Cyber Hobo

Hey, look at that, a post that doesn’t involve my sad excuse for a life.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the games that I’m playing lately. Probably because I’ve been playing a lot more thanks to my sad excuse for a life. (Oops, okay, just one mention)

Anywho, it seems like they’re getting shorter and shorter lately and I’m having a hard time figuring out why this is. I thought that maybe it was because I’m getting older, more focused, better able to use my mind, or just plain more skilled but… the thing is, I tried to test this fact by playing an older game, namely Baldur’s Gate, one of my all time favourite games.

You know what I found? It took just as long as I remember it taking. Sure, the graphics are dated, but man, it was still as enjoyable as I remember it being too. That was when I realised why they were getting shorter, because game designers take a hell of a lot more time on the graphics than they used to.  Mainly because they’re ABLE to make the graphics better.

See, back when they made Baldur’s Gate, the graphics they used were pretty damn good. I remember marveling at them to be honest. How good the trees looked, how smoothly the characters moved, how shiny the magic effects were. When I replayed it recently, as much as I adore the game, I could see how wooden the movements were, how flat the terrain was, how “Shiny” the magic effects were. I was honestly pretty crushed during the first hour or so, I thought that my holy grail wasn’t as good as I had built it up to be.

After that initial hour had passed though, something strange happened. See, I was very aware of that first hour, painfully so, but once the story got going… the next thing I knew, it was six hours later… The story that the designers had crafted was so compelling, so engrossing, so utterly thrilling, that before I knew it, the graphics didn’t matter anymore. What I saw onscreen was far outclassed by the imagery that was suddenly brought to life in my mind. Black Isle (R.I.P) had created a story that sucked me in and whisked me away to the Forgotten Realms in my head.

Games like that… man, they don’t come along too often anymore. Sure, the graphics now are… utterly amazing, but… I can’t help but think that ten years down the line I’ll look at games like Mass Effect and Neverwinter Nights 2 and think the same thing I think about Baldur’s Gate now, that the graphics weren’t actually that good. The thing that sets the Baldur’s Gate series apart from Neverwinter Nights and Mass Effect, is how good the story was. The latter two had good stories, don’t get my wrong, they were really a lot of fun to play, but if they were books, it would be like comparing Lord of the Rings to… No, not Twilight, cause if Twilight was a game it would be… probably a flash game where you catch babies thrown by Michael Jackson or something…

Wait, where was I? Insulting the utter drivel that is Twilight derailed me, (Remember Kids, Vampire’s do not sparkle.) Oh, right. Comparing Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights 2. Now, Baldur’s Gate is obviously Lord of the Rings, whereas Neverwinter would be… The Sword of Truth series? Both are excellent, don’t get me wrong, I adore both of them, to a fault, but LotR is just on another level entirely. It has, like Baldur’s Gate, transcended the medium of words or code and become something… magical.

Anyway, now that I’ve gotten the fanboying out of my system… It seems that somewhere along the lines, game developers started taking their customers for granted. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated pretty graphics, I really do, there’s nothing wrong with a game that is good looking, but I really wish we, as gamers, didn’t have to sacrifice a good storyline for good graphics, or vice versa. It seems that that is inevitably the way it goes though, developers take forever and a day making their games pretty but then skimp on the storyline or craft an amazing story and forget that being able to distinguish a male character from a female character is important. That being said, I much prefer the latter.

And that’s the end of my rant for now. I’m working on something else game related too so watch this space.