply I can offer nothing more, than concurrence with your opinion. I think it would be great if not only kojima, but the rest of the production studios could really use the medium to tell stories that cannot be told elsewhere. Good call my friend, good call

 

You mean the whole virus sequence right? I thought that was absolutely brilliant. For me, it was just that the story itself was getting a little too convoluted for my liking.

I don't mind the non-interactive cutscene in principle. For me it depends on the game. If I'm playing Final Fantasy, for instance, that's exactly what I want. But cutscenes in a game like, say, Devil May Cry 4 just annoy me. I have to watch my dude doing all these bad-ass moves, the whole time wondering why I wasn't just doing them myself.

God, that game looks so sick. And yeah, you're right, the fact that they never break the action makes the whole thing seem much more intense. For instance at one point during the interrogation, soldiers bust into the room and ambush the player. Not breaking the action for the interrogation scene means that's an actual ambush. If it were a cutscene, the fact that the game has to transition from movie back to gameplay (change of camera view, reappearing HUD, etc) clues you in that you're going back into "shoot mode" and removing any element of surprise from the ambush.