Comments on Hit Self-Destruct: A Shark In The Sewer

I always wondered about Gordon Freeman during H...

2009-03-19T05:48:00.000+13:00
I always wondered about Gordon Freeman during Half-Life 2, doesn't he ever need a toiletbreak?

But then I thought the HEV Suit must be much more remarkable than I had ever imagined before.

I definitely agree with both you guys. To clarify,...

2009-03-17T19:51:00.000+13:00
I definitely agree with both you guys. To clarify, this isn't my take on "what's holding video games back"; as Joe says, it's an observation. I would point out though that the better action movies, even if they don't have their protagonists cry in the shower, do a decent job at demonstrating the physical toll on their heroes. Die Hard for instance.

What Joe says about Final Fantasy 6 is really interesting, it makes me wish that everything else about Final Fantasy appealed to me at all.

Haha, I love that "rest a bit" angle. Few games ev...

2009-03-17T08:24:00.000+13:00
Haha, I love that "rest a bit" angle. Few games ever take a break from the action, and certainly none say "No, no, don't go and do that, we'll cover it".

A few do take breaks - Joe mentioned some RPG's, most RPG's allow you to rest and relax in some way at some point (possibly doing quests still, but at least not gory ones). Half-Life 2 has a nice break mid-way through, although it is a bit too short.

Then again, the whole point is to have the most fun I guess, if someone said "no, you can't do that, go and rest", you just couldn't do that - you want to gun down things, or see the ending, and by dammit, that bit you've been told not to go do is likely to be the most fun (or most disasterous for the NPC's who do go) part of the game!

Tough to do in anything linear, certainly.

This is a nice observation. There's one concern I...

2009-03-17T01:22:00.000+13:00
This is a nice observation. There's one concern I have, though -- action movie heroes are often the same way, right? If you have only 90 minutes, you can't take time for real introspection and catharsis (besides the occasional "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" modulo a few exclamation points).

Not every game falls into this trap, however -- in Final Fantasy 6, your party is basically all war-weary and shell-shocked after a major event a bit after the midway point of the story, and you need to go find them in the world and convince them to fight again. In fact, your character might even attempt suicide at one point. In FInal Fantasy 7, you lose control of the protagonist for some time to his internal psychological conflict.

Back in the West, Eternal Darkness had mechanics to reflect the madness that each character would develop by fighting the Lovecraftian horrors of the world. On top of that, each character was only playable for a short time, as they met grisly deaths, broke down in madness, or, rarely, escaped from their terrible situation to live out their natural lives.

Then again, the fact that I had to think pretty hard for examples shows how dominated our form is by mindless action flicks. I, for one, would really like to see some more vulnerable protagonists who aren't just foils to stoics whose fight-or-flight choice is impaired.