S
Soliloquy
Well, in a way, Ebert has a point.
Video Games as Art (i.e. Screw you Mr. Ebert)
- Thread starter Raemon777
- Start date
- Status
figmentPez
Staff member
Film and literature are not the only forms of art. Just because these two classic mediums are limited in their nature, not easily allowing for audience choices, does not mean that such a state should be the ideal for all art. Music can be like what Ebert considers "serious" film and literature, where it is presented to the audience in a fixed form, or it can be improvised, suited to the moment, made with the audience and yet remain art. Ebert's narrow definition of art cuts out much more than just video games. By arbitrarily ruling out anything with a goal or score, and anything that is not in a fixed form free of audience input, it rules out jazz and other forms of improvisational music, many forms of dancing (including most native/tribal rituals), figure skating, some styles of improv and stand-up comedy and a lot more. I don't care if he actually thinks of any of these as art, he's wrong. His prejudice is fairly clear later in the response where that quote came from:
"the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers... for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic. "
Video games, as a medium, are maybe 40 years old. How many films produced before 1930 were comparable to the great works of the stage that came before? I wonder how many critics said that movies would never match stage productions because the pre-recorded actors could never play to the audience, or hold their next line to wait for laughter to subside.
Furthermore, how does Eberts reasoning behind his criticism of video games match his conclusion? Why is jazz less of an art because it is not composed? Why is a bedtime story precluded from being art, simply because it is read aloud in a silly voice to suit the whims of a child? Why is the native dance of many cultures less of an art because it is done to the rhythm of the audience?
I reject Eberts elitist view of art, and his ignorant view of video games. Grim Fandango is worthy, in my opinion, of being put alongside the great works of film history, and it came out a dozen years ago. I certainly got more out of that game than I did out of watching "Shakespeare in Love", which Ebert named one of his top movies of 1998, the year Grim Fandago came out. I can barely remember a thing about the movie, but I remember the game, and the time I spent playing it with my sisters, very well. I've replayed the game, but have little desire to see the movie again. Grim Fandango is a work of art, and there are many other games that deserve recognition as such. Furthermore, in the coming decades I expect video games to progress beyond what they are now, just as films progressed beyond the black & white era. Compare a Marx Brothers comedy to something more modern. Many of the elements from the Marx Brothers are still around (some of the jokes, even) but movies have progressed a very long way as well, both technically and artistically. Games will continue to progress as well, if they're allowed to, and given the credit and recognition they deserve.
Everything I would want to say in support of games as art, I think figmentPez said well enough. I do wish to talk a bit about how I see Ebert and his point of view in this, not because I totally agree with it, but because I can understand where he is coming from.
Most art, at least the paintings and movies we consider "Art", are often about taking a second to look and reflect on what you are seeing, but games by nature being interactive are more about "doing" rather then seeing. When one plays a game, one is often not looking at the art and allowing it to effect them the whole time they watch, because they are trying to figure out how to solve the puzzle, or kill the bad guy, or jump the platform. Many bring up games like "Braid" which is a very emotional game, but forget that during a large chunk of it, you are not reflecting on the artistic narrative, but how to get that darn key sitting behind that wall so you can progress after jumping around for 30 minutes. It is not till the middle of the missions, or once you reach the end, that the real effects of it all start to hit you hard, the artistic quality of the narrative.
To give an idea, imagine the Mona Lisa, but at the bottom of the frame you have a bunch of buttons. Hitting the buttons causes a ball to drop that slowly reveals the art if you get them to land in the proper slots. Now, the Mona Lisa itself is still art, but those unwilling to work to see the art will claim it is not art, but only a blank canvas, because they can't simple walk up and reflect on it without effort to see what is behind that blank canvas.
This is where I disagree with Ebert. Games CAN be "Art", but they take more time to setup and reveal then paintings or movies, which means they don't work well for critics that are unwilling to play them to the climax. If Ebert took a second to play through all of Braid, he might find that it would give him more of an emotional impact then some movies, just because he earned that final reveal rather then allowed it to simply play out in front of him.
The issue is he does not have the patience to reach that point, he wants to walk into the gallery or the theater and watch, not interact, and thus he will never take the time to give games a fair chance. It is this reason I can never take him seriously when he talks about games, as smart of a man he is. http://www.halforums.com/forum/../member.php?451-figmentPez
Most art, at least the paintings and movies we consider "Art", are often about taking a second to look and reflect on what you are seeing, but games by nature being interactive are more about "doing" rather then seeing. When one plays a game, one is often not looking at the art and allowing it to effect them the whole time they watch, because they are trying to figure out how to solve the puzzle, or kill the bad guy, or jump the platform. Many bring up games like "Braid" which is a very emotional game, but forget that during a large chunk of it, you are not reflecting on the artistic narrative, but how to get that darn key sitting behind that wall so you can progress after jumping around for 30 minutes. It is not till the middle of the missions, or once you reach the end, that the real effects of it all start to hit you hard, the artistic quality of the narrative.
To give an idea, imagine the Mona Lisa, but at the bottom of the frame you have a bunch of buttons. Hitting the buttons causes a ball to drop that slowly reveals the art if you get them to land in the proper slots. Now, the Mona Lisa itself is still art, but those unwilling to work to see the art will claim it is not art, but only a blank canvas, because they can't simple walk up and reflect on it without effort to see what is behind that blank canvas.
This is where I disagree with Ebert. Games CAN be "Art", but they take more time to setup and reveal then paintings or movies, which means they don't work well for critics that are unwilling to play them to the climax. If Ebert took a second to play through all of Braid, he might find that it would give him more of an emotional impact then some movies, just because he earned that final reveal rather then allowed it to simply play out in front of him.
The issue is he does not have the patience to reach that point, he wants to walk into the gallery or the theater and watch, not interact, and thus he will never take the time to give games a fair chance. It is this reason I can never take him seriously when he talks about games, as smart of a man he is. http://www.halforums.com/forum/../member.php?451-figmentPez
My view on this is that Ebert is obviously biased. He's a movie critic and as such has invested his life in that particular art form. As a result, he will obviously want to keep that art form going as he sees tremendous value in it. He may also see video games as detracting from movies. The people who would normally be writing, acting, designing, etc. for movies are doing so for video games instead and that potentially weakens the medium. Also, people who would normally be spending money to go see movies are instead spending that money on games. Again, weakening the medium.
Plus, he's an old guy and doesn't "get" video games. I'll listen to him when he talks about movies as he obviously has superior training and insight, but when it comes to games, he has no basis to judge them. If he is not willing to give one a try or at least sit by and watch someone else play so that he can judge the story, I have no interest in what he says on the matter. He is not the final arbiter of art, we all are. We decide what is worthy of praise. He can have his opinions and rile up whomever he wants with them, but in the end, I don't really care.
Plus, he's an old guy and doesn't "get" video games. I'll listen to him when he talks about movies as he obviously has superior training and insight, but when it comes to games, he has no basis to judge them. If he is not willing to give one a try or at least sit by and watch someone else play so that he can judge the story, I have no interest in what he says on the matter. He is not the final arbiter of art, we all are. We decide what is worthy of praise. He can have his opinions and rile up whomever he wants with them, but in the end, I don't really care.
figmentPez
Staff member
Braid was a tough challenge, even for a platforming veteran. I'd be more inclined to point him towards HL2: Episode 2 with commentary turned on, or maybe an edited version of someone else playing through. I wonder if Ebert has ever talked with game creators. In the commentary for HL2:E2 Valve talks about when to take control away from the player for the most effect in cinematic sequences. They talk about how to get the player to look where they want. How to evoke emotion and make the player involved with the game world. It's really some great insight into how games are made, and why all the reasons that Ebert thinks games can't be art, are just difficulties to be overcome and opportunities to create a new form of art in a new medium.
And in many other cases, the gameplay is just an excuse to showcase the pretty art.
S
Steven Soderburgin
Ebert is wrong, it's a stupid discussion, there is no way he will be convinced because he's not actually interested in honestly examining games. Being a great critic and thinker on film does not mean he understands or wants to understand video games, and it's pretty clear that he does not. He's essentially trolling.
S
Soliloquy
I still think my video was funny :humph:.
Which is why is so much harder to make it work (and i was referring mostly to making it player friendly, which can lead to sacrificing immersion etc.).
YOU GO TO HELL, YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE!!!!!
Warcraft is the RTS, heretic.
I'd be right there with you (WarCraft II was one of my defining childhood games and I still have the opening paragraphs of the orcish racial history memorized) except that WarCraft III was such a disappointment to me that I just can't bring myself to care anymore. Playing/reading through WarCraft III, at the end I was like "seriously? was the writing that bad in WarCraft II and I didn't notice because I was like 10? And then I reread WarCraft II and nope, it really was that awesome and WarCraft III really was that bad).
I have to disagree. WarCraft 2 was nothing but narrations and a few little paragraphs in the manual. WarCraft 3 was what really defined the game and allowed it to grow into a world worthy of becoming an MMO. I love WC2, but it was not that great when it came to the story, because it didn't really have a story, only backstory.
WarCraft III TRIED to do a lot of good things, and did a decent enough job at most of them to set a good stage for WoW. But as @Li3n points out... it was mostly a lamer remake of StarCraft. And yeah, I consider that a pretty bad thing. WarCraft II had an awesomely written backstory and a decent (although I admit not spectacular) mission briefings. StarCraft also had an awesomely written backstory, as well as a well written and well voice acted plot with pretty decent depth. Beyond the Dark Portal and Brood War both improved or at least maintained the quality of their predecessors. (I will note that StarCraft is probably the better comparison in terms of actual acting/writing in game. But WarCraft II did have a very good manual that laid out an interesting backstory, with humanized villains).
After that constant improvement, WarCraft III comes along, with years and years of buildup, an amazing teaser trailer, and all kinds of ideas that SHOULD have been awesome. And instead we get a bunch of lame, poorly acted characters reinacting a plot we had seen before. WarCraft III was my first major experience with overhype. I was so excited for that game, and it was just plain mediocre.
If Arthas had been a minor side character he could be excused for being a lame, emo version of Kerrigan/Anakin-Skywalker (War3 happened to come out about the same time as Attack of the Clones, and I was amused at the extent to which Arthas/Uther and Anakin/Obi-wan parallel each other). But he was the main focus of the story for half the game. I wanted to like Thrall, but he just never carried the weight that his character was supposed to, and the "orcs and human uniting, setting aside their hatreds" thing is barely dealt with at all until the last few missions. (And Thrall's penultimate climax-line being "You're no Oracle... you're the Prophet!" pretty much seals the deal. Grom's final moments, while good, barely begin to redeem that).
And Furion and Tyrande were just... blah.
There definitely was potential for something awesome there, and some moments in the game touched upon it. The one Arthas line I thought was really spectacular was when he says to Illidan "Are you certain of that, Demon Hunter? Are you certain your will is your own?" They could have went down that route to showcase a truly conflicted character, self-aware that he is on the path towards evil but unable to stop it. It's that potential that allows things like Grom's death scene and Arthas' burdened trudge towards the Frozen Throne to feel meaningful, but the game didn't really earn them at all.
The books "The Last Guardian" and "Lord of the Clans" gave a lot of the characters and storyline a lot of depth retroactively, but I wish it had been conveyed better in the actual game.
After that constant improvement, WarCraft III comes along, with years and years of buildup, an amazing teaser trailer, and all kinds of ideas that SHOULD have been awesome. And instead we get a bunch of lame, poorly acted characters reinacting a plot we had seen before. WarCraft III was my first major experience with overhype. I was so excited for that game, and it was just plain mediocre.
If Arthas had been a minor side character he could be excused for being a lame, emo version of Kerrigan/Anakin-Skywalker (War3 happened to come out about the same time as Attack of the Clones, and I was amused at the extent to which Arthas/Uther and Anakin/Obi-wan parallel each other). But he was the main focus of the story for half the game. I wanted to like Thrall, but he just never carried the weight that his character was supposed to, and the "orcs and human uniting, setting aside their hatreds" thing is barely dealt with at all until the last few missions. (And Thrall's penultimate climax-line being "You're no Oracle... you're the Prophet!" pretty much seals the deal. Grom's final moments, while good, barely begin to redeem that).
And Furion and Tyrande were just... blah.
There definitely was potential for something awesome there, and some moments in the game touched upon it. The one Arthas line I thought was really spectacular was when he says to Illidan "Are you certain of that, Demon Hunter? Are you certain your will is your own?" They could have went down that route to showcase a truly conflicted character, self-aware that he is on the path towards evil but unable to stop it. It's that potential that allows things like Grom's death scene and Arthas' burdened trudge towards the Frozen Throne to feel meaningful, but the game didn't really earn them at all.
The books "The Last Guardian" and "Lord of the Clans" gave a lot of the characters and storyline a lot of depth retroactively, but I wish it had been conveyed better in the actual game.
Necronic
Staff member
nah that was fucking hilarious. I generally read the forums when at work, and flash is disabled. I wish I had seen that quote from him at the beginning, because it invalidates his entire argument:
1) Movies and Literature are art
2) Movies and Literature are not interactive
3) Video Games are interactive
therefore
4) Video games are not art.
someone with only a cursory understanding of logic can tell you what's wrong with that argument.
Edit: Also, I can't stand how much people butcher the definition of Art. Here is what art is -
Art is what happens when someone masters the existing fundamental principles of a subject and begins to explore/create new ones.
All this "art is the imitation of nature" conceipts are a misunderstanding of this concept. Really what should be said is "art is the expression and definition of nature" where the term nature means the fundamental essence of something. Its very hard to put this into words, but if you have ever studied Taoism that is what is meant by nature.
The women he references said that Chess and Micheal Jordan aren't examples of art/artists, which is so completely and disturbingly incorrect.
I still don't agree. While I do agree that WC3 was not the penultimate in storytelling, the characters themselves were larger, more meaningful, then pretty much all the characters in WC2 minus the few that actually carried over and got the spotlight (Grom, for instance). Thrall, while you believe he never carried the weight he was suppoed to, has become a stable of the fanbase, so much more then most other characters. Most of us are actually disappointed that WoW made his character morally weak, even though his loss of influence may make a better character trait for the storyline as a whole (he was often called a Gary Stu). Arthas, as much as he was a rehash of the "hero falls to evil" story, still has a rather large fanbase, much more then can be said for people like Teron Gorefiend, or even Anduin Lothar.
I have been a "Loremaster" of WarCraft for a long time now, and you can find me frequenting all the message boards and discussing future lore with my fellows. More then anything I disagree with the idea that WC3 has a "weaker" story then WC2, because WC2 didn't really HAVE a story to compare with. Yes it has some well written back story, all the manuals have that, the WC3 manual included with it's long detailed history of every playable race. Yes it did have a sort of narrative based on the faction you played, but never a cohesive storyline between the two, and it was all spoken passively to you, rather then really making you feel a part of it. Do you really think the battle for Zul'dare, where some orc says "we want this island for the Warchief!" was better then Thrall breaking Grom out of prison? Do you really think going to a circle and a little elf popping out saying little quotes before you stick her in the corner was better then the destruction of the Elfgates and the torture of Sylvanas? I just find that hard to swallow. Grom's death, for instance, still holds way more emotional impact then the deaths of characters like Anduin Lothar, who pretty much just got punched in the face by an Ogre and the narration said "Lothar is dead, go kill those assholes."
It's not that I think WarCraft III has a "weaker story" than WarCraft 2. You are correct that in WarCraft 2, the "story" only barely existed. But when you compare the parts that did exist (i.e. the backstory), there is WarCraft 3, which has a "backstory" in the manual which listed a bunch of events in chronological order that told you what had happened before. And you have WarCraft 2, which had very personal accounts by Gul'Dan and Aegwynn that showed not only what had happened but who it had happened to and why we should care. One of the things that impresses me to this day is the extent to which I empathize with Gul'Dan when I'm reading his account of Horde history. As a fellow person who cares deeply about learning how things work and how to manipulate them (i.e. a nerd) I can see exactly why he would have such disdain for his simple, bloodthirsty people, to the point where he'd sacrifice entire nations for a chance to explore the infinite reaches of the cosmos. I'd like to think I'm a better person than him, but the fact is if I were raised in his circumstances there's a good chance I'd have turned out just like him. Whereas Arthas... is what exactly? Just angry because he's young and brash and brash young people are angry and stupid?
As far as actual presentation of the game, obviously there is no comparison. But you know what a good comparison is? StarCraft. And StarCraft had a great plot, a great execution of that plot, great characters who were not only interesting in concept but were actually fun to talk to and who I was actually sad for when they died or were betrayed. That was my benchmark for WarCraft III, and WarCraft III failed.
Grom had a great death scene, but that was the first and only time in the entire game when I cared about him in the slightest. The rest of the time I was like "why is this asshole who's chopping down all the trees and is clearly doing all the wrong things essentially our POV character?" - "Why is Medivh giving everyone random cryptic warnings that no sane person would ever listen to instead of actually explaining what is about to happen and why you would ever want to travel west and oh by the way DEMONS are about the WRECK you and they are actually RESPONSIBLE for the plague you're all so worried about." - "Why is our POV character for the humans an emo punk? Why is our POV character for the undead STILL an emo punk?"
That's the biggest issue with WarCraft III, that lack of good POV characters. Thrall and Jaina are the only solid characters you have to root for, and they are so rarely present that they barely count.
As far as actual presentation of the game, obviously there is no comparison. But you know what a good comparison is? StarCraft. And StarCraft had a great plot, a great execution of that plot, great characters who were not only interesting in concept but were actually fun to talk to and who I was actually sad for when they died or were betrayed. That was my benchmark for WarCraft III, and WarCraft III failed.
Grom had a great death scene, but that was the first and only time in the entire game when I cared about him in the slightest. The rest of the time I was like "why is this asshole who's chopping down all the trees and is clearly doing all the wrong things essentially our POV character?" - "Why is Medivh giving everyone random cryptic warnings that no sane person would ever listen to instead of actually explaining what is about to happen and why you would ever want to travel west and oh by the way DEMONS are about the WRECK you and they are actually RESPONSIBLE for the plague you're all so worried about." - "Why is our POV character for the humans an emo punk? Why is our POV character for the undead STILL an emo punk?"
That's the biggest issue with WarCraft III, that lack of good POV characters. Thrall and Jaina are the only solid characters you have to root for, and they are so rarely present that they barely count.
Then why the heck did they retcon half of WC3's backstory when WoW came out?!
Both of those came out before WC3... Lord of teh Clans was even supposed to be an adventure game originally...
IMO i tihnk they wanted him to be one of those guys that must have things their way or not at all... which are just as annoying as him IRL.
Oh, huh. Forgot about that. I guess they were probably among the things that got me excited for WarCraft III. But it's largely irrelevant, because there still was no depth present in the actual game.
Yeah that was pretty much it. There's nothing wrong with that as a CHARACTER, but there is a lot wrong with it as a protagonist we are supposed to be identifying with for half the game.
Sure, but you where overstating the problem by saying they felt like they should fix it... instead i tihnk they just assumed you already read the books.
The problem is that such characters get boring fast... if i can't take that shit from a guy i know since kindergarten i certainly don't want it from a POV character in a game.
Well, a) they shouldn't make that assumption, b) I HAD read the books (apparently beforehand... I know I read them as they came out), and they still didn't make the game any better.
What made WarCraft really great, originally, for me, was that that they took basic, archetypical ideas and fleshed them out really well. Gul'Dan is technically your generic evil mastermind, but his memoir made him a really interesting, believable character to me. The parts of WarCraft that ARE done well are still successful at this, but I agree that large chunks of WoW consist of "let's grab some random cultural idea (Cthulhu, Norse Mythology, etc) slap some tweaked names on it, add a mediocre backstory and call it a day. That's partly because WoW is a huge world that they need to continuously fill up with stuff to keep people playing. WarCraft III had a fairly concise plot that I think had the potential to be truly great art if they had just worked harder at the script.
I will not argue that StarCraft had a better story because I agree with it. I never argued that WarCraft 3 had a better story then StarCraft, I was arguing the claim that WarCraft 2 had a better story then WarCraft 3, which I find a little silly because there was not much of a story to compare. WarCraft 3 had it's good points and it's bad points, but at least it had characters that meant something, where we saw why they meant something rather then being told why they meant something.
I am trying to understand what you are saying. I may have to read it again and actually try to keep out my knowledge of Gul'dan, try to act like that is the first time I read him, but he was not someone just curious for the cosmos. He was the one that more then anyone used his people for his own goals. He was the one that corrupted them, he was the one that brought the warlocks, and the one that stopped the only chance to reverse the change. It was never about curiosity, it was about power.
I think the issue is you are trying to look at the PoV of the characters in the first place. The game itself was trying to simply tell a story as it happened, you were not supposed to empathize with Arthas as a hero, you were simply supposed to watch him go down his path to ruin, and then help me realize that path to push the story forward. Not every game is about empathizing, even WC2 you never really empathized with the orcs, and in StarCraft you never really empethized with the Zerg, at least I never did. It was just a silly fantasy story, and you watch it unfold.
You may have to point out that "half" that was retconned, as I don't really see it. Yes, some of the events as they happened, changed a bit, but not to the extent you are claiming. Really, the only game that has been totally discarded was WC1, with WC2 being retconned slightly in certain areas, like the assassination of Lothar. Otherwise the game gave us our heroes, the majority of our villains, the creeps we fight, etc... Without it, WoW would not have worked as well as it did.
This wasn't actually a claim that I made. I said WarCraft 3 was disappointing, and I said WarCraft 2 had a better backstory. I realize it may have been a bit confusing and I apologize for that. The point I tried to make in my second post was that I was expecting something at least as good as what had come before (which included StarCraft) and that WarCraft III was disappointing because of it.
It was definitely about both, and what I think made it particularly interesting was that he sort of saw knowledge and power as the same thing. He does talk more about power than he does knowledge, but when does in the context of the power to explore the universe. "I cared nothing for the Horde or its petty politics. I cared nothing for this world over which we had complete dominion. I cared only for the chance to fathom the mysteries of Great Dark Beyond." While he is fascinated by power in general, the majority of the power he attains is only a means to an end, and that end is for a kind of power that is synonymous with knowledge.
This may be a point we simply disagree on, but the reason WarCraft 2 appealed to me so much we because I empathized with Gul'Dan. No, he doesn't matter that much in the game itself. But the reason I bought the game in the first place was because I was reading the manual at a friend's house, and I loved his memoir. As for the zerg, what I particularly liked was how they made an effort to make these giant slug things into actual characters that made sense in the context of their alien biology. And then Kerrigan enters the picture, and while I actually do think she becomes a little boring after her zerg-ifi-cation, she still had been the victim of a lot of stuff and I was willing to root for her as she strives to reclaim power that she feels should have been hers all along, except that the Confederacy and Mengsk took it from her.
Do you NEED protagonists in an RTS game? Well, technically no. But it works a lot better if you have them. Stories matter more when they happen to people you care about.
One thing that definitely is an issue is that I simply didn't enjoy the gameplay of WarCraft III as much as I hoped I would. This isn't so much the game's fault - my tastes just happened to be changing at the time. However, this was combined with the game taking some steps backward in terms of graphics - the unit portraits were nowhere near as good as they were in StarCraft and the mouth animations sucked, which further ruined the appeal of the characters. The end result was that I had to wade through hours of gameplay I didn't care much about, hoping it would pay off in a storyline that I ultimately would appreciate in some way, but it never did.
In wc3 the Eredar corrupted Sargeras, not the other way around... and there was other stuff. But i guess some of it was in the expansions...
Fair enough. I personally thought WarCraft 3 was the much better game then WarCraft 2, both in storyline and gameplay, even though the storyline itself was not as good as StarCraft. I am a person that judges such things based on the series rather then the company, so I never really was dissapointed that WC3 was not as good as SC, because I was not thinking of it as SC2, I was thinking of it as WC3, and improvement, and a good one, over WC2.
There are other ways one can learn about the cosmos, the Draenei themselves having been one of the best to teach him, and at the time before the corruption they were friendly with the orcs. If he really hated his people, he could have probably lived with the Draenei directly, but that would not have given him the power he craved. Fact is you got it backwards. The knowledge he gained was a means to an end, that end being the kind that is synonymous with power and control. This is why he fought his way to become the apprentice to Ner'zhul, because Ner'zhul was respected and held great power over the orcs, a power that Gul'dan wanted to take from Ner'zhul the minute he saw the chance.
I could empathize with either of them if in the end they were doing something that can be considered "Good" for everyone, but Gul'Dan, as I explained above, was all about power and did whatever he could to take it. Kerrigan, on the other hand, could have been a great conflicted character if they actually showed her conflicting between her rebirth and her former humanity, but that didn't go past her reveal mission in which she lets Raynor go. After that, it's "Queen Bitch of the Universe" and you really can no longer empathize with her while people are being murdered and betrayed. Even the Overmind was easier to empathize with, since it was only doing what it's creators engineered it to do, Kerrigan just did it because she wanted control.
At the least this seems like it will change with Kerrigan in SC2.
That is fair, even though I disagree with the graphic claims. Not every game is going to appeal to us. I personally think WC3 was a much better game then WC2, and was on par with SC even though it was a different style of gameplay. That is just my opinion on it though.
So one line in the backstory, that was never played off in WC3 anyways, is "half" the game? Seems a bit much of a claim, don't you agree? Metzen already apologized for that blunder, even though he didn't have to since such information absolutely zero to do with the relevant gameplay. I even suggested a way he could fix the blunder with a single sentence if he really wanted, but it's such irrelevant information that why even worry about it?
I'm pretty sure i said "half the backstory"...
And what does WC3 gameplay even have to do with WoW gameplay?! And either of those with the story?!
Let's go back: you said the world they made in WC3 was a great starting point for WoW, to which i asked why then they changed stuff willy nilly (like how many Dreadlords are now no longer dead?! Or even Illidan for that matter).
I'm pretty sure they didn't create him to kill them...
Plus, Kerrigan lets Raynor live for no logical reason while still under the Overminds control, so there's still something there underneath all that "taking revenge on the universe for shitting on her all her life + zerg hormone induced levels of evil".
2D graphics at the time of SC1 where further along then 3D was at the time of WC3... they did a pretty good job with what they had, but it's so stylized that it doesn't feel as well made.
Oh I'm not remotely trying to justify Gul'Dan's behavior. He's a douchebag. But you're still judging this in terms of more recent (and very retconned) content. Everything we knew about the Draenei at the time was what Gul'Dan told us about them, and they're treated as some weak race barely worth a mention. There is no mention that Gul'Dan actively corrupted the orcs, but rather that he just took advantage of their natural bloodlust. He states that the final destruction of the Draenei came after "centuries of violence," and the Shadow Council's original job was to prevent the orcs from destroying themselves.
In context, Gul'Dan appeared to be a (relatively) sane, rational person in a world of bloodthirsty warmongers. Was he evil? Of course. But as a nerdy kid in a world of jocks, he also was in some ways the closest POV character I had in WarCraft at the time, and I could totally understand where he was coming from.
Really, I think you're still being influenced too much by more recent retcons. The original memoir makes it pretty clear that the power he ultimately wants had less to do with control over people and more to do with control over the universe itself. It definitely IS power he's after (he talks about it a lot) and he is fascinated enough by it in all its forms to enjoy manipulating the horde, but ultimately everything he does to the Horde, he does to reach the Tomb of Sargeras, with the intent to become a god. While I am pretty sure he would also have used his godlike power to openly subjugate the orcs (as a sort of petty payback for forcing him to work in secrecy), his original motivations were, as mentioned earlier, to "fathom the mysteries of the Great Dark" and to "stand unscathed within the dying hearts of burning suns."
Those motivations are things I totally get, even if I wouldn't be willing to, you know, launch a genocidal war in order to attain them. But the fact is that I ALSO really get his overall obsession with power too, in a purely academic, nerdy way. I would use it to help the world rather than harm it, but I am fascinated by the dynamics of how people's beliefs change and how those beliefs impact their actions. I love subverting things, manipulating something that was supposed to be for one purpose and turning into something else, and it's all the more fun if you can do it without people noticing. (I usually fail at the last part simply because I like having an audience, so I end up telling people what I'm doing before I actually finish doing it). My favorite characters (both heroes and villains, although it usually ends up being villains) are the manipulative masterminds. And if I had grown up in a world of bloodthirsty murderers (which is what we were led to believe the Horde was at the time) I'm not sure I'd have had much a conscience to encourage me to invoke said interest for the greater good.
I actually do agree with this. I was a little disappointed when she immediately said "I'm a zerg now, and I like what I am. Deal with it" within minutes of getting reborn. I cut her some slack because she HAD just been betrayed for the second time by humans, and Jim was pretty much the only human she had reason to care about (and she lets him go). But she gets progressively more boring and one-note-megalomaniacal as the game progresses. By contrast, I did appreciate that the Overmind felt it had a sacred mission to become perfect, and assimilating the Protoss was the way to do it. I'm hoping (but not optimistic) that in Heart of the Swarm we get some more good Zerg characters.
This, although it's really not an issue of being "stylized." Just bad. A cartoon can be stylized and still be smooth and beautiful. The WarCraft III portraits were just clunky and ugly. Even worse, the graphics settings for the portraits were the same as for the rest of the game, so if your computer couldn't handle higher res graphics for massive armies, you had to deal with REALLY crappy portraits.
Is there a particular source you have for this? I'm interested if we had any info on that.
I could give two figs what Ebert thinks. He'll be dead soon enough, and soon enough the only people left alive will be those who grew up with games as an art medium.
Necronic
Staff member
yeah, referring to warcraft's story as art only goes to reinforce arguments that gamers have no idea what art is. Not that the story isn't good, but its kind of like Disney, they take every archetype they can get their hands on and slap them together with as much duct tape and bubble gum as they can. It ends up being the crack cocaine version of the Fantasy Genre, but that's not what art is. Story simply is not where you are going to find art in a game, with rare exceptions like Portal or Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. For the most part video game stories are on the same level as expanded universe novels. Not to say I don't like them, the Horus Heresy series is awesome, but comparing it to Confederacy of Dunces, The Good Earth or....well any literature, is just putting on a giant "I read at a 4th grade level" sign, which sadly I think more gamers wear than they are willing to appreciate.
Now, there's nothing wrong with those stories. They're fun, and have a relatively low level of difficulty. I mean, Altered Carbon is a kick ass book. And I mean KICK ASS! But its not literature, its not art, just like 300 (with the exception of cinematography) or Taken or all the millions of other media out there that are exceptionally entertaining but fail to challenge the audience or become more than the sum of its parts.
I haven't read the whole Horus Heresy, but the first one (by Dan Abnett) I thought was very good. In particular the way it simultaneously accomplishes and subverts the Jesus story. At first I was expecting it to humanize Horus, and it ends up doing the opposite, which in the end I found rather refreshing. It showcases him as an epic, largely than life figure, that other humans could only barely relate to. When he cries out "My Emperor, why have you abandoned me!?" towards the end I was particularly moved and blurted "woah" out loud (I was frustratingly on a plane next to a pair of orthodox Jews and I wasn't sure if they were the greatest people to start discussing Christ Figure allegories with). I found it all the more poignant because on one hand it's showcasing a very Jesus moment , yet you also know Horus ends up being the anti-christ of his universe.
I really like how Dan Abnett creates a world where morality is completely different than it is in ours, so at the end, when the characters reflect on the lessons they have learned, it doesn't feel like "And this, kids, was the moral of the story!" Instead you have to think for yourself about what happened and whether the characters are reliable narrators or not and whether the ways they changed was for good or for ill. I think a Christian, an atheist and a Jew reading through Horus Rising would each get something different out of it, but each interpretation is would be equally valid.
In general I find Expanded Universe fiction fairly bad, because it is mostly written by bad authors, but Dan Abnett, Jeff Grubb and Matthew Stover manage to write novels that make whatever universe they're shilling out for way more deep than it has any right to be.
And that would still be incorrect.
What I mean is the only story points that matter are those we play. Backstory is just that, backstory, you never experience it, so it can be altered and changed as Blizzard sees fit to better mesh with the real meat of the story, the playable space.
The Dreadlords are a bad example, since we have known for a long time that demons are not easy to kill and keep dead. The Dreadlords are even more difficult, they are the ones that created "Necromancy" in the first place. Illidan was never a retcon, and I guess you never actually paid attention to the mission to realize that. Arthas says during the mission, and you can check out the sound files under the World Editor if you don't believe me, "You are a pitiful creature Illidan, you don't even deserve death. I banish you from this world, and know this, that if you return, I will be waiting." He never killed Illidan, only wounded him, and left him to be dragged off back to Outland.
Information we learn in SC2 actually hints that they did. I won't spoil it though.
As for Raemon777, I admit I am probably always going to be blinded now from what I know of Gul'dan. It will be hard for me to read that paragraph and not see a hungry power mad person, and not just a guy looking for knowledge and using dark methods to do it. So I will end the discussion on our favorite old warlock.
I can understand not liking the portraits, but do you really think they would work with SC style portraits? I would rather have what we had then the clash of styles caused by that. I may disagree about the graphics being "bad" but I do agree they were not exactly technically superior to most games out at the time. I never really cared for that as long as I felt the style and art were cohesive. I think WC3 did a fine job with that.
You sure you want to be spoiled? Let's just say an old Dark Templar friend of ours has learned that the Queen of Blades will be integral to the salvation of the galaxy. Whether that means she will be have a turn of face, or simply will unknowingly cause the downfall of the Xel'Naga and herself, will remain to be seen.
S
Steven Soderburgin
This thread has convinced me: video games can never be art.
- Status