ITT: vidya with literary merit

>ITT: vidya with literary merit

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you first

>This is what motherfags actually believe

It's literally written by an essayist that has even collaborated with Murakami, user. Have you ever actually played a Mother game in its entirety?

2 and 3. You treat this like it's groundbreaking, astounding story of unparalleled merit when it's just a silly quirky RPG story set in an uncommon setting with some cool set pieces. Literal merit? Get the fuck outta here.

>murakami
>literary merit

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Check out some Oe instead of your oedipal pimp colonel sanders tranny romance that's literally the persona of japanese fiction.

I like murakami and all but he has written two truly great books and neither of them come close to either the literary merit of your average contemporary jap or the surrealism of calvino

Doesn't exist.

So you're the guy that bitches and moans whenever there's a thread about Bergman or Tarkovsky on Sup Forums because they're too populist for your delicate taste? I do agree that Kenzaburo is a better author, he does speak out a lot more to me on a thematic level (Eurofag here btw), but that doesn't necessarily mean Murakami loses all literally merit in comparison. That is honestly just fucking retarded.

Nor does your waifu

>videogame
>literary merit

It doesn't necessarily need to be a "groundbreaking, astounding story" to have literary merit. At the very least it certainly was unparalleled for vidya.

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Didn't they actually work with the author on this?

As an academic philosophy faggot, I second this. Easily the most underrated modern game.

Yep, he also did the voice for AM.

Yes, it's an extension of his short story.

None of his books go anywhere or say much. At least with his short stories it sticks to a powerful vignette that doesn't overstay its welcome. The problem isn't that his books are populist, but that they are a reflection pool, a veneer of mystery lacking any depth and for being character driven, are void of any emotional content aside from wistful longing. He has all these threads to work with but doesn't pursue them.

Yes, it's terrible.

Everyone in your field is an obnoxious twat. At least all the bitches are hot.

People seem to miss the point of what "literary merit" means, and it is different for every medium. Video games have a completely different type of literarity than books or poetry or film or whatever, because their specific ways of conveying information are different.

Also, the notion of a story needing to be "deep" or "complex" or even "meaningful" to be good is utterly philistine. Most of the literary classics have really simple stories. Moby Dick, one of the best books ever written, has a story that consists of the first 10 and the last 30 pages, but the story, the plot, is not at all the "point" of that wonderful book. The "point" of Moby Dick is its themes and the way it conveys them.

So let's look at what vidya can do to convey themes in ways that are unique to its medium. I'd say Majora's Mask is a good candidate, due to the fact that all the characters and their actions are deeply interwoven with the central gameplay element: the count down to game over. (I actually wrote an essay about the game, somewhat around those ideas, prof seemed to have liked it, sadly it is lost on my dead old hard drive.)

>essayist
Is that basically a failed author?

If Sup Forums was already unbearably obnoxious and annoying then this thread will have potential to kill somebody very soon.

Nothing is worse than the faggots on Sup Forums who think they know shit about writing. Literal human trash.

You sound mad.

essay is a completely different genre of writing than prose or whatever you think "authors" write, a term which, by the way, includes essayists

youtube.com/watch?v=olIwhY7BAFU

Isn't an essay just a short book?
>"authors" write, a term which, by the way, includes essayists
Exactly. An essayist is just an author who failed to write a full book.

Mildly annoyed because I hate literary faggots who take this stuff so seriously, but not really mad.

>Isn't an essay just a short book?

no

So, a guitarist is just a failed vocalist?

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The only real difference is the length but ok bro

>The only real difference is the length but ok bro

no

I wouldn't say that, but a vocalist who doesn't play the guitar is a failed guitarist

>can't name anything else
Ok fag

Never played Mother (NES but

>Earthbound
>Literary merit

So, I am a failed drummer because I never learnt how to play the drum?

"Book" is not even a genre. Are we talking novel? Non-fiction? Encycopledia? An essay is a relatively short text discussing a certain subject matter. If that subject matter is not enough to fill a book, why bother writing a book about it? However a book can contain several essays, in which case it is an essay collection.

>Ok fag

I'm not the retard who doesn't know what an essay is

W
E
W

The Bloody Baron quest chain in Witcher 3. The quest chain felt like I was reading something out of Brothers Grimm.

You were.

>earthbound
>witcher 3
I hate Sup Forums so much now. Why are you all faggots?

This year is going to be a great year.

its a mediocre jrpg who gives a literal fuck

Pathologic.

I feel like I was the only person not blown away by the quest line
It was good, but more like 7/10 not 10/10. Its a pretty simple plotline

You are like a little baby

And The Void

Find a better story. You can't.

Tough to say. Lots of games are manipulative, and dishonest to lend the appearance of quality to what is more than likely just very shallow. Not many games involve thematic and mechanical harmony, a trait that I'd say is as close as games with stories will ever get to "literary merit", but a few are out there.

I wanna say LISA is something close to that, but I'm not confident about that. Bloodborne also has some narrative and mechanical synergy that I think is rare, but again I dunno if that's what I'd hold up and say "this is what games should be!"

Anything with an english name and no moonrunes in the title.

I like the characters a lot. I liked that the Baron had all these layers to him. The Bloody Baron quest chain and Heart of Stone were really good.

Actually, in hindsight I think I liked Heart of Stone even more.

LISA and it's sister titles do form a cohesive and well crafted narrative (accepting some of the hiccups in Lisa the Joyful) but be careful, you're not allowed to talk about the game on Sup Forums since it got popular and thus became hipster garbage

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It being called hipster garbage by Sup Forums probably just elevates desu. Anyone willing to engage with it either gives a fuck or is an obvious shitposter with no ammo to defend himself with - not that those are even worth attacking either.

Sup Forums will say any game's story is shit. I have never heard anyone on Sup Forums ever say a game's story wasn't shit and have people actually agree with them.

True, but why should that stop actual conversation? Maybe someone will agree with you.

hearts of stone is good even though it's just Faust

There's a novel for it, so I guess that counts.

True, for a video game rendition of the German classic it was pretty good.

you've got it backwards lmao

there's a reason they always teach essay writing in school above creative writing

God of War is a modern Greek epic. he would fit in perfectly. all they need to do is make Zeus more of an ass. maybe have him rape Kratos' wife as a donkey or something.

any news on the translation project?

That reminds me of this little gem.

It's not actually an epic. It does nothing for a culture, is not virtuistic, it only exists because of things created and conceived of centuries past.

None of the writing in the whitcher 3 could be considered literature. It was ok at best, its just that most games are pure shit in the writing department, so "ok" seems great in comparison.

>game is called God of War
>you don't get to play as Ares
I don't get it.

Because you are literally retarded. Kratos kills the God of War, (the main villian of the first game), and assumes his mantle.

>Playing a a new character with no real ties to the old lore allowing more flexibility with the story.

It's pretty simple.

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Yeah, it's good enough and drably European enough to seem exceptional. It is exceptional, but only in the realm of triple-A games, where it sort of tapped into in a way indie European devs never have, and nowhere else.

>expecting some sort of deep discourse from a videogame based on a horror short story
have you ever considered that maybe you're the fedora?

I the industry needs to bring in more non-western/japanese writers. 30+ years of generic jap/western fantasy and sci-fi in games is starting to wear pretty thin. More foriegn writing might not elevate the overall quality, but at least we'll get more variety.

*I think

> it's written by a guy who collaborated with a guy who got literary awards
> therefore it must have literary merit
lol, okay

They are probably EOPs
If you dont know Japanese you cannot grasp the quality of MOTHERs writing

Obv not everyone understands or has an idea of what literary merit might mean or require. I have ideas but they may not be what OP or you or the guy who said GoW is an Epic think literary merit entails.

>As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
- Commissioner Pravin Lal, U.N. Declaration of Rights

>Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different?
- Colonel Corazon Santiago, Planet: A Survivalist's Guide

I think so too. People are just aping the Hollywood air around western devs, new blood and foreign ideas are very welcome right now.

>The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear., but it was never the streets that were evil.
>As distances vanish and the people can flow freely from place to place, society will cross a psychological specific heat boundary and enter a new state. No longer a solid or liquid, we have become as a vapor and will expand to fill all available space. And like a gas, we shall not be easily contained.
- Sister Miriam Godwinson, We Must Dissent

>We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?
>Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.
- Chairman Shenjii Yang, Looking God In The Eye

Text dumps don't count really.

>Mother: Sing the bad guy away
>Mother 2: Pray the bad guy away
>Mother 3: Heal yourself until the spirit of your mother causes the "bad guy" to kill himself

Epic.

Short, scattered quotes are "text dumps"? Or are you referring to the way I'm posting? Because that's irrelevant to its literary merit.

>tfw mother 3 originally was kill the "bad guy" and then you kill yourself out of the depression and trauma

sounds like some undertale bs, glad they changed it

I really hate how games attempt to copy hollywood storytelling. The medium will not progress if all they do is ape other mediums. Books dont try to be paintings, movies dont try to be sculptures; why should games try to be movies?

Yang's VA is wonderful. I get chills from a lot of his lines.

The spirit of it, just dumping philosophical quote after philosophical quote. No game will achieve more than actual philosopher and writers of sci-fi so, in your case, it's just dressing.

Video Games are an interactive medium, and a business. People believe that the big-budget Products of advertising are all that games are and can be atm. Ignore triple-A, and you'll find some games that try to do unique things and respect the medium's history for its successes and failures.

I agree that no game will come close to the work of actual writers and philosophers, but I don't agree that it's "just dressing." A video game is a holistic multimedia experience, and even though the core of the game is in its gameplay, the visual art, the music, the sound design, and the writing all comprise a whole work that is greater than the sum of its parts.
As for the quotes, they are stripped of any context here, but I think they still demonstrate a measure of literary merit, and one that's extraordinary for the medium.

As demonstrated by you, I don't think that Alpha Centauri is granted "merit" by it having a bunch of philosophical quotes. I'm not disputing the quality of the insights, or trying to act like the way you showed them is the same effect they have in the game, but as a demonstration for a game's literary merit I don't think that those quote serve that point.

Independant creators will always be the source of innovation, but innovation that never makes its way into the mainstream usually fades into irrevolence. Minecraft, cancer that it is, is a great example of a new concept being embraced by the mainstream. The problem is that even among indie developers the quality of writing is stuck at the same level as the pros. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've yet to find any writing in games that surpasses the general quality of the medium.

>Independant creators will always be the source of innovation, but innovation that never makes its way into the mainstream usually fades into irrevolence.
I think you are right, but as someone who has paid attention to triple-A and still does at arm's length, I don't think it's necessary for me to be apart of the mainstream who appreciates the delayed-effect of innovation. That is if it's true that lasting innovation cannot/usually does not come from the mainstream.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_merit
I'm just going with a broad definition of "high quality writing," which I believe applies to SMAC, especially when compared to other vidya.

>The medium will not progress if all they do is ape other mediums
Then why are you concerned if a game has literary merit?

Tim Schaffer used to be pretty good in the story department.

I think that if you want to get the most out of video games you need to delve into AAA and indie games. The medium has grown so large that its impossible to find games of consistent quality otherwise.