Penumbra's Plot

[Bridge]

Am I the only one who thinks Penumbra is Boring as fuck? It's level after level of sterile move the stuff around and "Oh look, it's dog #586605 time to jump on a barrel and hit it with a pickaxe." and a vague-ass story. "Log #40505, we mined some shit. Log # 233330 Explosives are bad."


I thought that Amnesia was definitely a much more atmospheric and terrifying environment. Even with it's "haunted house" layout it still kept things more fresh than Overture, which is a game I still haven't finished.

Wait, so you haven't played Black Plague? I personally like Overture, with all its faults, but it can't hold a candle to Black Plague. That's where most of the concepts that would get "perfected" in Amnesia were being developed - totally different experience from Overture.

EDIT: Also, finish Overture. Don't know where you left off or if you have already watched a LP of it but Overture is a fantastic experience even despite all its faults. It has some really memorable scenes.

[i3670]

@Ghieri I can agree somewhat with you. However, only with Black Plague. I found Overture more interesting for some reason but I had some difficulty finishing BP. But the fact that Penumbra and Machine made me think makes them better than Descent.

[Kman]

itt googol discovers what a theme is & shits the bed

[MyRedNeptune]

He means that some (Agrippa for example) of the characters are based more or less on real life people.
But then again, Tuurngait is also based on a real life...

No, no... That's not what I mean.
Of course, Penumbra has also an intellectual story where the Tuurngait will test our collective mind. But the story will not reflect real world problems as much as AMFP does.

AMFP is a story we should esteem, the game is not or less designed to be "fun". It's like a serious game that wants to encourage us to think what's wrong in our world. Like a "mirror" it shows us the destruction of capitalism, atomic and war.

The story in AMFP was deliberately cryptic so that at the end we think about. The Pigs refers to capitalism. As a symbol of livestock, in this sense, all child laborers are supposed to be and all types of people who work in our world for a pittance to allow certain people their wealth. Oswald is one of those rich capitalists who slaughters animals (people) as a commodity with which to play his children as dolls.

'He, who makes himself a beast, gets rid of the pain, to be human'.And he will feel the pain he has done to others. The temple in Mexico was a fiction, where people were sacrificed to their gods. And he came back, he knew what cruelty he has built with his machine and became a different person. the stone, or the egg, is an allusion to the atom, in our world, an age of destruction, power and profit.

The machine is our own soul, represented as an inner movement, the mechanical processes are predetermined. The machine is therefore our own body in which we are caught and try to bring our souls to terms, by manipulating them as a saboteur. In his garden, the skulls of his children are. This means that for money people go over bodies.

We have produced Pigs and these are our own children, which are a symbol of the shame which we have rendered to mankind. This should encourage us to think. Such games should our politicians and billionaires have all played! For this reason alone, because Amnesia is educationally valuable and instructive, it is preferable to all other games. Where most it just see as a horror game and did not look behind.

The story holds up a mirror to all of us, because it shows the destruction of our world. The game is like god.

Yeah, that doesn't sound very educational. That's literally propagating one of the most mainstream myths of all time. I doubt there is a person in the world who hasn't heard that tale at least 20 times in the past year.

Yes, I think it's a myth. I highly doubt that's how the economy actually works. People work in accordance with their skill and nobody's exploiting anyone. And even when they are, it has everything to do with a corrupt government and nothing to do with the economic system.


And it's not like Penumbra and TDD don't have themes that are just as applicable to real life, if not more.

[Googolplex]

Wait, so you haven't played Black Plague? I personally like Overture, with all its faults, but it can't hold a candle to Black Plague. That's where most of the concepts that would get "perfected" in Amnesia were being developed - totally different experience from Overture.

EDIT: Also, finish Overture. Don't know where you left off or if you have already watched a LP of it but Overture is a fantastic experience even despite all its faults. It has some really memorable scenes.

Overture doesn't have any faults.

[Bridge]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticism

[MyRedNeptune]

concepts that would get "perfected" in Amnesia were being developed

"perfected"

>.>

Well excuse YOU!

[eliasfrost]

Wait, so you haven't played Black Plague? I personally like Overture, with all its faults, but it can't hold a candle to Black Plague. That's where most of the concepts that would get "perfected" in Amnesia were being developed - totally different experience from Overture.

EDIT: Also, finish Overture. Don't know where you left off or if you have already watched a LP of it but Overture is a fantastic experience even despite all its faults. It has some really memorable scenes.

Overture doesn't have any faults.

That's a pretty bold statement don't you think?

[Macgyverthehero]

I felt much more immersed in the story and setting of the Penumbra Games that most of the time I forgot that monsters are lurking around.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent on the other hand, I did not really think about the story too much, all I was thinking was "when is the monster coming" while cowering in fear at every corner I came across.

Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs was able to immerse me into the story a bit more than what Amnesia: The Dark Descent could to, but I felt it was too much that strayed from what the first game was. However, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs was still good enough to have moments in it that I might never forget.

[eliasfrost]

He means that some (Agrippa for example) of the characters are based more or less on real life people.
But then again, Tuurngait is also based on a real life...

No, no... That's not what I mean.
Of course, Penumbra has also an intellectual story where the Tuurngait will test our collective mind. But the story will not reflect real world problems as much as AMFP does.

[...]

While that is an interesting analysis of the story and may or may not be the intended interpretation, I don't think the story needs to be overly complex or bring up world-sized problems to be considered good. It's not what the story is about that fully matters, but how it is executed, and I can with 100% confident say that the execution of the story in AMFP was a disaster compared to most adventure games in the past and recent time.

I think we sometimes look at it way too black and white instead of looking at the big picture of what a story really is. If you sit by a campfire and a dude telling you a story by only telling it without enthusiasm or empathy, then you'd probably think the story is pretty bad. But if he tells you the story with enthusiasm, with good pacing and invite you to get immersed in the story, you'd probably say it was a pretty good story.

Why should we treat the story in pop culture any different? How come we only look at story as some kind of plot summary on a wiki instead of the interplay of colors, the music, sound and silence? The character design, the personality of the characters involved and how they respond to the world they participate in, why is that not as important as a plot summary?

When talking about a story, or criticize it, I'm not criticizing the plot summary, but the whole picture with everything combined and I think it's important to take all this into account when dissecting the story, because the written text is only a wee small part of the bigger picture, and most people seem to get stuck at that tiny fragment of what a story really is and don't want to look around.