To be clear, the sequence is a very small part of the overall game, which is pretty easy to miss, if you're not looking for it.
The game as a whole provides most, if not all the pleasures other games do, perhaps with a higher barrier to entry than most (its developers are known for designing games that favor mastery over accessibility), and with a very strong, well-done aesthetic. If that aesthetic is not a person's thing, it will be a turn-off, certainly, but gothic horror is my aesthetic every day of the week, and it morphs almost seamlessly into cosmic horror, which is my aesthetic at least every other day of the week.
The game is played from the point of view of a witness to a tragedy - the fall of Yharnam, and that's an interesting perspective, what when most of games will have you be the one who averts tragedy.
In some ways, bearing witness to the tragedy is less depressing than your fate in the Souls series, where you bear the consequences of the current round of tragedy and become the catalyst for the next round of the same exact damn tragedy.
But there are other reasons to play games, and if sense of empowerment within a story is one (and I feel like I need to defend that want, because it's legitimate, and no less legitimate than other reasons why people play games), then, yeah, a person will bounce off it as hard as if they don't like the aesthetic.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-02-15 02:08 pm (UTC)To be clear, the sequence is a very small part of the overall game, which is pretty easy to miss, if you're not looking for it.
The game as a whole provides most, if not all the pleasures other games do, perhaps with a higher barrier to entry than most (its developers are known for designing games that favor mastery over accessibility), and with a very strong, well-done aesthetic. If that aesthetic is not a person's thing, it will be a turn-off, certainly, but gothic horror is my aesthetic every day of the week, and it morphs almost seamlessly into cosmic horror, which is my aesthetic at least every other day of the week.
The game is played from the point of view of a witness to a tragedy - the fall of Yharnam, and that's an interesting perspective, what when most of games will have you be the one who averts tragedy.
In some ways, bearing witness to the tragedy is less depressing than your fate in the Souls series, where you bear the consequences of the current round of tragedy and become the catalyst for the next round of the same exact damn tragedy.
But there are other reasons to play games, and if sense of empowerment within a story is one (and I feel like I need to defend that want, because it's legitimate, and no less legitimate than other reasons why people play games), then, yeah, a person will bounce off it as hard as if they don't like the aesthetic.