/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18711004]

Do /lit/-approved games exist?

I know its a far inferior medium that's being pulled down by the fact that's its target audience are 95-iq young adult males who have no knowledge of film or world literature, but surely given how many games release every years there have to be a few examples that are worth playing?

picrelated is one i've heard many a good thing about, but never got around actually playing

[Anonymous No.18711012]

>>18711004
You have to be willing to be a little forgiving with multidisciplinary efforts like that. The probability of pulling together a writer who can write to the highest standards of literature, artists who can do the same, etc., is infinitesimal. Additionally, it can safely be looked at as a constrained genre where any of the disciplines are concerned, since all have to make sacrifices for another. DE isn't exactly Ulysses, but it's still a fantastic game that has genuine artistic merit.

[Anonymous No.18711022]

>>18711004
This is unironically the best written AAA game released in the past twenty years. Everyone sucks Bioshock's dick, and Bioshock is indeed a very good deconstruction of Rand, but this is much, MUCH more ambitious and utilizes the non-linear and interactive nature of games to tell a much more complex story.

Joshua Graham/Caesar's feud alone make it better than 99% of other games, but that's just one small part of it. There's so much more and so many interesting narratives woven throughout the damn thing.

[Anonymous No.18711029]

>>18711004
Pic related is great, but the highest vidya game story telling comes through art and atmosphere (souls games) mechanics (Crusader Kings 2 and other sandbox games) or cinematic presentation (a good JRPG like Fire Emblem Three Houses, The Walking Dead TellTale Games or FF10/12).

To have a really good written literary experience you cant have a game that is written by panel or suits. Diablo 1, Planescape, and Disco Elysium all have great writing, but also had small independent teams and the influence of one writer is strongly felt.

[Anonymous No.18711030]

no, not /lit/ approved, but there are tons of good literary games that this board would call ’pozzed' or whatever because they're made by progressive-learning arty types like, for example, Depression Quest

[Anonymous No.18711032]

>>18711004
It's usually pretty hard to mix written form with gameplay, but this game does in a very nice way, but I think you'll have much more fun with it if you're used to RPG tropes and traditional game structure

[Anonymous No.18711034]

>>18711004
This game actually does manage to give each of it's characters a strong voice, not just in terms of their pet topic but also in their vocabulary and phraseology. Combined with its strong sense of atmosphere, no doubt helped by its nice style and superb soundtrack, the game becomes great pulp art.

[Anonymous No.18711040]

>>18711004

[Anonymous No.18711051]

>>18711012
>DE isn't exactly Ulysses
What other artistic work is, really? It perplexes me that when people deride games or film or any other medium (not saying you're doing that necessarily, but just that it invariably happens in a discussion like this), they always pick the cream of the crop of literature and say "find me one game/film/etc. that is as good as this". Completely eclipsing that a book like Ulysses is nestled at the top of 6000 years of literature that came before it, and is the product of all that time in which literature as a medium has developed and has had prior examples from which to learn and improve from. Film has existed for over a century. Video games less than half of that amount of time. These mediums are in their creative infancy still. Of course they aren't going to offer something as intricately constructed and complex as Joyce or Faulkner or Pynchon, it would be retarded to assume that they would. They simply haven't had the time yet to reach those kinds of heights. A bit of an unfair comparison imo.

[Anonymous No.18711057]

>>18711040
That section of the game was more akin to postmodern auteur cinema. Metal gear solid is an excellent cinematic experience from 1 to 5 but I wouldn’t Call it literary.

[Anonymous No.18711058]

>>18711040
I haven't been on /v/ in ten years, do people still argue over whether MGS3 or MGS2 is better? I hope so.

[Anonymous No.18711082]

>>18711004
You'll probably want to look for adventure. interactive fiction, and role-playing games, which emphasize immersion in the game's story. Some examples are AI Dungeon, RimWorld, Arcanum, Planescape, and Dwarf Fortress

[Anonymous No.18711088]

>>18711057
y not?many of kojima's ideas are directly or indirectly borrowed from post modern or dystopian literature with some keen observation on current affairs of his day.

[Anonymous No.18711123]

Cultist Sim and Sunless Skies

[Anonymous No.18711211]

>>18711004
Pathologic 2 is better than most of books recommended me here. By better i meant deeper, more thoughtful, not only story but themes are great.
>modernity vs premodern
>morality during pandemic
>magic did not work but is still viable for society

[Anonymous No.18711403]

>>18711211
>Pathologic 2
This! Highly recomend.

[Anonymous No.18711473]

[Anonymous No.18711492]

>>18711211
>>magic did not work but is still viable for society
Isn't this just post-modernism?

[Anonymous No.18711496]

>>18711211
Pathologic is great, you should play the original game too.

[Anonymous No.18711509]

>>18711004
It isn't really because of the writing but What Remains of Edith Finch had a section which perfectly demonstrated the artistic possibilities unique to video games. The medium is still in its infancy, give it another 500 years and you will have a few masterpieces.

[Anonymous No.18711512]

>>18711022
But muh Hegel

[Anonymous No.18711660]

>>18711004
Halo.

At a surface level one could easily read it as a story about the rejection of theology/mythology and the advocation for rationality -- and yet, Halo without irony draws upon mythology from Greek to Islamic to be reason why the impossible can be done; despite the player knowing what Halo is, the visual and music direction still try to evoke wonder and mystery. It's fairly rich in themes like betrayal, redemption and reconciliation.

The damn marketing for Halo 3 asked the player to "Believe" -- maybe I am over reaching, but two of the most creatively senior people throughout the original franchise have strong religious backgrounds. So I think there's something worth considering in that shooter.

[Anonymous No.18711666]

>>18711004
no idea, but probably some weird one with philosophy

[Anonymous No.18711724]

>>18711211
Came here to post this, and the original

[Anonymous No.18711797]

Alan Wake. Max payne 1 too.

[Anonymous No.18711892]

LA Noire is one of the best-written games I know of, albeit with some structural issues probably stemming from the troubled development.

>>18711509
>The medium is still in its infancy, give it another 500 years and you will have a few masterpieces.
This is arbitrary, magical thinking. There isn't any reason why things would work this way.

[Anonymous No.18711894]

>>18711004
Kotor 2 I guess

[Anonymous No.18712120]

>I know its a far inferior medium
the opposite. but examples within the medium bring down its reputation as theres still alot to figure out and its hard to convey a vision when it takes so much work and money, which is why for the moment, niche productions that are also well exacuted are hard to find.

>>18711022
>Bioshock is indeed a very good deconstruction of Rand
this is a retarded reduction of bioshock. and fight me but fallout 3 has better side quests. and its all about the side quests in fallout
>>18711029
>but the highest vidya game story telling comes through art and atmosphere
this

[Anonymous No.18712144]

Don't let the cover / title fool you, the campaign on this game is about as /lit/ as a game gets.

>>18711022
This is also acceptable. As is BioShock.

[Anonymous No.18712151]

>>18712144
>Don't let the cover / title fool you, the campaign on this game is about as /lit/ as a game gets.

Oof.

[Anonymous No.18712165]

>>18711022
Have you read Rand? I haven't, but I read an article from an objectivist enthusiast (that I went out of my way to look for) who stated that Bioshock gets it completely wrong. Besides that, I've never seen anyone make any real attempt to explain how Bioshock accurately critiques objectivism. They just say it does.

>>18712144
The only reason this game's story is so highly praised is because gamers are very, very desperate to have some "Citizen Kane moment" that proves to the grownups that video games are art. The story is, in reality, so riddled with plot holes that it cannot do what the developers wanted it to do. Plus, even Call of Duty is a more realistic depiction of war.

[Anonymous No.18712178]

>>18711004
This game perfectly encapsulates /lit/

[Anonymous No.18712272]

>>18712165
>The only reason this game's story is so highly praised is because gamers are very, very desperate to have some "Citizen Kane moment" that proves to the grownups that video games are art.

Video games will never reach the sublimity that literature can give; however, this game's story comes pretty close to reaching those levels, and takes advantage of the medium to deliver. Have you even played the game?

>The story is, in reality, so riddled with plot holes that it cannot do what the developers wanted it to do.

Plot holes can be allowed if the dialogue, pacing, structure, and themes of the narrative are great, and in this case, they are.

Case in point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KfMFN3hLfI&ab_channel=%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%85

>Plus, even Call of Duty is a more realistic depiction of war.

Do you feel like a hero yet?

[Anonymous No.18712314]

>>18711004
>a far inferior medium
By what metric? If we measured all art forms according to their immersion (or "interactivity" or "gameplay" if you prefer), then even the best books are inferior to the best videogames.

[Anonymous No.18712338]

Not that it has an amazing story or anything, but the vibe is definitely some high qulaity Phillip K Dick shit.

[Anonymous No.18712377]

>>18711004
>>18711022
>>18711123
>>18711211
>>18711509
>>18712144
I knew /lit/ was full of midwits, but sheesh.

[Anonymous No.18712492]

>>18712272
The plot holes and other errors make the themes fail. Like the nonsensical nature of the WP sequence and both faction in the city opening fire on Walker first despite his attempts to be diplomatic.

>Do you feel like a hero yet?
It is more realistic. Spec Ops isn't the pinnacle of realistic just because it's grim. Just like Game of Thrones isn't a documentary on the middle ages just because there's rape.

[Anonymous No.18712574]

I would only consider /lit/ games if they mainly consist of reading like disco elysium and other rpgs. This was a very good visual novel, I didn't know actual visuals novels existed that weren't just a thinly veiled otaku dating simulator

[Anonymous No.18712588]

This thread is not literature. Please kill yourselves, you manchildren.

[Anonymous No.18712605]

video games that try to be artistic are pathetic. so are the people who like them. it is the opposite of the confidence and development a medium needs. the most /lit/ games are Tetris, Mario 64, and MW2.

[Anonymous No.18712613]

>>18712605
Unironically this. A game is a game in its true sense when it lacks art. A game being "art" is a complete contradiction of what a game should be.

Wanting games to be art is just cope from cultureless incels. Just shoot your zombies and sandniggers. What the fuck do you need a plot for?

[Anonymous No.18712624]

>>18712605
This. Metroid is a far richer experience than any pseud rpg.

[Anonymous No.18712635]

>>18712605
>Tetris, Mario 64
but those are art

[Anonymous No.18712649]

katamari damacy is the most /lit/ game of all time

[Anonymous No.18712657]

>>18712613
Art is more than just narrative, and it's not contradictory for a game to have a narrative. And why is someone on /lit/ of all places against storytelling?

[Anonymous No.18712671]

The Swapper and Talos Principle are aesthetic puzzle games with some philosophy sprinkled in.

[Anonymous No.18712703]

>>18712635
they don't try to be, like all the pseudery posted itt

[Anonymous No.18712714]

>>18712657
Game narratives that try to be literary are more often than not just embarassing.

[Anonymous No.18712748]

>>18712714
That's probably true, however does it mean that games should offer nothing more than a feedback loop?

[Anonymous No.18712765]

>>18712703
i could say the same about all of literature pretending to be more than mere bedtime stories. none of that would change that both some games and lit are very beautiful, engaging, immersive, interesting and complex. if you want to miss out on that by being pretentious yourself, than go ahead. its the same shit with every new medium

[Anonymous No.18712767]

>>18712714
Anyone who's "trying to be literary" is liable to cause embarrassment, in any medium.

And why does the captch keep rejecting obviously valid answers? I am wasting so much time on this shit. And to make it worse wrong answers are punished with cooldowns, as if humans are supposed to have a 100% success rate with this trash.

[Anonymous No.18712774]

>>18712144
Spec Ops is a garbage Call of Duty clone that occasionally winks at the player with a "but this is bad, though" in a way that was engineered to seem mature to children, but then some marketer got the bright idea to spam an image comparing it to Heart of Darkness / Apocalypse Now and memed a bunch of adults into playing it and now some of them are too stubborn to admit they were had.

[Anonymous No.18712831]

I never want to read more than one or two lines (and only those if absolutely crucial) when playing a video game.
>could be reading a book in comfy lounge chair, couch, bed, outside, on a train, in a cafe, etc.
>but no, I'm reading a whole novel at my desk, on a bright screen, because someone thought it would be cool to make me read some trash story broken up into 400 parts and I have to walk from part to part in, dude, get this, a 3D environment
>it's probably Young Adult tier or genre fiction of such quality that it would be completely ignored if it was in a print book
The only /lit/ game is Cook, Serve, Delicious – a food-themed typing simulator you can play when not writing.

[Anonymous No.18712871]

>>18712831
I don't want to hear music in movies because I could be listening to music instead.

[Anonymous No.18712889]

>>18711211
I played the original but not the remake. The original was great, the internal politics of the town was fun to get immersed in

[Anonymous No.18712905]

no

[Anonymous No.18712911]

I really like Visual Novels as a medium and I'm a bit bummed they haven't been explored to their full potential. I recently read one called Swan Song that starts out great but lost me a bit when one of the main characters turns evil for no real reason and ruins everything. The biggest weakness of VNs is that anime style writing often prevents characters from being dynamic or making them interesting to follow like characters in a novel. Black and white characters can work in a movie, but when something is presented in a novel-like format, part of what you expect is enhanced plot and characters since that's a strength of the medium. VNs have some pretty awesome plots but characters are often just too weak. Characters based off of tropes are actually fine, it's just when everything they do is predictable and not humanlike that it gets boring.

[Anonymous No.18712939]

>>18712911
Try Flowers.

https://vndb.org/v14267

I've only read the first part so far.

[Anonymous No.18713000]

>>18711004
The issue with most video games (except perhaps visual novels and point & click adventure games) is the ludo-narrative dissonance.
It's especially evident with games where the gameplay is mostly mediocre and supports the narrative minimally and superficially (looking at you, Xenogears).
Many well-written titles, such as Planescape: Torment, Tactics Ogre, The Persona 2 Duology are simply way too time consuming for people who came there just for the narrative.
Games that fixate almost exclusively on the narrative are most definitely /lit/.
Sanitarium truly felt like an exploration of ones mind, while VN's such as Ace Attorney and Danganronpa are pretty much interactive stage-plays.
The interactive nature of the format can also give you a different look on the source material, and perhaps even enhance the experience in a way (e.g. I have no mouth but I must Scream).
There are also plethora of solely text based adventure games, which might be the closest thing to traditional literature.

[Anonymous No.18713099]

>>18712871
Music is incorporated into the movie. Games having stories is okay, but if we're talking about them being /lit/, that means I have to stop and read.

Stuff like Disco Elysium can be pretty good, but it's typically just tricking me into reading a sub-par novel by swapping the label, and not only am I sitting there reading sub-par writing, but I can only do so sitting upright at a desk, staring at a bright screen.

[Anonymous No.18713109]

>>18713099
Text is incorporated into games.

[Anonymous No.18713147]

>>18713109
Don't be retarded on purpose. Music is incorporated into the scene. It all plays out simultaneously, exactly as planned out and edited. With text, you stop everything and read.
>Dude, the writing in this 60-hour game is so good (for a game)! I played it two times!
>Reading five novels from one of the greatest authors of all time? How am I supposed to find time for that? I'll choose the best one and I'll add it to my backlog.

[Anonymous No.18713161]

>>18713147
Games require you to stop and do things all the time. They aren't supposed to be movies.