thiefinthedark on 2/9/2011 at 03:06
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
Boo fucking hoo. Random merchant doesn't have a story (and it's not like he could POSSIBLY be tied to the brewing gang war in Detroit, no...).
Sarif, Faridah, Pritchard, Jensen himself, Jenny, Tong, Sanders and Sandoval, Haas,
all better written and more realistic characters than Manderley, Jock, JC, Alex, Sandra, Tracer, etc.
Really? You know **** all about any of them by the end of the game. Jenson pines after Jenny the whole damn time, but she's present for exactly 6 minutes of non-interactive gameplay throughout the entire 30 hours. I know literally nothing about Faridah other than the fact that she lived in Asia for a few years.
There is no character extrapolation or development at all in this game, none. It is a cast of incredibly one dimensional set pieces. What shallow backstory there is serves solely to drive forward the quests, there is nothing there at all to provide texture.
Fafhrd on 2/9/2011 at 03:22
Quote Posted by thiefinthedark
Really? You know fuck all about any of them by the end of the game. Jenson pines after Jenny the whole damn time, but she's present for exactly 6 minutes of non-interactive gameplay throughout the entire 30 hours. I know literally nothing about Faridah other than the fact that she lived in Asia for a few years.
There is no character extrapolation or development at all in this game, none. It is a cast of incredibly one dimensional set pieces. What shallow backstory there is serves solely to drive forward the quests, there is nothing there at all to provide texture.
The fact that you weren't paying attention to the game is not the fault of the game.
Renzatic on 2/9/2011 at 04:24
You know, this is the one place where I kindasorta agree with Thiefinthedark. It isn't so much that the characters are badly written. They're not. What you do see of them is convincing, and they act more or less how you'd expect real people to in the various situations that arise in the game (save for Zhao Yun Ru, who is disappointingly shallow).
The problem is you don't get a true feel of how these characters act beyond the plot. Yeah, you get the tons of emails pertaining to them, the little touches in their offices and homes that do a decent job of showing who they are on their off time. But that's the problem. It's the whole "show us, don't tell us" problem that comes up so often in writing. You get all these tidbits of information, but it's at a disconnect. The end result is that, most of the time, your relationship with these characters ends up feeling more academic than personal.
It's like rooting through someones trash to get personal information. Yeah, you can tell someone likes cheetoes from all the empty bags they've got lying around in the garbage, and you can learn quite a bit about someone by reading through their discarded letters. But you don't really know them personally (I'm not speaking from experience here, I swur).
This is my one biggest complaint about HR, and the one place where DX trumps it completely. Yeah, old DX might've been overly ponderous at times. Sometimes to the point of being utterly ridiculous. But it had the side effect of making it seem like you were getting to know it's characters a little better. HR has you have a few interesting conversations with people on occasion, but leaves it to you to root around in their garbage to find out more about them. Wouldn't it be better if you could ask them in person? See how they'd respond to your questions about their life, instead of being stuck to asking about the issues at hand? You're getting told, not being shown, and it's a fairly glaring fault in an otherwise awesome game that's so strong in other areas.
Fafhrd on 2/9/2011 at 06:00
So you're saying that you wish the characters told you more about themselves, instead of the game showing you in e-mails and world design? :p
I prefer to infer things about their character from how they comport themselves and their surroundings. Asking them directly is silly and out of place for Jensen's character. He works with these people and is responsible for their safety, he already knows them and the game acts like you do, and gives you enough about them to feel like you do. A couple of examples: Sarif gives off a very strong impression of being a more or less self-made man from a blue collar background. It's in his no bullshit, almost rough and tumble manner of speech, his democratic view of augmentation, his love of baseball (he might even be an ex-ball player, the way he nervously plays with the baseball in his office), and his exclusion from the Illuminati.
Malik feels like she might be an orphan, or at least from a broken home. She forms familial connections easily and she's fiercely protective of them (she probably also has slightly romantic leanings toward Adam). The entire Shanghai Justice sidequest is about this, and a lot of it comes out in the beginning when she recaps the attack. She loves flying. She got augmented to fly better, and she was 'halfway up the Renaissance Tower in [her] wingsuit when [she] got the 911.'
I can't make any sort of inferences like that for DX. I don't know who Jaime is. Does he have a family? Don't know. Not given an opportunity to care. He's a nice guy, and apparently JC has known him since the academy, but to JC and to me, he's primarily the Doc, and there the relationship ends.
june gloom on 2/9/2011 at 08:11
You can find a lot about certain characters by their living and work spaces. Jensen's apartment, Pritchard's office, Zhao's penthouse...
Like, okay, Jensen's apartment- which is one of the strongest settings in the game, and it has basically no dialogue in it whatsoever, and you don't even really do much in it. But there's so much character deeply embedded into it.
The instant you walk in, it's a scene straight out of Blade Runner; with the blinds slowly moving up to reveal a room cloaked in shadow even with the dim lights above and the sodium arc glow of the city outside.
There's boxes everywhere, lining the walls, some of them open- it's clear he's in the process of moving in. Picture on the wall of a couple, looking rather outdatedly-dressed (Jensen was born in the early 90s, so his parents looking like tools is easily explained.) Two long tables up against the windows, sparsely decorated, with blueprints, unwashed food bowls, and clockwork scattered about, and a clock half-finished next to an antique globe, and an e-book about clockmaking nearby. These elements strongly suggest that Jensen builds clocks- and perhaps, given his new predicament, it's a therapeutic thing for him.
Bedroom. More food remains, his desk is a bit of a mess. Depressing emails on his computer, especially the one about his dog.
Picture of Jensen on the SWAT team, in happier days, before Mexicantown.
Picture of his dead girlfriend.
More of both in his boxes.
Get well cards on the dresser, some of them knocked over, like the breeze of someone passing by had tipped them.
Medicine boxes all over the bathroom, the mirror is smashed.
What can we gather from this?
Jensen is still getting over Megan's death, and he's kept pictures of her. He takes pride for his work with the DPD, hence why he keeps those pictures too. He's still recovering, but those cards have to be at least a couple months old; he hasn't bothered to throw them out, for whatever reason. Maybe he's busy, or maybe he's just too depressed. He tries clockmaking as therapy, but it doesn't seem to help- the smashed mirror belies his rage and grief, and some sort of anger directed at himself.
Man, that whole fucking place was just sad. :(
In comparison, let's look at Jock's apartment.
It's near the top of an apartment building that has no interior hallways that I can tell. You can sort of see into Maggie Chow's place if you climb up onto the balcony railing and stand on your toes. There's a few common books here. He's got a nice place, but it's sterile. There isn't really much there- even his computer, tucked away in the closet, doesn't really tell you much.
Tenkahubu on 2/9/2011 at 08:39
Credit where it's due - nice post!
Jason Moyer on 2/9/2011 at 08:53
Quote Posted by thiefinthedark
perhaps you can extrapolate on how Detroit has fallen on hard times!
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit#History)
Detroit being a shithole seems like one of the few things that doesn't need any sort of in-game explanation whatsoever. Actually, if anything there needs an explanation, it's how there's anything in that hub that was built or maintained after the 1970's.
Seriously, that line is like bitching about Robocop not explaining how Detroit fell on hard times. It's fucking Detroit.
Renzatic on 2/9/2011 at 09:11
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
So you're saying that you wish the characters told you more about themselves, instead of the game showing you in e-mails and world design? :p
Nope. I want both. :P
Quote Posted by dethtoll
-snip-
Hey, I ain't denying the thousands of little touches they threw in the game regarding the characters and world. It's one of the few games I've seen where you can get a feel about and everything and everyone just by looking.
What I am saying is that the characters themselves weren't nearly as talkative as they were in DX. You didn't get to spend as much time with the characters themselves as you did their surroundings. Yeah, the game does work from the assumption that Jensen already knows these people, and he only spends as much time with them as he needs. But that's the problem. Jensen knows these people. We don't.
Lets take Jaimie for example here. No, you don't learn as much about him outside his conversations. But you do talk to him. Alot. And most of that is just optional fluff. In HR, all the big conversations happen at set moments, and you don't really talk to these people much beyond that. Even the branching dialog scenes are usually one off word battles, trying to eek out extra tidbits of information at key points in the game. Nothing quite like even the discussion with the NSF operative on top of the Statue of Liberty. That was completely pointless. You could've just shot the guy right off and gone the whole game without losing anything.
I guess HR went in the totally opposite direction with how it dealt with its characters. Yeah, you learn alot about them. Even more than you do about DX's characters, but it's in a hands off, in the background sorta way. Considering how well written and acted (most of) the character in HR were, I wish it went a little farther and let you spend more time directly interacting with them. And hell, throw in a few more throwaway characters you could spent 15 minute talking to for no apparent reason other than hey...this drunk hobo guy has an opinion on government! RAD!
So to summarize it:
DX: Less detailed world, a larger cast of much more talkative characters.
HR: Hugely detailed world. Almost incredibly so. A bit more terse with the character interaction.
I wouldn't say one is better than the other here. But having more conversations, even pointless ones, makes for more memorable characters than divining their loves and interests by the incidental details of their surroundings.
HR would've been flat out perfect if it had both.
MorbusG on 2/9/2011 at 16:51
Fucking second boss fight. Fuck her right up her ass. With a baseball bat with some rusted nails. Sideways. Fuck, I dont have anything to fight her with. If I stun her with stun gun while cloaked, get behind her and try to melee her down, she somehow recovers from the stun and whacks my ass. WTF?
Judith on 2/9/2011 at 17:48
You got everything to beat her, it's in this room.
My question: is it possible to save Malik? I hacked every door in Sarif to gather as much stuff as I can before departure, and I was able to put down all these motherfuckers shooting at her, except this fucking robot. I want to save her, goddammit!! :mad:
Btw. Renz, your points are valid but there might be one simple reason for this: DVD capacity ;)
