Thirith on 21/2/2012 at 19:18
Ambiguous != random. C'mon, ZylonBane, you know better than that.
june gloom on 21/2/2012 at 20:15
Except it
is random.
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
Esther is not pretentious. Its goal is not to impress by being waffley and flowery in its language. Its goal is to be ambiguous by being waffley and flowery. Not the same thing.
Either way, it's waffly and flowery.
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
Everything about Esther is designed to be as ambiguous as possible: from the player movement to the narration to the motifs in the landscape.
Making zero fucking sense is not the same thing as being ambiguous. Some of the shit in there is completely nonsensical -- see my line about "non-sequitur about yoghurt."
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
Its ambiguity is a deliberate mechanic for leveraging immersion
If that's what it is, then it failed entirely.
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
It's not intended as artsy commentary on anything - other than perhaps that First Person Video Games are locked in to an overly formulaic formula. Which isn't exactly contentious, is it?
Maybe not, but what it
is is the worst fucking game I've played this year. It looks fantastic, but beneath its superficial charms is the soul of a boring, British hipster with delusions of being a poet. The whole thing is a poorly-constructed poem about the death of the narrator's wife, which, while theoretically very sad, has zero effect on me because
that little plot nugget is buried deeply in layers of pointless bullshit about a previous explorer to the island and the narrator bitching about his kidney stones. There's little random bits of symbolism that don't make much sense at all, and seem to be mostly there to look mysterious. The perfect spiral in the sand, the medical equipment surrounded by candles, the glow in the dark paint smeared everywhere, it all points to one thing:
the writer wears a fucking cape. And that bit with the letters? aaaaargh
It's trying to be cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. But it falls flat, and the story -- what there is of it -- suffers as a result. The randomized dialogue results in shit making no sense whatsoever -- for example, I came upon a boat upon which the narrator remarked "there's no hole, how did new hermits come to the island?" This
had to have been intentional -- sort of trying to force the player to replay the game to hear every random little piece of dialogue it has to offer. Except this is exactly the kind of thing where replays wouldn't be advised -- even ignoring the cynical "it sucks" reason, it's
very linear and the visual grandeur loses its luster on second viewing. That it
cites its lack of interactivity as a
plus on its Steam page speaks volumes. If the game really wanted you to focus on story, it would've made you want to hunt down that story -- make us rummage through a few boxes, make us look in the old shacks. Don't make us sit through two hours of an environmental artist's portfolio while some asshole mumbles about a guy with syphilis at predetermined trigger points. And the story's simplistic bullshit that comes off as needlessly melodramatic.
If you're still on the fence as to whether to get this game, don't. Steal it instead, it's not like they didn't completely recompense their expenses within six hours because people are morons who'll throw their money away at anything as long as it makes them feel good. They should just release it for free now rather than continue to charge money for it, they recompensated their expenses -- what more could they possibly want? I mean I know people are stupid and love to piss their money away, but it's kind of mean to take advantage of that isn't it?
Honestly. This isn't a fucking space monolith, people; Dear Esther brings nothing new to the table. But everybody's acting like a bunch of primitive man-apes being taught how to harness fire. Unbelievable.
faetal on 21/2/2012 at 20:22
Does it at least have multiplayer?
demagogue on 21/2/2012 at 20:35
haha, yeah nothing could add to it more than other guys hopping around you.
@deth, it sounds like you might not be totally against the idea of some kind of game-poem-walk, just that this one did a pretentious and stupid job of it (which I don't even disagree with some of the parts you mentioned). But is there any kind of poetry or high-art that you don't find stupid or pretentious, or there is but you just don't think it can ever translate into a game, or do you think it could but this wasn't it and shouldn't get credit for it (edit: but then what do think might be able to)? Just trying to get a sense of what level your discontent is at.
Renzatic on 21/2/2012 at 20:44
Quote Posted by demagogue
haha, yeah nothing could add to it more than other guys hopping around you.
I imagine DM in Dear Esther would be like a purple prose showdown. One guy types out random swaths of flowery, breathless phrases, while everyone else walks around looking at stuff, going "OH I GET IT NOW".
faetal on 21/2/2012 at 20:47
You could have it cycle dialogue from a massive pool of short stories and the winner is the last one to exit the game.
Sulphur on 21/2/2012 at 21:44
WARNING: MASSIVE FUCKING SPOILERS FOR PEOPLE WHO GIVE A DAMN
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Either way, it's waffly and flowery.
Yes.
Quote:
Except this is exactly the kind of thing where replays wouldn't be advised -- even ignoring the cynical "it sucks" reason, it's
very linear and the visual grandeur loses its luster on second viewing. That it
cites its lack of interactivity as a
plus on its Steam page speaks volumes.
A plus? Here's the spiel: "Abandoning traditional gameplay for a pure story-driven experience, Dear Esther fuses it's beautiful environments with a breathtaking soundtrack to tell a powerful story of love, loss, guilt and redemption."
Past the hyperbole and rhetoric, that line serves to tell you something very important before you buy DE:
there is no gameplay. It's hardly selling the non-interactivity as a 'plus' unless that's what you want to read into it.
Quote:
If the game really wanted you to focus on story, it would've made you want to hunt down that story -- make us rummage through a few boxes, make us look in the old shacks.
Except who would actually want to do that? That's half of the item hunt in a traditional adventure game sans the puzzle payoff.
DE is not a
plot driven title: there are no arcs to follow and distractions to punctuate the running around and searching for 'stuff' to further the story. It's narrative driven, and hiding the narrative behind framing devices you need to bang around the environments to look for just sounds like a different kind of tedium altogether.
Quote:
Maybe not, but what it
is is the worst fucking game I've played this year. It looks fantastic, but beneath its superficial charms is the soul of a boring, British hipster with delusions of being a poet. The whole thing is a poorly-constructed poem about the death of the narrator's wife, which, while theoretically very sad, has zero effect on me because
that little plot nugget is buried deeply in layers of pointless bullshit about a previous explorer to the island and the narrator bitching about his kidney stones. There's little random bits of symbolism that don't make much sense at all, and seem to be mostly there to look mysterious. The perfect spiral in the sand, the medical equipment surrounded by candles, the glow in the dark paint smeared everywhere, it all points to one thing:
the writer wears a fucking cape. And that bit with the letters? aaaaargh
Quote:
Don't make us sit through two hours of an environmental artist's portfolio while some asshole mumbles about a guy with syphilis at predetermined trigger points. And the story's simplistic bullshit that comes off as needlessly melodramatic.
Jesus chowderslopping Christ. This is a story of obsession and loss, and the lengths a person goes to grieve. Yes, when you fall in love with someone and lose them, it's not just a part of you that's lost; sometimes,
you go insane with grief. And yes, you're given to flowery and maudlin wondering and wandering -- perhaps
you wouldn't, but this is how someone else would. When you're inconsolable you tend to disappear into yourself; what do you think the island stands for? It's not an actual place. It's the internal landscape of the author in his death throes.
While the execution of the syphilis thing may have been retarded - I don't know, I haven't played the new version and thus don't know what might have changed - it's an allegory for the author's condition as well. Untreated syphilis eventually drives a person insane; the same way untreated grief would.
The symbols and diagrams are harder to explain - but the circuit diagram is definitely for a brake system. No need for me to elaborate further on that, I'm sure. Some of the chemicals on the walls are apparently alcohol and dopamine; I'm not 100% sure, since organic chemistry was never something I paid a lot of attention towards, but dopamine is one of the neurotransmitters in the brain linked to our pleasure centres: it regulates behaviour around seeking things that reward us like, say, alcohol.
At the end of the day, the descent into the caves, the ascent, the repeated references to throwing yourself into a valley, an obsession with certain seemingly insignificant things like the number 21, the narrator's harping on about kidney stones - the first time he got them was probably the first time he met Esther, perhaps in a hospital - all of this is the process of someone internalising their grief. Yes, it's vague and foolish and difficult to approach and hard to like, but why don't you try approaching a person who's recently lost a loved one - a soul mate - and see how easy they are to talk to.
And the thing about DE is, it's implied that the narrator is responsible for her death in the accident with the car crash; implied, though I can't tell for certain. But the profound, stupid irony of it all is he may not even have touched alcohol on that one night. In fact, it may simply have been fate, the way Paul never intended to be blinded by a light from the heavens on his way to Damascus.
"Blind with panic, deaf with the roar of the caged traffic, heart stopped on the road to
Damascus, Paul, sat at the roadside hunched up like a gull, like a bloody gull. As
useless and as doomed as a syphilitic cartographer, a dying goatherd, an infected
leg, a kidney stone blocking the traffic bound for Sandford and Exeter. He was not
drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all; all his roads and his tunnels and his paths led
inevitably to this moment of impact."
Given that at this point in the story all those individual elements now have context, if that didn't affect you in any way, you're probably dead inside.
Everybody else needs to take some time out and read the (
http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esther/downloads/dear-esther-script) script if it's so incredibly vague and obtuse to them after playing.
Everything may not make sense, but enough of it does -- at least it did when I played it.
Maybe the random audio did fuck things up beyond recognition for a percentage of people, and in which case, if you're one of them, I'm awfully sorry for you.
But: while I know that the Dear Esther I trawled through was something that could be incredibly florid at times, it was also incredibly powerful and affecting by the end. And I'm sorry that you weren't able to experience it.
june gloom on 21/2/2012 at 21:53
Where I come from, needlessly florid and pointlessly obtuse isn't good writing. It's bad poetry. And really, that's all that DE really is -- bad poetry. So maybe the narrator is 'internalizing his grief' and other such things. If anything, that just makes him LESS likely to write something worth reading.
Sulphur on 21/2/2012 at 22:25
Ok. Let me make it 100%Z OMG better by stripping that shiz out.
DEAR ESTHERMy love hath pass'd from beyond this veil.
My body wrack'd with grief, oh woe betide,
I shall throw myself from this cliff whence she died.
So we shall both in heaven travail,
Good-bye. (Cruel world)
Exeunt Jacobson.
CHORUS SINGS
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ngmakCXGe7M?version=3&feature=player_detailpage"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ngmakCXGe7M?version=3&feature=player_detailpage" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object>
SubJeff on 21/2/2012 at 23:47
Quote Posted by Renzatic
I imagine DM in Dear Esther would be like a purple prose showdown. One guy types out random swaths of flowery, breathless phrases, while everyone else walks around looking at stuff, going "OH I GET IT NOW".
LOL
Also, its not a game dethtoll.
