anyway recently i have played several games that have raelly thought-provoking, well-designed and visually striking concepts or themes going on
and they have all caught the night train to cliche city around the midpoint
for instance binary domain/syndicate/deus ex
these games address similar issues in REALLY HACKNEYED WAYS, but they each have distinct styles and interesting ideas, and start off more or less well (dehr obviously being the worst off here)
and then around halfway they get on the fast train to transcentral with ridiculously hackneyed and uninteresting shit
basically if you near-future dystopia ends with you going up a big corporate tower to Stop the Badness, IT SUCKS DO NOT MAKE IT
in binary domain all the interesting shit about the nature of self and indistinguishable distinctions is thrown away for endless linear corridors and simplistic morality
in dehr the social stratification and ethical issues are thrown under a train in favour of near motivationless superstructural torture
in syndicate the consumerism becomes increasingly clunky after we go to the genre-essential 'poor zone' and we go up endless elevators to stop the madman from whatever
and this isn'y limited to scifi either; kingdoms of amalur has a pretty meta exploration of being a player character in a deterministic world and how this makes you basically unstoppable and throws it away for KILL THE DEVIL NAOW
its like after the opening areas everyone loses track of their themes and just goes to typical cliches
rich zone of corporateness? MUST CLUMSILY CONTRAST WITH OUTRAGEOUS GHETTOS THAT EXIST FOR ALMOST NO REASON
issue threatening to change something about society/the world/mankind? LUCKILY THEY BUILT A KILL ALL DALEKS BUTTON IN HERE
woman? BETTER DO WHAT SHE SAYS, BE REQUIRED TO SAVE HER, AND FOLLOW HER INSTRUCTIONS FROM A TO B
i am tempted to say much of this is like the tv show seaon thing
plot gotta be 'finsihed' or have an 'end' by the end of the game
so even if you start off being all thematic and talking about issues and confronting people with ideas, in the end there has to be a straight line to 'you won lol' with as many dumbass setpieces to show off <whatever> game feature
i mean the social commentary in every science fiction game of the last few years is inferior to fucking blade runner and that's just sad
anyway i want ot hear other people's thoughts about narrative quality over a games life or games that throw away their ideas to follow single player conventions
especially since i'll porbably nver play another game again, lol
