What games best manage to avoid ludonarrative dissonance? Alternatively what are some of the worst examples?
My vote goes to Lost Planet 2, most of the action in cutscenes can be replicated through gameplay (like in the intro where a guy grapples on to a large akrids ass and unloads a clip in to it) and a lot of moments that would be cutscenes or QTEs in a typical game are left for the player to perform manually.
stop forcing new buzzwords you autitstic cukcshill
Sup Forums has enough already
Come up with a less pretentious term that describes the same thing in as many syllables.
Dwarf Fortress.
>stop forcing buzzwords
>shill
ok.
Seriously though very few games that I know of are like this. Probably one of the worst offenders are FF7-9. The cutscenes, while cool, really do not speak to the gameplay.
Gameplay-story disconnect.
One syllable less, and it's immediately obvious to everyone what it refers to. Someone who has never seen those three words would still be able to grasp them, as opposed to "ludonarrative dissonance."
Or gameplay-story conflict, if you like. One syllable less.
"The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house."
What can be really disappointing is when you get a game like Mafia 2 which is making an attempt at a mature and grounded story (not that those 2 are mutually exclusive) still resorts to shooting gallery gameplay that makes the story feel much more separate.
I know that's a lot of syllables for an American, so I'll express it in terms you can understand. Gameplay-story disconnect.
in other games the entirety of dragons dogma would be a qte
>ludonarrative dissonance
Fuck off Campster
Furthermore:
>PRETENTIOUS DICTION. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i. e., e. g. and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.
Ludonarrative dissonance can fuck off. This is a working man's board.
OP responding, well done, in an ideal world those 30 minute youtube game reviewers would popularise one of these terms over the one in my post. I'll use that from now on, I like to avoid pretentious terminology when something simpler will suffice.
xcom2 longwar mod
Everything went better than expected.
Dragons Dogma has great player agency, agreed. You have a great deal of control over your characters actions and can freely climb bigger enemies rather than being locked in to some animation where you run up their back, land on their head and hit X when it appears on the screen to stab their eye.
>I dropped out in sixth grade and big words make my head hurt and intimidate me so obviously anyone using them is just trying to be pretentious
>sawp bein smeert yew fuckin aw-tist
You should look the source of that quote up so that you don't embarrass yourself again.
That's a great argument you got there fagboy
>basic is too complicated
this had better be bait
No shit. It carries just as much weight as all the MLP fuckwits and manchildren quoting C.S. Lewis' about acting childish. Using a smarter person's quote out of context doesn't make it inherently true. Retardanon crying about a perfectly legitimate word then turning around and trying to quote Orwell as some sort of argument ending definitive proof is bullshit and if you think just because you can twist their words to fit your argument then you're probably said retardanon.
I know who it's from, and it's hilarious that you fucking retards are taking Orwell out of context in order to further your idiotic point. His list wasn't a "ban" of words, he was showing them as examples of where people would use language incorrectly to look more intelligent. Kind of like citing Orwell out of context in order to look more intelligent.
Huh I wonder whose doing that?
Well considering there was never an argument made against using the term ludonarrative dissonance in the first place I don't need to make one, so I'll just stick to mocking crybabies about muh big words and them meanie college liberals that make them up.
>stop using a term that makes me feel stupid!
>unironically defending the phrase "ludonarrative dissonance"
You're so eager to get into a fight that you've forgotten what you're fighting about.
The phrase "ludonarrative dissonance" is a perfect example of the poor writing that Orwell talks about. It's a long phrase with an opaque meaning to anyone who hasn't already looked it up on Google. In every context using a different phrase made up of simpler words gets a more precise meaning across faster and in a way that everyone can grasp it because it uses simple English.
The only people who are opposed to doing that are people who see writing as a means of showing off how smart they think they are and not a means of communication.
I have quoted Orwell to provide context to my argument but believe me, the argument stands perfectly well alone.
*tips fedora*
>see new word you don't understand
>should I look it up to learn what it means, maybe the origin of the word to better understand it?
>nah I'll just say it's dumb and whine about it that'll show em
>better shit this thread up about video games while I'm at it too, we don't have enough waifu/consolewar/trap/eceleb threads and this is taking up valuable board space for those
More on topic. Far Cry 3 was pretty shit for it considering your character whined and cried about killing someone in a cutscene and then you proceed to genocide an island in game then the next cutscene you're barely able to kill a single person.
GTA was good for it until 5 where only Trevor, and maybe Michael in some instances, fit how the stereotypical player would act. Action game wise Ninja Gaiden always did a fantastic job. Unlike DMC, though I never got good at DMC, how you acted in cutscenes in terms of actions was usually pretty true to the in game action.
Let's talk about games that do it pretty badly:
Uncharted 2: Get shot in cutscene and almost die. While in game itself you can take as many bullets as you want without any disadvantage.
GTA Games. Characters seem conflicted to kill some one, while the players have allready killed a ton of people. Franklin jumps to mind with his I'm no gangbanger bull shit, When you might allready have killed dozens of people with him.
Call of duty series. Same problem as uncharted 2.
Every game with new game +, considering that cutscenes dont take into consideration, that you are a god walking amongst people from the getgo.
That assumes that inclusivity and democratisation is desirable. I see little to no reason to want to further open discussions to proles.
Orwell was talking about writing, not singular phrases. Citing him only shows that you didn't understand his essay.
You still haven't given a good replacement phrase either.
>Capcom used to put out games like Lost Planet, Dragons Dogma, Devil May Cry, Mega Man, etc.
What the fuck happened?
The thing is that the people who are most loudly opposed to "ludonarrative dissonance" know exactly what it means, which is why they oppose it.
People like you are so bad at writing that you can't think of simple English alternatives to it which is why you think it's a necessary and impressive phrase. In reality it's needlessly opaque and even imprecise - ludonarrative dissonance just describes a general sense that gameplay and narrative aren't syncing up but does nothing to express how and why that occurs, whereas describing gameplay-story conflict as opposed to gameplay-story disconnect can express the granular nature of "ludonarrative dissonance" in a way that "ludonarrative dissonance" cannot - and in less syllables.
I think I could give a pass to new game+ but it'd be pretty commendable if a game actually altered the ng+ story to reflect your increased power.
One of my pet peeves has always been defeating bosses down to 0 health and then seeing them escape in a cutscene, why not just increase their hp to the point that 0 is now 1/5th health remaining.
equally enraging: escorting a character where their death is a game over but they die at the end of the mission in a cutscene.
Why do that when you can just keep shitting out Street Fighter and make just as many shekels?
Dont Forget Dead Rising, man DR1 was near perfect... that fucking survivor AI though
Based patrician.
>Orwell was talking about writing, not singular phrases
He gave several lists of singular phrases he objected to. In fact Orwell was arguing against a style of writing which is made up of "ready made" phrases that are stitched together into meaningless sentences because authors cannot think up their own words to express their own ideas. In consequence authors end up never clearly expressing ideas and everything turns to mush.
Orwell wrote at the end of his essay
>... it has nothing to do with archaism ... It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax ... or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’. ... it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning.
Read that last sentence again. Especially the last half of it.
>though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning.
"ludonarrative dissonance" is not that.
>You still haven't given a good replacement phrase either.
Read the thread.
It's pretty much a 'scientific term' to accurate describe a term. This is barely any different that people complaining about scientific latin names because they're long phrases with opaque meanings unless you're already a part of that group and would be familiar with those terms or bother to take a couple seconds to look it up. Which after just a few moments reveals they just took narratology and ludology (which is derived from the play Homo Ludens) and slapped them together. Not that different than Tyrannosaurus rex and tyrant king lizard.
Do you know whats worse than using the phrase "ludonarrative dissonance"? Hijacking a videogame thread to defend/object it for the sake of a long winded masturbatory argument no one gives a fuck about.
>It's pretty much a 'scientific term' to accurate describe a term
But this is wrong.
Firstly because video game analysis is not a science and therefore has no need for scientific terms, which exist for a very good reason (science uses latin because it is a dead language that means the same thing across the entire globe).
Secondly because "ludonarrative dissonance" is not accurate. It is far less accurate than describing gameplay-story conflict, or gameplay-story disconnect, or any of infinite variations of that. Ludonarrative dissonance describes every possible type of gameplay-story relationship other than one where they are in concert. If I say "ludonarrative dissonance" it means nothing but "the gameplay and the story are not in agreement with each other." It gives no explanation as to why. Gameplay-story conflict at least hints that the gameplay and the story are actively contradicting each other (fighting 1000 dudes in gameplay and being taken prisoner by 1 in a cutscene) whereas gameplay-story disconnect merely describes that they seem not to interact with each other in the way you would expect them to (you're the hero saving the world but the shopkeepers still won't give you discounts). You could even use other descriptors, like gameplay-lore disconnect (Fallout: New Vegas, where the strip is supposed to be a bustling metropolis but has a population of 10 people), or stats-gameplay disconnect, it goes on and on.
When you use simple words with precise meanings you can combine those words to say precise things in the same space that a single, longer, more vague, more opaque phrase would use to say nothing at all.
>people like you are so bad at writing
kek, i enjoy the assumptions and you trying so hard to soapbox. if you understand how they derived the term it makes sense just fine and I don't have a problem at all with people using gameplay-story disconnect but the rampant crying over it is excessive. Seems like you just don't enjoy language very much. Succinct writing has its place, and I prefer it in most instances, but getting bent out of shape over a perfectly fine term seems a bit silly.
Those are hardly any better. Someone's got to come up with some arbitrary name for it if you don't want to sound like a ponce every time you bring it up.
I don't get the issue anyways. It's a name used to describe a phenomenon in a medium from an artistic perspective. Its subject is a pretty fruity thing to be talking about to begin with so I don't know why the phrase itself is such a problem.
It's almost as if I put quotations around the word scientific term for a reason, huh?Keep on with your crusade and derailing and perfectly fine video game thread though bud.
>Those are hardly any better.
They are at the very least shorter. Even if they are no more precise, and no less opaque, (though they are arguably both), they are still superior.
>Someone's got to come up with some arbitrary name for it if you don't want to sound like a ponce every time you bring it up.
This sentence causes my physical pain. It's a demonstration of how we've become so accustomed to garbage writing in "academia" that if it's not written like garbage it doesn't count as academic.
RIP my fucking soul.
>I don't get the issue anyways
It's bad writing.
>Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
S K Y R I M
Not even memeing
>if you understand how they derived the term it makes sense just fine
I never said it didn't make sense, I said it was imprecise and opaque and needlessly long. In short it's an inferior phrase in every context and used only because of pretentiousness.
>Succinct writing has its place
It's not about succinct writing, it's about good writing.
It just so happens that good writing is also succinct.
GTA IV
Is this game Kino?
One touch I liked in Spec Ops was how as your character progressed, got more fucked up, and basically went nuclear over the course of the story, your animations and voicelines during gameplay would also change. "Focus on that target!" becomes "Kill that fucker!", a quick bullet to the head instead involves your character bashing somebody's skull in with the butt of your gun, and your character starts having hallucinations during some of the fights.
>stop using buzzwords you
>autistic
>cuck
>shill
wew lad
>It's almost as if I put quotations around the word scientific term for a reason, huh
Yeah, so you could immediately retreat from your line of argument like an army practicing defence in depth and trying to bog me down in endless nonsense posts deployed like cannon fodder.
FUCK ACADEMIA
reply to my post if you have an IQ of 120+ and agree
>No ludonarrative dissonance
>Spect Ops
Come on user, try it at least
Who needs 'em anyway?
Holy shit this is a really bad thread. And I have seen some really bad threads in my time.
Isn't it pretty conflicting when your character's an archmage that can barely use magic? Or when the residents of the five house village outside of your mage's college tell you that you, the archmage, should sign up at said college? What about when every bandit that yields to you immediately shouts that you never should have come here and starts attacking you again?
>using that phrase
ludonarrative dissonance is not a ready-made phrase, it's a distinct concept.
>using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning
...is a guideline, not a rule. He makes it clear that
>Read the thread
Gameplay-story disconnect is hardly simpler, and NOT immediately understandable. Again, ludonarrative dissonance is an established concept, and fighting to replace an established phrase is ridiculous.
I feel bad for OP because he immediately got the point and it's just all the come-latelies who are throwing the fit.
this happens every single time we have a thread about LD
it becomes about people arguing that the name is stupid
Not really sure what you're talking about, but I was just referring to one thing it did well that brought the story and gameplay closer together, not necessarily the game as a whole.
Hell, 'gameplay-story disconnect' is pretty much a direct translation of 'ludonarrative dissonance', so it fits just fine.
They try to make you feel bad about killing and about war but the only thing you can do in the game is killing
>ludonarrative dissonance
the fuck is that?
>we aren't allowed to use words like "predict" or "inevitable" anymore since user is a retard
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the worst person on Sup Forums this morning
I'm not losing any sleep over one fucking syllable.
>it's bad writing
But that's not even the issue at hand. You're an autist fighting your own fight.
When do they try to make you, the player, feel bad in the story? I only remember a loading screen or two that was a little pretentious.
>ludonarrative dissonance is not a ready-made phrase, it's a distinct concept.
It's a ready-made phrase that describes a concept better described by other phrases.
"expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous" all refer to distinct concepts but there are better words that refer to the same concepts that should be used instead.
>Gameplay-story disconnect is hardly simpler
It is. It's got one less syllable, but that's not all. It's made up of simple English everyday words that can be interchanged as needed to express different variations of the same concept, like I have described earlier. It is a much more flexible phrase that is both more precise and more straightforward.
>and NOT immediately understandable.
It is certainly less opaque. You might have to think about it for a bit but anyone who goes on Sup Forums would be able to figure out what it meant, even if it might take some a little while. Most people, however, would need Google to grasp "ludonarrative dissonance." This is because ludonarrative is a word that virtually nobody has run into before and it has only been popularised - and I'm pretty sure it was invented by - a hack academic who couldn't write to save his life. It's root is in ludus, which is literally just the latin word for play.
It could be fucking gamestory and it would be a better word. Note, however, that it sounds retarded. Somehow, the EXACT SAME THING but done with latin is "not retarded"? No, it's still retarded, but most people are too retarded to see it.
Prototype. The story portrays Alex Mercer as an immortal death machine and that's pretty much how the game plays with how hard it is to die.
>I'm not losing any sleep over one fucking syllable.
Then why even bother defending the word?
If you think it doesn't matter why not use the better phrase? Unless you have some retarded emotional attachment to fucking "gamestory dissonance" there's no point using it over the better alternatives.
Or when you play as a Kajhit but can just waltz in that city where Kajhits are banned and no one brings it up?
Game-story disconnection, but said in a way that makes the speaker think he's being intellectual.
>thread derails into autistic semantics
You planned this OP, didn't you.
You fucker.
BioShock 1 was really good at this.
when you get to that shit close to the end that auto rapes your health and you're fighting hunters it gets pretty fucking annoying.
but everything else is basically a cakewalk.
I anticipated some grumbling and shitposting between vidya discussion but not such unprecedented levels of autism.
Wait, sorry, I meant to say:
I predicted some upset and bad posts between game talk but not such unseen levels of autism.
...
>This is an anti-intellectual board.
ftfy
working blue collar gives me a lot of time get paid to read.