Entertainment Forum General Chat Thread [ARCHIVED] • Page 1298

Yes, those two things are extraordinarily different than major plot points

 

like haircuts in prison break. how did they always stay so fresh?

 

They're closer to TV than they are film

 

I am not denying that there are bad films. I criticize them all the time. Video games are still developing as an art form. I prefer storytelling through gameplay like in Journey or Shadow of the Colossus. You can't get that from a film.

 

what you’re explaining is pretty close to another art form

television

 

In length but not in structure. They tell a 3-act story.

 

TV episodes have a three act structure. Seasons and even series often do as well. There are also stories that branch off from the main one, much like video games

 

The only game that immediately comes to mind as having a point a to point b story is, ironically, the one that's currently a television show

 

Actually no I've thought of a few.

A few of those are TV shows too though

 

I think games are better when they don’t have stories, but I consume them differently than other people do

 

Video games, DLC and sequels aside, come out as one finished product, like a movie or a book. They have the typical story development that singular stories always have. TV shows don't have that because you have no idea when the show is going to end. Shows are always being written as they go along. Phil Leotardo was not the grand antagonist of The Sopranos; if the show ended in season four he wouldn't even exist.

 

there’s a reason that the majority of video game to film adaptations are miserable and video game television adaptations are occasionally successful

 

YouTube Premium is better than television

 

And they tell multiple stories across dozens of hours and are meant to be consumed in intervals.

 

80s/90s video games based on movies were especially awful! So many bad ones because companies wanted to just crank them out as fast as possible to capitalize on the movie's success. The games stunk though!

 

They are consumed in intervals because they are long, but it is still one story. Mass Effect 2 is basically Seven Samurai; The Last of Us is structured just like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

 

What is this discussion? That games are like television? They are not, lol. Games are unique from other forms of storytelling in the sense that the player is in complete control of how the story is delivered to them. Everyone can agree that a TV show episode/movie is meant to be consumed in a single sitting. Some television needs to work around commercial breaks. That break does not exist in games, the player controls the stopping and starting. In more complex games, a player could advance through the main story without experiencing so much of the peripheral story. Something in a book/film/show might go over your head, but you are not completely missing it.

 

Books/literature are number 1. The immediate access to your brain from the words creating the narrative and experience as you read them and interpret them is unparalleled by any other medium. The best authors, from Dostoevsky to Toni Morrison, take your mind somewhere that feels thematically/intellectually infinite and true. Few movies are as good as the greatest works of literature.

Film and television (and video games) tell stories visually with moving pictures and (usually) sound, so they are comparable, but a film will usually have the advantage of a contained story being told at once, and being able to be concise and stick to the main points it's trying to convey. TV generally has more obstacles to that, which is why movies are better suited to making artistic statements or saying something consistent. TV has gotten better, but I also think a lot of "prestige" TV isn't as good as a lot of other people do (particularly in the last 5-8 years). So movies to me are a far more interesting and fulfilling medium than TV, which I watch a lot less of now.

Video games are at their least artistic when they're just giving you most of the important story/thematic/character movement in CGI cinematic cutscenes where you can't do anything but watch the story, then they let you go shoot bad guys under the guise of a mission or something. Video games have gotten a bit better at this in general, but still struggle to marry the use of interactivity and game mechanics of the medium to the theme/narrative in a real way.

One of the problems with TV and video games is they ape cinema too much to separate themselves. Cinema used literary and artistic influences and created cinematic language (eg Caravaggio's influence on Scorsese), video games and TV use cinematic language and usually it comes in the form of homages to previous works of cinema.

 

Also kinda goes to Tetra's point in the VG thread. Games are the only medium that punishes people for not being good. You cannot get the full story in some of these games if you stink at the game. I don't necessarily think that's a positive/negative, but it does change the way the story is delivered.

 

what about music

 

I don't think people are acknowledging how unique the construction and economics of television are and the particular artistic constraints that are placed on it.

 

since music rarely has a visual element and in general isn't trying to tell stories at the same level of scope or nuance as most literature or cinema, idk I can't rank it with the others. Podcasts are at the bottom, tied with YouTube content.

 

YouTube is the absolute worst

 

yeah alphabet in general is trash

 

Coward!