/lit/ - Literature

demons souls is one of the fewgames that deserves /lit/ approval. it has poetic game design and art design

>>20073040
It's been said a million times before, but BotNS is the closest literary saga to the Souls series you can find because of the complex storytellings and the fact that most of what is said is from a subjective point of view, which pushes the reader/player to wonder about the real hidden issues.

>>20073057
What about Max Payne?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lhy9QnBHmo

>>20073040
I read his Bounty Hunter series. It's trash but I am astounded at the fact that he felt it wasn't and asked money for it. I need that kind of confidence.

You've gotta be a particular kind of midwit to call your novel 'the wizard and the dragon'

Even 'the knight with a longsword' is a better title

>>20073178
People are still malding over that clip?

>>20073040
>is this the [x] of [y] ?

>>20073323
Speaking of malding, Joe.

I never understood the appeal of this guy. Someone who bears the title of ‘critic’ boasts a certain level of intelligence. But this man has proved time and time again to be retarded. That video of him sperging out over Silent Hill 2 shows how shallow he is when it comes to thinking about and approaching games, and other subjects most likely.
Also his books are bottom of the barrel trash.

>>20073040
Why did he reuse the same cover like 5 times

>>20073040
except dante maybe, it looks like he is better

>>20073040
I honestly can't even imagine what a person with so many shit takes and so much shit taste would write.
I imagine it would try very hard to be symbolical and keep forcing pointless vocabulary flexes.

Is it actually called “The Wizard and the Dragon”

>>20073602
You don't get it

>>20073040
>see thumbnail
>get interested
>look closer
>it's not actually about a Wizard Dragon
Disappointing.

>>20073040
No, that would be something like Ulysses

>>20073602
There’s also this one

Try to think of a more generic name. It's impossible.

>>20073109
Max Payne writing is presented as tongue in cheek, please tell me you are joking.

>>20073040
>WIZARD DRAGON
>(the) WIZARD (and the) DRAGON
This is blatand false advertising. I came here for a dragon that is also a wizard, and not some bullshit 08/15 fantasy tripe.

>>20073849

>>20073891
I like that font.

>Is X the Y of Z?
No, because X is Z. It has no relationship to Y.

>>20073908
pretty sure everything in this universe has a relationship to everything else famalampai

how did this nigga miss the entire lore of hollow knight is beyond me

>>20073959
His brain is incapable of processing anything that isn't Star Wars tier of accessibility (like The Witcher).

>>20073977
The Witcher is inaccessible to anyone who doesn't speak Polish

>>20073977
he has some stupid criticisms like how the hollow kngitht fight is easy. Completely ignoring that in the middle of the fight the music changes to a sad tone and the knight starts stabbing himself in hopes of finally killing the literal god inside of him, and then said god takes control and starts tossing him around like a puppet with infection ulcers leaking literal cancer

>b-b-but you can't cancel your dash

>>20073040
Why is it that literally every single gamer out there suffers from massive retardation?
It's like video games as a hobby literally attract, most of all, retards. I've never met a gamer that was past his 20s and wasn't a massive retard. Everyone with half a brain ultimately regrets playing video games as soon as they get out of college, even the midwits.
Then there's the absolute state of >>>/v/ , where this thread definitely belongs.

>>20073997
You’ve met every gamer?

>>20073992
I always hated how you have to fight the Hollow Knight before you fight the Radiance. It makes sense story wise, but it’s annoying to have to go through the Hollow Knight every single time I die to the Radiance.

>>20073040
Can some kind anon post some passages from the book? I'm interested in seeing how bad it really is.

>>20074166
This is not from the wizard and the dragon, it’s from another book of his titled ‘The Bounty Hunter’
This is from the beginning of the book.

>>20073891
Soul

>>20073057
Haha...Kill yourself videogame retard. Guaranteed you watch (jerk off to) visual """"novels""" and cartoons. Get a grip.

>>20074187
the very first sentence is as bland as wet flour

>>20074187
JFC, do people actually buy this?

>>20074187
i'm convinced a robot wrote this

>>20073863
Gravity's Rainbow is tongue in cheek

>>20074214
>>20074281
what's the issue

>>20074212
Ok? I havent touched a video game since the last time i popped demons souls in, almost a year ago. As I said before
> it has poetic game design and art design
nothing about your mentally ill paranoid post changed this, especially since you havent played the game, and anyone on here with real taste, would probably see why I liked it.
you probably read the shittiest litcore like mccarthy and think you are high culture lol.

>>20073040
this dude's videos are actually so bad and speak volumes to gamers' standards for critique
mrbtongue and matthewmatosis werent perfect but i miss them

>>20073057
i think it's nicely written too, for what it is

>>20074741
for sure

>>20074710
Not him but the fact that you don’t seem to play games very much makes me question the authority of your statement
>demons souls is one of the fewgames that deserves /lit/ approval
But how could you know that Demons Souls is “one of the few games” when you don’t seem to play many games at all?

>>20074748
because I played them all throughout my youth. pretty obvious man, stopped playing them when found better interests but obviously they have merit.

>>20074663
it's BORING

>>20074663
To give you a serious answer: it's entirely reliant on the genre to carry the interest of the reader; something well written, is most likely going to contain good characters, which are interesting to read about regardless of genre.

>His partners dead eyes surveyed the planet below through the ships optics. Churning cities and remote valleys rendered in opalescent hues against a backdrop of space. He sinched up his body armor through old habit; somebody would die today.


Captcha: KYSjj--i refuse.

>>20073360
there's no appeal, people just put on his videos as background noise, kind of sad if you ask me

>>20073360
His videos are long, therefore he must be smart.

Joseph Anderson's writing is unique because of how utilitarian it is. Even when a character shows emotion, the syntax is still taking priority to make a grin or a joke statement feel mechanical. I believe what causes this for amateur writers is the belief that lore has to establish itself in fantasy / sci-fi before the story plays out. Because lore is the story, though (keep in mind these types are almost always addicted to video games) they try to mesh the two together in ludonarrative fashion. The strategy ends up backfiring because the worldbuilding reads like a literal blueprint, like you are reading excerpts from that one computer program, you know the one, it's what DMs use because authors get too stressed out over it.

I would still call his literature... Well, literarily valuable. Objectivist fantasy, so to speak, is a unique thing. It's what put Sanderson on the map. It allows unique ideas to flourish by virtue of not drenching everything in too much symbolism or dialogue. At the same time, I can't help but feel there is a crossover between these types of stories and feel-good 19th century pulp.

>>20073360
I remember thinking he approached things with a little more depth than a lot of the other people making similar content of a similar length. There's an abundance of "critique" videos that spend 70% of the multi-hour runtime summarizing things that happen with no examination of themes or mechanics. But really Noah Caldwell-Gervais is the best to ever do it as far as overly-long video reviews of vidya go.

>>20074480
Still not comparable, Max Payne overly descriptive narrations with weird metaphors are clearly satire of noir, it works really well for the game, but I have seen people take it completely seriously and praise it as a high watermark for videogames storytelling, just hoping that's not what you are implying here.

>>20075352
I believe Anderson has the mind of an engineer or a mathmetician compared to someone who actually opines over the depths of art. He cares about the technical elements, the things he can construct and that's why his symbolism is so non-existant. It's why he methodically lays out his points in his video essays and often reviews games (see his Dark Souls vids) based on the moment by moment encounters he has with it.
Ultimately this works well in games where you're reviewing the mechanics, but any kind of meta-thought seems somewhat lost to him. I wouldn't be surprised if he had some minor form of autism.
It's why he can name his book 'The Wizard and the Dragon' and feel no shame for how rote it is. You read the title and think it might be a great subversion of fantasy tropes, surely it would have to be in order for the author to publish such a work? But no. In Anderson's mind, it's enough.
Apparently he also has quite a Japanese following. This would make sense with how literal and procedural many of them are.

>>20075980
That's how we end up with From soft releasing the same tired game year after year. Themes, tone, originality and most other things integral to art are completely lost in From games now.

>>20073206
Kek

>>20073891
This book and the second one is fucking amazing. This book is basically Elden Ring.

>>20073178
>>20073360
Holy shit, you faggots don't realize how minds work.
His critiques are great, but only if he takes some time to analyze things. Joseph can't do shit on the spot, but that's fine because he is not that kind of person.

>>20078478
His critiques are boring, meandering slogs that stretch for hours despite Joseph saying very little of substance during the runtime. It’s white noise.

>>20075618
>But really Noah Caldwell-Gervais is the best to ever do it as far as overly-long video reviews of vidya go
I think he is the best of a certain approach to talking about videogames. However he mostly talks about the games as a text. He talks about them thematically and teleological. However he often doesn't talk much about the gameplay. I find someone like Mathew Matosis sort of does the opposite. He spends a lot of time talking about mechanics. Compare both of their deep dives into Death Stranding to see how valid, yet different their approaches are. I love Noah's content but I find he only talks about half of a game (ie not the game part) very well.

>>20073997
Accessibility, addicting

Yep that's it

>>20073107
That book is severely (haha get it) lacking in anime fights with sad Frankenstein monsters, though. I'm sure we can find a better fit.

>>20079175
I dunno, the fight against Baldanders at the end of Sword was pretty Souls-esque

>>20078535
>His critiques are boring
the fact you're talking about him on a mongolian navy website demonstrates you're wrong

>>20075980
Holy shit this is literally me.
t. Engineer

>>20074748
Well over 95% of video games are not worth playing because they have no artistic value or merit. Fromsoft games are some of the only exceptions.

>>20078478
This

>>20078478
>Holy shit, you faggots don't realize how minds work
lmao no, his "video game critiques" are actually categorically not great by virtue of what they are in themselves.
>don't realize how minds work
pretentious fucking faggot maybe lay off the youtube video game videos and read a book

>>20074187
>the two of us are going to go down, neutralize the outer defenses and then eliminate all hostiles
kill me, video games are a fucking blight on the Earth

>>20075980
>I believe Anderson has the mind of an engineer or a mathmetician
utter cope from someone who thinks real math is like adding big numbers and solving algebraic equations, Anderson has the mind of a fucking video game addict and nothing more.

>>20074077
Yeah, but amazing how quick you learn to do it without taking a hit.

>>20073040
Wait a minute let's be serious for a second. What would be the dying simulator for reading?

>>20074212
Stop being such a snob.

is his book good as a product or art?

>>20073891
Gene Wolfe was a mediocre author, why does /lit/ fellatio him so much?

>>20082084
>uhm akshually joseph anderson is le bad and you need to read a book
woman moment

At the very least I think he will be able to realize how shit Elden Ring is.

>>20075980
>I believe Anderson has the mind of an engineer or a mathmetician
I don't buy it. I've read science fiction and fantasy written by programmers and mathematicians, and it suffers from different faults than the posted excerpt. MatthewMatosis is a programmer by profession and he cares plenty about gestalt properties. As a self-respecting programmer I would never put an unclear referent in my second paragraph. And so on.
Are programmers better at writing than other(/"real") engineers? They do create something that's sort of like prose if you squint a little, but it seems too flattering.
Or is this what you get from someone with the mind of an engineer but zero engineering experience?

>>20083436
>I've read science fiction and fantasy written by programmers and mathematicians, and it suffers from different faults than the posted excerpt.
I'm thinking of three in particular:
Greg Egan is a SF writer, passionate amateur mathematician, and ex-programmer. His prose is so-so and his characters are hilariously thin. But while he can gush about his cool technology, it's always because he has something to say. He'll talk about the mechanical difficulties in building a satellite in interstellar space across relativistic differences because he really loves modeling that sort of thing (and chances are he did program an actual model you can download from his site). He wouldn't describe a power suit by how super duper strong it is. One of his novels has intelligent digital assistants but they're uncannily non-sentient. That novel even talks at length about gender, but not in the context of those assistants, because come on, what is there to say?
Alexander Wales publishes web fiction, and I think he recently started earning enough to quit his job as a programmer. He's obsessed with emergent properties of large systems and it bleeds through in all his writing. His latest project is ostensibly fantasy slice of life but he can't help mention as asides the impact of limited time travel on disaster response and the economics that cause unique magical items to flow to major cities. If you pay attention you notice that his systems are carefully designed to not be exploitable beyond his intentions, to pre-empt questions of "why don't they just do XYZ".
qntm is another web fiction author. He programs and cares a lot about programming. His writing is condensed, and his short stories all attempt to express single ideas. He has a post of writing advice that's actually titled "how to write like a programmer".
All these people care immensely about interesting ideas, though they insert them in different ways. The little I've seen from Joseph Anderson lacks that urge for novelty.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro reminds me of Dark Souls 1 a lot.
Gene Woof is a safe pick but the book I mentioned is pure fantasy kino, old and demented boomer Gawain from the Arthurian legend battling deformed maneater monstrosity under the sewer system of a fortress is peak Dark Souls kino

>>20077306
Didn't play Sekiro, did you?

>>20079602
He's still boring

>>20083300
You dont get it, its not unoriginal rehashed content, its a homage!

>>20077766
>its basically ER
Gene Wolfe was doing what Dark Souls did before it was cool. To this day, readers of his New Suns still piece out clues as to what exactly occurs in all those four books.
Yes, Botns was the original Dark Souls.

>>20083935
why is everybody who talks about that book on here cringe?

>>20083272
>Grand Master
>king of unreliable narrators
>dense prose
He's great. I've never read him, but he's great.

>>20083300
i just checked his twitter, he loves it.

>>20083935
Thief 1 did environmental storytelling 10 years before DeS/Days and it was done better. Weapon having a description on them doesn't make any sense.

>>20073040
I would've read a Book called the Wizard Dragon or the Attack Dragon but this title is just bland.

>>20073840
Attack Dragon would be better.

>>20073863
This, play Alan Wake instead.