: Or, if I should paraphrase Mr. Shigesato Itoi, writing like a newspaper can
: pay off even better: it's not so much about what's written, but where it's
: placed. Marathon, and PiD in particular, are exceptional at this. PiD even
: goes beyond 'writing like a book' or 'newspaper' to 'writing like a video
: game.' See Lion O Cyborg's latest writeup for an illustration of what I
: mean, but the short of it is: You grabbed some items in the middle of the
: game that seems not just useless, but detrimental. A cloak that speeds
: up time around you, and a poison vial (or rather, two, but you learned
: from experience not to drink that stuff again). Deep down in the belly of
: the beast that is this series of torturous dungeon floors is a room that
: shuts you in. There's even a cheeky "uh oh" in the message box.
: A dead man here tells you he suffocated with two hours of air and the
: doors opened at the third hour. Also, one of his buddies got bit by a
: venomous snake. Hmmm...
: After solving that trap, you talk to some dead dudes that say everyone got
: bodied by green oozes down the narrow corridor and eaten for lunch, except
: the guy with the snake bite, who they ignored. Hey, is there any good
: reason to put two of a consumable item in a game that hurts the
: player?
: Video game writing. It's all about doing stuff in this interactive medium.
: Taking the yellow crystal out of the PiD demo was the stupidest idea
: bungie ever had (please don't take that literally and show me crap from
: Destiny that's even dumber).
: Then there's the emotional breakdown you can have shooting grenades into
: Durandal's brain... a modern game would put in a $hi77y cutscene showing
: the character do that and go through the emotional trauma, because it just
: demands cinematics that are so hi-def it could only go in a
: non-interactive, pre-rendered cutscene to show off the state-of-the-art
: specs of the hardware before it gets dated in 3 years... *ka-sigh*
I really agree with you 100% here. Those examples you just gave are actually really, really good. So good, in fact, that they make me wonder if we should send them in an email to Extra Credits, or maybe Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit, see if we can spread the message around – I think modern video game makers really could learn a lot from Marathon and PiD, if only they were open to it.
Vale,
Perseus
