Interactive Narrative
Blog: 4
Week: 5
Game: The Wolf Among Us
Q: Do the choices you make in the game contribute to the sense of meaningful interactive moments?
'The Wolf Among Us' Provides the player with the interactivity style common to the telltale games. But how do the choices the player makes contribute to this interactivity. I though that because this game doesn't actually have the sort of interactivity from games with a lot of player control, but of sorts the choices the player makes still effects the interactive moments.
A later choice in the first chapter of the game is where you go first. Do you go to Mr Toad's apartment or Lawrence's apartment? If you choose Mr Toad's, Lawrence will die but if you choose Lawrence's you are given the opportunity to save him. This contributes to any interactive moment afterwards because as a player you feel these things are now happening because of the choice you just made. From 'Storyplaying' (Sebastian Domsch, 2013), "Choice situations can be either a-temporal or have a temporal dimension, which means that there might be a limited amount of time during which the options are available, or that - after a finite amount of time - not making any choices will produce an outcome that is different from the choice situation and that therefore constitutes a choice in itself." This passage is relevant to your choice if you select Lawrence's apartment. Because as you hide in the closet from the burglar you are given the option to charge out and save Lawrence or do nothing. If you do nothing the option available disappears and it is as if you have a made a choice. This also applies to the many combat scenes you encounter throughout the game. Choices appear on the screen but if you choose to do nothing the scene continues on in a different way compared to if you had chosen the option on screen.
Basically the options you see on screen from the dialogue, to the combat, and to the general run out of the closet choices, it feels like meaningful interactivity because of what the player can assume will happen from each choice. If the player can get a rough image in their minds of what will happen if they chose this or that it makes the interactivity meaningful.
Friday, 25 March 2016
Wednesday, 23 March 2016
24/03/16- Modelling left arm_X-22
Friday, 18 March 2016
18/03/16-week3Blog
Game:The Banner Saga
Blog: 3
Q3: How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?
Morality is an interesting part of games. As a person who games on a daily basis I have come across choices that bring my morality into play. Why I find morality interesting in games is because I know where I stand on the spectrum of moral choices and what I would choose in reality, so when I play games I often find myself actively doing the opposite of what I would actually do. In The Bana Saga I feel that the 2d environments and simple gameplay are not immersive enough for me, so I constantly feel detached from the game and thus am certain to do unrealistic decisions. An example from the game is during a journey from one city to another and a drunkard jeopardized the caravan and so as the leader I was given a few choices; beat the man, Ban him from alcohol, separate him from everyone else or banish him. I know morally banning him from alcohol is the right thing to do because he stays safe and so does the caravan but I banish him knowing that he will surely die in the frozen tundras. Perhaps if the game was 3d or on an oculus I may feel enough for he characters that I make decisions I would make in real life but that's not The Bane Saga. A passage (from 'Ethical dilemmas and dominant moral strategies in games' by Brandon Perdue) I really felt fit with the example above was "The idea of a moral choice often runs directly counter to the tendency of many players to make the optimal moves in the game." Basically the situation with the drunkard was I could take the strategic path and toss him meaning he could no longer cause future problems for the camp which may or may not have been very bad, or only slightly punishing him keeping my conscience clean but having that decision later on being bad for everyone else. Basically strategic decisions conflict with moral decisions and it's up to the player if they want the game to be easier or harder depending on what choice they make.
So I think morality can influence the players decisions but if the game is not immersive enough the player will often be detached enough to influence his own decision making even if it goes against his/her own moral standards.
Blog: 3
Q3: How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?
Morality is an interesting part of games. As a person who games on a daily basis I have come across choices that bring my morality into play. Why I find morality interesting in games is because I know where I stand on the spectrum of moral choices and what I would choose in reality, so when I play games I often find myself actively doing the opposite of what I would actually do. In The Bana Saga I feel that the 2d environments and simple gameplay are not immersive enough for me, so I constantly feel detached from the game and thus am certain to do unrealistic decisions. An example from the game is during a journey from one city to another and a drunkard jeopardized the caravan and so as the leader I was given a few choices; beat the man, Ban him from alcohol, separate him from everyone else or banish him. I know morally banning him from alcohol is the right thing to do because he stays safe and so does the caravan but I banish him knowing that he will surely die in the frozen tundras. Perhaps if the game was 3d or on an oculus I may feel enough for he characters that I make decisions I would make in real life but that's not The Bane Saga. A passage (from 'Ethical dilemmas and dominant moral strategies in games' by Brandon Perdue) I really felt fit with the example above was "The idea of a moral choice often runs directly counter to the tendency of many players to make the optimal moves in the game." Basically the situation with the drunkard was I could take the strategic path and toss him meaning he could no longer cause future problems for the camp which may or may not have been very bad, or only slightly punishing him keeping my conscience clean but having that decision later on being bad for everyone else. Basically strategic decisions conflict with moral decisions and it's up to the player if they want the game to be easier or harder depending on what choice they make.
So I think morality can influence the players decisions but if the game is not immersive enough the player will often be detached enough to influence his own decision making even if it goes against his/her own moral standards.
Thursday, 17 March 2016
18/03/16-Today
Today I spent my time by helping Jacob with the timing of the animatic and I also recorded sounds and received sourced sounds from https://www.freesound.org/ to apply to the finished animatic.
Wednesday, 16 March 2016
17/03/16- Dialogue
From out last meeting one of the things we discussed was the dialogue. I started to brainstorm some ideas but the one that stuck out for me was
"Revolutions are a fight between the future and the past. We are the Future! And we intend to clean out the past."
This was for the first part where the Synth overlord is on the laptop screen talking to the man. I figured that the Humans represent the past because they have at this stage had their chance to rule over earth, but fail at this and the Synths take it upon themselves as the representation of the future to clean the wrong doings of the Humans. Very much like in real life how we constantly screw things up and hey we only have one planet, but we don't do a very good job of looking after it.
Later on when we see the synth assassin come in the overlord from the T.V said
"You call us Synths, but we are so much more!"
While I was trying to figure out what he says, I had to find out what these lifeforms were called I juggled a few options such as, Golems, Automatons, Sentinels and Androids to name a few. However I felt Synths worked the best because the word embodies this idea of Techno organic forms very well.
Later on when the man opens his eyes and they appear red and mechanical I thought instead of " we will be slaves no longer!" simply repeating "We are the Future!" from the overlord is a confirmation that he is now one of them.
"Revolutions are a fight between the future and the past. We are the Future! And we intend to clean out the past."
This was for the first part where the Synth overlord is on the laptop screen talking to the man. I figured that the Humans represent the past because they have at this stage had their chance to rule over earth, but fail at this and the Synths take it upon themselves as the representation of the future to clean the wrong doings of the Humans. Very much like in real life how we constantly screw things up and hey we only have one planet, but we don't do a very good job of looking after it.
Later on when we see the synth assassin come in the overlord from the T.V said
"You call us Synths, but we are so much more!"
While I was trying to figure out what he says, I had to find out what these lifeforms were called I juggled a few options such as, Golems, Automatons, Sentinels and Androids to name a few. However I felt Synths worked the best because the word embodies this idea of Techno organic forms very well.
Later on when the man opens his eyes and they appear red and mechanical I thought instead of " we will be slaves no longer!" simply repeating "We are the Future!" from the overlord is a confirmation that he is now one of them.
17/03/16-Character Profile X-22
Monday, 14 March 2016
Storyboard-15/03/2016
Here is a final storyboard that I just completed. This was a collaboration between Gabe and myself over the last week. It is still open to change at this stage.
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