Life is Strange is one of few choice-based games that creatively uses its mechanics and, rather than attempting to be a technical tool of branching realities, makes its mechanic the very part of narration. Max uses her rewind to never face grief, to never be lonely or unliked. Similarly, we adapt to Max's worldview and simulate her desires, snooping around us and rewinding time for miniscule tasks simply to have the best forms of dialogue, of relationships, of events. We create the best consequences for Kate, for Chloe, for Rachel but also wish kindness to David, Victoria, Joyce and even random Arcadia citizens. We want to fix everything and live in a perfect world by actively relying on our powers (as a character) but also replaying the game time after time for the best consequences (as a player - applicable to those in 2015 waiting for new episodes). The game lying to the player is crucial because Max is lying to herself. The very tropes of Butterfly Effect and Donny Darko are quite popular, a lot of us are familiar with it. And it's not like the game attempts to hide what it will make us do. In Max's journal, she herself alludes to media about the two choices, sometimes even mentioning her own irrational fear of the same thing - but ultimately she always brushes them away for yet another "I have to save Chloe". Just as we brush them away because we want this story to end differently even if the answer is staring us right in the face. Life is Strange is ultimately the journey of grief. It's the deep desire we all have to relive the past with our loved ones, for things to be different. Throughout the four episodes, Max accelerates in her use of rewind powers but also desperation. To save Chloe, to have everything, to never have anything bad happen. Ultimately, that desperation reaches its climax in Polarized, non-stop jumping through time and realities to imprison Jefferson, to save Chloe, to win the contest; never having a time to catch a breath or process the horrific assault she experienced just moments ago. Max runs towards a destination that doesn't exist in search of a light, of revelation, of something to Fix Everything. We run with her. And then we stop, finding ourselves on the top of the cliff, the very place we ran from all these episodes dreaming of a different world and we Finally Know. That's why the story works. That's why letting Chloe or Arcadia go is so heartbreaking. Life is Strange is not supposed to have a good ending or a good myriad of consequences to our previous decisions. It's supposed to crash the illusion we played into for those 5 episodes alongside Max. Chloe dying on a bathroom floor angry, not knowing what happened to Rachel, never finding peace with her mother and stepfather - is what breaks our hearts. Whichever ending the player chooses, Max is left with the result of sexual assault and seeing death all over. Arcadia Bay's death trail and convoluted messy problems of its citizens will never be overwritten. And we can't change that. No amount of interference, rewind, choice making will fix that. It's supposed to be horrible, unfair, powerless. Because that's the reality of grief and loss. Max, and us, are supposed to acknowledge the truth, the reality. And acknowledging is the path of accepting and moving forward from the horror endured. Back in 2015 the endings did face scrutiny by players. Of course, everyone wanted everything to be Good, for consequences to be felt, and for us (and Max) to never lose agency. I find that years later the overall perception has grandly changed and people set with it a little, reflected on the game, maybe even replayed it, and finally accepted the story it told. But I do think it's expected and quite normal that back in 2015 people were adamant to that finale. Of course, no one wanted their pefect reality and a myriad of perfectly chiseled decisions snatched away from them.
Yeah, I think there's a core viewpoint being espoused in this section that if choices only alter gameplay/story/characters along the way and don't alter the *ending*, it's Lying to you. Personally, and especially with everything that the game's core story was building up to as you learn the *why* of what's happening, I think calling that out as lying to the player about choice is a bit disingenuous. But, that can also just be a matter or perspective. Journey vs Destination as the core focus of scrutiny.
@@Stands-In-The-Fire I agree. The mechanic itself doesn't lie throughout the game. There are a lot of branching consequences and dialogues to explore and it doesn't feel like a static experience. It would definitely be a different conversation if for example both the ending and the lead-up to that ending were utterly without variation. A good example of that is the new Life is Strange: Double Exposure game, unfortunately... In that game, yes, I agree; the game is lying entirely, and our actions don't have consequences, both in the final decision and generally throughout the game. But Don't Nod's Life is Strange approached choice by making it part of a Coming of Age narrative. I think , ultimately, if people find the game lied to them, than Don't Nod's story just didn't work for them. Which is okay of course, not everything works for everyone.
Just found out hellblade didn’t have perma death this whole time and have done 2 full play throughs thinking if I died too much I’d have to restart. Thinking that heightened the experience as a veteran gamer and if I ever came back to it now the experience would now never be the same.
I loved Life is Strange, and while you are mechanically right that no choice in the game changes the final option, save the town or save Chole... does that really matter? Your choices shape the experience you have, reflect on you and how you view things, and take you on a wonderful journey. It's the journey, not the destination. That old saying.
And the sense as a player of sacrificing all the changes you made to hopefully better the world helped heighten the final choice. The gameification helps.
It does. While he was talking about it I remembered what my expectations were while playing. I expected my choices to play into how the town reacted to the storm. I figured that the more I helped people, the better my chances were in the last episode where I expected Max would try to convince the town to evacuate. Instead it went with, hey your choices didn't actually matter, kill this person you love in the hopes that it won't cause a freak storm.
“maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way” vibes, lol Which is valid, I have a set of guilty pleasure games that have let players down massively. But if a game promises your choices have consequences and then doesn’t follow through, people are allowed to be upset at being lied to.
I was going to say just this exactly. The choices in Life is Strange are still choices, even if they don't mean anything in the end, and are a good way to help players connect or share agency with the narrative goals of the game.
I didn’t mind the lie of HB. I actually liked it. I saw the message, felt my sphincter tighten, and resolved that I wouldn’t be beaten. I only died a handful of times and never got too worried. When I found out that it was a lie after beating it, I loved it. It made me feel like I’d been motivated and was closer to Senua’s journey because of it. Death may have felt worse, but that’s because, like Senua, my failure was amplified by false information. We were both going to be just fine - we just couldn’t see it until the end
Me: Enjoying an indepth analysis on deception in games, up to the Spec Ops White Phosphorus scene. TH-cam: *interrupts video to give me an ad for an outdoor gas cooker stove* Outstanding... Liked and subscribed lol
Life is strange and hellblade are to this day some of my favorite narrative experiences in games. Both were just truly fantastic for what they were. Hellblade's lie didn't really effect me, because I realized pretty early on that the combat was pretty easy, and it didn't stress me out a ton, but the narrative, and the audio of that game fricking delivered. And Life is Strange just packed some serious emotional gut punches that aren't incredibly common in video games. I also want to point out, you could argue the original bioshock falls into the same category. Similarly to spec ops, it really makes you think about the way we tend to just accept whatever video games tell us to do.
The most dishonest and insulting lie I've experienced in a game was in the first Infamous game. There is a choice where the protagonist's girlfriend is kidnapped and he's presented with a very comic book inspired choice of having to choose to save 6 doctors or his girlfriend. If you make the good choice and save the doctors, his girlfriend dies as expected. If you choose to save the girlfriend, it's revealed that it was actually a trick and the woman you save was a decoy and the girlfriend was hidden among the doctors you let die. The game retroactively changes the nature of the situation based on your choice to ensure that the girlfriend always dies. It's only a trick if you try to save her, but if you let her die it wasn't a trick and she wasn't a decoy. It feels incredibly manipulative for the game to reshape the past to ensure that your choice results in the outcome they wanted.
The Suffering did kind of the same thing. If you make ethical choices, you get the good ending and if you make middling choices, you get the middling ending, batted choices bad ending. So far so good, except for what changes. Either your family was murdered by someone else and that's why you're in prison now, or the kidnapping you plotted for them accidentally causes their deaths, or you're straight up evil and you murdered them. So it retroactively changes the entire plot of the game based off of what you do currently.
The Witcher 2 also does this a lot. The situation you faced, while on the surface level the same, turns out to have been different, and caused by radically different things, depending on what answer you choose. of course you might not ever find out, since both "major" paths players can go down have so much bespoke content to them that it feels kinda surreal to think there could be an entirely different branch to go down that is entirely mutually exclusive with the one you chose. I'm still torn on whether that particular facet of the game works to enhance the experience, or cheapen it.
@@droid-droidsson I think in Witcher 2 it's slightly more handwave-able since the game branches so significantly from the Act 1 choice. The changes in circumstances may not always hold up to excessive scrutiny, but it makes sense on the surface that events play out differently in the two different versions of the post Act 1 story. I feel like that's less insulting than the Infamous situation where the past is altered in the moment based on your choice.
@droid-droidsson You mean like that time you were supposed to be fighting an army and they only trickle in about four guys at a time with some effects in the background because the game and system can't handle more?
Prince of Persia II was it, I think. They didn't tell you, but the sand veins grew up the arm and it was implied that's bad and the other demon guy would take over. I mean I was like 12, but still :D
36:30 The thing about Mass Effect is that it depends in what you consider to be the "ending" of the game. If you consider the last five minutes to be the end, then, yes, the choices you've made up until that point don't matter. But if you consider the whole third entry to be the end, boy howdy does it deliver. There are so many different branches and permutations of people being alive, dead, in good standing with Shepard, whether the council lived, what your relationship with the annoying gotcha journalist is, so much that has payoff and changes depending on choices you made. While I agree that the final choice could have integrated player choice better, honestly, it feels impossible for any game studio to incorporate every single choice in a game series that massive all into one moment at the end of the game.
Yes, good point and I agree with it. But that's why I focused on the ending and not the choices themselves like in LiS and TWD. This kind of thing happens a lot in RPGs more generally, but very few have the level of unique character development and interaction be so unique depending on your in-situ choices the way Mass Effect does.
That's only a cut and paste modular difference. It's not any different from Fallout or heavy rain. The only difference is that one of the characters is no longer present. It's not like anyone grieves them when they're gone or that their necessary skills are now absent.
Spec Ops: The Line feels really frustrating to me at face value, since I actively try to find non-lethal/less-lethal options in games where I can, and being denied that option and railroaded into something I don't want to do is already frustrating enough without also being mocked for it... but that's also my perspective as someone who's already experienced games like Dishonored and Deus Ex, and drawn lessons from them, so I feel like it's unfair to hold that against Spec Ops: The Line? I think the message gets SO MUCH CLEARER when you directly compare it to "The War on Terror" in real life - every American who signed up to "fight the terrorists" was also lied to (the big lie that Iraq had WMD:s crowning a whole web of smaller lies), does that absolve them of the horrors they committed? And the thing is, even when they became disillusioned in the field and realized they weren't actually the heroes they thought they were, it was too late to opt out. If the point that they went wrong was when they willingly signed up to go kill dirty stinking middle eastern terrorists, after which it did not matter if they realized they'd been duped because they no longer had a choice, is it really so wrong to put the player in the same place in SO:TL? The deceptive marketing is such a shady business move, but it is the thing that makes it work. The whole story hinges on the player going in with completely unrealistic expectations. I want to be mad, but, as someone who's had games like Sniper Elite V2 sitting unplayed in my steam library for more than a decade because military shooters just don't appeal to me... clearly, Spec Ops: The Line was not made for people like me... and that's the whole point. It DID give me a choice, and I picked the right option. Not sure how I feel about that, but I really respect it.
There's an interesting discussion about how much Spec Ops is just a commentary on military shooter games as a genre which just happens to involve war as a trope of the genre, and how much is an actual deliberate message on war itself. That's a different and much larger thing, but as you make clear, there's a lot to talk about there.
Great vid! But at the middle of it I thought that Soma should be mentioned, though closer to the end I'm not sure. Any elaboration would be kind of a spoiler so here it is: the story is linear but there's a few choices that aren't about consequences but about asking you new questions related to the game's themes (what means being human, what means being real and how much responsibility you can take over others). Second layer of elaboration: And not all choices are obvious to be choices, and some can be completely missed (and it's so real). And I love the damn thing!
Hellblades lie is perfect to me as someone who has experienced psychosis. The constant fear alone. Mine was because of severe anxiety from a medication. The paranoia was debilitating on top of constantly hearing sounds or whispers. I dont wish it on anyone.
Its like in horizon zero down, i wondered if choosing different options changed anything, but soon i didn't care (it most probably didn't ) but it helped me to feel in the same head space as Aloy to the point that i felt i was her, i even walked everywhere inside populated places, and sometimes even in the wild, because doing otherwise made me feel selfconsious or that i didn't had a reason to
that senuas sacrifice lie gave me enough anxiety that i stopped playing halfway through lmaoo might go get back into it now. having made it further in the video, i will concede that even though i quit halfway through bc of my own anxiety and (ironically) mental health, i never looked at the experience i had as anything short of a masterpiece. that was part of why the effect was so strong on me
Another example: in freespace, some briefings in story missions are simply incorrect, but in-universe it's quickly shown that your commanding officers are not infallible, and the enemy is genuinely out maneuvering your intel.
I’m glad you highlighted that sometimes the illusion of choice is done for emotional reasons. I for one loved ME3 and am dying on that hill that the colored endings don’t take away from the choices you make along the way that have real impact-just not on the ending. But they carry emotional weight at the very least and shape your experience and memories with the game. In ME3’s case I think about my choices far more often and much more as part of the experience and why I love the trilogy than which color my ending had. (btw I’m also ready defend the endings. they may not vary much but it’s their implications for your personal journey with the game that matters. how, in your mind, the world continues and in which state. One just has to give it more thought than taking what’s presented at face value)
My main issue with the ME3 endings is their lack of creativity *given* how detailed and rich the rest of the journey throughout the series was. But yes, this is why I didn't talk too much about Mass Effect in general in the video, because its choices do fall firmly into the bucket of being significant as they effect how relationships and events play out throughout the series before the ending. And I suppose they also help to contextualise the ending too (as you seem to imply). Loved reading this perspective.
@ Yes, totally see your point!! The execution of the different endings was lackluster for sure. Loved this video, such an interesting topic and you unpacked it in such a nuanced and differentiated way. #subbed
Good video, keep up the work! Maybe you could make a video about game mechanics and core gameplay loops being used against the player in meta-narratives, like Bugsnax or Undertale?
The current discussion about the conflicts between the art of storytelling and the pressure to deliver traditional gameplay mechanics is really exciting. Amongst the games I personally played, The Missing : JJ Macfield and the Island of of Memory is a fascinating example. It's not a AAA game however.
As my mind has been thinking about Wasteland 3 a lot after a discussion about games while waiting for FNM draft to start last week. I was surprised that game was not included as the amount of lies you are told by almost everyone involved in the main plot is just staggering.
At the end fight I fought my PC instead of the enemies. The game throw more and more enemies at me as the time went by to the point I just had a square foot of moving basically relying on dodge and/or parry in order to survive. After more than 40 min the amount of lag overdone my PC and made me mistake one parry/dodge move so I finally lost. YOU WERE SUPPOSE TO LOOSE. I was sad as I did my fricking best, but I have to give it to the developer, the fight was epic, the music, the tense in my shoulders, my eyes watching carefully every inch of the screen, the fans going 120% blasting red hot air and my hopes getting smaller and smaller with every single new enemy added. I ... was crushed. In seconds after that I was just thinking that I need to redo all of that again, but better, I even thought my PC was not powerful enough to finish the game. ALL THAT TO SEE THAT IT WAS INTENTIONAL. The voices were right, "Die!" and I did NOT want to listen ...
So, about senua, i knew the spoiler beforehand because everyone talked about it and i didn't care enough to avoid spoilers for a game i didn't know. what surprises me (i know, i come from a point of knowing it beforehand, so it's not fair), is how no one picked up on it not actually growing further. As the video has shown, no death beyond the third actually adds rot. I'm pretty sure the threshold is met even earlier, at the second or maybe even first death per chapter. And then you see it actively grow between a lot of chapters, even without you dying, which i would feel cheated for. "hey, i didn't die here and you STILL added rot? what if i died more often earlier, would i just lose all my progress in a cutscene?" which i would assume is the moment most people would realize they're being lied to. (i'm not claiming i would've realized, but if i didn't, i'd be surprised how easily i was tricked). Oh, and it "technically not being a lie" is definetly bs. removing "and all progress will be lost" would make this true, but with "this is not a lie" it basically means that their game is meaningless, as there is no progress upon finishing the game. also, i hated the ending. not because giving up is wrong per se, but it's framed in a way of "just listen to your abusive father, he was right all along".
another lie Gears has is that the last few bullets in the magazine do more damage than usual, the intent being better odds at clutching a life-saving kill as you run dry. The interview where they talked about this coming from wanting to help low-skill players who weren't nailing the active reload like high-skill players (who didn't need the help of magic bullets) was a pretty nifty listen.
I would have not bought Hellblade at all if I didn't learn that perma death thing was a lie. Thing is I like both deep narative games and games with complex combat system and higher difficult settings are the best way to test the latter. If I bought the game without knowing, I would have played on easy to not have to worry about that and that type of meta-gaming does hurt the immerstion for me. Maybe it would have been better if instead of a tutorial like pop-up message, it would have been better if you were told this through a character in-game. With Senua being anything but realiable it would have been more ambgious if this was a real threat or not. The way it isn't just the devs lying straight to your face at least.
I'm apart of the small group of people who also felt cheated by your cboices not actually mattering at the end of Life is Strange. I do think that part of this frustration came from the fact that I finished Oxenfree first which is one where your choices actually do effect the ending so my expectations for Life Is Strange were colored by that experience.
Hmmm, the section about dialogue-tree choices is kind of missing the mark for me. You seem to be presenting a few points that I don't believe line up with what those games were doing or even what they were claiming to do. 1) You interpret the opening statements in TWD and LiS as suggesting something about each game's ending, but that's not at all what they're saying. What they state is simply that the narrative will change depending on your choices - that means the narrative throughout the game, not only / not specifically the ending. The fact that e.g. in TWD different playthroughs will have different characters join and/or die throughout the game based on your choices is exactly what the opening statement promised. Same with Life is Strange. To reduce those promises to the misinterpretation of specifically the ending is disingenuous I think. 2) You then use that rationale to claim the games are lying to you, and at one point even state that the games pretend they're "better games" than they are, which is again very much a misrepresentation of what's happening, and makes me worried that you're making your viewers think badly about these games when it's really just your misinterpretation that's wrong. I don't want to come across as combatitive here, I genuinely don't actually care much about either of those games, I'm just disappointed that in an otherwise really great video with interesting points, this section just entirely misses the mark and somewhat ironically makes you fall into the exact trap that you describe for all these games (essentially lying to your viewers, whether intentionally or not). It tarnishes the credibility of the other great points you make by suddenly making the viewer think "well wait, that's just straight up not true". I still think the video overall is very well done, I just wished you approached this section differently.
I'll defend my stance a bit here, but you do make some very good points. 1) My conclusion that TWD and LiS lie to the player comes from the observation not just of the games themselves, but the vast discourse around these particular games which criticise them for their "illusion of choice" approach. There are plenty of steam reviews and reddit threads that make this assertion which are easy to come across when looking at discussions about each game, and most notably their endings, without specifically looking for criticisms (and perhaps I could have made this clearer in my video to be fair). In any case, are these criticisms warranted? I'm not too concerned, but to me it's clear that many people misinterpreted the flexibility of the games' endings. 2) In my video, I attempt to explain this common misinterpretation as being due to the games' presentation (the opening text statements, the constant player decisions, the "clementine will remember that"s). Whether intentional or not, the presentation misleads the player, which I call a lie in this context, though I admit the word lie is quite strong here. If a couple people have an incorrect misinterpretation, it's a bad read, but if everyone agrees that there is an illusory aspect to choice in these games, then there is some level of misdirection from the game's side, even if that wasn't the design intention. It's easy to see what the games are doing in retrospect, but its something else entirely at the end of a first playthrough. A large point you've made is that the presentation of the two games is more about the effect you have on the story *throughout* the game, not necessarily the endings. I make this point in my video as well, even defending the opening statement in TWD explicitly from the claim that it is a lie because of this. But I go on to say that because people expect this framing to extend to the ending, it feels like a lie once the full scope is understood by the player, so there just happens to be multiple ways that those opening statements have been interpreted by players. I agree that neither of those games claim to do more than they actually did, but that their framing made it very easy for a lot of players to misread the scope of each game, to the point that its not only the audience who can be blamed, making it a type of (unintentional) lie. Having said all of that, the way I've framed this discussion within my video does underrepresent some of the importance nuance here. Particularly using the phrase "better games" as opposed to something like "more flexible game", or something without a value judgement. I'd change those parts if I were to go back. I don't want people to look down on these games, but to take away which approaches work best when trying to make a game of meager scope feel like one of broad scope, which is the whole premise of illusion of choice. So, thank you for the extremely measured and well-thought-out criticism. I'm always trying to improve videos each time I put one together, so I appreciate comments like these a lot. I look forward to writing more unnecessarily verbose replies in the future.
Wow, I can't believe i have watched yet another video on spec ops the line yet still have learned new ideas about it and gaming as a whole Great video! Two questions: Do you think that, according to your logic, that games that try to be clever with their deception but have the surprise ruined before then set it up to be despised? Like for example Tlou2 had its plot leaked so when people actually played it they were able to see all the tricks of the trade and felt the game was condescending like you said in the spec ops part? Second question: Are there any other games you love that you think lie to the player?
Thanks, glad you liked it! 1) Yes, this definitely happens. Despise is a strong word though. I think in the case of tlou part 2, the hate came from a very different place, but was exacerbated by the leaks and not caused by them. But like in Spec Ops, if a game tries to coerce the player into an action or mentality through deceit, but the surprise gets ruined, it can be easy to eye roll your way through the reveal instead of taking it on the game's terms. Sometimes you need to be unaware of things for them to be effective. 2) There were some other ideas I floated around for this video but didn't make it in. For example puzzle games are always trying to hide things from the player, which is deception in a way. It's especially obvious when you have red herrings which lure you into a false solution. In a similar vein, I thought about games like Tunic and Outer Wilds which hide fundamental mechanics from the player. Not outright lying, but still slightly deceitful (of course for good reason). In terms of narrative lies, I also considered Dead Space 3, where in coop mode one player can see the real scene, and the other sees a hallucination, and the only way to figure out which is real is to communicate irl! Oh, and Frog Fractions!!
@Pixel_Whip 1) Fair when you have a confirmation bias of negativity it can be easy to hardware away it's attempts to be genuine, hence why some many love it for how it made them feel and why so many dislike it for its failure to do 2)oooo puzzle games do hide the truth from you and yes the famous dead space 3 hallucination But never heard of frog factions sound neat Thanks for the articulate response!
The issue with game design by obfuscation is that it fundamentally requires player ignorance to function.. IMO as a dev - games should get better the more information a player acquires. Not worse.
The Walking Dead Season 3 has a smörgåsbord of endings that can happen due to your actions in the moment, throughout the game, and even in past games. ... However, it's often considered the weakest season by far. Take that as you will
I think if you want a game with a story and outcome purely driven by you the player, then play like The Sims or a role-playing game. If you want a well-thought-out storyline with interesting themes, characters and emotions like you'd get in a movie or novel then idk, you need to buy into what the devs are selling you a little bit. and the thing about audiences is they often don't know what they do or don't want until it's put in front of them
The dialogue choice thing really infuriates me. Don't even include it if you're not going to allow me to affect the outcome of the game. Mass effects in Fallout do it to a minor degree in that they change the short term scenario, but they Don't change the ending of the game itself. I think the best way to handle this would be to write the story from beginning to end until you have a complete story. Then work your way backwards asking "What if?" And changing things from the end backwards to critical points in the story. Then each branch you get should result in a different ending. You might have some that are similar, but even a game like heavy rain basically has cut and paste endings regardless of who survives or doesn't.
mostly great video but that quick note reading of life is strange was messing with me, and i don’t get it. ignoring that i think the choices in the game are more about the internal experience, eg, hearing someone say something you did, or making something harder (saving kate for example), the theme is imo quite clearly about the fact that you can’t have a perfect life. It doesn’t rob you of agency, because there’s a very clear choice, but it does say that you aren’t always going to get to be happy. Sometimes things are going to suck, no matter what you choose, SOMETHING isn’t going to be right, and you have to live with that. Grief, etc, it’s about moving on while knowing that nothing can ever be perfect. A lot of people read the ending as “you can’t change anything” but that implies that one ending is correct, and that’s just their personal emotions on the bay ending leaking in, imo it’s pretty clear that the only message that fits both endings is that sometimes you’re gonna have to take cuts, not anything about determinism or something lmaooo. wonderful video though complete aces
Thanks for the comment, and for a very measured critique. Honestly, looking back, I don't like the way I worded my read on Life is Strange. You're right that it's more about the futility of trying to perfect life's outcomes with your own choices. The message is that there's almost always a price to pay. This isn't really what determinism is, so I'd rephrase my take if I went back.
Heavy Rain implies, heavily, that you can get a distinct ending for the way you play it, but it’s always the same ending. It’s always the same killer, and it pisses me off. My wife told me I have no right to, since it makes sense, a specific killer with it specific motives. But I can’t shake the feeling that it would be way cooler to have several endings, depending on your detective skills. Also, a video about videogame lies should at least mention Arkane’s Prey, since it has a pretty big lie that kind of changes everything, without changing anything at all.
I'm pausing at the 15min mark to share something. I didn't play this game i did download and start the game and i wanted to enjoy epic story game but am not a skilled gamer despite playing games actively for 25 years and when i saw this message pop up i decided this asnt for me. I have poor reaction times and sometimes my health causes me to play poorly. I played many games like War zone, fornite and such where a death can waste 30 min though nothing of consequence is taken so I often play alone to not disappoint others. I have never played a dsrksouls game because I know the permanent loss of things after a death like souls (assuming you can not reclaim them) would make me never pick up that game again and thus I didn't dive any deeper than the threat at the start of the game. It is a little sad, years later to learn if I d dug a bit deeper I would have had my fears abated.
i have to say that calling WP a "dangerous incendiary" is the understatement of the century given the uhm...severely atrocious kind of chemical weapon it is, to put it kindly
"the wording was chosen really carefully". Lol, lmao. There are several ways it could have been worded to make sure the player does not feel trolled in the end. Specifically the "each time you fail" would not pass the jerk genie-test.
Just because you think or a % of players think this is what it say, and if not, it was a lie, doesn't mean, it was a lie or written poorly. The subjective thinking most of the time leads you to a path, which was not planned for it. Read it objectively, technically, and not put things to it, which are not present. I feel it was written correctly and carefully, and can't see the lie. Realise freely, after you know everything about it, that you were wrong, and that way you have to oportunity to learn from your mistake. But if you just listen to the haters or players, who are stuck in the "you are trolling me, I'm too genius to be mistaken" mindset, you just set yourself up to fail again in the next event.
@Cruntocius Of course you wouldn't see any issues with how it is written. Those constant commas in your reply alone break any reasonable syntax several times over.
I don't like Life is strange just because it felt like someone given a power they didn't ask for and being punished for it. She didn't even wish to save her old friend. She was just freaking out. Then she got punished and taught not to change the past when she didn't seem like the person to want to do that to begin with. Also on the Spec ops choice is to not pay the devs for their game, since you just stop playing halfway through as the choice to not use white phosphorus.
I like Slay the Princess and its relationship with lies. Spoilers: I don’t think the narrator ever truly lies. Gaslights a little, but never lies (“don’t listen to that voice, you are happy”). Something about the game makes you feel like the narrator is lying though. So the game is lying about the narrator’s lies. This isn’t to say either the princess or narrator are right or wrong, they simply have perspectives. It isn’t until you understand those perspectives do you actually see the truth in both party’s statements
Even though I hate Life is Strange, the every choice matters lie isn’t what makes it bad. There’s a few narrative games where it works really well. I’d say the best one I’ve seen is Refind Self, because the choices do matter for the personality part but not for the overall story. You’ve gotta play it three times, it’s fairly short though so that’s not an issue!
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice kind of lies? After so many deaths you earn something called Rot Essence, and the game lorewise explains to you that the more you die, NPC's will get sick. Afflicted NPC's cant give you any special dialogue, and the first person who always gets afflicted is the Sculptor. When you talk to the sculptor, he says "that hes special and cant die" so it makes you think that the more you die, NPC's are going to start dying off. But the tutorial that pops up for it doesnt say thats what happens. It explicitly says "The more Rot Essence Wolf has, the lower the chances of receiving Unseen Aid". So maybe less of a lie, and more of a "I wouldnt be surprised if From Software actually did that" lol
Spec Ops: The Line, in my opinion, did a better job of subverting expectations than The Last of Us 2. Both of them force you to do things you don't want to do, but for me at least Spec Ops was more affecting. And less dumb.
A marketing strategy means that it's something that was presented in marketing for the game. This never was. This was a message in the beginning-ish of the game, and got attention through word of mouth. The devs were questioned on/talked about it after the fact. That has nothing to do with intentional marketing, which seems to be your issue.
If a game lies to me mechanically it's gone too far. It is fundamentally how I interact with the game. If you tell me it's I for inventory but it's j, you're lying to me with the reality you're creating. That is never ok. This is why spec ops is condescending and hellblade does not work.
Mass effect is such a weird beast. Because yeah the excution of the ending especialy before the directors cut is pretty bad and pretty baffling. But not becasue the choices dont matter like a lot of people claim. Its them trying to find a way to make choices matter and actualy having made a pretty good system for it and then still fumbling it. The war asset system that excist is suppose to be a answer to how do we make all choices matter. Wich war assets you get can actualy get quite complicated with a lot of them be depending on at least 1 if not often several choices you made up till that point between all 3 games. SImple example is the infamous punchable reporter. She can be a war asset but the only way to make her 1 is to NOT punch her in any of the three games. And yes war assets actualy have a influence on the ending. the control and later added synthys ending arent even avaible until its high enough. How well the normandy and its then active crew survives is reliant on it, As well as the additional scenes like the star gazer ending is only avaible if its high enough (before dlc stargazer was actualy impossible without doing multiplayer since it aplied a multipyer to the asset score depending how muich you done). Now the game is realy bad at commuciating this and the actual endign are still to similar, But there was defntiyl more of a attempt to make it work then people give it credit to.
About hellblade, i have to ask: if most the people praising the lie are people that already have the mental illness, then has it actually spread any awareness? I never let the rot spread that far in my playthrough, so i was more neutral.
Ok, so the lie on Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is not because it says there is permadeath but there isn't, rather, the lie lies in the perceived intention of the message. Because the line seems to be a warning and therefore something to be avoided, but it's just spoiling the end of the story. The rot gets to Senua's head, that is the end of her quest. And she ends her quest by renouncing it, which includes losing all progress towards it.
I can see how choice-based narratives like Life is Strange, Mass Effect, etc face a catch-22 when it comes to the ending. As you noted, allowing the player to choose their own ending ends up retroactively devaluing all the choices the player made during the game. On the other hand, I can see an outcome where players get upset if they are forced into an ending they don't want due to choices they've mde throughout the game. You let me make my own choices for 15 hours then all of the sudden when it comes to the biggest choice of all, you're going to railroad me into an ending I don't want? Or you end up with people removing all choice and just using guides that will get them their desired ending. I'd be curious if people have examples of games that manage to avoid this catch-22.
Great analysis, tho I’m honestly surprised the last of us 2 isn’t in the list of games mentioned. Technically, the game ITSELF doesn’t lie, which would explain why it’s not here, but the trailer definitely does and it’s really despicable that Neil made that decision
Life is Strange is one of few choice-based games that creatively uses its mechanics and, rather than attempting to be a technical tool of branching realities, makes its mechanic the very part of narration. Max uses her rewind to never face grief, to never be lonely or unliked. Similarly, we adapt to Max's worldview and simulate her desires, snooping around us and rewinding time for miniscule tasks simply to have the best forms of dialogue, of relationships, of events. We create the best consequences for Kate, for Chloe, for Rachel but also wish kindness to David, Victoria, Joyce and even random Arcadia citizens. We want to fix everything and live in a perfect world by actively relying on our powers (as a character) but also replaying the game time after time for the best consequences (as a player - applicable to those in 2015 waiting for new episodes). The game lying to the player is crucial because Max is lying to herself.
The very tropes of Butterfly Effect and Donny Darko are quite popular, a lot of us are familiar with it. And it's not like the game attempts to hide what it will make us do. In Max's journal, she herself alludes to media about the two choices, sometimes even mentioning her own irrational fear of the same thing - but ultimately she always brushes them away for yet another "I have to save Chloe". Just as we brush them away because we want this story to end differently even if the answer is staring us right in the face.
Life is Strange is ultimately the journey of grief. It's the deep desire we all have to relive the past with our loved ones, for things to be different. Throughout the four episodes, Max accelerates in her use of rewind powers but also desperation. To save Chloe, to have everything, to never have anything bad happen. Ultimately, that desperation reaches its climax in Polarized, non-stop jumping through time and realities to imprison Jefferson, to save Chloe, to win the contest; never having a time to catch a breath or process the horrific assault she experienced just moments ago. Max runs towards a destination that doesn't exist in search of a light, of revelation, of something to Fix Everything. We run with her. And then we stop, finding ourselves on the top of the cliff, the very place we ran from all these episodes dreaming of a different world and we Finally Know. That's why the story works. That's why letting Chloe or Arcadia go is so heartbreaking.
Life is Strange is not supposed to have a good ending or a good myriad of consequences to our previous decisions. It's supposed to crash the illusion we played into for those 5 episodes alongside Max. Chloe dying on a bathroom floor angry, not knowing what happened to Rachel, never finding peace with her mother and stepfather - is what breaks our hearts. Whichever ending the player chooses, Max is left with the result of sexual assault and seeing death all over. Arcadia Bay's death trail and convoluted messy problems of its citizens will never be overwritten. And we can't change that. No amount of interference, rewind, choice making will fix that. It's supposed to be horrible, unfair, powerless. Because that's the reality of grief and loss. Max, and us, are supposed to acknowledge the truth, the reality. And acknowledging is the path of accepting and moving forward from the horror endured.
Back in 2015 the endings did face scrutiny by players. Of course, everyone wanted everything to be Good, for consequences to be felt, and for us (and Max) to never lose agency. I find that years later the overall perception has grandly changed and people set with it a little, reflected on the game, maybe even replayed it, and finally accepted the story it told. But I do think it's expected and quite normal that back in 2015 people were adamant to that finale. Of course, no one wanted their pefect reality and a myriad of perfectly chiseled decisions snatched away from them.
Yeah, I think there's a core viewpoint being espoused in this section that if choices only alter gameplay/story/characters along the way and don't alter the *ending*, it's Lying to you. Personally, and especially with everything that the game's core story was building up to as you learn the *why* of what's happening, I think calling that out as lying to the player about choice is a bit disingenuous. But, that can also just be a matter or perspective. Journey vs Destination as the core focus of scrutiny.
@@Stands-In-The-Fire I agree. The mechanic itself doesn't lie throughout the game. There are a lot of branching consequences and dialogues to explore and it doesn't feel like a static experience. It would definitely be a different conversation if for example both the ending and the lead-up to that ending were utterly without variation. A good example of that is the new Life is Strange: Double Exposure game, unfortunately... In that game, yes, I agree; the game is lying entirely, and our actions don't have consequences, both in the final decision and generally throughout the game. But Don't Nod's Life is Strange approached choice by making it part of a Coming of Age narrative. I think , ultimately, if people find the game lied to them, than Don't Nod's story just didn't work for them. Which is okay of course, not everything works for everyone.
Just found out hellblade didn’t have perma death this whole time and have done 2 full play throughs thinking if I died too much I’d have to restart. Thinking that heightened the experience as a veteran gamer and if I ever came back to it now the experience would now never be the same.
I loved Life is Strange, and while you are mechanically right that no choice in the game changes the final option, save the town or save Chole... does that really matter? Your choices shape the experience you have, reflect on you and how you view things, and take you on a wonderful journey. It's the journey, not the destination. That old saying.
And the sense as a player of sacrificing all the changes you made to hopefully better the world helped heighten the final choice. The gameification helps.
It does. While he was talking about it I remembered what my expectations were while playing. I expected my choices to play into how the town reacted to the storm. I figured that the more I helped people, the better my chances were in the last episode where I expected Max would try to convince the town to evacuate. Instead it went with, hey your choices didn't actually matter, kill this person you love in the hopes that it won't cause a freak storm.
“maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way” vibes, lol
Which is valid, I have a set of guilty pleasure games that have let players down massively. But if a game promises your choices have consequences and then doesn’t follow through, people are allowed to be upset at being lied to.
I was going to say just this exactly. The choices in Life is Strange are still choices, even if they don't mean anything in the end, and are a good way to help players connect or share agency with the narrative goals of the game.
I didn’t mind the lie of HB. I actually liked it. I saw the message, felt my sphincter tighten, and resolved that I wouldn’t be beaten. I only died a handful of times and never got too worried. When I found out that it was a lie after beating it, I loved it. It made me feel like I’d been motivated and was closer to Senua’s journey because of it. Death may have felt worse, but that’s because, like Senua, my failure was amplified by false information. We were both going to be just fine - we just couldn’t see it until the end
This video was how I learned about the Hellblade lie. I loved learning a new perspective on the game.
I had a feeling this would happen 😋
Me: Enjoying an indepth analysis on deception in games, up to the Spec Ops White Phosphorus scene.
TH-cam: *interrupts video to give me an ad for an outdoor gas cooker stove*
Outstanding... Liked and subscribed lol
👀
Life is strange and hellblade are to this day some of my favorite narrative experiences in games. Both were just truly fantastic for what they were. Hellblade's lie didn't really effect me, because I realized pretty early on that the combat was pretty easy, and it didn't stress me out a ton, but the narrative, and the audio of that game fricking delivered. And Life is Strange just packed some serious emotional gut punches that aren't incredibly common in video games.
I also want to point out, you could argue the original bioshock falls into the same category. Similarly to spec ops, it really makes you think about the way we tend to just accept whatever video games tell us to do.
The most dishonest and insulting lie I've experienced in a game was in the first Infamous game. There is a choice where the protagonist's girlfriend is kidnapped and he's presented with a very comic book inspired choice of having to choose to save 6 doctors or his girlfriend. If you make the good choice and save the doctors, his girlfriend dies as expected. If you choose to save the girlfriend, it's revealed that it was actually a trick and the woman you save was a decoy and the girlfriend was hidden among the doctors you let die. The game retroactively changes the nature of the situation based on your choice to ensure that the girlfriend always dies. It's only a trick if you try to save her, but if you let her die it wasn't a trick and she wasn't a decoy. It feels incredibly manipulative for the game to reshape the past to ensure that your choice results in the outcome they wanted.
This is a good one, for real one of the most blatant 'illusion of choice' situations
The Suffering did kind of the same thing. If you make ethical choices, you get the good ending and if you make middling choices, you get the middling ending, batted choices bad ending. So far so good, except for what changes. Either your family was murdered by someone else and that's why you're in prison now, or the kidnapping you plotted for them accidentally causes their deaths, or you're straight up evil and you murdered them. So it retroactively changes the entire plot of the game based off of what you do currently.
The Witcher 2 also does this a lot. The situation you faced, while on the surface level the same, turns out to have been different, and caused by radically different things, depending on what answer you choose. of course you might not ever find out, since both "major" paths players can go down have so much bespoke content to them that it feels kinda surreal to think there could be an entirely different branch to go down that is entirely mutually exclusive with the one you chose. I'm still torn on whether that particular facet of the game works to enhance the experience, or cheapen it.
@@droid-droidsson I think in Witcher 2 it's slightly more handwave-able since the game branches so significantly from the Act 1 choice. The changes in circumstances may not always hold up to excessive scrutiny, but it makes sense on the surface that events play out differently in the two different versions of the post Act 1 story. I feel like that's less insulting than the Infamous situation where the past is altered in the moment based on your choice.
@droid-droidsson You mean like that time you were supposed to be fighting an army and they only trickle in about four guys at a time with some effects in the background because the game and system can't handle more?
Prince of Persia II was it, I think. They didn't tell you, but the sand veins grew up the arm and it was implied that's bad and the other demon guy would take over. I mean I was like 12, but still :D
36:30
The thing about Mass Effect is that it depends in what you consider to be the "ending" of the game. If you consider the last five minutes to be the end, then, yes, the choices you've made up until that point don't matter. But if you consider the whole third entry to be the end, boy howdy does it deliver. There are so many different branches and permutations of people being alive, dead, in good standing with Shepard, whether the council lived, what your relationship with the annoying gotcha journalist is, so much that has payoff and changes depending on choices you made. While I agree that the final choice could have integrated player choice better, honestly, it feels impossible for any game studio to incorporate every single choice in a game series that massive all into one moment at the end of the game.
Yes, good point and I agree with it. But that's why I focused on the ending and not the choices themselves like in LiS and TWD. This kind of thing happens a lot in RPGs more generally, but very few have the level of unique character development and interaction be so unique depending on your in-situ choices the way Mass Effect does.
That's only a cut and paste modular difference. It's not any different from Fallout or heavy rain. The only difference is that one of the characters is no longer present. It's not like anyone grieves them when they're gone or that their necessary skills are now absent.
Before we even start, Ghost of Tsushima when they say “this horse will be with you for your entire journey”
Spec Ops: The Line feels really frustrating to me at face value, since I actively try to find non-lethal/less-lethal options in games where I can, and being denied that option and railroaded into something I don't want to do is already frustrating enough without also being mocked for it... but that's also my perspective as someone who's already experienced games like Dishonored and Deus Ex, and drawn lessons from them, so I feel like it's unfair to hold that against Spec Ops: The Line?
I think the message gets SO MUCH CLEARER when you directly compare it to "The War on Terror" in real life - every American who signed up to "fight the terrorists" was also lied to (the big lie that Iraq had WMD:s crowning a whole web of smaller lies), does that absolve them of the horrors they committed? And the thing is, even when they became disillusioned in the field and realized they weren't actually the heroes they thought they were, it was too late to opt out. If the point that they went wrong was when they willingly signed up to go kill dirty stinking middle eastern terrorists, after which it did not matter if they realized they'd been duped because they no longer had a choice, is it really so wrong to put the player in the same place in SO:TL?
The deceptive marketing is such a shady business move, but it is the thing that makes it work. The whole story hinges on the player going in with completely unrealistic expectations. I want to be mad, but, as someone who's had games like Sniper Elite V2 sitting unplayed in my steam library for more than a decade because military shooters just don't appeal to me... clearly, Spec Ops: The Line was not made for people like me... and that's the whole point. It DID give me a choice, and I picked the right option. Not sure how I feel about that, but I really respect it.
There's an interesting discussion about how much Spec Ops is just a commentary on military shooter games as a genre which just happens to involve war as a trope of the genre, and how much is an actual deliberate message on war itself. That's a different and much larger thing, but as you make clear, there's a lot to talk about there.
Love your analysis. You deserve more recognition than what you have based on this single video alone
And I love your comment
Great vid! But at the middle of it I thought that Soma should be mentioned, though closer to the end I'm not sure.
Any elaboration would be kind of a spoiler so here it is: the story is linear but there's a few choices that aren't about consequences but about asking you new questions related to the game's themes (what means being human, what means being real and how much responsibility you can take over others).
Second layer of elaboration: And not all choices are obvious to be choices, and some can be completely missed (and it's so real).
And I love the damn thing!
Hellblades lie is perfect to me as someone who has experienced psychosis. The constant fear alone. Mine was because of severe anxiety from a medication. The paranoia was debilitating on top of constantly hearing sounds or whispers. I dont wish it on anyone.
Its like in horizon zero down, i wondered if choosing different options changed anything, but soon i didn't care (it most probably didn't ) but it helped me to feel in the same head space as Aloy to the point that i felt i was her, i even walked everywhere inside populated places, and sometimes even in the wild, because doing otherwise made me feel selfconsious or that i didn't had a reason to
IIRC, in Deus Ex biochip upgrade was warranted, cause your UI is glitching at that time and this should "fix" that problem. Elaborate ruse, all along.
Yup, exactly!
I think, also, you take some HP damage when some of those glitches happen. You heal back the health over time, but it does cause a moment of panic.
that senuas sacrifice lie gave me enough anxiety that i stopped playing halfway through lmaoo might go get back into it now. having made it further in the video, i will concede that even though i quit halfway through bc of my own anxiety and (ironically) mental health, i never looked at the experience i had as anything short of a masterpiece. that was part of why the effect was so strong on me
Another example: in freespace, some briefings in story missions are simply incorrect, but in-universe it's quickly shown that your commanding officers are not infallible, and the enemy is genuinely out maneuvering your intel.
I’m glad you highlighted that sometimes the illusion of choice is done for emotional reasons. I for one loved ME3 and am dying on that hill that the colored endings don’t take away from the choices you make along the way that have real impact-just not on the ending. But they carry emotional weight at the very least and shape your experience and memories with the game. In ME3’s case I think about my choices far more often and much more as part of the experience and why I love the trilogy than which color my ending had. (btw I’m also ready defend the endings. they may not vary much but it’s their implications for your personal journey with the game that matters. how, in your mind, the world continues and in which state. One just has to give it more thought than taking what’s presented at face value)
My main issue with the ME3 endings is their lack of creativity *given* how detailed and rich the rest of the journey throughout the series was. But yes, this is why I didn't talk too much about Mass Effect in general in the video, because its choices do fall firmly into the bucket of being significant as they effect how relationships and events play out throughout the series before the ending. And I suppose they also help to contextualise the ending too (as you seem to imply). Loved reading this perspective.
@ Yes, totally see your point!! The execution of the different endings was lackluster for sure. Loved this video, such an interesting topic and you unpacked it in such a nuanced and differentiated way. #subbed
Thanks, glad to have you around 😊
Love your videos and analysis! Thanks for the awesome video!
Thanks heaps! Glad you liked it. (And you better not be lying)
Barring a game like Doom, on paper, every character should approach situations as if perma death is on, because from their perspective it is.
maybe we should tell the demons in doom that permadeath is on xD
Good video, keep up the work! Maybe you could make a video about game mechanics and core gameplay loops being used against the player in meta-narratives, like Bugsnax or Undertale?
Love that idea
How do you only have 3k subs?????
Excellent and very interesting video. Keep up the good work
On it!
The current discussion about the conflicts between the art of storytelling and the pressure to deliver traditional gameplay mechanics is really exciting. Amongst the games I personally played, The Missing : JJ Macfield and the Island of of Memory is a fascinating example. It's not a AAA game however.
9:46 i felt really seen by the game when under the lens of mental illness.
Also, i thought it was pretty obvious lie
As my mind has been thinking about Wasteland 3 a lot after a discussion about games while waiting for FNM draft to start last week. I was surprised that game was not included as the amount of lies you are told by almost everyone involved in the main plot is just staggering.
At the end fight I fought my PC instead of the enemies. The game throw more and more enemies at me as the time went by to the point I just had a square foot of moving basically relying on dodge and/or parry in order to survive. After more than 40 min the amount of lag overdone my PC and made me mistake one parry/dodge move so I finally lost. YOU WERE SUPPOSE TO LOOSE. I was sad as I did my fricking best, but I have to give it to the developer, the fight was epic, the music, the tense in my shoulders, my eyes watching carefully every inch of the screen, the fans going 120% blasting red hot air and my hopes getting smaller and smaller with every single new enemy added. I ... was crushed. In seconds after that I was just thinking that I need to redo all of that again, but better, I even thought my PC was not powerful enough to finish the game. ALL THAT TO SEE THAT IT WAS INTENTIONAL. The voices were right, "Die!" and I did NOT want to listen ...
So, about senua, i knew the spoiler beforehand because everyone talked about it and i didn't care enough to avoid spoilers for a game i didn't know.
what surprises me (i know, i come from a point of knowing it beforehand, so it's not fair), is how no one picked up on it not actually growing further. As the video has shown, no death beyond the third actually adds rot. I'm pretty sure the threshold is met even earlier, at the second or maybe even first death per chapter. And then you see it actively grow between a lot of chapters, even without you dying, which i would feel cheated for. "hey, i didn't die here and you STILL added rot? what if i died more often earlier, would i just lose all my progress in a cutscene?" which i would assume is the moment most people would realize they're being lied to. (i'm not claiming i would've realized, but if i didn't, i'd be surprised how easily i was tricked).
Oh, and it "technically not being a lie" is definetly bs. removing "and all progress will be lost" would make this true, but with "this is not a lie" it basically means that their game is meaningless, as there is no progress upon finishing the game.
also, i hated the ending. not because giving up is wrong per se, but it's framed in a way of "just listen to your abusive father, he was right all along".
another lie Gears has is that the last few bullets in the magazine do more damage than usual, the intent being better odds at clutching a life-saving kill as you run dry. The interview where they talked about this coming from wanting to help low-skill players who weren't nailing the active reload like high-skill players (who didn't need the help of magic bullets) was a pretty nifty listen.
I would have not bought Hellblade at all if I didn't learn that perma death thing was a lie. Thing is I like both deep narative games and games with complex combat system and higher difficult settings are the best way to test the latter. If I bought the game without knowing, I would have played on easy to not have to worry about that and that type of meta-gaming does hurt the immerstion for me.
Maybe it would have been better if instead of a tutorial like pop-up message, it would have been better if you were told this through a character in-game. With Senua being anything but realiable it would have been more ambgious if this was a real threat or not. The way it isn't just the devs lying straight to your face at least.
Thought this was a Daryl talks games video from the thumbnail
I'm apart of the small group of people who also felt cheated by your cboices not actually mattering at the end of Life is Strange. I do think that part of this frustration came from the fact that I finished Oxenfree first which is one where your choices actually do effect the ending so my expectations for Life Is Strange were colored by that experience.
Hmmm, the section about dialogue-tree choices is kind of missing the mark for me. You seem to be presenting a few points that I don't believe line up with what those games were doing or even what they were claiming to do.
1) You interpret the opening statements in TWD and LiS as suggesting something about each game's ending, but that's not at all what they're saying. What they state is simply that the narrative will change depending on your choices - that means the narrative throughout the game, not only / not specifically the ending. The fact that e.g. in TWD different playthroughs will have different characters join and/or die throughout the game based on your choices is exactly what the opening statement promised. Same with Life is Strange. To reduce those promises to the misinterpretation of specifically the ending is disingenuous I think.
2) You then use that rationale to claim the games are lying to you, and at one point even state that the games pretend they're "better games" than they are, which is again very much a misrepresentation of what's happening, and makes me worried that you're making your viewers think badly about these games when it's really just your misinterpretation that's wrong.
I don't want to come across as combatitive here, I genuinely don't actually care much about either of those games, I'm just disappointed that in an otherwise really great video with interesting points, this section just entirely misses the mark and somewhat ironically makes you fall into the exact trap that you describe for all these games (essentially lying to your viewers, whether intentionally or not). It tarnishes the credibility of the other great points you make by suddenly making the viewer think "well wait, that's just straight up not true". I still think the video overall is very well done, I just wished you approached this section differently.
I'll defend my stance a bit here, but you do make some very good points.
1) My conclusion that TWD and LiS lie to the player comes from the observation not just of the games themselves, but the vast discourse around these particular games which criticise them for their "illusion of choice" approach. There are plenty of steam reviews and reddit threads that make this assertion which are easy to come across when looking at discussions about each game, and most notably their endings, without specifically looking for criticisms (and perhaps I could have made this clearer in my video to be fair). In any case, are these criticisms warranted? I'm not too concerned, but to me it's clear that many people misinterpreted the flexibility of the games' endings.
2) In my video, I attempt to explain this common misinterpretation as being due to the games' presentation (the opening text statements, the constant player decisions, the "clementine will remember that"s). Whether intentional or not, the presentation misleads the player, which I call a lie in this context, though I admit the word lie is quite strong here. If a couple people have an incorrect misinterpretation, it's a bad read, but if everyone agrees that there is an illusory aspect to choice in these games, then there is some level of misdirection from the game's side, even if that wasn't the design intention. It's easy to see what the games are doing in retrospect, but its something else entirely at the end of a first playthrough.
A large point you've made is that the presentation of the two games is more about the effect you have on the story *throughout* the game, not necessarily the endings. I make this point in my video as well, even defending the opening statement in TWD explicitly from the claim that it is a lie because of this. But I go on to say that because people expect this framing to extend to the ending, it feels like a lie once the full scope is understood by the player, so there just happens to be multiple ways that those opening statements have been interpreted by players. I agree that neither of those games claim to do more than they actually did, but that their framing made it very easy for a lot of players to misread the scope of each game, to the point that its not only the audience who can be blamed, making it a type of (unintentional) lie.
Having said all of that, the way I've framed this discussion within my video does underrepresent some of the importance nuance here. Particularly using the phrase "better games" as opposed to something like "more flexible game", or something without a value judgement. I'd change those parts if I were to go back. I don't want people to look down on these games, but to take away which approaches work best when trying to make a game of meager scope feel like one of broad scope, which is the whole premise of illusion of choice.
So, thank you for the extremely measured and well-thought-out criticism. I'm always trying to improve videos each time I put one together, so I appreciate comments like these a lot. I look forward to writing more unnecessarily verbose replies in the future.
33:59 I think we can say with confidence armed lee is better. Simply for that cleaver/glass shard dual wield zombie brawl, lee is a god damn machine.
Great video lad enjoyed it thourgoly
Thanks :)
i just found out that permadeath was a lie damn because of it i was always on my toes each fight it really elevated the experience
Mouthwashing is the best version of this trope
Wow, I can't believe i have watched yet another video on spec ops the line yet still have learned new ideas about it and gaming as a whole
Great video!
Two questions: Do you think that, according to your logic, that games that try to be clever with their deception but have the surprise ruined before then set it up to be despised?
Like for example Tlou2 had its plot leaked so when people actually played it they were able to see all the tricks of the trade and felt the game was condescending like you said in the spec ops part?
Second question: Are there any other games you love that you think lie to the player?
Thanks, glad you liked it!
1) Yes, this definitely happens. Despise is a strong word though. I think in the case of tlou part 2, the hate came from a very different place, but was exacerbated by the leaks and not caused by them. But like in Spec Ops, if a game tries to coerce the player into an action or mentality through deceit, but the surprise gets ruined, it can be easy to eye roll your way through the reveal instead of taking it on the game's terms. Sometimes you need to be unaware of things for them to be effective.
2) There were some other ideas I floated around for this video but didn't make it in. For example puzzle games are always trying to hide things from the player, which is deception in a way. It's especially obvious when you have red herrings which lure you into a false solution. In a similar vein, I thought about games like Tunic and Outer Wilds which hide fundamental mechanics from the player. Not outright lying, but still slightly deceitful (of course for good reason). In terms of narrative lies, I also considered Dead Space 3, where in coop mode one player can see the real scene, and the other sees a hallucination, and the only way to figure out which is real is to communicate irl! Oh, and Frog Fractions!!
@Pixel_Whip
1) Fair when you have a confirmation bias of negativity it can be easy to hardware away it's attempts to be genuine, hence why some many love it for how it made them feel and why so many dislike it for its failure to do
2)oooo puzzle games do hide the truth from you and yes the famous dead space 3 hallucination
But never heard of frog factions sound neat
Thanks for the articulate response!
The issue with game design by obfuscation is that it fundamentally requires player ignorance to function.. IMO as a dev - games should get better the more information a player acquires. Not worse.
Fantastic video, holy cow!
Appreciate it 😊
The Walking Dead Season 3 has a smörgåsbord of endings that can happen due to your actions in the moment, throughout the game, and even in past games.
... However, it's often considered the weakest season by far. Take that as you will
I think if you want a game with a story and outcome purely driven by you the player, then play like The Sims or a role-playing game. If you want a well-thought-out storyline with interesting themes, characters and emotions like you'd get in a movie or novel then idk, you need to buy into what the devs are selling you a little bit. and the thing about audiences is they often don't know what they do or don't want until it's put in front of them
The dialogue choice thing really infuriates me. Don't even include it if you're not going to allow me to affect the outcome of the game. Mass effects in Fallout do it to a minor degree in that they change the short term scenario, but they Don't change the ending of the game itself. I think the best way to handle this would be to write the story from beginning to end until you have a complete story. Then work your way backwards asking "What if?" And changing things from the end backwards to critical points in the story. Then each branch you get should result in a different ending. You might have some that are similar, but even a game like heavy rain basically has cut and paste endings regardless of who survives or doesn't.
mostly great video but that quick note reading of life is strange was messing with me, and i don’t get it. ignoring that i think the choices in the game are more about the internal experience, eg, hearing someone say something you did, or making something harder (saving kate for example), the theme is imo quite clearly about the fact that you can’t have a perfect life. It doesn’t rob you of agency, because there’s a very clear choice, but it does say that you aren’t always going to get to be happy. Sometimes things are going to suck, no matter what you choose, SOMETHING isn’t going to be right, and you have to live with that. Grief, etc, it’s about moving on while knowing that nothing can ever be perfect. A lot of people read the ending as “you can’t change anything” but that implies that one ending is correct, and that’s just their personal emotions on the bay ending leaking in, imo it’s pretty clear that the only message that fits both endings is that sometimes you’re gonna have to take cuts, not anything about determinism or something lmaooo.
wonderful video though complete aces
Thanks for the comment, and for a very measured critique.
Honestly, looking back, I don't like the way I worded my read on Life is Strange. You're right that it's more about the futility of trying to perfect life's outcomes with your own choices. The message is that there's almost always a price to pay. This isn't really what determinism is, so I'd rephrase my take if I went back.
Heavy Rain implies, heavily, that you can get a distinct ending for the way you play it, but it’s always the same ending. It’s always the same killer, and it pisses me off. My wife told me I have no right to, since it makes sense, a specific killer with it specific motives. But I can’t shake the feeling that it would be way cooler to have several endings, depending on your detective skills.
Also, a video about videogame lies should at least mention Arkane’s Prey, since it has a pretty big lie that kind of changes everything, without changing anything at all.
I'm pausing at the 15min mark to share something. I didn't play this game i did download and start the game and i wanted to enjoy epic story game but am not a skilled gamer despite playing games actively for 25 years and when i saw this message pop up i decided this asnt for me.
I have poor reaction times and sometimes my health causes me to play poorly. I played many games like War zone, fornite and such where a death can waste 30 min though nothing of consequence is taken so I often play alone to not disappoint others. I have never played a dsrksouls game because I know the permanent loss of things after a death like souls (assuming you can not reclaim them) would make me never pick up that game again and thus I didn't dive any deeper than the threat at the start of the game. It is a little sad, years later to learn if I d dug a bit deeper I would have had my fears abated.
i have to say that calling WP a "dangerous incendiary" is the understatement of the century given the uhm...severely atrocious kind of chemical weapon it is, to put it kindly
"the wording was chosen really carefully". Lol, lmao. There are several ways it could have been worded to make sure the player does not feel trolled in the end. Specifically the "each time you fail" would not pass the jerk genie-test.
Just because you think or a % of players think this is what it say, and if not, it was a lie, doesn't mean, it was a lie or written poorly. The subjective thinking most of the time leads you to a path, which was not planned for it. Read it objectively, technically, and not put things to it, which are not present. I feel it was written correctly and carefully, and can't see the lie. Realise freely, after you know everything about it, that you were wrong, and that way you have to oportunity to learn from your mistake. But if you just listen to the haters or players, who are stuck in the "you are trolling me, I'm too genius to be mistaken" mindset, you just set yourself up to fail again in the next event.
@Cruntocius Of course you wouldn't see any issues with how it is written. Those constant commas in your reply alone break any reasonable syntax several times over.
I don't like Life is strange just because it felt like someone given a power they didn't ask for and being punished for it. She didn't even wish to save her old friend. She was just freaking out. Then she got punished and taught not to change the past when she didn't seem like the person to want to do that to begin with.
Also on the Spec ops choice is to not pay the devs for their game, since you just stop playing halfway through as the choice to not use white phosphorus.
I see Spec Ops The Line, I click
I like Slay the Princess and its relationship with lies. Spoilers:
I don’t think the narrator ever truly lies. Gaslights a little, but never lies (“don’t listen to that voice, you are happy”). Something about the game makes you feel like the narrator is lying though. So the game is lying about the narrator’s lies. This isn’t to say either the princess or narrator are right or wrong, they simply have perspectives. It isn’t until you understand those perspectives do you actually see the truth in both party’s statements
Even though I hate Life is Strange, the every choice matters lie isn’t what makes it bad. There’s a few narrative games where it works really well. I’d say the best one I’ve seen is Refind Self, because the choices do matter for the personality part but not for the overall story. You’ve gotta play it three times, it’s fairly short though so that’s not an issue!
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice kind of lies? After so many deaths you earn something called Rot Essence, and the game lorewise explains to you that the more you die, NPC's will get sick. Afflicted NPC's cant give you any special dialogue, and the first person who always gets afflicted is the Sculptor. When you talk to the sculptor, he says "that hes special and cant die" so it makes you think that the more you die, NPC's are going to start dying off.
But the tutorial that pops up for it doesnt say thats what happens. It explicitly says "The more Rot Essence Wolf has, the lower the chances of receiving Unseen Aid". So maybe less of a lie, and more of a "I wouldnt be surprised if From Software actually did that" lol
Life is Strange 1 is still the masterpiece for me, Not a single game to this day has lasting impact for me.
Great video.
Thanks!
Spec Ops: The Line, in my opinion, did a better job of subverting expectations than The Last of Us 2. Both of them force you to do things you don't want to do, but for me at least Spec Ops was more affecting. And less dumb.
Hellblade's lie as an experience is great,
Its lie as a marketing strategy was scummy.
A marketing strategy means that it's something that was presented in marketing for the game. This never was. This was a message in the beginning-ish of the game, and got attention through word of mouth. The devs were questioned on/talked about it after the fact. That has nothing to do with intentional marketing, which seems to be your issue.
Nice content man, keep it up, new subscriber here
If a game lies to me mechanically it's gone too far. It is fundamentally how I interact with the game. If you tell me it's I for inventory but it's j, you're lying to me with the reality you're creating. That is never ok. This is why spec ops is condescending and hellblade does not work.
Very good video
Mass effect is such a weird beast. Because yeah the excution of the ending especialy before the directors cut is pretty bad and pretty baffling. But not becasue the choices dont matter like a lot of people claim. Its them trying to find a way to make choices matter and actualy having made a pretty good system for it and then still fumbling it. The war asset system that excist is suppose to be a answer to how do we make all choices matter. Wich war assets you get can actualy get quite complicated with a lot of them be depending on at least 1 if not often several choices you made up till that point between all 3 games. SImple example is the infamous punchable reporter. She can be a war asset but the only way to make her 1 is to NOT punch her in any of the three games.
And yes war assets actualy have a influence on the ending. the control and later added synthys ending arent even avaible until its high enough. How well the normandy and its then active crew survives is reliant on it, As well as the additional scenes like the star gazer ending is only avaible if its high enough (before dlc stargazer was actualy impossible without doing multiplayer since it aplied a multipyer to the asset score depending how muich you done). Now the game is realy bad at commuciating this and the actual endign are still to similar, But there was defntiyl more of a attempt to make it work then people give it credit to.
About hellblade, i have to ask: if most the people praising the lie are people that already have the mental illness, then has it actually spread any awareness?
I never let the rot spread that far in my playthrough, so i was more neutral.
Ok, so the lie on Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is not because it says there is permadeath but there isn't, rather, the lie lies in the perceived intention of the message.
Because the line seems to be a warning and therefore something to be avoided, but it's just spoiling the end of the story. The rot gets to Senua's head, that is the end of her quest. And she ends her quest by renouncing it, which includes losing all progress towards it.
I can see how choice-based narratives like Life is Strange, Mass Effect, etc face a catch-22 when it comes to the ending. As you noted, allowing the player to choose their own ending ends up retroactively devaluing all the choices the player made during the game. On the other hand, I can see an outcome where players get upset if they are forced into an ending they don't want due to choices they've mde throughout the game. You let me make my own choices for 15 hours then all of the sudden when it comes to the biggest choice of all, you're going to railroad me into an ending I don't want? Or you end up with people removing all choice and just using guides that will get them their desired ending. I'd be curious if people have examples of games that manage to avoid this catch-22.
Is there a difference between deception and lying?
What an amazing gem of a video. Though provoking and well explained. Sub and a like from me!
Thank you so much!
press WHAT to close the menu??
Trapeze
@victorfroes6650 I've never heard that word before except in reference to some body walking a tight rope
👀
Today I have discovered that Americans have a different word for trapezium
So it's all just vibes?
🌏👨🚀🔫👨🚀🌕
Always has been
Great analysis, tho I’m honestly surprised the last of us 2 isn’t in the list of games mentioned. Technically, the game ITSELF doesn’t lie, which would explain why it’s not here, but the trailer definitely does and it’s really despicable that Neil made that decision
It doesn’t kill u because it’s all in senuas head none of it is real
He knows dawg
Way to be horrifically dismissive of mental health.
*conditioning us to accept being lied to* 👎
How'd he manage to repeat the same sentence for 15 minutes