#video games: sekiro

[butbabeitsnotreal]

me walking into a boss fight for the 12th time in a row without changing a single tactic, piece of equipment, or thought in my head

[troythecatfish]

Based Soulsborne Games

[master-orpheus]

My favorite Fromsoft boss type: Grandpa going beast mode

EDIT: I have been informed that I forgot Gwyn. This situation has been rectified and added Owl as well. Praise the Grandpa

[straightforwardpolls]

which game would you rather be the protagonist of?: bloodborne/ sekiro/ dark souls (your pick of the series)/ elden ring/ idk these games

[dungeon-vault]

[makomaki5]

If you want some other game recommendations from a huge gamer that is NOT Hogwarts Legacy, I got you bc we do not support antisemitism or transphobia.

Full disclaimer: If your advocacy goes as far as for Trans and Jewish voices to fall on deaf ears about a VIDEOGAME?!? Then, you were never an ally to begin with.

But, as a videogame lover and player, I will make other recommendations for you to play if you really need a good game that will support the rights of other people and is not built on hate!

If you really want a wizard game:

Play Skyrim and Eldan Ring! Those are two great open-world/build your character/magic games that don’t center around magic but have magic nonetheless! They actually have more spells and than this stupid game centered around wizards! Plus, they both have HUGE open worlds that will take (I promise) hundreds of hours to play and explore.

Play the Witcher!!! Although I have not played it, my sister raves left and right about the Witcher 3! It’s a choice-based, super long, world-heavy game that just immerses you in both magic and spells from the get go! Although not a ton of spells, it’s a timeless game and WAY ahead of it’s time.

If you really want a choice based game:

We literally got Cyberpunk a few years ago! It has amazing features for custom characters and fun armor to mix and match. It also has a choice-based storyline and multiple endings based on the choices you make/categories of your personality you update! What’s also so great about this game is it naturally has great representation. I’ve never seen a game that has NPCs have a set sexual orientation and won’t stray from it: if you are a straight man and hit on the lesbian, she will TELL YOU she’s a lesbian. It’s very interesting and also have trans representation and her personality is not just her being trans. It’s compelling. So, play this game!!!

Another set of great choice games is the Life is Strange series! Although not open world, every choice you make impacts the ending/relationships you have with different characters. There is also GREAT LGBTQ+ rep in every game they produce. The first time I played these games, my brain chemistry changed.

The walking dead series is an AMAZING choice-based series with a lot of representation. Although not open world and depressing(lol), it is a super immersive experience and has your heart rip in half for the characters. In the last game, especially, we see a more immursive and creative fighting techniques that just made you binge the game.

Another great game (that isn’t exactly choice but has an interesting way for you to interact with the world based off the way you want to explore) is Disco Elysium. You get to choose how/why/when/where you interact with the world and people. I have literally never played a game like this and my jaw dropped when I started. I could NOT put it down. The clock ticks throughout the day so you need to be careful about what you do with the amount of time you have. EVERY relationship will unravel another part of the mystery going on throughout the game. And, it’s very intense, fun, and full of philosophical shit that just makes you excited. Plus, you can tell it was made with so much dedication and care.

Fallout 4!!!!! This game is super underrated now a days, but is it worth playing! You can customize your character and choose who you side with/who you kill/who you save/who your friend are/what clothes you wear/what weapons you weld. Like, you cannot ask for more out of this game!! And, the world is HUGE and filled with such intricaticay. I cant rave about this game enough.

Persona 5! This is one of the best games I have ever played in my life! Like Disco Elysium, you only have so much time throughout the day to complete tasks and your relationship with peers/the skills you have are gotten from that time. So, if you choose not to hang out with someone or do homework or whatever, you could not max different parts of your personality/combat techniques. Is game is also in part a choice game, where you get to choose which route you want your narrative to be. Super fun! Also, this game has super fun turn-based combat that just leaves you on your toes! It’s super fun and super immersive and super HARD. It will take you a hundred hours to play.

If you want an immersive open-world:

I already named a few up there, but I haven’t mentioned the Horizon series yet, which is just fantastic. Both games have HUGE open worlds and a great amount of representation that just comes so easy to it and feels so natural. It’s not forced or random or anything: it’s right and natural and not a HUGE deal. It also has very immersive worlds with quite a lot to do. Although Horizon Forbidden West only has about 28 hours of the main story, it took me 80 hours to complete it because that’s just how huge the world was. Plus, the lead character, Aloy, has so much depth and interesting tidbits about her that you KNOW the game was created so much love and care. Also, the face expressions are so real and beautiful, it literally brought tears to my EYES

Red Dead Redemption 2 literally has one of the greatest open-worlds of all time and y’all are gonna play that shitty wizard game 😭?? It’s SO intimate and fun. There are times where you’ll be stopped to do a side mission and, if you die, you can’t go back to do it! I can’t say enough about this game because im sure everyone has heard it already but it’s emotional, FILLED TO THE BRIM with character depth, and super goddamn fun.

We all know about Breath of the Wild, but if you haven’t played that yet and are choosing to play Hogwarts Legacy, what are you doing ??

And just other GREAT games:

All the Batman Arkham Series games are INCREDIBLE. They literally were the stepping stones to other great games and was one of the first to introduce such an interesting half-open world concept. They fighting and stealth is ridiculously fun, and I have replayed these games so many times!

The tomb raider games are FANTASTIC. Filled with puzzles, stealth, and fighting, you cannot milk out more from this game. Plus, you okay as the incredible Lara Croft, who is such an interesting character.

The Last of Us?!? Such great representation! And what great character depth! You can see the love that goes into this game and what it means for the people that create it. Although a linear game, it does not necessarily feel that way because of the amount of exploring you are forced to do. This is one of those rare games where crafting does not feel like a chore, but an immersive and anxious experience. Both games are perfect!!!

If I forgot any, repost and add them because yeah! And, if you’re still not convinced to play something else, you aren’t an ally and stop calling yourself one!

[sorryitisandy]

I can't even muster appropriate words for how much I hate that Dark Souls and other fromsoft games became the battle lines for a stupid fucking culture war around gaming.

You there. If you are obsessed with this notion of dark souls representing some haven of difficulty that's been long gone that must be held up as a beacon of this, then you are not serious and I dont care about you(also whoever made the call to Run that stupid prepare to Die campaign back with DS1).

What I do care about is that everything that is *chefs kiss* about these games gets lost in this bullshit. Every weapon has unique animations and plays differently, conveying a variety of playstyles that it expansive. The world's are rich, filled with an intriguing sense of mystery and malaise that is just so fucking delicious. Some of the best dialogue I've ever seen in terms of game writing, and the delivery from its cast is absolutely kino.

Is it harder than other action RPGs? Yeah sure somewhat. But it kills my soul, thread by thread, when I see reasonable people out there expressing a stark disinterest or even opposition in these fantastic games because they have been given a distinct impression that the developers have no interest in them, because they think the culture surrounding these games is "get good" that Miyazaki and co are some sweatlord capital G gamers brewing up the hardest game imaginable for some culture war, when they are actually cooking up one of the most thoughtful high fantasy Gothic experiences ever.

And fuckheads who planted a flag into these games, that the rest of us Straight up did not ask for, have convinced them not to play it and I cry and throw up every time.

[video-game-photography-by-marie]

Eclipse in Lothric

- Dark Souls 3

[videogamepolls]

Requested by anon

[maloosh-baloosh64]

From Software is so fucking good I know it's mario day but im feeling so autistic about From Software games. Three fucking cheers for From Software I love their games I need to sink my teeth into as much of their library as possible because by god they just make such gripping, fascinating games that allow for deep player expression whilst demanding keen execution and strategy and I just adore it so much.

[mikethinkstwice]

Finally playing Elden Ring and wow it has exceeded my expectations as a designer. From the ways the game handles difficulty scaling with summoning ashes, its diverse methods of player expression via a more comprehensive magic system, and the map design all have me impressed.

But I've got one (singular) thorn in my side about Elden Ring that has made me think about the pros and cons of... prose and cons.

So, From Software games have a reputation for cryptic lore veiled behind equally cryptic prose, usually squirreled away in item descriptions. In past From Software games, this has mostly been an opt-in experience for Players. Want to dive into analyzing that prose to find some interesting world building nuggets? Knock yourself out. Think that's too much work? That's fine too! Since past From Software titles are linear experiences with minimal narrative player choice, one could ignore the prose-veiled lore and just enjoy the game from a mechanical and power fantasy perspective.

But just like Elden Ring is different from past From Software games in a myriad of other ways, Elden Ring is different in this regard too. On one hand, the open world nature of the game helps couch this prose in a more intense sense of discovery. Instead of walking down a fairly narrow exploration space and then being delivered these nuggets of lore, you (the player) are actively venturing out to a location because it looks interesting to you. Therefore, there's a sense of personal investment in what you find there and what you learn! And that's really cool!

But on the other hand, From Software's tendency to veil its lore in this way can sometimes work against Elden Ring's nareative design. Specifically when what you find is a who and not a what. Sometimes those NPCs you meet will want something of you that requires you to make a choice between people, factions, or even cosmic powers in the world. Now of course in any story there is bound to be hidden information to the Player, but due to how From Software lore is presented, it can be difficult for a Player to make an informed choice about the actions their character is taking.

This can lead to situations where an NPC attempts to con a Player or undermine their belief in a faction in the lands between. But due to the cryptic nature of Elden Ring's prose, these important decisions can go right over a Player's head! And if the Player doesn't know what they're getting themselves into, they might feel confused or even cheated when their character does something that doesn't match the Player's expectation of how their Character has acted thus far.

For some Players, this could manifest as the Player being ambivalent and not particularly invested in the Characters within the story. But overall this is a minor bump in an otherwise pretty fantastic game, and I wouldn't be surprised if I received comments saying that this Player experience absolutely didn't happen to others.

The easiest way to fix this would simply to be a modicum more transparent to the Player about the choice they are about to make once said choice is in front of them. That way, Elden Ring could throw as much cryptic prose as they wanted at the Player, and then when it becomes decision time, the curtain could be pulled back juuuust a little bit to give the Players key context to what their deciding to do with their character.

Hell, doing this could even expand the design space From Software has to work with regarding their quest lines! It could allow for more meaningful and interesting narrative choices on the Player's part to foster further replayability.

[butbabeitsnotreal]

yes its my favorite game. yes ive played it multiple times. yes ive platinumed it. yes im still bad at it.

[tiabwwtws-art]

SEKIRO BLAST

[scarlettrambles]

Emma the Gentle Blade

[alexhwriting]

A peek at my Master's Thesis

So as I prepare my master's thesis, I needed to write up a quick summary of what was actually going to be written during that process. The following is the rough draft and bibliography I'm starting with, though more research and details are almost a guarantee for later. This is also only about 500-ish words for the summary, so by no means the most thorough.

Environmental Storytelling, Ludonarrative Harmony, and Immersion: A Summary

            For my master’s thesis, I plan on exploring environmental storytelling in videogame narratives and the role that the background plays in immersion as well as ludonarrative harmony. During the Fall 2023 semester, I worked through some of the research for this paper as a directed study with Dr. Kee, which informs some of my bibliography along with some of the work I had done in previous classes with both Dr. Kee and Dr. Fox. I hope to argue, by the end of the paper, that the innocuous and mundane details that we see in the background of video games while playing are actually at the core of the immersive experience. To prove this, I will be referring to past work by many digital media scholars who have been working on game environments for the past 30 years, as well as games that both utilize and fail to utilize their environments for proper immersion.

            I will begin my essay talking about the core concepts that I want to show throughout the paper, those being Ludonarrative Harmony (as derived from Clint Hocking’s Ludonarrative Dissonance), theories of immersion and presence within the game world as discussed by J. P. Wolf and Marie-Laure Ryan, among others, and discussions of spatial practice and engagement within a video game’s world. Because of the layered meanings of the terminology, I will be using throughout the paper, I will be laying out some of my own definitions as well to make my essay more clear in its purpose. Specifically, I want to be precise with the term “virtual world,” which I will be using to refer to the environments of the games that will be discussed throughout the paper. An extension of this is “virtual world lore,” which will refer to those details given to the world through mediated sources, such as character dialogue, tooltips, and item descriptions.

            For the games I wish to consider throughout this paper, I have selected several from the catalog of FromSoftware, since these titles are famous for their ambiguity and lack of clear narrative as opposed to more traditional role-playing games (RPGs), such as the Fable series. For the FromSoftware examples I have picked Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019), Elden Ring (2022), and Bloodborne (2015), as each of these takes a different approach to their worlds and the way their narrative unravels. Bloodborne specifically shows off a high level of ludonarrative harmony in level design and player traversal, reinforcing its main message, through loss of character health, that progression is always painful. Sekiro takes a much more traditional narrative approach, with considerably more dialogue and cutscenes compared to the rest of the FromSoftware titles. Finally, Elden Ring, as an open world game, gives the player a lot more freedom and proves an interesting lens to approach the notion of game world, since it emulates a very large environment, The Lands Between.

            In addition to these traditional action RPG experiences, I have also selected some independent games that work well in this discussion. Unpacking (2021), Inside (2016), and Alien: Isolation (2014), all exemplify similar ideas to the FromSoftware titles, though in different forms, especially puzzles. Unpacking and Inside are both of note here for their lack of dialogue entirely, leaving the environment as the primary mode of storytelling for drastically different stories between the two. On the other hand, Alien: Isolation is more of note as an exploration of a place with few additional characters and survival elements recontextualizing the space around the player in times of intensity.

            Finally, I will be looking at some games that do not use the full potential of their environments and the detriment to the storytelling that is the result of such an experience. For this, I will be looking at Goodbye Volcano High (2023), and Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), both games that experienced several delays. Both offer empty virtual worlds, where there frequently feels like there should be more for the player to engage with given their Visual Novel and RPG genres.

Prospective Bibliography

Aarseth, Espen. “A Hollow World: World of Warcraft as Spatial Practice,” in Corneliussen, Hilde    G. and Jull Walker Rettberg, eds. Digital Culture, Play and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader (MIT Press, 2008): 111-122.

Alexander, Lily. “Fictional World-Building as Ritual, Drama, and Medium” in Wolf, Mark J.P.,        ed. Revising imaginary worlds: A subcreation studies anthology (Taylor & Francis,      2016): 14-45.

Álvarez, R., & Duarte, F. “Spatial Design and Placemaking: Learning from Video Games.”          Space and Culture 21.3 (2018): 208–232

Caracciolo, Marco. “Radical Environmental Storytelling in Video Games,” in Slow Narrative        and Nonhuman Materialities (University of Nebraska Press, 2022): 161-188.

CD Projekt Red. Cyberpunk 2077. CD Projekt. Xbox/PC/PlayStation. (2020).

Christopher, David, and Aidan Leuszler. “Horror Video Games and the ‘Active-Passive’           Debate.” Games and Culture, 2022.

Creative Assembly. Alien Isolation. SEGA. Xbox/PC/PlayStation. (2014)

FromSoftware. Bloodborne. Bandai Namco. Xbox One/PC/PlayStation (2015).

FromSoftware. Elden Ring. Bandai Namco. Xbox One/PC/PlayStation (2022).

FromSoftware. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Activision. Xbox One/PC/PlayStation (2019).

Grodel, Torben. “Video Games and the Pleasures of Control.” Media Entertainment, 2000, 209–      26.

Hocking, Clint. “Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock.” Click Nothing: Design from a Long Time Ago, (2007). https://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html.

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture” in First Person: New Media as Story,          Performance, and Game. Ed. Pat Harrington and Noah Frup (MIT Press, 2004): 118– 30.

Kocurek, Carly A. “Who Hearkens to the Monster’s Scream? Death, Violence, and the Veil of the Monstrous in Video Games.” Visual Studies 30, no. 1 (2015): 79–89.

KO_OP. Goodbye Volcano High. KO_OP. Windows/PlayStation. (2023).

Krzywinska, T. “Blood scythes, festivals, quests, and backstories: World creation and rhetorics          of myth in World of Warcraft.” Games and Culture 1.4 (2006): 383-396.

Mark J.P. Wolf, “Beyond Immersion: Absorption, Saturation, and Overflow in the Building of      Imaginary Worlds,” in Marta Boni, ed. World Building, Transmedia, Fans, Industries          (Amsterdam UP, 2017). 204-214.

NetherRealm Studios. Mortal Kombat 1. Warner Bros. Games. Xbox/PC/PlayStation. (2023).

Perron, Bernard, Clive Barker, and Ewen Kirkland. “Storytelling in Survival Horror Video Games.” Essay. In Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play.

Ryan, Marie-Laure, and Thon, Jan-Noël, eds. Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014.

Soriani, A, & Caselli, S. “Visual Narratives in Videogames: How Videogames Tell Stories             Through Graphical Elements.” img journal, 3, (2020) 474-499.

Thon, Jan-Noël, “Transmedial Narratology Revisited: On the Intersubjective Construction of           Storyworlds and the Problem of Representational Correspondence in Films, Comics, and          Video Games” Narrative 25 (2017): 286-320.

Playdead. Inside. Playdead. Xbox/PC/PlayStation. (2016).

Witch Beam. Unpacking. Humble Bundle. Xbox/PC/PlayStation. (2021). Creative Assembly. Alien Isolation. SEGA. Xbox/PC/PlayStation. (2014)