gondaily

Dang it! It hurts to speak...

I'm not a big talker, anyway, but this is really annoying.

Once again, it is too hot to wear jeans. A disaster.

My brother has been playing BG3, lately. The game seems extremely boring and terrible. The story is interesting - at least what he tells me about, which admittedly is probably just the interesting bits - but that's about it. Then again, is that the point of the game? To be a cool story? I find it very hard to understand why someone would choose to play a game to experience a story over reading a book or watching a movie/show or whatever. It's a role playing game, so I guess it's about playing a role? But isn't that what one does when reading a book anyway, kind of project themselves into the characters, see themselves in their flaws and their attributes, think of what you would do in this or that situation? I don't know, but for me reading is experiencing a story first-hand, if that makes sense. I often end up pausing my readings to day-dream about how I would've gone about it. Or just a parallel story. I have lots of fun doing that.

I really think reading is the superior medium of storytelling, and I'm inclined to believe gaming is the supremely inferior medium. Let me be clear, though: I don't mean to say anything like "games suck" or "you suck if you play games." Quite frankly, I couldn't care less about whether someone or anyone enjoys games as a story-telling vehicle, all I'm saying is that I think they're just not the best tool for the job.

Every time I play a story game - which is rare, because I don't enjoy them - I find myself thinking that the story is a hindrance to the enjoyable parts of the game, such as the puzzles or the action or the platforming, you know, the game part of the game.

On the other hand, I think LitRPG is actually really awesome. Because, in my opinion, that's what game story-telling should be. You know Travian? Kind of like Travian. A story develops because of the players! There's other games like this. I think Shadow Slave would make for an awesome game! What would make it fun would not be the story embedded in the game, but the story made by the players. Do you get my meaning?

I'm sure there's games like these, but BG3 is not one of these games. If I wanted an awesome story, I would read a book. If I wanted visuals to go along with it, I would watch a movie. Why would I play a game? I feel like a story-telling game is just a way to do both story-telling and gaming poorly, at the same time, which I find to be rather distasteful.

Hot take alert, I guess.