In recent memory God of War got me pretty good. The struggles that Kratos would go through attempting to communicate with his son reminded me all too well of my dad’s relationship to me. I’m fortunate enough that I don’t have the same issue with my children, and that game definitely had me doing some self reflection.
The Witcher 3! I never played 1 or 2. However 3 did a great job of story recap and finishing up said story. DLC was a must as well. All in all, I was engaged with the story.
I loved RDR but every time I try to play RDR2 I struggle to stay engaged for more than a couple hours. Then it’s 6-12 months before I play it again. Still haven’t finished a single play thru. Just can’t put my finger on why.
I’m a big fan of RDR2 (~470hrs from two full playthroughs), and would recommend it to anyone, even if they don’t normally play games. However I can understand why it might not appeal to some people, for one reason or another.
I suspect this might be because of a slow start to the story - frequently the game falls victim to its own ‘cinematicism’ and holds the player’s hand too much (e.g. walking too far away from a mission area or trying things outside of the box runs the risk of failing the mission, unlike the creative approaches one may take in Rockstar’s earlier adventures). I have stopped seeing RDR2 as a ‘game’, and instead treat it as a world to experience, kind of like a good book. I want to feel that world more than conventionally play in it, and this process greatly heightens my attachment to it as well as to Arthur, increasing immersion.
That being said, I probably speak for many when I hope that you get to finish that journey someday and feel your place within it. It might take as long as it needs to, but it might just be worth it.
You should give Witcher 2 a go, it actually still holds up. The story is fantastic, and it gives you many twists and choices you can regret and think about a lot, just like how you love it from Witcher 3.
It’s the same thing as saying a good book can ruin your day when it’s over. Just because someone has an emotional attachment to a really good story, whether game, movie, or book, doesn’t mean they have a boring life.
It’s like saying “if artistic work/expression changes you, you’re a rube.” What changes you, if not expressive works? Who cares if games mostly describe tropes and isms. I’d argue almost the opposite of what you wrote, but this is the internet, and it’s a boring discussion. Bless up your house. Your experience of reality is constantly being shaped by the by your participation in sensation and your faculties of knowing.
A massage can change you, just as much as a really good meal, or a particular smell, or an advertisement. What is wrong (for lack of a better word) with being changed by an immersive experience in a video game? I guess my questions are: what allows us to validate certain types of experiences that others have, and invalidate others? It’s the prerogative of other minds, no? Do you or I dictate what is of vivifying value? Maybe not. My knowing of words, pictures, sounds, so on, is not yours. Dumb things exist that shape people’s personhood, from time to time. Peace out - I’m compelled to respond by my rejection of this kind of anti-experiential nihilism. I just drank like four beers. They are changing me, as a person.
I’m surprised you’re downvoted like this, but I had a similar thought. I understand the meme, that it is about the feeling when you finished a game with a story that made you involved. But calling it a “lifechanger” feels like exaggeration.
I have played a game that touched me deeply, leaving me emotionally out of my socket for about a week. But I wouldn’t say it “changed my life”. I can feel the echo of that experience when I remember, but that’s all.
Every single thing we do changes our lives, including posting throwaway comments on the internet. Games just tend to do it in ways people actually remember.
For pure entertainment or passive turn-brain-off type games I’m inclined to agree with you. Mario Party isn’t exactly changing lives out here.
Games that tell a story though, they can be extremely impactful just like any form of story. Through stories I myself have changed my world views, taken new perspectives in life. Star Trek The Next Generation’s season 6 episode Tapestry changed my outlook on risk taking especially in my professional life, my username reference to the Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask got me to overcome my extreme fear and anxiety of being rejected by friends. Was I much younger when I experienced those stories, sure, but they still changed the course of my life.
My day job is working on satellites, I’m a hobbyist carpenter, been teaching myself to play piano, frequently go camping/hiking into Colorado’s mountains, work on a project car, and sure this evening I’ve been playing Factorio but I’ve been doing so while sipping wine that I made myself.
You could call me many things, but I don’t think boring fits.
I understand that it sounds kind of hyperbolic, but I’ve played a few games that changed my life, and I consider myself to have normal emotional depth. I’ve played some games that simply affected me on a core level in ways I hadn’t felt since childhood.
I loved and competed in various trading card games throughout high school however once married with kids I could no longer afford the hobby. Dominion caused a surge in the deckbuilding genre and ultimately led to my first published game design. Now board games and tabletop RPGs are a favorite for spending time with family and friends.
Man that game was 10 levels of fucked and creepy all wrapped in existential crisis and the definition of who is ‘you’? Still fucked up on that game, but damn was it good.
I’m in the minority on this one but I found that game very overrated. There was nothing new or tantalizing gameplay or concept wise here. I’d dare say it was boring.
Can’t say any one game was life changing for me. They are more a collection of experiences that I reflect upon. Hundreds of games, that have refined me my thoughts and feelings over the decades.
Life is Strange 1 - There are just a lot about life that I wished I could change. Lots of regrets. I think about the idea of butterfly effect a lot. I know a lot of movies also show this, but they often portray in a very “high stakes” scenario which its hard to feel relatable to, since its so far detached from realism. Meanwhile, in LiS, the portrays a scenario that’s more localized, it “hits home” stronger, especially that part where…
spoilerMax was able to go all the way back to childhood. Like… that shit just triggered one of my childhood memories where I was being abused by my older brother and I ran away from home. I could’ve died that day, or worse, tortured and trafficked, or they could harvest my organs. I was supposedly a common thing the country I was from.
Life is Strange: True Colors
Some people might relate less, but for me I can relate to the Alex a lot, the emotional aspects of life. I wasn’t an orphan, but I feel practically like I’m one. I wasn’t originally supposed to be born, I kinda feel like this life, this “timeline”, is an anomoly. Everyone in my family hates me, kinda like how
spoilerIn a flashback / dream sequence, prospective adoptive parents would reject Alex, just like how my home country’s government have legally rejected (tried to, at least) my existence, and my parents, my older brother, they all hate me. And I don’t even have a “Gabe” like Alex has. Which hurts even more That family argument thing before the dad abandoned them is also relatable. My parents would frequently threaten divorce, and threaten to abandon us. There are arguments all the timex between my parents, and my mother and older brother, and then my they would turn their rage towards me, the youngest in the household. I didn’t even have headphones to tune out the yelling. It was miserable, it was agonizing. And I relate to how Alex never felt like there is a “home” And also the ending how almost nobody really believed her (choice dependent, but I fucked it up somehow) I don’t even have the ability to feel emotions, yet everytime I hear those arguments at home, I feel like as if I was Alex, like I had her abilities to sense feelings. And those feeling are explosive and contaminates the entire house.
I haven’t played much (under 10 hours) but I started one of the “easy” starts and it isn’t going poorly. I always hit the point in complex games where I’m not exactly sure what to do.
One that should get way more attention: Little King’s Story. It presents as a cutsie Pikmin-like, but is actually a dark, metaphorical tale about abuse and trauma.
Most recently, the final choice in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 gutted me.
I mustbe weird, because I see people talking so good about expedition 33, but my experience with it was so terrible, that I had to force myself to finish it, but only because I feel uneasy if I don’t do things until the end.
I had a few speedbumps along the way. Gestral beaches were infuriating until I found out if you limit the frame rate to 30 FPS, they get much easier. Same with the parrying mechanics in combat to some degree, though they are easy enough in 60 FPS. Seems like they designed the game for 30 FPS and things get borked when upped to 60. It might be fixed by now, I haven’t played in some time.
My bad experience was mostly from feeling that things were too repetitive, and that the story started to feel bad written in mid game and got messier and messier as the game advanced further.
In the combat aspects, I felt like character builds and overall strategy were worthless because I could just dodge everything and be invincible.
Also, I didn’t really like the characters. They felt too shallow somehow.
I can’t really disagree with any of that, though I did feel like the plot made a comeback in the latter half of the game after struggling through the middle like you say.
And some of the combat was quite hard for me. Though very late game, there are some utterly broken character builds that can make almost any fight trivial. That’s part of the fun!
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