What are the most pretentious games ever made?

[Girl Named Sandoz]

i'm surprised no one has said Dear Esther yet. it feels like it was the game that sort of kicked off the pretentious walking sim genre and it's still by far the worst one i've played. at least it's pretty good looking for a source engine game?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Pathologic is very pretentious and the actual gameplay is boring as hell, but it balances it out by being incredibly compelling.
Most of the pretentious games I've played have already been mentioned in this thread, so I'll just say Far Cry 5 sucks and I wanna kill the writer for wasting my time.

Counterargument
If you expected anything, in the year of our Lord 2018, out of the FAR CRY franchise, to have a good story, you, sir, are pretentious.

 

[Polarity]

Gone Home is just a baby's first asset flip. Nothing more. People went apeshit cause it had a lesbian relationship in it. Heck to this day I hear people calling it GotY...

Gone Home was the beginning of the end of me watching Giant Bomb content. I remember Brad reviewing it saying it was "an important game" or something dumb. I booted it up, was excited for some sort of spooky haunted house simulator, then got 2 hours of milquetoast LGBT garbage.

 

[Oatmeal2000]

Dominique Pamplemousse 2.

The first game wasn't pretentious, and the ending for the first game made sense (spoilers ahead, as if you care lol): There were technically two possible endings, one which you got by partnering up with an exploitative business owner, or the other by choosing to try and expose them. But, both choices lead to your character becoming unemployed and destitute anyway, because capitalism is bad or whatever. It made sense what the game was trying to say.

But the second game is all about the main character and his clone trying to decide which of the first game's endings is "canon", even though that doesn't matter because they both led to the same outcome. You go through a bunch of wacky set pieces trying to find an answer to which ending was canon, before eventually giving up and asking the game's creator which ending was canon.

The game's creator tells you how she can't decide which ending is canon, and then rambles on for a few minutes about random "deep" subjects and herself, like how she's 31 but feels like she's stumbling through life. And then after a really bad song plays (because both of these games were musicals), the game ends.

Also does anyone know if this game is an example, I was attracted by the artstyle, but it looks pretentious and a review I saw seems to backup that claim

Dujanah on Steam

apolitical

store.steampowered.com

View attachment 4748394

I think the "pretentious" label does fit for Dujanah, but I don't think that makes it bad at all.

Most of Dujanah is spent talking to characters that tell you little anecdotes, and taking in the various set pieces. These often don't advance anything in the game, you're just left to interpret them in your own way, which is why you could call it pretentious - It's definitely more of an introspective game as opposed to a strong narrative one.
That being said, it's not pretentious in the way YIIK is, where the dev was so far up their own ass that nobody really got what the game was trying to say. Nearly all of the set pieces and characters in Dujanah are connected to the game's themes and the main character's situation. (That Steam review saying there's "no obvious theme connecting them" is off base.)

I'd still recommend it, even if you could call it pretentious - It's memorable, and the art style and music are really good.

 

[Table Country]

Counterargument
If you expected anything, in the year of our Lord 2018, out of the FAR CRY franchise, to have a good story, you, sir, are pretentious.

I wasn't expecting something good. I was expecting something stupid and inoffensive that would let me shoot at bad guys for a few hours. What I got was something that was too stupid to realize how stupid it was and offensive to my sensibilites as a person with a working frontal lobe where instead of shooting at bad guys I was forced to listen to the proselytizing of a bunch of inbred waco rejects in between completing major milestones.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The reason for going against Elohim and entering the Tower is really the same for you as a player and the player character: you want to know what's going on. In-universe, the designers wanted to make sure that the AI was capable of curiosity and independent thought, not because they hate religion, but because making a successor to the human race that has no volition is just making a thoughtless machine or a slave. So for the Extended Life program to end, one of the AIs has to prove cognizant enough to be capable of complex problem-solving, but also have its own will.

Elohim's ending is "bad" because it continues to delay the process, which has already failed over and over to the point where the world around the player is starting to decay and corrupt. While Elohim isn't a directly antagonistic character, he knows that success means that the entire program will end, and he'll be wiped out, and he goes from commanding you to not enter the Tower to pleading with you not to end the world, but eventually comes to terms with it at the end. Directly going against his advice can also lead to you dying (like going out of bounds, or the characters who give up and choose to do nothing) and needing to be iterated, so it's not that you're being reward for being spiteful towards him. Allegorically, I think he's more of a demiurge than a Yahweh, since it's clear that his motivations are selfish, and his existence is only over a limited world, rather than being all-powerful.

The main issue (that a lot of pretentious games share) is that what you need to treat the game as a game in order to proceed rather than acting by what the story and characters logically would, doubly worse because you need to know that this point is the point of no return. It would have made more sense if it was clear that Elohim's actions have tangible negative consequences so a rebellion is at least justified, but I don't recall anything besides some of the things other AIs wrote, which are not really anything that justify it.

Also isn't Gnosism as a religion defined by "fuck you dad"?

The Milton Library Assistant/The Serpent is specifically trying to put you in "Gotcha!" moments by presenting lines of arguments that turn your words against you and present you with limited choices for ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions that can't just be "solved." It's not the game writers trying to convince you that morality is this simple set of rules and that your own personal ethics are stupid, it's that the character wants to make you doubt yourself and feel that you have no idea what you're doing and are incapable of reason on your own. He wants to worm his way in and encourage you to climb the Tower so that, when you transcend, you'll feel that you have to let him transcend as part of you, since he's also aware that the world is crumbling around him, and that you and the other Children are the only way he has out. It's self-serving deception, and you have the ability to either outright reject him (as per Elohim's advice) or to turn his words back around on him near the game's end and prove that you're capable on your own.

My main issue is that I can't call him a turbo faggot and that he should self delete. More seriously, the limited range of answers makes the discussions more angering than fun since I can't reply to his gotchas in how braindead they are.

I also don't think that the puzzles are at a ten-year-old's level, unless you're only going for the green/easy ones. The red ones you need to climb the tower, along with the hidden puzzles, are decently challenging. The Road to Gehenna DLC starts at the red level and gets even harder, so it's a good post-game challenge

I'll give you, the red ones are 14 year old level, it's still the usual video game ridiculousness of having puzzles as barometers of intelligence.

 

[Coffee Mugshot]

Detroit Become Human was one of the worst offenders I've played in this category. It starts out alright, running with a fairly generic 'humanlike AI becomes conscious and develops feelings' plot. Towards the end of the game it devolves into an insane Antifa/BLM simulator where the US government literally, and I do mean literally, goes full 3rd Reich on the AIs and you have to stop the comically evil US soldiers/cops from murdering every AI in the country for the crime of wanting civil rights.

After I finished the game and was trying to find explanations for the bizarre conclusion I discovered that the director and the studio are French, and was like 'oh.'

 

[YachieKicchou]

Detroit Become Human was one of the worst offenders I've played in this category.

Need a game where you play as the human deathsquads that declare Total Android Death at the end of the game (where they raid the abandoned ship and purge them all).

 

[Coffee Mugshot]

Need a game where you play as the human deathsquads that declare Total Android Death at the end of the game (where they raid the abandoned ship and purge them all).

The ship part wasn't even the worst of it. There is a missable scenario/path (I think you have to choose violent resistance and make a couple screwups with Kara) where the petite girl and child robots end up in a literal concentration camp run by guys with huge US flags on their helmets and 'US Army' plastered across their chests. They strip them of all their possessions and send them into 'recyclers' to kill them while the AIs cry and cower in fear. They get saved by the brave antifa resistance leader leading troops against the evil oppressors. It's comically bad.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

Gone Home is just a baby's first asset flip. Nothing more. People went apeshit cause it had a lesbian relationship in it. Heck to this day I hear people calling it GotY...

Also Fez. The game is decent, but the creator is a pretentious prick. We don't 'deserve' a Pez 2 apparently, whatever that means...

https://youtu.be/oc26EKhZNyM

People like to make fun of Gone Home, Fez and depression quest. But I think the granddaughter of all hipster pretentious art game crap is Braid. It's an alright puzzle platformer with super Mario bros references. But game journalists and homosexuals in the video games are art crowd circle jerk over braid being deep because the ending is a text screen references the Manhattan project. Braid is such hipster trash. Even college humor made fun of braid for sniffing its own farts back in the day. Yes, that college humor.

 

[Tims]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned YIIK

At least include the superior YIIK review:

 

[Sand Mega]

People like to make fun of Gone Home, Fez and depression quest. But I think the granddaughter of all hipster pretentious art game crap is Braid. It's an alright puzzle platformer with super Mario bros references. But game journalists and homosexuals in the video games are art crowd circle jerk over braid being deep because the ending is a text screen references the Manhattan project. Braid is such hipster trash. Even college humor made fun of braid for sniffing its own farts back in the day. Yes, that college humor.

Yeah, I think Braid started to popularize this style of writing more than anyone, but at least it had cool gameplay and a cool artstyle to carry it, the twist of "the protagonist was the kidnapper all along" was pretentious because it was just a "subverting tropes moment" for no reason, but it was better if it was just it and had no atomic bomb bullcrap, also heard it's getting a remaster that haven't has gone silent for years http://braid-game.com/

 

[Leave_Fargut]

I actually think RDR2 is quite pretentious. Strange really, given RDR1 wasn't at all. But when the RDR2 prologue started up with that title card in cursive talking about the end of the West, my eyes rolled so hard they almost fell out of my head

 

[Raging Capybara]

it's required by law for me to post this video every time yick is brought up:

2 hours, 2 hours and a half.

How the fuck do you have the patience to watch these things? And with the voice sub-bass cranked up to eleven.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Metal Gear Solid 2

It's always Metal Gear Solid 2.

 

[SpiderBitch]

Literally every single game made by David Cage or DONTNOD entertainment (the Life is Strange studio)

Undertale itself I don't think is pretentious, but the fans make it pretty pretentious.

Braid the game isn't that pretentious either, but the developer absolutely is:

“A Higher Standard” — Game Designer Jonathan Blow Challenges Super Mario’s Gold Coins, “Unethical” MMO Design And Everything Else You May Hold Dear About Video Games » MTV Multiplayer

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

Spec Ops: The Line was really fun. It’s what gave me my love for war crimes.

Spec ops the line might be my favorite example of an accidental comedic game. It's writing about what it would look like if Micheal Bay got to direct a movie based on Stanley Kubrick, a Holocaust movie that never got to be made.

Bioshock Infinite is a fun game that’s made worse by pretentious messaging.

The result of anyone being able to make a game now. You get some really good stuff, but it’s all in a sea of pretentious, faggy, copy and paste garbage that’s always about the same “muh mental illness” story. We get it. Daddy didn’t love you and you wanna kill yourself because people said mean things to you on the internet.

Bioshock Infinite's popularity, like Overwatch, is only kept alive by all the pornography. When people talk about bioshock they are talking about the first two bioshock games. When people talk about Infinite. It's all the porn of Elizabeth.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

Braid the game isn't that pretentious either, but the developer absolutely is:

“A Higher Standard” — Game Designer Jonathan Blow Challenges Super Mario’s Gold Coins, “Unethical” MMO Design And Everything Else You May Hold Dear About Video Games » MTV Multiplayer

I think The Witness is the absolute pinnacle of Johnathan Blow sucking his own dick. I'll agree with other people's lambasting of Braid, but any complaint about it goes double for The Witness. The 2deep4u audio logs, the secret ending, it all has such a pervasive sense of smugness, it's unbearable. The puzzles themselves are mostly fine, and I think the idea of having additional puzzles hidden in the environment outside of the standard "Look, here's a group of puzzles to solve" layout is a good choice. But shit like having you sit through an hour of an actual university lecture just for a couple seconds to click on a moon and drag a line for a puzzle is absurd. The Witness is the only game I can actually remember yawning while playing because it was just so dull. Johnathan might not be on Phil Fish or YIIK level, but proudly posting his catheter piss bottle is pretty close.
I've meant to go and play The Looker, since it seems to be taking the piss out of the game, but haven't gotten around to it.

 

[Next Task]

The easy answer is pretty much every game @Jaimas has covered.

But there's also a bunch of games by someone called VasantJ. I think they're made in RPGMaker, they're a series of interlinked games with irritating, 'wacky' humour, and you solve crimes, have to win arguments, and they were never very good but got increasingly pretentious as the creator got themselves more and more sycophants. They've usually got Medieval in the title and start to think they're saying profound things about good and evil when they're shitty sprite games with a terrible sense of humour.

 

[Meat Target]

so I'll just say Far Cry 5 sucks and I wanna kill the writer for wasting my time.

Shut your whore mouth, sinner. "Keep Your Rifle By Your Side" trumps any flaws it may have.

Nor did I get any fart-huffing vibes from it. It left me wanting more redneck wars. My biggest complaint with FC5 is that the Resistance points forced the story to progress too quickly, and that you can't go half a mile in any direction without getting in a drive-by with Peggies.