Influential games and their horrible horrible consequences

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ShitLurker

ShitLurker

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Dec 17, 2019
I'm not getting into the quality of the influential game in question, just on how they put something on the table that ended up propagating through the whole medium like a flashfire and in the worst way possible.

So to open up. I love Dark Souls (and Sekiro, Bloodborne and Elden Ring), they may have their ups and downs, but they certainly have an identity of their own and enjoyed all of them as a whole. But Dark Souls created the dreaded soulslike. One would think that since I seem to love the formula, I'd be through the moon at the soulslike being a thing, and I was at first till I noticed that the grand majority only stick with the cliff notes of what makes these games good.

High difficulty that usually turns into unfair bullshit or that requires such perfect execution it goes beyond giving you a high for succeeding to just a sensation of "it's fucking over", though the From Software games did creep in there themselves a bit on Elden Ring. Absolutely cryptic narrative without half the subtlety or artistic direction. Stamina bar without accounting for it in animations and rolling all over the place just cause Souls did it. Losing your shit on death and having to recover it in some shape or form. And also the retardation in the journosphere of "It's the Dark Souls of X!" as well as making it a constant thing to discuss whenever difficulty in gaming ever even comes out as a topic.

There are some absolute gems that are partially inspired by it of course, Hollow Knight is another game I deeply love and hits a lot of the notes and if Nioh didn't have the fucking diablo loot I would remember it more fondly (though it's execution demands were getting up there). But for the most part, all of the imitators tend to stumble in one or more facets. Code Vein was just fine, from what I've heard Lords of the Fallen was ass and the Surge as well while the sequel did some stuff better.

We also have a few in the pipeline with Wo Long and Lies of P, both look interesting, but I just don't have that desire to go into any soulslike that I had a few years ago.

So, any other games you lads like or love but can't deny had horrible consequences for the medium?
 
As far as indie games go, I would say Undertale and Five Night's At Freddy's. Both are basically the progenitors of the current gaming waves of the "quirky" RPG and the idea of "mascot horror" respectively at this point. The former lends itself to pretentious writing and attempting to be more smart then it actually is while the latter specializes in making scary media for children.
 
Half-Life. Ultra successful first person shooters that combined fun gameplay with novel (at the time) set pieces and an actual story, in an era where the most successful shooters had been quake and doom style games where you zoom around and gib things with a shotgun for a high score.

What the industry took from it: SET PIECES GOOD! FAST PACED ACTION BAD!
 
Resident Evil 4. A great horror game with pulse-pounding action, a fantastic inventory system, and a fun story that's still quotable to this day. The combat feels great, despite being tied to an antiquated "tank control" scheme, as the game is balanced to a razor edge. The enemies all react satisfyingly to hits and always telegraph their blows ("Detras de tí, imbecil!"), so it never feels unfair.

Things other games took away from it: "Hurr durr QTEs good!"

Yes, I'm aware games that used QTEs before RE4 existed, like Shenmue and Dragon's Lair, but RE4 is the one that influenced other games to turn it into a tired cliche.
 
Assassin's Creed essentially set a standard for open world games.

Climbable towers that unlock part of the map and a billion collectables (though the latter was done before, but was popularized by AC)

The Witcher also inspired a semi-Dark Souls combat that AC ended up copying.

Grand Theft Auto also had a lot of copycats for a while, but those aren't as popular anymore.
 
Metal Gear Solid. Games had never been as cinematic before it, but every AAA game after it tried to be. This caused production costs to skyrocket and is partly responsible for 90% of the bullshit seen today.
 
Fortnite. I am sick and tired of dances in front of a camera in any medium
I now understand those kitschy movies about places that outlawed dancing
 
Breadbassket said:
As far as indie games go, I would say Undertale and Five Night's At Freddy's. Both are basically the progenitors of the current gaming waves of the "quirky" RPG and the idea of "mascot horror" respectively at this point. The former lends itself to pretentious writing and attempting to be more smart then it actually is while the latter specializes in making scary media for children.
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I agree about FNAF and will add one more thing.... it popularized the idea of "Matpat Bait" (for lack of a better term). A lot of games these days have trouble just fucking telling a story... now it has to be "did you notice this obscure detail on this background image that is only visible randomly at this point? Did you datamine the game and find this one file that reveals something important?"

This kind of thing was fine in FNAFs 1-3 which kinda had an urban legend thing going for them, but when the story got more speciifc and started involving named characters, it resulted in a disconnect. Like I'm sorry, learning "one of the victims was named Cassidy" is NOT the kind of thing I should have to play a minigame and read a a children's activity book for, and even if I do, it kinda diminishes the horror--I never get to know Cassidy or Afton on any meaningful level beyond trivia because of the autistic way Scott committed to telling his story.

That a lot of people think this is a good idea--that horror is meant to be read into rather than simply read--is one reason I tend to avoid most things Matpat covers. If they're effectively designed so that you need a theory video to understand them, what even is the point?
 
skykiii said:
I agree about FNAF and will add one more thing.... it popularized the idea of "Matpat Bait" (for lack of a better term). A lot of games these days have trouble just fucking telling a story... now it has to be "did you notice this obscure detail on this background image that is only visible randomly at this point? Did you datamine the game and find this one file that reveals something important?"

This kind of thing was fine in FNAFs 1-3 which kinda had an urban legend thing going for them, but when the story got more speciifc and started involving named characters, it resulted in a disconnect. Like I'm sorry, learning "one of the victims was named Cassidy" is NOT the kind of thing I should have to play a minigame and read a a children's activity book for, and even if I do, it kinda diminishes the horror--I never get to know Cassidy or Afton on any meaningful level beyond trivia because of the autistic way Scott committed to telling his story.

That a lot of people think this is a good idea--that horror is meant to be read into rather than simply read--is one reason I tend to avoid most things Matpat covers. If they're effectively designed so that you need a theory video to understand them, what even is the point?
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To compound onto this, FNAF was actually scary when there wasn't a reason given for the animatronics to kill you beyond your colleague telling you "Yeah, I dunno why they move at night. Management says it's to stop their servos locking up & they seem to think we're animatronics not in a suit."
My entry to the thread is Dota 2. Love the game, but it introduced battle passes to the world. Fuck, do I hate having to contemplate which games I am playing enough at the current time to spend $5-15 on their monthly pass for fomo bait.
 
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare basically turned almost every big-budget FPS from 2009 til until about 2016 into a clone of itself, and told developers that the only thing that matters in an FPS is multiplayer and the single player campaign could be an afterthought no longer than 5 hours long. If you were into single-player shooters with interesting stories and gameplay that was more than just shooting Russians/Arabs/terrorists it was a dull time.
 
Final Fantasy had some of the best graphics on the PS1 but also had the stories and gameplay to back them up. JRPGs afterwards seemed to cater purely to graphics while worrying about the rest afterwards unless put out by niche companies. This culminated in what I can only describe as one of the worst things I've ever played, Final Fantasy XIII, where they seemed to give no shits for anything BUT graphics and barely even made a game. Square-Enix seems to at least be trying to move in a more positive direction these days but only time will tell. The Japanese seem infatuated with anything as long as it's bright and flashy.
 
John W. Smoke Jr. said:
TF2 and its loot box economy, it's my favorite game ever but those goddamned loot boxes ruined everything.
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Came here for TF2 as well and since you already mentioned lootboxes I'll mention the "community workshop", AKA "just having the community create the game for you". This obviously had disastrous consequences for TF2 and every valve game that came after it. TF2 used to be an artistically unique game with a cool 60s theme and now is overrun with 10+ years' worth of random hodgepodge cosmetics designed by furries, bronies and other faggots with zero regard for aesthetic, instead following the profound design philosophy of "WAT IF HEAVY WAS BIRD LOL". It's like playing the game with a bunch of ugly random mods made by slavs for Heroes 3, except it's official content and you can't turn it off because the other fag paid $20 for it and wants you to see it.

Naturally this extreme deluge of paid content that earns valve money and costs them exactly $0 to add to the game also greatly contributed to the shift of focus to trading and gay videogame economics rather than actual gameplay. Other games ruined by this include Dota 2 and I'm sure CSGO as well but I haven't played that in 5+ years.
 
Diablo 2 ruined RPGs, instead of finding cool new items in games you get the same sword you always use but with a +0.2% damage boost on fridays if it's sunny
 
WTBOnlineFather said:
Came here for TF2 as well and since you already mentioned lootboxes I'll mention the "community workshop", AKA "just having the community create the game for you". This obviously had disastrous consequences for TF2 and every valve game that came after it. TF2 used to be an artistically unique game with a cool 60s theme and now is overrun with 10+ years' worth of random hodgepodge cosmetics designed by furries, bronies and other faggots with zero regard for aesthetic, instead following the profound design philosophy of "WAT IF HEAVY WAS BIRD LOL". It's like playing the game with a bunch of ugly random mods made by slavs for Heroes 3, except it's official content and you can't turn it off because the other fag paid $20 for it and wants you to see it.

Naturally this extreme deluge of paid content that earns valve money and costs them exactly $0 to add to the game also greatly contributed to the shift of focus to trading and gay videogame economics rather than actual gameplay. Other games ruined by this include Dota 2 and I'm sure CSGO as well but I haven't played that in 5+ years.
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There is a hat removal mod on Gamebanana: https://gamebanana.com/mods/205768
And there is a standalone sourcemod called TF2 Classic which removes almost all the unlocks and adds some beta weapons into the mix if you're really sick of regular TF2 (It also has some very stupid custom weapons servers): https://tf2classic.com/download
 
Game: The Last of Us
Horrible consequences:

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Company of Heroes franchise.

Effect: It's okay to shit on historical facts and logic so long as there's explosions, bugs everywhere, and anime ID faceplates.
 
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