I just can’t wrap my mind around where you’re coming from. Since we clearly disagree but I don’t think we’re too heated about it I’m just gonna kinda ramble though this for my POV in contrast to yours. Because I think that’s all it’s coming down to on this? Probably from different school of philosophy on art and the like but I wouldn’t know which school of thought either of us would belong to.
The idea that item descriptions and vague mentions of proper nouns in the souls series is a better narrative or narrative really at all is somewhat irksome. It creates lore, it does not create a story. All it is doing is setting up more backdrop for the world you’re in, and sometimes that tangentially gets to narrative but rarely pushes your character or your direct narrative forward lest it be something you slay the beast with. This compared to initially having slept with Yen the second time then later after getting a djinn to lift the curse that was binding the two characters choosing to break it off was such a big character moment that it gave me some pause. Not totally saying one is better than the other, but one is pushing a narrative forward more than the other.
As to Geralt flexing his pecs as he moans over some succubs, IDK sex is weird man. But saying it works in Killer 7 really throws me through a loop. If we’re going to talk about super over the top games, we have to recognize that they’re playing on a base instinct as well. Not so much to go down the trodden road of instances of sex being 100% more likely than that of an action movies happening to someone. But that if we’re going to scrutinize every instance of sex than just turn a blind eye to the fact that you’re chopping someone’s head off the next minute is a bizarre standard to set.
As to the sex being boring. The Witcher more than most games I’ve played lays it’s intrigue on interpersonal relationships. If you don’t care for characters than you’re not going to like it. I can’t speak for the books but in the 2 games I’v played just brushing it off for run of the mill male power fantasy seems dismissive.
What’s really at the heart of this though that keeps bugging me is the prudish mindset. Like if sex isn’t handled in this high minded narrative shaking way then it’s never worth exploring or putting in a game. Like games aren’t allowed to explore sex, use sex, or even talk around the idea of sex. If nothing else that’s limiting and boring.
But seriously, HOLY CRAP this game is way too damn long for it’s own good. I like it, but I just hit a wall again last night. I want to play side quests and run around to go and meet and kill new and interesting monsters but HOLY CRAP you could split this game in two and there would still be more in it than your average 60 buckaroo AAA game. I hear there’s DLC too? Who can get to that?
Witchers are monster hunters. The witchering in 2 is mostly in the service of other politicking, but 3 has a whole section of your quest log that’s just contracts. 3 is a pretty good simulation of doing a job in addition to the main quest. Geralt finds work to make money because the main quests don’t often reward you with money.
You have to consider with the career of being a witcher that their are overhead costs so having the ability to kill a wrath or stone golem for coin isn’t that bad. Occasionally you stumble upon a love triangle or people who steal and are left to decide if you want them to get punished. What I do like about the Witcher 3 is the dialogue choices are much more natural than the “sarcastic” options of Fallout 4.
I still haven’t found all the places on the map. Does that make me a bad Witcher
Miyazaki isn’t spoon-feeding you sub-tolkien nonsense, he’s asking you to become an active participant in shaping his story, to the degree that every action you take in Dark Souls is your own personal narrative. This is why I recall my own time playing these games moreso than any other traditionally “story driven” game.
The tone of my writing conveys an anger I don’t feel towards your opinion but rather an attempt to lobby on behalf of what I feel to be superior world building/story telling. As a child, Miyazaki would read western fantasy books but obviously couldn’t read what was actually happening, so he would fill in the gaps with his imagination and become an active participant. I dunno, I’m losing conviction as I’m writing but I think we would both agree it’s better to show than to tell, and Dark Souls is the best example I can think of in the gaming realm. It succeeds as a narrative driven experience without ever interfering with the player and I think that’s cool.
I think there’s an important distinction to be made between the story that dark souls tells and the story of you playing dark souls!
the game always struck me as a place almost in stasis waiting for the player to interact with it. like I get the sense that some of the enemies that were placed in ambush areas would literally never move in the game’s fiction otherwise, because the world that you’re traversing is so old! even the bosses or wandering enemies wouldn’t move outside their areas because why would they? shadow of the colossus has a similar feeling, for reference, where the story isn’t so much told by the actors as it is by the player interrupting stasis. so dark souls tells a very personal story and it’s really interesting because of that, but it isn’t the only/best way to create a narrative-driven experience
this is as opposed to games like the witcher, which features a very active world with multiple actors acting independently that would ostensibly continue to go about their routines unprompted by the player. and yeah I know for most intents and purposes the agents in both games are created with relation to the player in a weird metaphysical sense but the agents also interact with each other with more frequency and dynamism than the characters in dark souls do
so while it’s easy to get into the idea of dark souls as a more compelling narrative experience because it’s YOUR story (you literally create the character that propels the story forward), I don’t know if it goes so far as to render other narrative experiences as trite as you seem to be insinuating – the witcher tells a story that requires you to play as an actor that isn’t necessarily the most important actor in its world. whether it succeeds at that is up for debate, but I haven’t played the third game so whoops
This was something acknowledged by Miyazaki and his team and later corrected in Bloodborne. The first area you fight in is patrolled by an angry mob with pitchforks and torches when you find them. It’s a small little tweak but it corrected that feeling of stasis (I enjoy that from previous Souls games because it made the whole experience that much more surreal) and made Yharnam feel more alive.
I feel we’re kind of talking about different things here at this point. I’m not saying Dark Souls is less interesting, or that there isn’t an interesting story to dig up. But the story of those games were found in a way akin to an ARPG with group mind think around it to piece the whole thing together. I know SB was a big part of that, and it’s really cool an unique for that.
What Dark Souls doesn’t have by design is Narrative. To be more clear “a spoken or written account of connected events” There are desperate pieces here and there in your item descriptions. The Witcher is the polar opposite to Souls in this respect.
I don’t have the numbers but I’m fairly confidant that Witcher 3 has to be up there for the most spoken lines in a game. Going to every character and getting at least a slice of their life story and at points literal narration along with books, small item descriptions, character bios, monster descriptions and so on. The Witcher has lore and narrative in spades.
In contrast Souls has the desperate elements. It is a story told with minimal to an absence of narrative.
If the story of Dark Souls is the intro cutscene and the NPCs talking, the narrative is I went and killed everything so I could ring these bells and then I went to Mt Olympus but Zeus wasn’t home, etc. I think The Witcher sacrifices some of the implicit strengths of reading item descriptions to align those two better. Bloodborne’s subquests also do a good job of directly involving you in happenings in the world, e.g., Eileen, but they’re still quiet.
The second and third Witcher games improve on Mass Effect and the Bethesda-style game by making the player’s interactions meaningful to the world and developing unique paths that reward revisiting, increasing the quality of the average character’s writing, and filling the world with smaller objectives that still have substantial context behind them. I think they were able to pull this off because they were adapting solid source material, didn’t waste time on an expository introduction to the universe, and the labor costs in Poland allowed them to create a staggering volume of game. I don’t give a shit if Fallout 4 allows me to comb the wasteland for every car battery to put on a laser light show. The Witcher 3 is huge and engaging.
I guess I’m just not impressed that a developer was able to adapt a story from a book only idiots would read on a plane trip. If we’re praising this game for “good writing” yet its source material is utter fucking trash, then what does that say about our standards as gamers? As you mentioned, It’s functional, and that’s worth praising, but to hold this game up as the one game you would suggest to your “smart friends” who like “good writing” is silly to me. I’m not saying that’s your assessment, but that’s the overall sense of what I’m reading on the internet.
Dark Souls knows better than to legitimize games by sign-posting every objective and ramming some half-assed bargain bin fantasy novel down your throat. Dark Souls knows that involving you as an active participant in a narrative is a whole lot more meaningful then talking to NPC’s, reading 12 pages of in-game lore, or looting a peasant farmer’s shack after you make some crucial “choice” to help them slay the goblins that have been eating their sheep, etc.
I literally screen-capped an image in Witcher and wrote down my comments in like 30 seconds. Please note, this is not meant as an attempt to be a troll but just honestly what went through my head at the boring cluster fuck that assaulted my eyes.
edit: I have failed to present a adequate argument, so I will post Tom Bissell’s excellent piece on storytelling in Dark Souls and the shitty storytelling in Skyrim and by extension The Witcher too
yeah look it’s a fairly mainstream game that doesn’t try to have an immersive UI and it’s game of thrones style well done schlock at best but what exactly is wrong with that?
it’s vastly better than skyrim, as those sorts of games go. that’s the intent.
This is maybe the first time i’ve actually been annoyed by the “compare everything to Dark Souls” selectbutton meme
DkS tells its story in a really fantastic well-considered way but it’s not the be-all-end-all of fantasy game storytelling. The Witcher or Skyrim may or may not work on their own merits, but the solution to their problems is not “copy this other game’s approach”
Shoehorning DkS into a thread for no reason doesn’t really say anything about either game except “this is good and i like it better than that” it’s a dead-end argument.
Trashy books have their place, you know, and dismissing people who read them as idiots is pretty dickish.
As for that article,
If you have no idea what the Elder Scrolls franchise is, you are probably either (a) an adult woman
I don’t know what standard you hold books to, but my fiancée seems to enjoy them even while at home and, man, I hope she isn’t an idiot. This reads like a blanket dismissal of fantasy literature as a whole. I think The Witcher is roughly on par with A Song of Ice and Fire in its “Intro to Realist Theory” sophomoric political savvy.
Skyrim is trash primarily because it feels awful. The Witcher is at worst kinetically boring.
Also, goodness gracious, are you holding up Dark Souls as an example of good UI?