- Joined
- Aug 21, 2022
Are you tired of Jim Sterling's skits?
Are you sick of being told Capitalism is bad?
Are you outright done with listening to a Brit convince you his tits are true and honest?
Do you think Jim is/was capable of making good points but he's too much of a spiteful, bigoted, terminally-online Twitter weirdo to live up to that capacity?
If you said yes to any of these, then don't worry.
Much like video games talk too much. It's as simply as that. Like with most aspects of gaming, the removal of limitations hasn't been a strictly positive ordeal for video game dialogue. In fact, it's largely resulted in the increase of small talk and filler banter that servers no purpose other than to justify paying voice actors. If you've been playing games for the past 10 years, you'll notice the rapid increase in how chatty games have been. Games talk during cutscenes, during gameplay, during loading screens, during death screens, during pause screens. Sometimes all at once. And needless to say, not every single game is the Deadpool Game.
For this Jimless Jimquisition, I want to focus on the gameplay talking and what I believe to be the causes for it.
Are you sick of being told Capitalism is bad?
Are you outright done with listening to a Brit convince you his tits are true and honest?
Do you think Jim is/was capable of making good points but he's too much of a spiteful, bigoted, terminally-online Twitter weirdo to live up to that capacity?
If you said yes to any of these, then don't worry.
Gloria From Pokemon Sword (and Shield) Presents:
THE JIMLESS JIMQUISITION
with your host: not Jim Sterling
Today's Viewer Voted 800K Subscriber Special: Video Games Need To SHUT UP!
THE JIMLESS JIMQUISITION
with your host: not Jim Sterling
Today's Viewer Voted 800K Subscriber Special: Video Games Need To SHUT UP!
Much like video games talk too much. It's as simply as that. Like with most aspects of gaming, the removal of limitations hasn't been a strictly positive ordeal for video game dialogue. In fact, it's largely resulted in the increase of small talk and filler banter that servers no purpose other than to justify paying voice actors. If you've been playing games for the past 10 years, you'll notice the rapid increase in how chatty games have been. Games talk during cutscenes, during gameplay, during loading screens, during death screens, during pause screens. Sometimes all at once. And needless to say, not every single game is the Deadpool Game.
For this Jimless Jimquisition, I want to focus on the gameplay talking and what I believe to be the causes for it.
- Follow The Leaders: The best thing that Breath Of The Wild did was not catch on industry-wide. Aside form a single Ubisoft game that everyone forgot about before it came out, and arguably Genshin Impact which is gotcha trash anyway, Breath Of The Wild is a fairly unique open-world experience; and it's sequel is likely still going to be fresh because we haven't have a flood of dollar store takes on it. I tell you this because imitation often leads to stagnation and oversaturation more than innovation or refinement, be it big budget or indie and regardless of the industry. And in regards to dialogue, it's fair to say that The Last Of Us influenced Sony's first party experience and the AAA landscape as a whole. The part of the Last Of Us that worked was it's ability to use banter to alter the tone to something more lighthearted during quiet times and to add to characterization between cutscenes and gameplay. It also wasn't afraid to have you miss dialogue, and in fact some conversations could be missed if the player was careless or callous enough. Modern games treat their banter as being just as important as the cutscenes, despite often being nothing more than characters talking about events that already happened (God Of War: Ragnarok) or trying to tell jokes because funny games are always funny (Rachet And Clank 2016).
- Lack Of Skill: Lack of skill for writing video games, to be specific. To be fair, gaming is still relatively new as a medium, even if the industry is well-established. And unlike film, story telling in gaming is only taken seriously when it mimics movies or tv shows instead of forming it's own visual language. So for example, in most games the camera can be racing any direction the player wants. So if you want to show them something during gameplay, you have to force the camera to look at something, or at least in the direction of that something. But this lacks any of the subtly it can have in other visual mediums; it's like having the camera linger on something well after characters walk off shot instead of hiding it in the background but it stays there for a good 6 seconds just so everyone can process it. Similarly, most writers struggle to convey information without exposition or banter because there just isn't any way to learn about working in the game's industry beyond sheer experience. Can't go to a school and learn how to tell a story in gaming like you can for Hollywood films, can ya? And even if you do, who's to say they won't just pull up The Last Of Us and say mimic that?
- Lack Of Time: This one is a classic, but when you have maybe 3 years at most to get this product that has more sweat, tears, and mental drain than most others, it's easy to see why there would be situations of "fuck it" and just having the characters talk all the time to get the ideas across, especially if the gameplay is more important. Dead Rising 4 probably would have been less of a disaster in terms of writing if not for it's time crunch.
- Pride: Of course, never discount a studio thinking "Oh, cutscenes are what people who hate video games do. That's giving up. We'll put it in the gameplay because having the player use the controller and get the story is far more immersive than alternating between it." Which sounds correct... until the reality of how either the gameplay gets in the way of the story beats because people can only focus on so much at any one given time or the story ends up not being suited for the gameplay of the game (Again, modern God Of War) shows up. Which circles back to in-game banter being strictly superficial conversation or recaps on events that already happen. But because they don't want anyone to miss anything ever without getting in the way, we get stuff like GOW:R where even this banter will restart itself if gameplay interrupts it. (Serious, GOW:R is pathetic in terms of storytelling)
- All Of The Above: It's not just copying [Famous game here]. It's not just people assuming all aspects of writing is universal across all mediums. It's not just miserable time crunch or unbridled pride. It's seldom ever just one thing, and I'd put good money down on the non-stop talking being a variety of things and a combination of all of the above.
- Too much dialogue can actually remove depth from a character. Ahoy is the worst in this regard; The game wants her to be both the stoic badass and awkward girl. So after any given big boss, she just goes "well, that happened" because she's try to relate to people with no life experience nor imagination. She talks too often to let her actions or achievements speak for themselves, but is too "relatable" in design to ever soak in anything the gameplay allows her to achieve. By comparison, just to twist the knife in, in Sonic Adventure 2, after Sonic and Shadow's first battle, they don't banter in the cutscene. They're standing next to each other, keeping distance, breathing and waiting for one of them to make the next move. It's only when Eggman says "The islands gonna blow. You plan to die or what?" that they both call it off. Let it be known the game with a literal Saturday Morning plot (albeit it slightly dark, so Saturday Morning Season Finale) seemed to take it's characters more seriously than the game(s) with bigger budgets than your average film.
- Because I'm an asshole who loves to pick on Sony, let me ask a question: for how deep people praise the Sony walking experience, how often after the first Last Of Us are any games in this style quoted? Part II was rightfully memed to death, but the actual dialogue, for how much of it there was, doesn't seem to have left a strong impression with people. We've all seen people who have something to say but nothing to contribute to a conversation, and having everyone constantly talk means that individual lines hold less impact.
- It can really ruin the atmosphere. Given who modern games have a fetish for being stories with button presses, you'd think this is something that they'd pay attention to. And they do... during story sections. But, as the Gaming Brit Show brought up with Rachet 2016, characters tend to talk just for the sake of making the most of the voice actors, even if it makes no sense for the series. In that game, it turns a gun-totting redneck and a group of heartless murderous monsters led by a somehow more heartless corporate leech into funny, quirky people who talk about dinner and rocks before your Disney Channel Original Hero guns them down in cold no-blood.
- It's just annoying. Please, shut up and let me play the game. The ability to store an audio book within a game hasn't been impressive since 2005, so can the character just stop talking and let me play the game? If your story requires more time than you're willing to put into cutscenes, then perhaps it's time to ask if your story has some pacing issues or is over bloated. If your characters will be forgotten about the moment they stop talking, then your characters can't achieve what the archetypes of Final Fantasy 7 did with PS1 technology. And if the gameplay cannot reinforce the narrative without someone reminding me what I'm fighting for, maybe it's time to try something different for once instead of mimicking or modifying 10-15 year old formulas.
