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Why do people don't care about the history? - Printable Version

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RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - str4wberrypanic - 01-07-2013

It's not about the external history like " Napoleon was defeated in Russia ", it's about " you wake up in a unknown place without knowing why ". <======= SORRY FOR THE BAD EXAMPLE


RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - Streetboat - 01-09-2013

Oh, so the storyline.


RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - Rapture - 01-10-2013

(01-06-2013, 03:37 AM)str4wberrypanic Wrote: I was thinking about this recently, and i think that a lot of people who likes custom storys don't actually care about the history. That's because i've never seen any feedback about how good the history was, and the way people read memos in videos. I've realized this when i was reading the comments of " Followed by Death " in Moddb. Everyone says " oh, it was scary " or " nice scripts " or something like that, but never " oh, i really liked the history line ". It has a cool story and everything, but people don't care... I mean... for me, Amnesia was scary because of the history. The more i knew, the more i feared it.
But i don't know, it looks like people see a memo and just feel too lazy to read it. I think i've taken more time thinking about a cool history than making it, but it seems that all who people care is about the script level. And when i think about it, i don't feel animated to make a hard story, since people will only read the memo if it's part of a puzzle or something, and this is really bad. :l
What do you guys think?
I like it when Lore isn't shoved in your face. You take a Alien from Planet X, dress him up as a human give him basic English and stick him into the middle of New York. You don't tell him anything other than he is on a planet called Earth, in a city called New York and the people surrounding him are called Humans.
His objective is to go South and reach a abandoned mothership and you must pilot it north into Canada and cook Bacon or some weird shit like that. But really it's just to escape from Earth while killing the Evil Mastermind Pig that has enslaved the human race.

You walk around, and you see a big building labeled New York Stock Exchange. "Hell, I don't know what that is. But I'll read up on it later". You walk some more, dodging dangerous steel monsters with bright eyes that run away after they see your menacing face. "Ok, I suppose those monsters were easy to dispatch. I better read up on their strengths and weaknesses later."

A couple of hours later, your lost somewhere in the west in something called a subway. On your way their, you had to fight a terrifying, short, four legged, long eared boss. By grabbing a newspaper and shooing it away as it tried with great success at destroying your shoes.

It doesn't sound anything like Dark Souls. But it's kinda, sorta, not really similar to how they introduce the world. Their isn't any notes or flashpoints explaining the story in great, immersive, chronological order lore. It's just run through it all, and what you see is what you get. (Btw, I hate reading notes because 98% are filled with mistakes or terrible English. I understand if it's not your strong point, I'm a native American-speaking-English and I struggle somewhat with verbal or text communication. Find someone to help you out!)

Another form of Lore I love are the snippets given to you at regular intervals. If anyone has read the Bartimaeus Trilogy, half of the book is filled with snippets of information at the bottom of almost every page. References to King Solomon, Dijin in a Lamp, Atlas, Another Dijin in a Bridge, Farqual, Ptolemy, Empires, etc...
Their are just references and jokes everywhere, and it just raises thousands of burning questions in my mind every time I read one of them. And they were very humorous also.

Something in Amnesia that always caught my eye were the game loading screens. These little snippets of text always made me wonder about "Who were they?" -- "Are they related to the story of Amnesia?". Something like Hazel still today makes me wonder to what importance she had.
Don't tell me who Hazel is, I want to keep my ignorance about her.


RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - CorinthianMerchant - 01-10-2013

[video=youtube]http://youtu.be/9rxrYKODrdQ[/video]


RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - Clord - 01-13-2013

There is many examples in Youtube where popular Youtuber gets stuck in-game due the fact that he/she does not bother to read. One of them happened when the person skipped over page which basically contained solution for the puzzle (morse code.)

There is increasing attitude of "you can pause if you want to read" and let's player proceed to ruin his own immersion to the story (let's face it, many of them don't even really understand the official story as they skip all over it.)

Oh well, I gotta agree that I don't watch let's plays to expect some amazing storyline. Smile


RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - failedALIAS - 01-13-2013

(01-09-2013, 10:35 PM)Robosprog Wrote:
(01-09-2013, 08:24 PM)Streetboat Wrote: Oh, so the storyline.

Backstory would be the correct term, storyline encompasses the story that actively takes place visibly in the media.

Very nice explanation, Robo.


RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - Syronix - 02-07-2013

Well I think most of people like fiction than history, because fiction is always easy to create a story


RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - Streetboat - 02-10-2013

I doubt there are many truly historically accurate custom stories in Amnesia. History can easily be fiction.


RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - gatts205 - 02-14-2013

Story is incredibly important aspect of a game, for me. Possibly the most important. I can definitely reiterate much of what the previous comments have said. However, I feel it is important to stress that, unless a strong reason to the contrary exists, the back story and storyline must have a logical flow. I have played a few custom stories that were otherwise decent, but inconsistency between different parts subtracted, sometimes terribly, from the experience. This tends to bother me even more then spelling and grammar.

It is also important to keep in mind the surroundings in which the player is given information. I am not by any means a level designer, but giving information in places where receiving that information is unlikely can ruin immersion unless done very skillfully. For example, finding a note from the head of the household in a beaten up section of the cellar does not make sense. However, finding it in the office or giving that person a reason to be down there improves it somewhat. It can even be done by adding a simple sentence into the text.

Because I seem to be straying off point, it is best I stop here before this post becomes the dreaded wall-of-text that no one will ever read.


RE: Why do people don't care about the history? - Exostalker - 02-15-2013

So is this about history, or story of the CS?