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S2 Ep102: VGBD - Emotional Games
73 Plays6 years ago
SPOILERS: Undertale, every Bioshock game, The Wolf Among Us, This War of Mine, Furi, Transistor, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Bastion, The Last of Us, Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Join Dave and Jake for the latest installment of Video Game Break Down, where we discuss some of the most emotionally impactful moments in gaming for us.
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Join Dave and Jake for the latest installment of Video Game Break Down, where we discuss some of the most emotionally impactful moments in gaming for us.
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Beverage Talk
00:00:35
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going, Dave? A little bit drunk. Yeah. So take that as you will. It's just happy occasions. It's happy hour every hour. We're all we're all trudging through this.
00:00:58
Speaker
I don't have to wear pants and I can drink what I want when I want. What's the, that's the new rule. That's the American dream right there. How about you? How are you doing? I'm drinking rain, total body fuel, lemon HDZ as per my Amazon subscription.
00:01:17
Speaker
I feel like I gave you one of these when we were still recording in person. And then you're like, this is my thing. And you probably outbought. That's actually correct. Because you did start the subscriptions first. I was trying something else first. I think it was.
00:01:35
Speaker
Uh, I can't remember what it was now. It was a different can. It definitely wasn't lemon, but ultimately I did end up on lemon. It was still rain, but just a different flavor you're saying? Yeah, it was something else. Was it blue raspberry? You're right. It was blue raspberry. It was like way too sweet though. It was like drinking candy.
00:01:52
Speaker
Blue raspberry is interesting because it's a made up flavor, but certain ones go in like the, I imagine blue raspberry is more sour and people are like, I imagine blue raspberry is really sweet. I'm like, this is basically a religion. You made shit up and you're making really hard opinions about how it is, even though it doesn't matter.
00:02:10
Speaker
I will say though, Jolly Rancher had a soda and they had different flavors, but their blue raspberry one was, as with all of their flavors, pure sugar and they carbonated sugar.
Sugar, Sweets, and Emotional Avoidance
00:02:25
Speaker
You know what? I gave it some food coloring.
00:02:28
Speaker
One thing that's adjacent to that that I do like though is the Jones soda. It's been a long time since I've had it, but we used to stock it for D&D when we still ran that in person, when I saw people. And their blue raspberry was actually pretty solid.
00:02:47
Speaker
I thought they just did kind of like cola root beer, orange soda, cream soda type things. Yeah. They definitely had like, they had a blue raspberry. Wegmans would have it. Um, and we would pick up a couple bottles of it for human consumption.
00:03:04
Speaker
That's the way I do it. I'm not watering plants with it. Did you ever try a big blue? I did not. I don't know if that was a Redner's specific brand, but there was a small grocery store Redner's near where I grew up. It has some other locations though. I'm not sure how regional it is.
00:03:23
Speaker
But they had like these small bottles, like yay big. I'm going to gesture for the camera. But they also had like the big fucking two and a half liters to three liters. Like, why would you ever need it to be that big? Because you can't drink from the bottle at that point because you look like a sociopath. Bulk soda. But it was very blue and very sugary. And that was my vice as a kid. Yeah.
00:03:48
Speaker
It's not that good for you as it turns out. I mean, like, I don't know how much better it is that I'm like cutting out the sugar from most of my beverages because there's a lot of other things in this can that I'm looking at right now. But you're not a pregnant woman. You're fine.
00:04:03
Speaker
The sugar was always definitely bad, right? Yeah. I drank a lot of soda growing up and I don't think much of it was necessary. I think the main thing with it is sugar is not inherently bad, but if you just have it sit on your teeth, your dentist, you're like, I'm going to make so much money out of you.
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah. It's also like we talked we've talked about calories before and like I would rather have something that's good if it's going to be high in calories and like so does a waste by comparison. You're like if I was going to have a bunch of sugar, right? Like it'd be cooler to have a cookie. Right. Anything like that. Paste you in a little fancier than I did. But a baked good. A baked good. Yeah.
00:04:48
Speaker
rather than just like empty, you know, orange soda. But that's fair. I don't know. We're just here to judge our listings based off of their beverage choices. I got to say, I really did enjoy eating. I think it was a little Debbie. They had like these raspberry rolls. It was similar to zebra cakes, but it wasn't chocolate. It was like a raspberry filling. Hmm. That sounds pretty good.
00:05:15
Speaker
But a lot of times at that age, I was just consumption because I could. There's also a way to kind of avoid dealing with my emotions. Right. Which is great that you brought that up because this episode, we're going to do our best to avoid thinking about our emotions.
Exploring Emotions in Gaming
00:05:34
Speaker
And in order to accomplish that, we're going to discuss them out loud in front of the world, presumably. I was going to say millions of fans, but yeah, yeah. The world will keep it generic.
00:05:44
Speaker
We'll broadcast this later. We not to immediately take your perfect segue, which was like designed and tailored and like, I know I was going as like, let me lean into it nicely. He's like took the cloth and you like powdered and you, you, you started making the overcoat that would be a perfect opportunity to change topics. But instead, um,
00:06:14
Speaker
I forgot what I was going to say. So yeah, let's just run with it. Wow. Think of what I was going to say. Could've sworn it was funny. I believe you're a funny person. I always laugh when I look at you. That's why we still have the camera. That's a joke from my grandfather, probably. Yeah. That's a two bit one from the old days. That is a pretty good one.
00:06:35
Speaker
All right, I think we basically killed the segue enough that we can actually step on it. Yeah, it's dead. It's dead. So this episode, just following up on video game breakdown, which was the series that we ran and continued to run when we don't have other ideas. Or we have a really good idea, and you'll never know the difference.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's just kind of a way to instead of targeting a specific game, it's more of a broad topic for these types of elements in video games, how they apply, where they're successful, where they done fucked up.
00:07:13
Speaker
What it means to us is the gamers. Right. This is basically my life at this point. So, you know, got to lean into it a little bit. We don't usually do the spoiler alerts much anymore because we trust you guys can read, but.
00:07:30
Speaker
If you care about any sort of spoilers whatsoever, check the description. I probably went back and made a list of all the games we talked about, whether they were on our notes or not. And be like, ah, thank you. And then send us a message being like, you preserved my spoiler dignity. I appreciate all of those warnings.
00:07:53
Speaker
That's it. Then we can, uh, we can jump into
Nostalgia and Childlike Wonder in Gaming
00:07:56
Speaker
it. So basically talking about emotions in games, how we felt about things, how important they are, whether they could be overvalued or that they're undervalued. Yeah. And some emotional manipulation of video games and how that's used a little bit. Yeah. Cause it's not always a bad thing. Manipulation. Hmm.
00:08:16
Speaker
That's true. That's true. So I actually stole the top spot by typing something up as we were talking about other things to prepare for this. And I put Legend of Zelda up here, which was because I realized we kind of underrepresented
00:08:34
Speaker
Um, childlike wonder. And that's probably what that series most means to me emotionally. Like, um, I still remember as a kid when I got the N64 and I was like, Oh man, there's all these cool games. And we had like golden eye, which my parents weren't super hot on. We had, um, Mario Kart, which was awesome. We had, uh, legend of Zelda Ocarina of time and Majora's mask.
00:09:05
Speaker
And Ocarina of Time was just like mind blowing to me as a young teen. I was just like, I just entered Hyrule Field and I could go anywhere. What is this? Yeah, it was kind of like a whole big ordeal at the time because it was an adventure. And granted, growing up as a kid, kids are fucking dumb. They have a very narrow view of the world. Not that I wanted to talk, but
00:09:33
Speaker
You don't know about so many things that are out there and what exists. So it serves as a kind of gateway into fantasy and seeing things kind of larger than life scale, a whole other world with new elements, magic, possibilities, characters. It's basically just fantasy, but it's kind of like your first entry into that escapism.
00:09:58
Speaker
You're like, oh, holy shit, this is a whole thing. Somebody thought of this and then made it into reality versus modeling it off of, you mentioned Goldeneye. People are familiar with guns and combatting like spy movies, right? We're Americans. In some ways, they're our fantasy movies that have yielded a similar effect. Yeah. But being able to live that out as a kid, especially on the high def polygons of N64 at the time, too. Legend of Zelda was like,
00:10:28
Speaker
Um, I had no idea what was going to happen next. And this was back then when you're like, Oh, if I wanted cheat codes or something like that, I found them on like cheat code central and then went to the library and I printed out a piece of paper and I bought that home. Like.
00:10:44
Speaker
That's what reality was like, you know, back then, right? And I think that sense of wonder that wasn't tied to an in-depth analysis of mechanics that kind of happens now, like we talk about games and we like break them down.
00:11:01
Speaker
We're just like, oh, yeah, the game plays great. The graphics are great. We feel like some of the character interaction could have been a bit better, whatever. Like we do that now. But as a kid, I would have just like stared blankly at someone who is trying to explain all of those concepts to me and been like, but it's fun and I want to play it now. And you're standing in front of the TV. What are you doing? Yeah, I get that. It's more complicated now, and I think
00:11:29
Speaker
Uh, one of the, the great surprises for me was playing breath of the wild recently and being like, Oh snap, that still exists. Like that was just like the openness and the possibilities kind of mixed with the nostalgia of Zelda as a series. Just like, I mean, it was clearly what they were going for with that game, that sense of, uh, wonder and just go off and explore something, discover the unknown and figure it out. Um,
00:12:00
Speaker
and trying to do it in the least gamified sense that you can. And yeah, that is in like rigid structure. Exactly. Yeah. They're like, we're not going to explain a whole bunch of things to you. There's not even like necessarily systems for figuring it all out. And we're just going to tutorial those systems. You just tried a couple of things. And holy crap, it works. And those discoveries are all useful in the game.
00:12:31
Speaker
And I don't know, I just, I really like that. I think Legend of Zelda is. Implematic of that sense of, of wonderment. And that's one of the emotions of playing games. Wonder.
00:12:43
Speaker
Wonder. And that just appears, you know, in a slot. It's like the, what is it? The family feud board. It's like, is Wonder up on the board? 10 respondents. Yeah, for me, I don't usually have too many wonder moments. I mean, I'm sure as a kid, I did have a lot of things I was experiencing for the first time being like, wow. But in more recent adult years,
00:13:18
Speaker
were really cool for me because it was an immersive sim, but I hadn't really had much experience in that. And those were really good entries for me at that time. Undertale also kind of broke genre from what I was used to. Yeah. And then I mean, obviously it's going to be in this list anyway. Oh, yeah. I mean, like it has a huge emotional tie in as well. So but as far as sense of wonder, I think those both count because
00:13:38
Speaker
I'm trying to think. BioShock and BioShock Infinite.
00:13:45
Speaker
It was something new and impressive. And then I was emotionally invested in those games. So stepping into Undertale for a bit, what other kinds of emotions did you really get from that experience? Because we both played this roughly at
Emotional Journeys in Games
00:14:00
Speaker
the same time. You basically made me play it. I made a lot of people play it. I don't want to make you seem like you're the only victim. I subjected a lot of people to it because I liked it that much. I wanted other people to feel the same, hopefully.
00:14:16
Speaker
But you, you, was it just the sense of wonder you kind of got out of that? Or did you experience other, other, uh, emotions while? No, for me, it's kind of the whole gambit. So context a little bit. Initially when I was playing this game, I was not in the.
00:14:38
Speaker
best frame of mind. I had some shit going on at the time. So I was initially going through the tutorial sequence and going through that stuff. And then when you have the tutorial fight, she kind of stops attacking you at a point and you see like her expression change because she doesn't want to actually hurt you and I want to hurt her. But you were kind of at this impasse and you thought like this has to go down.
00:15:07
Speaker
So like after that, I think I just started crying a little bit, not like bawling, but like tears were just going. I was like, yeah, fuck. And then it's like, undertale. I'm like, Oh, is that the game? No. And then two minutes after you meet sans sans Jesus Christ, you meet, you meet him. And then he, um, gives you the.
00:15:32
Speaker
I forget what it's called, the handshake that buzzes. Yeah, he's got the hand buzzer thing. I don't know if there's a proper noun for that. Write in if you know what the proper noun for a hand buzzer is. Like I said, I'm a little bit tipsy still. I'm not. It pranks you, right? Yeah. And then it's immediately, no, it's like the whoopee cushion. And it's like immediately. The whoopee cushion in the hand. It immediately changes into like, haha, lighthearted. And I started laughing. Music changes. Yeah.
00:16:02
Speaker
And I was like at an emotionally vulnerable state. So I was able to switch between being very sad to having the openness of emotions switched to levity at that moment, which I thought was really cool. And then as the game progresses, there are other more tense moments or you feel victorious or you kind of feel with characters as these events are happening. Yeah.
00:16:28
Speaker
directs you in a way to feel a certain way towards a character which kind of leads you into those interactions. Right. There's a lot of very personable characters in Undertale where you can empathize with them and you want to see. You want to experience the story with them, which is really nice. And you bring up a good point of the circumstance outside of the game largely impacting your experiences in the game.
00:16:58
Speaker
Because you know like you're saying an emotionally raw time in your life Which just breaks down a lot of those walls and you can experience games in ways that you otherwise couldn't so like the opposite for that for me is like
00:17:14
Speaker
Sometimes if I feel like I have, if I had to play a game and there should be an emotional impact, or there normally would be, but I'm in a state where I'm just like, ah, I absolutely have to play this. You know, I don't really want to, I've got something else going on, it's distracting me, I'm worried, whatever. Like that insulates you from emotional experiences you might be able to experience in that same game. And- I feel like certain things come at specific times.
00:17:43
Speaker
So even if you think about people who you met in your life, let's say you shifted your meeting of them a couple of years one way or the other, they might not have had the same impact on your life. Maybe you're like, that's not the type of person I associate with now, but they were fun back in high school or
00:18:01
Speaker
I couldn't think of another example, but I'm sure there are others. I mean, I think about that for myself sometimes. Like if I went back and to talk to myself at 14 or 13 or 12 or 15 or 16 or 17, like would I even be able to tolerate the kind of person that I was?
00:18:22
Speaker
And I'm not sure the answer is yes. Like, it's been 10 years. Yeah, at least. No, I do think you change a lot in those times and you
00:18:37
Speaker
grow as an individual and have more emotional depth and capacity as a human being. So if I were to do certain things now, I'm sure it wouldn't have the same impact because I'm old and jaded.
00:18:52
Speaker
But for the things that happened when they happened, I'm glad that I can appreciate them as I did. In the same way, I look forward to being able to appreciate things that come out as I hopefully get my mental state back to being able to appreciate that sense of wonder or being more open emotionally, just like stuff hit you and feel it. Right. Instead of being like, that's a bad emotion. Get it out.
00:19:21
Speaker
No, I definitely get that. I mean, maybe not always. You can't live your life always raw. Some people do for a long time and that's draining. That's a lot of stress and pain. Also, please stop texting me.
00:19:41
Speaker
No, it's, I think it's a good methodology to not necessarily live with your heart on your sleeve, like be an open book, be willing to share and communicate with people. But at the same time, keep some shit in check a little bit. Yeah. It's, uh, it's important to, I mean,
00:20:03
Speaker
I think taking a moment to just kind of, one of the problems I had when I was really young or younger was I would internalize everything. I think a lot of teenagers do that, right? Like, take everything to heart, feel everything, but not really break out of myself and experience the world and interact with other people in meaningful ways. And I think that's, you know,
00:20:29
Speaker
That's something that's really important to be able to establish your baseline. So it's not just like you have some ego, you have an ID, you're not or aid, you don't have like, I thought you meant like a form of ID. I have an ID if they are not. But I think, you know, big life events can shake that.
00:20:53
Speaker
structure of ourselves that we build up. And on that kind of uncertain ground, that's where, you know, you feel really emotional naturally as one would expect. You're not sure what the world's really like. But, you know, I think it works out in the end.
00:21:13
Speaker
So we talked about Undertale a little bit in my sense of various emotions. What is a game for you where you kind of started, you actually, you had the feels.
Impactful Gaming Moments
00:21:25
Speaker
I had the feels. Like something that caught you off guard and you maybe started to well up or you felt a sense of like a pang in your stomach. Gotcha.
00:21:35
Speaker
There's a lot of good entries on this list and maybe not cover all of them. I'm gonna I'm gonna subvert I'm gonna go to the subversion real quick here Not so much Welling up of fields as much as kind of shock But I'm gonna go to call of duty
00:21:56
Speaker
which I added on the list and I was like, I know I'm going to hit it, but specifically Call of Duty four modern warfare and full disclosure, I don't really play Call of Duty anymore. The last one I played was like black ops, which was after Call of Duty modern warfare too. Um, but I remember, uh, did you play through the single player campaign for cod four?
00:22:20
Speaker
I played some modern warfare two back in the day. I might've done some four multiplayer here or there, but that's about it.
00:22:29
Speaker
But there is, so the moment I'm thinking of is you kind of switch perspectives between US forces and the British forces a couple of times. And you end up in like Afghanistan light. I don't think they have a real country there. Somewhere in the Middle East. The Middle East, yeah. Fake country, Stan.
00:22:57
Speaker
You're like investigating a possible nuclear threat and you're like, all right, going through, do the mission, whatever, whatever. And then you hear over the radio that needs to be an evacuation, you know, like, sure, whatever, go on the helicopter. And this is still just shooting guys, right? It's called duty. You're just shooting guys. Nobody cares. And then there's a massive explosion as a nuke is detonated in the city and your helicopter goes down.
00:23:24
Speaker
And you're like, oh, that's unfortunate. But you wake up, and your guy can drag himself out of the helicopter, and you can try to stand up. And the game's got the Call of Duty health aura that they made really popular, where it's like, oh, they're just right across around the sides of the screen. You know you're hurt, right? Yeah. You haven't healed. And you're like, all right, well, we'll just try to get my way out of here. And after trying to stand up, eventually, your guy just dies.
00:23:54
Speaker
you'll just fall to the ground and die. And you can accelerate the process by trying to jump a bunch repeatedly, which is kind of hilarious. But if you try to conserve your health and like just crawl out, doesn't matter, you always die there. And then it just zooms out to like satellite view and it's like, has your character, your person's name, and they're just like, KIA, and then goes back to the British forces. And
00:24:21
Speaker
I could have just been because I was still like an impressionable teenager, but I was like, holy crap. My guy is dead. Like they played through the whole experience of my guy dying. And up until the very end, I still thought, you know, like, no, he has a chance.
00:24:44
Speaker
I assume it's because in most shooting games or FPS, it's like, oh, you died. You'll respond in three seconds. And it's like a mechanic of the game and doesn't really have the weight of murdering people. Yeah, it's the action here. You don't expect that canonically you're going to just die.
00:25:05
Speaker
And that's, that's a trope I know that they've subverted or not subverted. They've probably done to death and games after that. I think that your protagonist actually is betrayed and killed several times across the rest of the series. But like that first time it happened, I was just like, holy crap. And I had to sit back. That's the emotion of a shock.
00:25:29
Speaker
which I don't usually get in games outside of like a scary sense. So I'm giving points to Call of Duty for that. Those are the only points I ever give. Thank you for not answering my question. It's OK, Activision Blizzard. There you go. Was that your question?
00:25:56
Speaker
I mean, a pit of, pit of the stomach sort of game or experience. What is something that kind of struck you emotionally? I mean, if that was Call of Duty for a few of that instance, that's fine. Yeah. I mean, it was now it wouldn't be, but probably the combination of playing through it as like a teenager and being completely subverted. Um,
00:26:24
Speaker
I imagine it's similar for like what happened with Final Fantasy, right? For, for a seven, for a lot of people. Yeah. Uh, looking back when I was playing that at one of the, it was probably at least the second CD. How many floppy disks was this?
00:26:47
Speaker
I feel like as it was happening, we probably had some kid over at our house, because maybe you're watching a neighbor's kid or somebody from your church. It's like, oh, hey, can you watch our kids during the afternoon? We all live close enough by, fuck whatever.
00:27:05
Speaker
Did you just watch other people's kids? I didn't. I was playing video. Oh, okay. Your family was watching it. It's gotcha. Okay. It's like my mom and this kid were like in the basement and I think like the whole scene with Aerith happened where she gets stabbed and like
00:27:24
Speaker
Oh, why'd I give her any items? And I was like taking it in and getting a little bit emotional. This kid just like making a wreck in the background. I remember being upset. I'm like, could you not? Right. I'm having a moment here. Yeah. Like I was getting deep in the feels and it was just completely shaking me out of that. And I was like, I want this to sit a little bit. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
00:27:51
Speaker
No, it's actually something I sometimes when I start playing a game now, I'll just go social networking quiet, like I'll like close Discord or whatever, and then like turn off my other monitors. And so I just have the one and just go immersed in it. And I think being deprived of that experience for some of those games where there's dramatic moments happening.
00:28:15
Speaker
is, uh, it's like, it's a tragedy. You really should experience some of that as immersed as you can. It's weird for getting messages. Maybe they'll say like, you've seen this guy's dick on Reddit, right? It looks weird. Oh man. We should leave those groups. Recent ish memory. And eventually we will have a fucking episode on it. So help me God is the last of us. Oh yeah. Cause I would just,
00:28:46
Speaker
Oh my gosh. For me, my PlayStation is always separate from my computer. My computer is where I'll kind of sit and do most things, spend most of my day. My health's doing great, thanks for asking. But the PS4 is always a separate room. I ask every time I do. And separate TV. So it's kind of like my gaming away from gaming. So I don't do it as often because I feel disconnected from everybody else who is online talking about shit. Yeah.
00:29:13
Speaker
But at the time like I was playing my living room in the beanbag and I go through the intro sequence just like half an hour and you're kind of playing as the character as like the whole zombie outbreak happens and then like your daughter gets killed. Yeah. And then it goes into like, hey, this is going to be the game. You're like, oh, shit. So you now feel the weight of.
00:29:36
Speaker
or the zombie apocalypse. Like you've already lost somebody close to you who even in just that half an hour, you felt attached to that character and you're just like, yeeted away. Don't you, um, do you play as the daughter or at the beginning of the game? Yeah. Yeah. Cause, uh, initially you just kind of hear noises and you wake up at the middle of the night and you're walking around sluggishly and your PJ is going like, is dad at work? What's going on? Yeah.
00:30:04
Speaker
That was an accidental yawn, but it worked. Okay. I thought I was like, dang, Dave's an actor. Um, yeah. And they really do, they really do play up the attachment between father and daughter. Like there's a gift exchange, I think. Like she gives them a birthday gift or something. Yeah. She gets him a watch. And it's basically, you talked about how emotional manipulation is going to be one of the topics brought up here. There's a lot of that in the beginning chapter of the last 100%.
00:30:34
Speaker
But they're just priming the pump. They're just like, you know, the emotion starter on your emotion ignition. And you're like, why are you doing that so much? And you're like, it's probably they're like, it's probably fine to worry about it. But yeah, it it helps for things in the long run because. You care about the characters who were there and you're always worried, like you've seen them take away somebody just like that.
00:31:00
Speaker
Is this snap coming up? Yeah. And then you're worried that they're going to do it for other people. Right. You're like, oh, Joel and Ellie are like these missing puzzle pieces of a family. I want this to work. I want them to be okay. So when you have those other sequences later, it's just heightened because there's a risk associated with it. Right. And you have the fear of loss.
00:31:26
Speaker
the writers have already shown themselves semi-statistic and willing to hurt you emotionally, so perhaps they would do it again. And I definitely, that carries through the game. It contextualizes their relationship and everything. I mean, I don't want to do the last of this episode right now, but...
00:31:43
Speaker
This is a good example. No, it's really solid. I want to credit you in front of our listeners. That wasn't even on the notes. We didn't even have the last of us. I'm not even looking at the notes, motherfucker. You're just coming up with this stuff on the fly. That for me has been a more, in recent years, emotional impact. Whereas some of these things on here,
00:32:07
Speaker
and our list have elements, but none of these on this list hit me in the same way. That's fair. That's absolutely fair. Kind of just making the card for reference not seem as good now. That's why I did it.
00:32:26
Speaker
I'm going to follow up with another one that actually was impactful for me.
Emotional Weight and Moral Choices
00:32:31
Speaker
And I'm fairly certain was impactful for you, which was Among Supergiant Games. They have a lot of emotional moments and characters and they know how to write stories that are emotionally impactful. And Darren Korb is a really good musician. Shout out Darren. I went to one of your panels. Your music's fucking dope and you're great. Thanks.
00:32:55
Speaker
Friend of the show, Darren Korb. Man, I hope so. I have his autograph on a thing. We should invite him for one of these episodes. Just be like, hey, we're going to talk about. We'll text Darren. Yeah, maybe you could just text him real quick. I've thought about, in the past, about having a guest, like a quote unquote celebrity guest. Or you know, someone related to the actual gaming industry and not like just a leech on it like we are.
00:33:23
Speaker
I would have a mild panic attack. Exactly right. And then I think about it, I'm like, how best do I portray the podcast? Dishonesty in order to get one of these people actually on, right? Like if they ask what our listenership is, do I tell them?
00:33:41
Speaker
real numbers. I would be like, hey, we talked about video games, you're associated to video games. Something leads me to believe you have a decent amount of free time right now. It's probably true. But in particular, Supergiant Games, Bastion, the OG, the original,
00:34:03
Speaker
I mean, these are one of the developers that just came out the gate running and delivered a home run product. And Bastion's really awesome. It's one of the ones I'm less likely to go back and just replay for fun. But in particular, there's one really emotional moment where it's a choice to carry the guy that betrayed you
00:34:34
Speaker
out or use your super weapon because you've got like, I don't know, the golden gauntlets going back to Legend of Zelda and you have, what is it, like a huge totem pole you can thwap people with? It's a big step. It's a long way.
00:34:49
Speaker
I'm pretty sure it's a log, but it's like, it's ridiculously strong, but you can choose to forego that and carry this guy who betrayed you out back home. And in the sequence, these enemies will shoot at you until your health is almost completely out and then they'll stop. They just respect you for carrying this guy out and sacrificing yourself potentially to do it.
00:35:19
Speaker
Um, and the music with it. Holy shit. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So again, loose context for people who haven't played Bastion. There's a character called Sia or something, but she has a theme, which is, um, very beautiful son by Ashley Barrett. And then there's another theme called coming home, which is by Darren Korb. And then.
00:35:45
Speaker
I think her theme is called setting sail, but basically they mash those songs together to be at the same time. And it's so beautiful and hopeful and somber, but it just fits that moment so well. It's like that was another moment in gaming where I was like, Oh shit. Yeah. It hit me pretty hard. It's, it's so good.
00:36:12
Speaker
I think not to analyze it too much, but that's literally what we're doing. So to analyze it too much, part of the impact is that these are very tailored experiences. You can have an emotional experience in a game that's freeform, sandboxy, something like that. I think, but I couldn't think of any examples for it. This is very explicitly, the only thing you can do is carry this guy out.
00:36:41
Speaker
and get shot until you're almost dead and they stop shooting you. But it allows you to take a step back from just a bunch of inputs with the controller and think about what's happening on the screen a little bit more and appreciate the moment. And I think that's, that's really, that's really awesome for, uh, for some of this. I will say though,
00:37:09
Speaker
If that moment didn't have music, because a lot of times I'll associate certain events with music because music usually accompanies the feeling. I think if you have like an upbeat tune, maybe thinking, oh, it's an upbeat section.
00:37:29
Speaker
Um, our brain is just wide that way to be like, Oh, I associate this with this. It connects and makes sense. Um, silence can be used very well in mediums to convey something like more impactually. But I think it's unnerving or silence is unnerving.
00:37:51
Speaker
I've been watching a lot of Neon Genesis Evangelion recently on Netflix because I have never seen it until now. And even though it's not my favorite thing in the world, it's an older anime. I do notice there are a fuck ton of like once per episode, they'll have a scene and they'll either like replay something to kind of drive home impact or they'll leave it sit for like 40 seconds. Mm-hmm.
00:38:18
Speaker
It's an old anime, so I don't care if I spoil anything or Jacob put it in the list. And there's a point where right now the guy in the Mecca is like holding somebody else and he doesn't want to kill him, but he is a threat and he needs to. So there's like 35 seconds of him just like static picture, no animation of him just holding the guy. There's no dialogue, no music. And then it cuts to black and you hear like that because he he crushes them.
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah. But like, you know, with that time, like there's mental deliberation, there is hesitation because the character has reservations about his actions. He has doubts. Yeah.
00:39:02
Speaker
That's something I appreciate more, I think, as I grow older, is when media is willing to slow down the pace. Yeah, just to make you a little bit uncomfortable, right? You're like, man, this scene is, when did they last do a cut, right? Like we're sitting here just watching this, making me real uncomfortable. I appreciate that.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah. I much prefer those Westworld season one vibes to Westworld season three. Am I going to have, am I going to have to put Westworld in here? That was an aside joke for current events. Um, that's funny. Um, yeah. Uh, I think honestly, I don't want to go.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I'll probably leave pyre, but I will spoil literally the end of transistor. Cause that was another big one for me while we're on pain. Um, the abridged description of what's going on is, uh, the protagonist red has her boyfriend trapped in the transistor, which is an electronic sword.
00:40:18
Speaker
And you get to the end of it, and she basically has the power to recreate the world that's been destroyed by the process, which is the antagonist force, I guess. And so she starts repainting the world, basically, with the transistor and the power she has.
00:40:39
Speaker
And she gets partially through it, paints a couple areas, essentially, and the voice in the transistor is like encouraging her. And it's like, yeah, we've done this. Like we got this. And then she stops. And, uh, she basically gives up more or less and chooses to be with the person she loves by stabbing herself with a transistor and having her consciousness absorbed into it. Yeah.
00:41:09
Speaker
basically they're like, as much as she would have recreated over the physical world, he was not a part of that anymore. Yeah. So she couldn't bring that back. And like, this is one of those moments where I've talked to people who didn't weren't impacted as much by it as I was, but there's something about, um, the unfulfilled quest kind of,
00:41:35
Speaker
It's like you reach the goal at the end and you realize that not to like get depressing, depressing, but it's like you reach the goal at the end and you realize that it wasn't worth it or it's not what you really wanted. And that's what the ending of Transistor was for me. Not in that I didn't want the story to end that way. I thought it was actually a really satisfying conclusion. No, it definitely is. But I know what you mean.
00:42:07
Speaker
It subverts the expectations a little bit of the hero's journey where somebody goes on the quest, achieves their goals, not the end. Everybody's happy. Um, I have to tangent back to this because of what you said, but going back to last of us, right?
00:42:25
Speaker
I'll try and keep it vague because I think everybody should play this on their own. Well, they'll get a notice for it at least. I'll still hold off. But the ending for that I loved so much because it wasn't a straightforward happy ending. Yeah. There are consequences for actions. And essentially what was done was like.
00:42:49
Speaker
a selfish thing, which did not benefit a lot of people. But I understood the motivation of the character. It was just cool to see that play out. Yeah. Because it fit the game. If they would have just said like, hey, it ends right here, would have been like, okay, that makes sense. But it wouldn't have been the same. Right.
00:43:16
Speaker
I think you talked about it fitting the game. That's part of the great accomplishment, I think, for a game like Transistor, is if you look at just the ending, you're like, oh, you mean Romeo and Juliet, right? It's just Romeo and Juliet, right? Yeah, that's an easy trip. Yeah, that's exactly correct.
00:43:34
Speaker
Not knowing that it ends that way and then having a different goal being Presented in front of you for the entire game and having that goal eroded by every interaction between red and the consciousness and the transistor it's like to yourself it can erode your Pursuit of that goal, right? It's just like
00:44:00
Speaker
you understand it fully contextualizes her choice at the end, which is, I think, what makes it really beautiful. And if you've had something like something really disappointing happen in life or some tragedy or something like that, I think that it makes it satisfying in a way that there's a story out there that's like sometimes a happy ending just isn't the plausible outcome. But there's still things to look forward to. Yeah.
00:44:29
Speaker
And those things are always going to have more impact for me because it's an accomplice to the game and the story.
00:44:39
Speaker
rather than this is kind of the focus of the game. Yeah, I know there's a pretty obvious delineation between these are games which have emotional elements, like some of the ones we've mentioned versus this is an emotional game and they want the experience to be kind of like the impact of that emotional roller coaster. So
00:45:02
Speaker
the game itself might take certain hits. My easy target is going to be Gris. Gris is a beautiful game. It has a nice, loosely inferred story about depression.
00:45:18
Speaker
But mechanically it sucks dick, sucks a whole big bag of dick. It's really, really basic platforming. Um, so for me, I would almost rather watch that as like a short film than add like an interactable, but not that exciting gameplay aspect to it. Cause now I feel like I'm just doing the action to drive forward the story so I can see little snippets of what happens.
00:45:45
Speaker
Right. And I mean, that's an entire tag in Steam, right? Like, walking simulator. Admittedly, Griss isn't like walking simulator, because usually it's like 3D walking simulators. But sometimes a game just would work better as a visual novel. And you don't have to throw a bunch of semi-satisfied, or unsatisfying mechanics around that shell.
00:46:13
Speaker
If you have a good idea and it doesn't mesh with game design, then implement the good idea in some other way. I have this great erotic rock opera I'm working on, but it's going to make a really shitty flip book. That's all I'm saying.
00:46:33
Speaker
I just imagine you just paint every scene on rocks. It's a rock opera. Yeah, there's a lot. Sorry. Yeah, as usual, sometimes we take way more notes than we need.
00:46:53
Speaker
Another one I actually do want to hit is Fury, which we've done an episode on and dedicated listeners. Yeah, I know our best. It had the most edits out of anything and to its credit, I really did like that. Those are good edits.
00:47:10
Speaker
It was like a Saturday afternoon of just editing it. But, um, this was another game where on your recommendation, I picked it up. I don't know why you keep recommending emotional games to me, but let down your walls, Jacob. But I think that like the game player and.
00:47:33
Speaker
Fury is very solid. But honestly, it's not super remarkable. It's mostly, you know, attacks and dodging. It's like in some bullet hell aspects. But the story and the world building and the setting is just really
00:47:56
Speaker
It's motivating. And with the music amping you up, it's all building to a crescendo. And the crescendo is, you're the antagonist, good job. But do you remember what you were feeling the first time you encountered the beat?
00:48:25
Speaker
I was in it to win it at that point, Jacob. I'm not the girl. Yeah. I remember thinking she was really weak. So she's not really meant to fight, which is why you don't actually fight her. And she's just kind of evading and trying to set up like these traps, like their final weapon. They're kind of fail safe measures.
00:48:49
Speaker
And she's the last one too. She was placed after every other gatekeeper because they're just like, yeah, we probably shouldn't put the girl on the front. Like just the little girl who just somehow convinced someone that she should be one of the guardians. Right.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a home run. Sometimes games have like home runs where it's like, all right, now that you've got all your powers and you've accomplished all the hard things, here's just you flexing, right? It's just like this is you at the end smashing your way through here. But it's a home run against a little girl who doesn't want to die. And you're like, yeah.
00:49:30
Speaker
It's very manipulative too. We talked about emotional manipulation. Pretty much all of our lines there are like, you don't have to be this way. Please hold my hand, things like that. You're just like, okay, yeah, no, I feel bad. I understand.
00:49:45
Speaker
I think guilt is pretty rare in games. It's rare to actually feel guilt and fury was one of those games that made me feel guilty. Early on the first couple of gatekeepers don't really have
00:50:00
Speaker
They're like, hey, fuck you. Get back in your cage. You're like, fuck you. Right. Kick their ass. But then as you go and you have, I'm going to forget their names, but the night guy. Yeah. Who has a son and he's like, I have to do this too. I'll let you look that up if you want. Yeah, I'm going to.
00:50:20
Speaker
but he tells his son, he's like, it is the hand, even though it might be like scary. It's like, I can't just do nothing. Like this is for the good of everybody for me to try and stop him here. When you're talking to the angel lady, really great with names tonight. Um, she essentially says like, Hey, like you can have like a peaceful life here. You don't need to keep going. I'll take care of you. We'll be friends. Right? Yeah. And you're like,
00:50:45
Speaker
No, keep going. Or you could have left there, stayed there and had an actual ending. Yeah, you do start to feel regret because your character doesn't really express anything, doesn't say anything. We see these other people who are going against your, your gamified course with straight lines. So you do start to feel bad.
00:51:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's the grim resolve of this Afro Samurai protagonist. It's, yeah, and I like the pacing of the game to make you feel that way as you go up against some people where you're like, this guy doesn't strictly seem evil, but he's clearly doing bad stuff and he's the gatekeeper, he's a jailer. I'm the good guy. And then eventually you're like, okay, I just killed the guy's dad, the kid's dad.
00:51:42
Speaker
Like, okay, I just killed a lady who offered to stay with me and not like an end to the havoc. Okay, that's fine. And then it culminates, you know, like, all right, I killed a little girl, probably not the best. Um, and they're all right. You are the end. Yeah.
00:51:59
Speaker
Um, and I don't know, I, that's the reason I love that game so much. It's the reason I spent so much time in the edit. It was just the emotional impact of, holy crap, that OST so good. Um, in conjunction with the events in the game. Yeah. I can't think of another example of Tom. I heard that, uh, as I move the mic was lean back. Right. What other games actually make you feel guilty for actions outside of
00:52:29
Speaker
one misleading item or two. I can think of an example, but I haven't played it so I can't speak too much on it, and that is this war of mine.
00:52:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. I can think of the example for this war of mine, actually. Go ahead. So in this war of mine, you have to do salvaging and scavenging and protect your survivors. And it's like Ukraine or something like that. Doesn't really matter. And you are eventually you find a house that has a bunch of food in it. There's like a lot of food and supplies and things.
00:53:06
Speaker
And before you can loot everything, this old couple comes out and it's like, hey, who are you? What are you doing? And you can totally just leave at that moment. And if you leave, you always have the option to come back and steal all of their stuff.
00:53:27
Speaker
And if they don't fight you, they just beg you not to do that. And if you steal all of their stuff after a couple of days in the game, they die because they don't have any food. Yeah. Is that the example you were thinking of? That's the one thing I've heard about. Yeah, it's a make you feel bad game.
00:53:54
Speaker
Um, to a lesser extent, I think the Witcher also does that, but it's not always guilt. It kind of just drives home that in a grim world, winners are few and far between. It's just different stages of loss. Yeah. That just seems like an overall dark context, but the other great example from an emotional manipulation is anything by
00:54:24
Speaker
Squints eyes. Why don't I forget the name of the studio? People who do Wolf Among Us and Walking Dead. Yeah, Telltale Games. Telltale. Rest in peace. Yeah, had some good stuff.
00:54:37
Speaker
But wolf among us was great for me. Cause you have this really cool stylized world and stuff's going on, but every time you are kind of forced to take an action, you are presented with like, Hey, here's 80% of this information. This guy's doing some shitty stuff. Isn't he a shitty guy? You're like, yeah, I think he's kind of shitty. Shouldn't you punish him for being shitty? You're like, yeah. And then like something, whatever you do, whatever you choose,
00:55:06
Speaker
It always ends up being so much more drastic than you had planned. In a bar fight with a guy, we're both transformed in fighting werebear versus wereshark. And you have the option to attack his arm or something. So I did. But I took off his arm. And then throughout the rest of the game, the guy was really salty about not having an arm. It's not like that event happens and it's kind of in a bubble. It's like, hey.
00:55:32
Speaker
We're going to keep reminding you of the choices you've made throughout the game and the chapters. And that's something that's it's cool in a design sense, but you always feel like you can't win. Yeah. Because it's not like you're going through trying to make evil, awful decisions. You're just trying to play the game and do what seems best in the moment. But there's always just these huge repercussions that come back.
00:55:59
Speaker
I think, like, I actually really enjoyed Wolf Among Us. It's probably my favorite of their interactive games. Most games are interactive. But you know what I'm talking about. And part of that is because Bigby is... You control him. He's the protagonist. But he's also a werewolf. Like, he has...
00:56:22
Speaker
He is the monster, right? It's a similar kind of thing to Fury, but they do sabotage it a bit with that. You're always wrong, regardless of what choice you make. Fake choice, almost. Even if there are impacts, it's always like, but you are the bad guy, so you don't have the choice to choose to be the good guy.
00:56:46
Speaker
It's the opposite of what usually plagues RPGs and things like that, hero syndrome, where you're all like, I want to just not spend 20 minutes finding this lady's cat in this tree. But the game's like, but you're the hero, go do that, right? Is that a Shogo reference? I don't know, it could be. But yeah, I'm not a fan of that either. If there's an actual choice and actual consequences,
00:57:15
Speaker
then I think that has more of an impact. Actually, something you mentioned that we didn't talk about a consequence for in Bioshock, in original Bioshock,
00:57:29
Speaker
Do you have a choice? Do you have a choice to harvest or save the little sisters? And I've never met someone who harvested the little sisters that I would associate with in real life, right? Where's this going?
00:57:47
Speaker
But was that an impactful moment at all for you? Did you develop paternal instincts over the course of Bioshock? Because I definitely did at least by two.
00:58:01
Speaker
I mean a bit to a degree, uh, cause I saw the little sisters as kids. Uh, they're just kind of like caught up in some decently fucked up shit. Um, and I didn't really see them as enemies. So I didn't think like I needed it to kill them. So I think I went the route of saving them most times. I'm sure I had a play through where I was just like, eh, let's see what happens. Yeah.
00:58:29
Speaker
Yeah, more so, I saw like big daddies as possible allies and little sisters as friends.
00:58:36
Speaker
Gotcha. Yeah, I definitely I couldn't bring myself to harvest them at all in my first playthrough, probably second playthrough. Eventually, I picked the option on accident and saw the animation for it. And I'm just like, all right, well, I hate myself. And number two, no one is ever going to play Bioshock 2. I'll put it on the list as a spoiler, too. But they really ramp that up.
00:59:02
Speaker
It's that's most of the moral decision is how you treat other people. And the little sisters are a big part of it. I didn't get true paternal syndrome until Bioshock Infinite.
00:59:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. But even though like she's an NPC who cannot die, you don't have to worry about like protecting her like some fucking fable bullshit. Yeah. God, I hated that mission. But between the interactions, you start to care about her and want to protect her. So like once she gets taken, you're like, where are they? Where is Rachel? Yeah, you want to allow a particular set of skills.
00:59:48
Speaker
No, I agree with that entirely. It's much more impactful when you interact with her as much as you do, when you learn more of her mannerisms. And she's escorting you through the game as much as you are escorting her. Yeah, I didn't charge her any money. She didn't charge me any money. We just figured it'd be about even.
01:00:07
Speaker
She does give you a lot of money though over the course of the game. Book her a catch. Yeah. Oh, I saw you approached a vending machine. Let me just pull this comic. Did you want this bag of money from the trash? Or you ran out of ammo. It's like you want a full sniper rifle. I just generated magically. Okay. I'll take it. Sure. Might as well.
01:00:29
Speaker
I hope this is gonna be me in my old age. I'm just gonna like want things, you know, like a barrel of guns. I'm just gonna shout Elizabeth from my deathbed. Right? Oh my gosh. Dementia is gonna go be rough on us with someone growing up on the internet. Oh boy. Those will be fun times. Yeah.
Integrating Emotions in Storytelling
01:00:56
Speaker
Any final thoughts towards
01:01:00
Speaker
emotional games or emotion in video games, certain things to avoid for developers or certain things to possibly keep in mind for designing good, good games.
01:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think you touched on it a little bit with Gris, but aiming just for emotional impact is a very risky path if you're going down game development. And if you're going to be manipulative about it, you kind of need to earn it by also having good gameplay. The Last of Us has amazing gameplay, and they justify their manipulation.
01:01:39
Speaker
similar deal with Fury if it was just you know the characters would be cool but the gameplay is also really good if it's just a walking simulator and the story is not that good and you're just trying to be like hey
01:01:59
Speaker
Here's the reason you should be invested. You should be invested because X is not good storytelling. Here's X. Here's the story around X. Here's X's impact. And then person gets invested. That's the right way to do it.
01:02:20
Speaker
So that's super vague, but basically justify your choices in games and don't lean, don't depend on it too much. If someone, if someone can play through your game and be like, uh, if they didn't have an emotional experience with it, um, if that determines whether the game's good or not, then the game's not good in my, in my opinion.
01:02:48
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I don't really screw with anything you said. Um, yeah, I might reiterate or rephrase something here briefly, but in general, I like to follow this principle of don't have something just for the sake of having it. Like I hate when they put romance subplots and movies or shows and it doesn't lend itself to the story. Um, and certain animes I like this because
01:03:17
Speaker
What was it? Jesus Christ, my memory has gone to shit. That's fair. Future diaries. All right.
01:03:28
Speaker
So there is a lot of relationship stuff going on in there and emotional ties. So it's more impactful when characters are killing each other off because they have to have resolve for their motivations. And that makes more sense than we thought it'd be interesting if these two people had a crush on each other and maybe kissed and held hands.
01:03:51
Speaker
cool. I don't want that kind of thing. I want something that's going to drive a narrative. I want to see character development. I want to see stuff progress. I want it to be relatable and understandable. And if you're just like, this girl is cute. Okay, cool. Like it's, it's kind of getting anything from it, you know? Yeah. But I like stuff that later I can be like, Oh, Hey Dave, how was that game? Like,
01:04:20
Speaker
That was good. At some point, on a Steam sale, you should check it out, honestly.
01:04:27
Speaker
This is how I end up with 600 games. Um, no, I definitely agree. You can't just have emotional fan service. Um, basically the equivalent right in a game. Yeah. I'd expect that to carry you across the finish line. If you're looking for any recommendations, please hit us up though. There's definitely ones unless we have not covered that are just good experiences and there's good games as well. That's very true.
01:04:58
Speaker
Man, we put too many things on the list. We talk too much, I think. We just have ideas and feelings.
01:05:03
Speaker
What's this wee shit? I have ideas, David. Oh, I'm sad. I could, I could. All right. Well, thank you guys for listening to the end and being our therapist for this episode of soapstone. As always, if you have emotional feedback, you can send it in at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com.
01:05:30
Speaker
or join the group therapy at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:06:07
Speaker
you