Topic: Gaming's pet peeves

@Kidfried Deacon literally doesn’t shut up. You go around all sneaky and then the minute you kill someone he shouts angrily about killing them or whatever. If you get off your bike at the right time, he’ll scream about the radio when there’s other people around who must think he’s an absolute madman. And don’t get me started on the audio logs where Deacon just screams over the top of generic NERO unit being overrun by the monster thingies LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE TIME 😂😂

@Kidfried @nessisonett Whilst I haven't played Days Gone, I can think of a couple other examples whereby audio logs, in-game dialogue and contextual exchanges all overlap and drown each other out. I get that having characters react to certain triggers is immersive, but developers really need to come up with a smarter way of implementing it, because this generation in particular has become a cacophonic mess at times. Some folks get it right (like Naughty Dog, I think) so why can't others?

@Kidfried @nessisonett @RogerRoger MGS5 was the worst for this with how much plot was hidden away on cassette tapes. I ended up having to find quiet parts of the map where it would be safe to stand and listen to them.

@Thrillho Well, not the worst. At least in MGS5 you could control whether you wanted all that exposition, and when you wanted it.

I think that's a difference with the in my opinion bigger offender Days Gone.

I don’t know if I’m weird this way but honestly, I almost never read or listen to the extra collectible types of additional exposition. Supplemental audio files, notes, dossiers, random lore hidden in the menus... I’m not sure why, but even in games I adore I can’t seem to make myself listen/read that stuff. Now on the contrary, when the game has an in-game cutscene or audio moment, I stop playing and watch/listen until it’s complete before I move on. I don’t skip those, even if it’s possible to. In DOOM 16 right now I always feel obligated to stop and watch the short hologram scenes that play in some of the rooms, however I haven’t read any of the extra info contained in the collectible logs. Not a single one.

I’m probably missing out on key information in my favorite games, but it just seems to slow down my playthrough, yet if the content is occurring during the game then for some reason I feel like it’s important so I don’t want to miss it.

@Th3solution Yep, you are weird.

@JohnnyShoulder Lol, I wear the title proudly! How does the saying go? “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” I’ll gladly be the strange and odd one out in this crazy world.

@Th3solution Yeah I prefer not to be perceived as 'normal'. What is the saying? 'One person's normal is another person's weird'.

In regards to storytelling in the form of audio tapes, text logs etc. I prefer to have it done with an in game cinematic, but if I'm into the story then I will take my time to read or listen to the extras. But I don't really enjoy it and find it a tiresome form of exposition.

@JohnnyShoulder Most of the time I read the stuff, even though I often not enjoy it. I really should just skip it, but I'm too afraid of missing something significant.

It's often a sign of lazy story writing. I think there's three kinds:

• Bad: plot lore. Lore that actually is required to understand the plot. This is often just lazy exposition, because the developers didn't have the budget to make an animated scene, or because the writers didn't know of a better way to convey all the information. Example: Hellblade
• Bad: lore for lore's sake. The devs felt they needed to add lore to the game, because... no one knows why. This is the lore that will tell you stuff you already know: the ruler of this domain is a really bad person, the disease that turns people into zombies is really intense, the war is really bad, etc. After reading it, you haven't learned anything about the world you didn't already know, the lore just states what you already experienced in cut-scenes or gameplay. Example: Assassin's Creed
• Good: the lore is actually lore. The lore will tell you something that isn't nessecarily required reading/listening to enjoy the story, but will tell you something more about the world. Side-stories, stuff about plants, or about the religion these people believe in. It will be something that has nothing to do with the plot, and it's completely unique. Example: The Elder Scrolls, God of War 2018

@Kidfried Control had the best readables and audio/visual tapes imo. Because the world was so (new) weird it felt like you were learning something. The visual tapes were genuinely entertaining to watch. Plus you would read the background on something like a plastic flamingo and then face it

@Kidfried DOOM Eternal was really bad for this. Just about everything story related was in a readable collectible.

I get that DOOM is about blowing demons up but 2016 had a decent plot to tie it all together. I started reading the Eternal ones but they’re so fragmented and have no context so I gave up in the end. I meant to go back and read them once I had them all but couldn’t be bothered.

@Thrillho Yeah, I missed so much story from MGSV as a result. I think that was an unfortunate side-effect of Konami rushing Kojima and freezing his budget.

@Th3solution Apologies if this makes you slightly less weird (and therefore less proud of your weirdness) but I completely agree with your position on supplementary material in games. I used to stop and read absolutely everything, but doing so often ruined the experience for me. Particularly this generation, most of the additional text or audio files have become so disposable that I just felt as though I was wasting my time with unimportant window dressing.

First time I played Life is Strange, I stopped and looked over every single knick-knack, trinket and bit of flavour text available in the first couple of episodes, and doing so nearly drove me crazy. I think it was one of the first games where I abandoned this approach and made a sprint for the finish, and I ended up enjoying its second half much, much more as a result.

I think @Kidfried is spot-on with their three categories of this stuff.

I'm also reminded of a funny example from a Star Trek game on PS3, where you could scan various environmental objects and Scotty would info-dump about them. Early on, I stopped and scanned some grass, and he popped up with "It's grass. Vulcan grass. Grass from Vulcan. What do you want me to say? I'm an engineer, not a botanist. Touch it if you want, make a hat out of it, I don't care. Can I get on with my work now?" Always took that as a nod from the developers, venting their frustration at having to pad out their game with such additional nonsense.

@JohnnyShoulder People keep reminding me to play Control. The concept, setting and look of it really interest me, but is the gameplay any good by chance?

@RogerRoger Yup, I had something similar with some games this gen as you described with Life is Strange.

Often I will play games with my partner, and they are often way more into any game than I am. So, they want to read and see everything, even to the point of almost yanking the controller out of my hand when I skip over something.

Now with many games I play on my own I will just skip over some of the fluff, and have a way nicer and less padded experience. Many gamers are real completionists I think (and I can be guilty of that myself too), and we're often conditioned by these games to want to see and do everything. For me at least I think it's pretty difficult sometimes to embrace the idea that, yes, these texts are fully optional, and maybe the developer doesn't even want you to read everything. Just like you wouldn't enter a book store and just start reading every book in there, just because you can.

I'm not feeling eloquent today, but maybe some of you might understand what I'm trying to say 😅

@Kidfried The gameplay in Control is awesome i thought. There are some performance issues, but I was able to live with them. Might be worth waiting to get it for the PS5.

@Kidfried Don't worry, I get you! And I think that's a valid point; particularly in lore-heavy games, I think most developers write these endless pages of stuff knowing that it can't and won't be absorbed by all, and that the story must be able to stand on its own. Because you're right, you wouldn't walk into a real bookstore and read every book, so why do we bother trying when we're in a digital bookstore?

I think you're right, I think the idea of a game being something you have to complete 100% plays a part, in conjunction with the long-standing tradition of games having secrets and Easter Eggs and, on a more basic level, the need to test what's possible (and not possible) in a constructed environment. After all, one of those books in the in-game bookstore might be a switch to a hidden room (and that's pretty unlikely to be the case in the real world... well, unless you happen to live in an 18th Century gothic castle, or Disneyland). For many, therefore, I can understand the need to push every button possible.

@Kidfried I agree with your break down. Ghost of Tsushima is a good example of category 3. The Mongol artifacts and banners and such are purely educational to give interesting context. And really, I’m not sure why I don’t read those extra entries because I do find them interesting when I do take the time to do so. It’s not like I don’t like reading; I quite enjoy it. I really like visual novels and am having a great time with Danganronpa and I feel like I have to read every passage in that game and if I miss something I’ll use the text review function (which I highly appreciate) to go back and read the conversation to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I used to like to read real novels and books and I’ve largely replaced my leisure reading with gaming since there is a lot of reading and storytelling contained in them that satisfies that void. So I’m not sure why I ignore supplemental exposition in gaming. I think it has to do with time constraints.

@RogerRoger No problem! Come join us in the Weird Club. There plenty of room here and we’re looking for a treasurer.

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On a related side note — One of my pet peeves is when the game doesn’t have a menu option to review important pieces of information later if you need to. Whether it be story info and key character description, or more importantly, gameplay tutorial and instructions, I need to have an easy way to go back and review things if I take a break from the game for a few weeks. I’ve played games (I can’t think of an example right now but JRPGs come to mind) where you get one shot at learning the gameplay mechanics and it you happen to mentally snooze during the brief intro tutorial of the mechanic or gameplay nugget then you’re screwed. You’ll never be able to find it again. I’ve played games with extravagant menus with lore and character dossiers but I search high and low and can never find “Now what were the input commands for the special fire attack?” It’s pretty frustrating.

Of course you have the opposite problem in most games where you have to watch reminder of how to “Press the left analog to move forward and press X to jump” a million times during the loading screens. Or worse yet, when the basic tutorial prompts continue to interrupt you during gameplay, even at the end of the game.

Some games have a deft system whereby the game will sense if you’re struggling to execute a command that was taught hours ago, and only after failing a few times will the re-educating prompt come up. I appreciate it when it does that sometimes.

@Kidfried Control’s definitely worth playing. It’s one of those games I wouldn’t say I loved but I appreciated what it did right. The performance issues are pretty bad, I lost several hours of progress over the course of my playthrough due to bugs locking me out of the next area or just straight up crashes and save corruption but if you wait for PS5 you’ll probably have a better experience.

@nessisonett I just had the issue when you when back to the game after pausing it or looking at the map, the game would take a second to get back into action. Every. Single. Time. And the slow down when things got busy. But did not experience any of the things you mentioned. I think your Pro might be haunted. 😂

@JohnnyShoulder Honestly, I’ve been perfectly fine in games like Ubisoft ones and Skyrim, which are very buggy games. It’s just a select few games like Control, Star Wars and FF7R that stuck out to me as having truly annoying levels of bugs, texture glitches and slowdown. It’s not even my external hard drive as most games are on the internal and the ones I do keep on the external work perfectly well. I have no idea why it’s those games with issues.

@nessisonett Ubisoft games are only buggy at launch. They do an impressive job of patching stuff later on.