I mean look at what happened when GTA IV removed some of the, IMO, pretty unsubstantial and useless mechanics and features that cluttered San Andreas.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERES NO JETPACK!?
Also, I think you're unfairly generalizing when you say all "art games" have rudimentary interaction.
I'm only doing so because this is because it's becoming increasingly apparent that this is how we need to define them. Naturally there are always exception to any rules, but I think I can safely say that
most art games are guilty of this. That's what I'm trying to say here, even about people who you say I'm apparently lumping into one big dumb group. For the sake of convenience, I'm just trying to talk about the totality of the genre and people who like it as a hole. Some games do this and some people feel this, and that's wrong. It's not so much that someone downloaded Braid and now they get dumped into the idiot dumpster, I'm criticizing an attitude and game design scheme that some people may or may not have. Nothing against TIGS, of course. I like this forum, that's why I post here. If I was just rollin' and trollin' I'd post on ToT's forum, y'know? So for the sake of convenience, just know that I'm acknowledging that there are a few good apples among the bad eggs, I'm just not going to point them out every time, it's simply not convenient.
Killing a monster, and then another five monsters, and another random moster, then button-mashing to lift some rock and then jumping over some pit and then solving some puzzle isn't proper narration, it's traditional game design.
But this is the sort of capacity that a video game has to tell a story, and is borrowed more from movies and books. Are external conflicts in movies or books not proper narration? Kratos is moving from location to location and he's dealing with the overall plot of the game, which is a war against a god or something. These are the forces of that god that Kratos must contend with, and just because he isn't dealing with that god himself at this moment doesn't mean it's not an expression of that overall theme of godly conflict the game is seeking to establish.
Further, the tension is completely lost when you play protagonist and know that there is no failure. You never ask yourself "IS HE GONNA DO IT?" because you are told you have to kill him and know when you lose you will have another chance. You may only ask yourself "HOW IS HE GONNA DO IT?"
And this is the problem when you think of a video game as with the sort of narrative you'd expect from a book or movie. You shouldn't be asking yourself if the character is capable of doing a specific task, because of course he is! The game clearly gives this character the potential to overcome the obstacles set before him, or the game is unwinnable. Because of this, it's more important that the player asks if
they are going to be able to do it.
I mean, if you have to lift some random stone too many times during your game, that's redundancy enough on its own! Stories never tell you about trivial events.
Video games aren't movies or books, they are driven around repetition. As a collection of rules, we have to allow the player to exist in a completely alien world defined by completely alien rules but make the logic of that game concrete enough for him to subsist in it. This is why repetitious events are important in a game, because there's only so much about this new world that you can ask the player to understand. If there's a rock block you, you can pick it up and break it. If there's a monster, you can punch it until it dies. Video games lack the capacity to throw new things at you, because they may interfere with the list of things that you've become accustomed to.
There has never been a game that perfectly replicates the laws of our universe, they all pick and choose small aspects of the real world (or of worlds more fantastic than our own) to focus on, and that's what makes them games. All games are inherently repetitious, just look at sports, boardgames, or card games. This is what happens when you have organized play defined by rules, it's inescapable in a good game.
As said earlier, it's like having crossword or sudoku puzzles in a novel.
Actually, it's a lot more like having a novel in a crossword or sudoku puzzle.
You guys are addicted to this shit.
I can stop whenever I want, Melly. I just do it because I like to party.
Well if you remove word and figurative graphics from Phoenix wright you are unable to proceed, while if god of war is just a bunch of square onto a plane it still work.
Oh man, we're gonna play the Phoenix Wright card, are we?
You're gonna question the guy who has a set of Capcom formalwear, given to him by Seth Killian, for being such an awesome Phoenix Wright fan, about Phoenix Wright?
Look at that. I've already won the argument without saying a single word against your points. You want to step to a super-fan like myself coming at you with Morigan on his cummerbund?
Phoenix wright is an adventure game where the story is the puzzle,
Phoenix Wright is an adventure game where the story
presents the puzzles. If you want an example of a game that doesn't try to do this, it's Professor Layton, where most of the puzzles are mostly unattached from the matters at hand. Phoenix Wright simply presents us with simple logic puzzles based in a world of its own creation, and gains a fair bit of effectiveness because of that. Lets take a puzzle from the game, where the person you're questioning tells you he made a phone call at 6PM. This is impossible, because you have evidence that tells you that there was no power between the hours of 4 and 8PM. This is the game, and everything around it is the fluff. Ultimately it's a simple puzzle that requires you to have read the piece of evidence that contradicts him, and is only as integral to the plot as they're willing to make it. The story is there for the sake of context when it comes to these puzzles, a tool that helps the player better understand the situation being described. This puzzle could've existed outside of the sprites, music, and yes even story of Phoenix Wright and stood on it's own, it just wouldn't be a very good puzzle.
the puzzle was not some slap on obstacle to prevent progression, the puzzle WAS the progression!
It doesn't seem to cause any more progression than God of War, it's dictated by the same win/lose flags that most games use. You present the right evidence and the story continues, or you present the wrong one and lose/have to present the right evidence. You're not defining the story any more than a game like God of War is, you're simply participating in it and moving it along by playing the game part of it. That being said, it's not a bad thing at all. It's the perfect marriage between gameplay and story that one would expect from the sort of world that Phoenix Wright is, it certainly would seem silly if Phoenix Wright had to go through platforming segments to collect evidence and we were then shown cutscenes of him moving the story as he presents the evidence. This doesn't make God of War inherently wrong, though, because God of War wasn't trying to tell the same story that Phoenix Wright was. Gameplay should match and compliment the story it's trying to convey, which is why a game about killing a god is a beat-em-up and a game about court is a dialogue heavy adventure and puzzle game.
edit:
Story in game like GOW is like story in porn, no matter how enjoyable they are they are optional and skipable,
Again, I really don't like how you put down video games, this time likening their artistic and storytelling merit to that of pornography. Every game can exist without the story, even a VN can be 'won' if the player is blind to the dialogue, his continual clicking assuring he achieves an ending. Phoenix Wright could be won if stripped down to nothing but the puzzles they present and the context needed to understand them.
I'll abstain from listing any pornographic material that I feel has artistic merits, I'll just save that for the chatlog with anarkex.
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