Disliked Elements, Mechanics, and Tropes

[Dark_Stalker]

@agarriberri0548

I would say that Part II is an anti-revenge story through and through.

Yeah, I said I hate it when forces me to stop specifically on my turn. And want a fully anti revenge that lets me nip it in the bud.

@agarriberri0548

Not that Abby’s father was not morally questionable at best, but if they wanted the girl to be given a legitimate shot to be heard, they needed to take Joel down a few notches. Not only that, but both of them hardly interact in a real sense.

Also kinda disagree with this. I feel like more time should spend time on Abby prior to killing Joel. I don’t think the solution to people ignoring their own evils in a revenge story is making the person your attached to nicer but make the enemy nicer. Plus like, you don’t have to be a dick front and center to show that you haven’t always been squeaky clean. Especially since in this circumstance it was one specific event that caught up to him rather than his past in general, you really don’t need to make him eviler to justify it. Plus I’m of the opinion you can make anyone sympathetic. (Like pop give them brain damage, and now they’re a victim too regardless of what comes after)

Why I like project moon in particular, first game we’re a purposefully amnesiac bad person. The entire game is you finding out you were even worse of a person (like mad scientist level) than you thought, so that you could one good deed in saving the world from a dystopian hellscape. You right your past wrongs with everyone, except one who betrays you at the last moment which screws everything up for everyone. And like we know the mc is a decent person now, and even she does on some level but it ultimately didn’t matter. And so you can recognize she had a legitimate grievance and if we were playing as her we’d be the big bad irredeemable (which I think makes it better, if you deserve redemption you don’t need it after all) guy, and also mad she messed up everything.
And then the second game happens we have an unrelated someone who wants revenge on her for all the damage that caused. And all the main antagonist are unrelated people who want revenge on him for stuff he did in pursuit of that.

@agarriberri0548

Either way, Ellie would have ended up empty inside because revenge is not fulfilling.

Also depends on the character. I can imagine in the case of a loved one it could be honoring their memory or what not. Or it being helpful cathartic. Like I can get behind a character who does evil for happiness, so revenge isn’t the line I’m drawing for emotions.

@agarriberri0548

By contrast, the Greek gods are just humans with supernatural powers. They lust over mortals and other gods;

Oh also kinda wish we had more worlds where the all powerful god everyone worships just plain meant harm upon people. Plus like, morality if say the afterlife punished you for helping others would be fun topic to explore.

Actually blazblue, anime fighter, two big bad guy, both gods, one is typical beyond mortal reasoning embodying a concept, but the main main bad guy. Lives off hatred, literally. He’s crass, he’s weaker than he is normally, as he’d be bound to another god at full strength and he hates everything. He’s ridiculously human. To the point that he admits he’s god but no one believes him. And if his personality wasn’t bad he’d just plain have a tragic backstory, but you don’t care because he’s evil. And he’s just fun.

[JBento]

@Dark_Stalker

y I like project moon in particular, first game we’re a purposefully amnesiac bad person.

When’s this from? Because KOTOR is from 2003.

[comradelenin]

@Dark_Stalker

Oh also kinda wish we had more worlds where the all powerful god everyone worships just plain meant harm upon people.

That’s just JRPGs.

[Jacic]

@agarriberri0548

rest of my fellow Greek mythology enthusiasts, The Penguin Book of Classical Myths by Jennifer R. March, and I was puzzled by how very few of the “short” stories, across a variety of authors and sources, have what we understand as “good endings.”

Oh yeah, they’re often labeled as tragedies for a reason. Greek mythology can be interesting because they treat their gods as often having quite human like personalities where there are failures, revenge, squabbiling etc and even the human/demigod protags often have significant personalities faults that can lead to failures or even their downfall. It makes them far more interesting in many cases than the often very perfect main characters we often seen in the media these days. Even look as a lot of the unsanitised faerie tales and folklore and the endings are definitely not what we would call “good”. Shakespeare did it as well where the protags didn’t necessarily live happily ever after.

There’s a lot of it around that can make for characters you can relate to (or sometimes want to hate) but it really does make you feel something about the stories. (Overly sarcastic productions youtube channel actually does a good dive into some of the classical greek literature and explains a lot about the characters and why things happen. Highly recommend that channel.) It’s actually one of the reasons why I wrote Oedipus. Due to a certain psychologist’s work, his motivations in today’s society are often very misunderstood. He’s actually one of the less flawed characters in a greek tragedy surprisingly enough. (Though he does have some anger issues + refusal to take advice from others who know more than him at times, but he is kinda a case of sometimes bad things happen to people who don’t necessarily deserve it and his end is definitely not good in the original.)

It’s going to be a personal preference thing here. I know most folks want a happy ending, but knowing the ending might not end with everything working out actually raises the stakes higher and I find myself getting more invested rather than coming away feeling crappy about it.

What I think you’re looking at more is the tendency of some characters to be written as a “bad luck magnet.” When overdone it can get old or cliched when you get misfortune heaped upon misfortune, particularly if there’s no underlying reason for it. Having a tragic backstory doesn’t make a character automatically interesting, as a character with a normal background doesn’t make them uninteresting. It’s all the way they’re written and the way they interact with the story. One of my complaints with the TV adaption of GOT when it went off script from the books initially is they overdid the “graphic bad things for shock value” and it just became impossible to watch torture porn rather than “oh no I wonder how/if x character is going to get out of this scenario and how will it affect them?”

@Sally_Forth

having a cast of characters that are all progressive and kind and perfect just makes them feel bland.

IMO human characters often need flaws/quirks/weaknesses of some description to make them interesting. They can be good (red flag RO’s aren’t necessarily interesting characters by themselves, they still need character development regardless of what their motivations and character types are), but they need distinct personalities and motivations that aren’t “I want to get with the MC”. Actually I’ll admit, having every RO in a game throw themselves at the MC and fall over themselves trying to make them like them for no particularly good reason is one of my personal dislikes. (I haven’t read a lot of the HC games so not poking specifically at those at all! General comment). Otherwise they can feel a bit cardboard and unreal. The flip side of this would be the main character being perfect which is often described as a mary sue/gary stu.

@dreamofeden

The ROs weren’t really characters so much as prizes for the player to win if the played well or succeeded certain checks.

^This. One sentence probably describes most of that above paragraph. Check boxes rather than rounded characters with their own part to play in a game rather than just to be a RO.

@hellanikthi

I want me some more LotR style friendships, and more great mentor-student relationships…I

^So much this as well! I really hate that most of the major relationships in CSG’s these days tend to revolve around them being romance options. I’d really love to see some deeper platonic only ones like friends, family, mentors etc.

@agarriberri0548

Jason helped Medea chop her brother into tiny little pieces after an ambush.

Despite being a “hero”, Jason really is a piece of work with some very large character flaws. Just leaving this here as an example of an interesting Greek tragedy that would never get made into a movie today .

Miscellaneous Myths: Medea

[LiliArch]

@Jacic

Actually I’ll admit, having every RO in a game throw themselves at the MC and fall over themselves trying to make them like them for no particularly good reason is one of my personal dislikes.

I’d love to see a story where this happens and the MC is (allowed to be) totally weirded out and wondering what on Earth is happening. And then solving that mystery would be part of the story.

@Jacic

Check boxes rather than rounded characters

I read “rounded checkboxes”… need to clean my glasses.

[Dark_Stalker]

I don’t think he gave himself amnesia like this guy did. He is in time loop and he wants to do things differently so he repeatedly erased his memories and gets them back in a schedule. Game is a bit long because of that. Anyway first game is lobotomy corp, 2nd is library of ruina. Plus amnesiac protagonists is super common.

Also Amnesia… I think all four were evil people who gave it to themselves.

@comradelenin

That’s just JRPGs.

I mean most of them being worshipped have the impression of a good god. Or everything has already gone to shit. I’m imagining a evil cult except it the main religion, because they have proof it’s real

Most jrpg a god who isn’t even worshipped or even a creator comes down to fight you. And that’s like a good portion of the definitions swiped so we’re back to like Greek generically strong person.

[Dragomer]

@Sally_Forth

Nobody wants to romance a racist, or sexist, or classist, or bigot after all

I don’t believe that for a single second. The number of people simping about characters that are royalty calling them ‘peasants’ is much greater than you think.

[natwa]

Actually, I think it’s interesting that tragedies for a comparatively long amount of time in antiquity seemed to be the most well-regarded and maybe even most popular drama and, I think, also when it came to stories in general(I include plays as stories here), while these days happy endings are seen as the default and certainly at least by far the most popular way to end the story in (just about) any kind of media. To me that shows that the expectations when it comes to fiction and plot and the tastes of their audience in some ways have changed greatly and in some ways even have undergone a u-turn and I think that’s really interesting.

[LiliArch]

@natwa

(I include plays as stories here)

As you should… I don’t want to think of a world where acted stories aren’t regarded as stories!

[Dragomer]

@LiliArch

No outcomes the reader wasn’t expecting allowed?

Depend on the kind of unexpected. ‘Lol so random’ unexpected? No thanks. Logical but ‘I didn’t think it would go there’ unexpected? Great. ‘Rocks fall, you’re dead. Restart now’ unexpected? Absolutely not.

At least that’s my take on it.

@agarriberri0548

By contrast, the Greek gods are just humans with supernatural powers.

Not really the thread for this but that’s a big misunderstanding of Greek Myth and the whole religion and several greek philosophers and theologians from the era would have an aneurysm reading that sentence.

There have been entire books written by theologians and priests of the era that some myths by their contemporary poets would lead to that exact interpretation and that it was extremely inaccurate.

It’s basically the equivalent of taking a random funny song about a dude drinking at a bar with God and thinking that God being just a normal drunken dude with magic power and trouble at home is accurate to Christianity and an important part of how they see their religion.

The Greek Gods’s whole deal is more ‘They are the world and everything in it in some form and said world can be very cruel and messy when you step on the wrong spot or get unlucky’.

[agarriberri0548]

@Dragomer

Not really the thread for this but that’s a big misunderstanding of Greek Myth and the whole religion and several greek philosophers and theologians from the era would have an aneurysm reading that sentence.

I meant that as my own personal opinion and interpretation of their myths, not that they believed in what I described.

[Dragomer]

I have two things I dislike that are kinda catch 22 together.

The first one is when choices are very vague and you basically need to read the author’s mind to know what choice test what stat or personality stat or whatever else mechanic the game has with absolutely nothing in-game giving you a hint or idea (Samurai of Hyuga is by far the most stand out exemple of that).

And then there is it’s opposite, which I assume happens to avoid the first scenario: When every single choice is just ‘Here’s a situation, pick the very clear stat you want to solve it with’, which I also can’t stand.

[Nm6k]

@LiliArch

I’d love to see a story where this happens and the MC is (allowed to be) totally weirded out and wondering what on Earth is happening. And then solving that mystery would be part of the story.

Think I remember a vn on kickstarter that had a similar plot though it never came out.

[AnneWest]

I think one of the Fernweh paths can be played a bit like that.

[comradelenin]

That’s a rather detached form of bigotry most aren’t affected by these days.

[Dragomer]

That’s still classicism and bigotry tho. The kind you’d expect from a lot of CoG nobility ROs in context but just don’t see.

I don’t think most are affected by the medieval era’s societal standards either these days.

[KZV]

IMO, it really only covers ‘realistic’ versions of these things.

Something like a Klansman RO ain’t gonna fly, but something like an elf supremacist who only romances fellow elves? There’s definitely an appreciative audience for those kinds of things.

[comradelenin]

I mean, there’s probably an audience for the Klan thing too, just not one you want to cater to.

[anon12679161]

It’s more common in visual novels than in CoG (though I have definitely seen it once or twice) but I HATE forced slowdown. You know those scenes where the author forces the text to appear so slowly because they think it builds tension or something? It builds tension alright, my muscles get so tense from restraining myself from throwing my keyboard through the screen.

I already read faster than the text normally appears, please for the love of god don’t intentionally slow it down even more.

[rozane]

@anon12679161

I already read faster than the text normally appears, please for the love of god don’t intentionally slow it down even more.

Haha, I fully agree with you! It makes me lose interest quickly.

It’s a shame because ultimately I do think it is a very good visual storytelling tool. I think the first time I encountered it was in Son of Satan(?) and I was impressed how much that animation could convey (specifically, the character was falling down, so the words were set up vertically, very nice touch).

I think a good compromise would be to keep the animation, but allow it to skip with a click. Then you would still know what feeling was supposed to be conveyed without having to wait for it to load.