I gleefully encourage people to list games with human storytelling they really liked. Recommendation threads are always good.
I note someone mentioned Disco Elysium. I played Disco Elysium. I enjoyed Disco Elysium.
However, Disco Elysium mainly proves that your game can have a good story if you let words eat the entire game, skin and bones and all. I'm afraid I want to find ways to solve the problem that still let me have game in my game.
> Sincerity, in case you have not heard, is cringe.
I don't particularly disagree with anything here (You actually changed my mind on the divorce thing; I still think the game gets hammery about "no don't divorce" thing at times, but you pointed out my raw nerves on the subject too hard to ignore) and I agree that games need to tell more kinds of stories (Too much of the default gameplay model is aimed towards profitability and we haven't meaningfully advanced in... decades now, we seriously need to progress past more advanced ways to punch goblins and develop other forms of interaction though new gameplay models) but this bit rubbed me funny. Not because of you, because of the history of the term and its cyclic nature. Mini essay someone pretty involved in the corners of the internet the term comes from incoming.
The thing with cringe and sincerity is it's a revolving door over time. There's always a push for "cringe is bad chad cuck meme yadda yadda I'm based because I'm calling someoen" but the actual origin of the terms based and cringe revolves very heavily around sincerity and self awareness. The short of it is that you're based when you know you're cringe, and you're cringe when you think you're based.
In their original (And my preferred) forms, someone who's cringe is a mixture of being critically unaware of your surroundings and lacking sincerity to themselves. An archetype of cringe that endures pretty consistently is people who are trying to fake out being something they think is cool. Based, on the other hand, is someone who doesn't care about being cringe and does things because they enjoy them.
So, under a certain interpretation cringe is cringe because it thinks it can be based if it fronts hard enough, and based is based because it knows it may be called cringe and doesn't let it get in the way of its expression.
I love your games and always enjoy your articles btw, I always read them in your voice after watching the GDQ conference :)
I think it's worth nothing three games about families: "Papa and Yo", "That Dragon Cancer" and "Firewatch". The first one is about domestic abuse while the second is about a family going through the lost of their newborn baby because of cancer. The last one is about a husband whose wife has lost it's memory of him and gone soul searching. All those stories are very human and unlike games similar to Last of Us, they are basically interactive books that tell stories.
I really liked this article and think the takeaway is timely and useful. But I think you're being _slightly_ unfair to Brothers. :) There's a great storytelling-through-mechanics moment that (at least for me) connected me to the characters' emotional state in a way that could only happen in an interactive medium, but to be fair it's _one_ moment and it comes something like 95% of the way through the game.
I'll also add my recommendations for games-about-family: Little Party (free) and Wide Ocean Big Jacket (inexpensive) by Turnfollow.
Haven spends a lot of effort in capturing the feel of the protagonists' relationship. The gameplay elements are a weird potpourri that don't /quite/ mesh, but the two of them definitely burned a snapshot of themselves into me.
Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is a story with a lot of focus on Jimmy's relationships with his family, or at least imagined versions of them. Your party members mostly consist of Jimmy's relatives and you get a whole lot of insight into what Jimmy thinks of them while adventuring through surreal and frequently horrifying dreams. Luckily Jimmy has the power of Empathy.
I'll add the first game in the Banner Saga series to the list of those that try to do family. One of the recurring Story elements is over Rook trying to protect his daughter Alette vs letting her become a fighter and defender of the caravan.
Mild spoiler: The first game ends with one of the two being killed by the big bads death throws after shooting it with a magic arrow. As a result nothing of that dynamic continues into the remaining two games.
I gleefully encourage people to list games with human storytelling they really liked. Recommendation threads are always good.
I note someone mentioned Disco Elysium. I played Disco Elysium. I enjoyed Disco Elysium.
However, Disco Elysium mainly proves that your game can have a good story if you let words eat the entire game, skin and bones and all. I'm afraid I want to find ways to solve the problem that still let me have game in my game.
I really loved the father/son interplay between Kratos and Atreus in God of War, some of the best moments of the game for me.
Disco Elysium. That is all.
> Sincerity, in case you have not heard, is cringe.
I don't particularly disagree with anything here (You actually changed my mind on the divorce thing; I still think the game gets hammery about "no don't divorce" thing at times, but you pointed out my raw nerves on the subject too hard to ignore) and I agree that games need to tell more kinds of stories (Too much of the default gameplay model is aimed towards profitability and we haven't meaningfully advanced in... decades now, we seriously need to progress past more advanced ways to punch goblins and develop other forms of interaction though new gameplay models) but this bit rubbed me funny. Not because of you, because of the history of the term and its cyclic nature. Mini essay someone pretty involved in the corners of the internet the term comes from incoming.
The thing with cringe and sincerity is it's a revolving door over time. There's always a push for "cringe is bad chad cuck meme yadda yadda I'm based because I'm calling someoen" but the actual origin of the terms based and cringe revolves very heavily around sincerity and self awareness. The short of it is that you're based when you know you're cringe, and you're cringe when you think you're based.
In their original (And my preferred) forms, someone who's cringe is a mixture of being critically unaware of your surroundings and lacking sincerity to themselves. An archetype of cringe that endures pretty consistently is people who are trying to fake out being something they think is cool. Based, on the other hand, is someone who doesn't care about being cringe and does things because they enjoy them.
So, under a certain interpretation cringe is cringe because it thinks it can be based if it fronts hard enough, and based is based because it knows it may be called cringe and doesn't let it get in the way of its expression.
I love your games and always enjoy your articles btw, I always read them in your voice after watching the GDQ conference :)
I think it's worth nothing three games about families: "Papa and Yo", "That Dragon Cancer" and "Firewatch". The first one is about domestic abuse while the second is about a family going through the lost of their newborn baby because of cancer. The last one is about a husband whose wife has lost it's memory of him and gone soul searching. All those stories are very human and unlike games similar to Last of Us, they are basically interactive books that tell stories.
I really liked this article and think the takeaway is timely and useful. But I think you're being _slightly_ unfair to Brothers. :) There's a great storytelling-through-mechanics moment that (at least for me) connected me to the characters' emotional state in a way that could only happen in an interactive medium, but to be fair it's _one_ moment and it comes something like 95% of the way through the game.
I'll also add my recommendations for games-about-family: Little Party (free) and Wide Ocean Big Jacket (inexpensive) by Turnfollow.
What about Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth? It is very human for me.
Hades had some great family moments, including an interesting ex-relationship between two side characters, but few people in it are really "human"...
Haven spends a lot of effort in capturing the feel of the protagonists' relationship. The gameplay elements are a weird potpourri that don't /quite/ mesh, but the two of them definitely burned a snapshot of themselves into me.
Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is a story with a lot of focus on Jimmy's relationships with his family, or at least imagined versions of them. Your party members mostly consist of Jimmy's relatives and you get a whole lot of insight into what Jimmy thinks of them while adventuring through surreal and frequently horrifying dreams. Luckily Jimmy has the power of Empathy.
I'll add the first game in the Banner Saga series to the list of those that try to do family. One of the recurring Story elements is over Rook trying to protect his daughter Alette vs letting her become a fighter and defender of the caravan.
Mild spoiler: The first game ends with one of the two being killed by the big bads death throws after shooting it with a magic arrow. As a result nothing of that dynamic continues into the remaining two games.