As I said in yesterday's post, I've decided to start a blog in which I ask the Dtoid community to debate over specific aspects of games. Feel free to check out the post for yourself if you want more info, though it should be pretty self-explanatory.

For the first entry in (what I hope will gain enough momentum to become) the series, I'm wondering what games you've played that have really sucked you into their world and made you stand in awe at the depth (or at least perceived depth) of their fictional universe. I read an essay today about J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the Lord of the Rings books, and the essay attributed much of Tolkien's success as a writer to the fact that the worlds he wrote about were so well crafted and detailed. It's easy for one to imagine that for every Lord of the Rings book he wrote, there were at least four more books' worth of stories and expanded history floating around in his head. Another example is the Star Wars universe, which has a vast expanded mythology not only in the mind of many fans, but in licensed books, cartoons, games, comic books, etc.

What games do you remember that have extremely well-crafted and vivid settings? Keep in mind that while your example may very well be a whole series (or even a franchise reaching beyond video games), it doesn't necessarily have to be. A little-known orphan game that sold poorly may have a more prominent place in your mind than a monster franchise with enough canon material to study for ages.

Let's debate! (Is that cheesy? Let me know if it's cheesy.)

I've been playing Dissidia a lot lately and although I'm thoroughly enjoying it as a whole, I find myself cringing at the game's horrible, generic script. To me, the game really feels like a culmination of all the elements (both good and bad) that make up the Kingdom Hearts games, only taken to the extreme. On one hand, the solid action-RPG gameplay from KH has been made even more frantic and exciting, but on the other, KH's sub-par writing has returned in an even worse iteration. It's as if Square Enix just went through a bunch of fortune cookies and copied the fortunes onto the script, and I'm absolutely determined to prove this point.

Below I have included a 50/50 mix of fortune cookie fortunes and excerpts from Dissidia: Final Fantasy's script. The only changes I have made to the excerpts from Dissidia involve changing the narrative voice to the traditional second or third person found in fortune cookies when it applies (so a line like "I must not fall to temptation" would become "you must not fall to temptation" or "one must not fall to temptation"). Also, certain giveaway words have been replaced with general terms (so line like "a warrior must not fall to temptation" would become "a man must not fall to temptation"). Everything else has been left as it is. I challenge anyone to sort out which lines are from Dissidia's script, and which lines have been taken from fortune cookies. On my next blog post I will announce the answers, as well as give credit and applause to anyone who got them right.

FIGHT!

1. Your current path will lead you to the future you long for.
2. You cannot steal victory.
3. You should be aware of your own naivete.
4. Behind a capable man, there are always capable friends.
5. Your emotional currents are flowing powerfully now.
6. What the head decides must sometimes be ignored in favor of the heart.
7. There is always a way - if you are committed.
8. You should learn when to quit.
9. Never quit!
10. No matter what your past holds, you have a bright future.
11. Your strongest weapon is your brilliant mind.
12. Nothing in this world is accomplished without passion.

So I like discussing things with people and I like discussions in general. I obviously also like games and the game industry as a whole, and seeing as I've been trying to think of something to use this blog for, I've decided that starting sometime in the near future I'll start posting open questions to the community on a more or less weekly basis, asking for examples of games that have succeeded in certain aspects of--holy shit this is a convoluted run-on sentence so here's a simpler explanation of what I'm trying to do:

Basically I'm shamelessly stealing the concept behind Dtoid's own weekly "Game Debate to the Death," with a few major differences that I think will encourage discussion beyond just "this game is my fave k bye."
-Instead of discussing games as a whole, I'll be asking questions about specific aspects of a game (for example, one week I might ask, what games have most successfully incorporated the concept of customization into their gameplay?).
-Instead of giving you two choices to pick from, I'll be asking you to bring your own examples to the table, which I think could really encourage more interesting discussions.
-Also, cocks.

If you have any comments/suggestions, or even if you just like this idea, let me know!

Hello Dtoiders! Some of you may have seen me around already; I've actually been here for about two weeks now. I planned on writing an intro post shortly after I joined, but my sister came down with appendicitis the same day I joined, and between helping take care of her and getting things ready for the start of school, I never got around to it. Better late than never, right?

Anyways, I was drawn to Dtoid through Anthony Burch's excellent Rev Rant series, and stayed after seeing everything else that the site has to offer.

For those of you who actually read intro posts with the expectation to find out about a person's gaming history and preferences, feel free to check out my profile. Currently I'm playing the shit out of Dissida and nothing else, though I usually juggle two or three games at once. I own a PS3 and PSP; I wish I could get my hands on a 360 or a DS, but being a college student makes this already expensive hobby that much harder to afford. My PSN ID is KingKongFive, feel free to friend me!

And just to make this a bit more interesting than the usual intro post, tell me your favorite game. Or something.

From the comments regarding Bethesda's lawsuit against Interplay...

Monster w21 Faces at 09/12/2009 02:38
You people are woefully deluded if you think Bethesda is the bad guy in this situation.
They bought the Fallout IP. Fallout is theirs and theirs alone. They paid over 5 millions dollars for it.
If you bought a loaf of bread from a guy for 5 millions dollars and he broke into your house at night, stole half the slices and then tried to sell them off to someone else you'd probably seek legal action aswell.
Interplay isn't some poor defenceless independant developer. They're a long established developer/publisher who destroyed their business through bad choices and sat on the Fallout IP for 10 years.
Grow the fuck up.

Ganjookie at 09/12/2009 03:31
@Monster w21 Faces your analogy is fucked up.
Its as if a man made 3 loaves of bread. HE sold the recipe to somebody and then after the new guy made some good bread and sold it to more people over a larger area, the original man tried to sell his bread again, and the new guy tried to fuck him in the ass, because he bought the recipe.

Actually, you're both wrong. It's as if Man A made some loaves of bread which all sold badly, so he went on to sell different recipes. Then another man, Man B, who was famous for his pies, asked Man A to buy his failed bread recipe. Then, in the weeks leading up to Man B's first batch of Man A's bread, Man B did a bunch of interviews with prominent baking magazines and websites about how much respect he has for Man A's fantastic, severely underrated bread. Then, when it's finally on sale, it turns out Man B made some changes to the bread recipe in order to make it taste more like his famous pie. Still, he's selling it as Man A's recipe, and Man A, who sees that people are becoming interested in his bread for the first time, decides to start selling his bread again, and then Man B comes and sues him.

Lengthy and silly analogies aside, I do think that Bethesda's alleged attitude towards Interplay and the Fallout series up till now is what's pissing a lot of people off. Activision may be an evil publisher, but it has no delusions about that fact, and it doesn't go to great lengths to try and hide it. Tim Schafer fans may have been angry when Activision sued EA over Brutal Legend, but at least no one was saying "this is going against everything that Activision has claimed to be about." Bethesda, on the other hand, kept repeating this mantra in the months and weeks leading up to Fallout's 3 release, about how much respect they have for the series and how much love they have for the series, and how they were trying their best to really bring that Fallout magic into Fallout 3. They failed miserably, of course, but many Fallout fans, including myself, really believed from their interviews and press that they had tried their best, and that's all anyone can really ask for. I personally had quite a lot of fun with Fallout 3, though II never logged as many hours into it as I did into either of the first two games, and I had fun DESPITE the changes Bethesda had made, not BECAUSE of them.

I won't presume to speak for all Fallout fans on this matter, but I will say that for myself, personally, this is about more than the lawsuit. This is about a claim that Bethesda has made time and time again, about how they're huge fans of the original Fallout games, about how passionate they are for the series, about how much they want gamers to experience this lost gem, and a lawsuit like this just proves how much of a lie that was. A true Fallout fan would be excited to see the first games selling again like they have been, and Bethesda trying to shut this down the way they are proves, to me at least, that they're more in this for the money than they are for the passion. They don't want gamers to experience the magic of the Fallout games, they want gamers to experience the magic of THEIR Fallout game.