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25.10.13

My toughts on Quantic Dream


If there's one trait I admire in a developer, is their ability to do exactly what they want and 
not go for what's hot and popular. So essentially I like devs that are outside the mainstream in one way or another....Guess that makes me a bit of a hipster. Oh well, In anycase while Quantic Dream is certainly no obscure gaming company, they're games are in no way traditional. 

More like interactive movies than games, taking a tiny step back to the fmv era with mostly QTE driven gameplay, they certainly are a very divisive group. You either love them or hate them with a burning passion. I love my devs this way, because if you like their flavour they give you lots of it. 

It's kind of like with food. For example notice how you always prefer home made food over some factory ready made thing or school cafeteria food is because, the ready made stuff and school cafeteria food needs to be ok for as many people as possible. If they make it too much the way some specific person likes it they end up alienating a good chunk of potential customers while some customers absolutely love it.

In my opinion this can be applied to video games. Games cashing in on whats popular all have this
trying to appeal to everyone wibe in it, wich means the end result may be alright but it's not something you'll remember for years and years because it was tailor made for your tastes.

But back to Quantic Dream. Id like to talk about each game of theirs that I've played and share my toughts on them and go on a bit more detail on common critisisms of the games
(especially heavy rain).

But before we go any further we need to adress one elephant in the room.
QTE's. I personally dont have a problem with QTE's in this manner, the whole game is built on them. 
This has been made very clear by everyone involved, so just be an informed consumer. 
If QTE's arent up your alley at all, dont play the game.

Farenheit/Indigo prophecy

 Just around the time Heavy Rain was coming out, I borrowed this game from a friend for the PS2.
My expieriences were mixed. The story had a pretty solid setup but around halfway the game went to completely different direction (if you played the game you know what I mean). Also the game over, while not a bad thing, certainly hinders the interactive movie thing a bit. Why? Well, it kind of makes your choices and gameplay rather uninteresting. 
Quantic Dream wanted this game to be a movie where your choices and game performance
 change the outcome, but they also wanted it to be a game.
To me this sort of highlights why strict failure states with game over screens don't really
work for a game like Heavy Rain.
With constant game overs it becomes apparent that most of your choices in the 
game dont really matter, they only result into an uninteresting game over.
To slighlty spoil the game, only factor defines what ending you get, and it's so darn obvious
that it really dosent warrant multiple playtroughs, because you know that the other choices lead to a game over. So its basically a bit more forgiving version of
Dragons Lair with some puzzleish things thrown in. 
Even despite all of that I can forgive the game a little, Quantic Dream was clearly experimenting (as they most likely still are), and they really hadn't found their formula yet and were still compromising with their gameplay elements (namely still having game overs).
But It's still an interesting experiment and it leaves you craving more from them because it has alot of potential. Wich convieniently brings us to.


Heavy Rain
Since Farenheit wasn't all that well know it mostly avoided the mudslinging 
that Heavy Rain recieved. Because of this I'm going to be alot more defensive on this so...yeah.
Anyhow, the hype for this game was......odd to say the least. Since their previous game was kind of a hidden gem, you'd never think that their next game would be such a hype machine. I guess Sony was really excited over any exclusive at that point.
In any case that hype might be the reason people are sort of quick to argee to any 
critique of the game. However it does not excuse some of the downright stupid and even false accusations. one of such accusations is that "there is no way to lose the game".
Technically this is true, there is indeed nothing in the game that states that you have failed.

However, all of your characters can die wich in any gaming circle is considered a bad ending. There are a copule of other bad endings as well. Personally I consider these bad endings as a failure state. Again, the game itself never declares that you failed, but when they tryed that before in farenheit the game sort of lost it's weight. "Oh, you died? Oh well gotta try again. Shame that really didnt change the outcome of the game" instead In Heavy Rain it's more like "Oh crap, this character died. I wonder how this will end now". 

Also this puts more weight into the otherwise bit dull QTE gameplay, since results are permanent. But that brings us to the next argument about how even if you fail a QTE you wont fail the entire game (like in dragons lair for example), and while it's true that not every QTE failure changes anything, the first time playing you really dont know wich failure gets you killed and wich dosent. And that add to the tension You dont know wich failure will get you killed, but you know that any one of your mistakes could be fatal.

This game isnt without it's share of flaws and I think it's all again about Quantic Dreams ongoing experiment of searching their style but here they have clearly improved already.
For example I hate how the game seems to give you a tutorial like task every so often. Making the omelette, trying get the baby to sleep etc etc etc. Ya know tasks that arent too hard and are missing all the weight that the more actiony scenes contain.

Also slow walking parts despite what Extra Credits says, are really dull compared to the weight of the actiony scenes. They're slow and meant to more set the mood and give a break. While there's nothing exactly wrong with this, it's still rather dull.

Also the controls are fucking weird, now I know what some of you are thinking. "Controls bad? What, but it's QTE's". The answer is because you do actually directly control your characters at times, however because of the changing camera angle I guess, you walk by pressing R2, wich is the most ackward thing ever. I understand why but goddamn is it weird.

Overall I think Quantic really found their direction with this game, and while it still needs a little tweaking, It's still a really great effort. Not to mention it was genuienly rather touching

Beyond Two Souls

With this game I have very little input on mostly because I only played the demo, however I wanted to comment my toughts based on the demo in contrast with BadCop69's video

 He complains about the controls, wich is weird because in the demo I found that the control was more fluent and natural than in Heavy Rain. It's kind of like comparing Red Dead Redemptions horse controls to shadow of the colossus. In SOTC the horse control is really natural while in RDR it's pretty much the car controls from GTAIV with living a creature. Then again I havent played the full thing so maybe it becomes a problem later on. Also from what I understand the main character can't die. So im curious as to how they're able to keep the tension up.


 Conclusion
 Quantic Dream are an experimental
bunch, they do thing differently wich opens new ways to look at games.
They didnt find find their absolute perfect direction with Heavy Rain, but it's still a significant improvement over their previous effort. Let's hope the evolution keeps going.

Now that I've opened up this whole talk I suppose
I should adress my opinion on David Cage as well.

Maybe next time, for now let this wall of text full of opinions be enough.