Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

No suprise here.

Conventional storytelling in visual media is all about directing the viewer's attention to where you want it.

Back in the 1990s I did some work with VRML and found that with the user interfaces of the time the user would usually turn his back to what he was supposed to see and then not be able to find it.

If you wanted to break the "looking ahead" pattern you'd want to design the scene so that important events happen in different places; one thing you will need is good audio cueing, and "stereoscopic" sound in headphones rendered by HRTF won't be good enough -- you probably want 22.4 sound, but a properly mixed 5.1 track and an optimal speaker system might be enough.

Also I have no idea how you light a 360 degree scene, both in the sense of "everything looks good" and "you don't see the lights".

Even in outdoor scenes, Hollywood-quality work requires the use of lights, reflectors and other tricks -- if you use real actors and don't light them well they'll go to the union and complain.

There is a large precedent in video game storytelling but even there, critical moments in the story are usually in cut scenes or rendered using "Visual Novel" conventions.

Half Life 2 was really good for telling the story while keeping the player in the action. Even during scenes where characters were just talking to you, you could play with the scenery and move around and pick things up. There'd be several people talking in a room and the game would expect you to turn around to face the person who is talking, then turn back around to see the other person respond.

It was a natural step from HL1 as players became more comfortable navigating 3D game worlds. I'm wondering if they're waiting for that moment in VR before choosing to make another story-heavy game like that.

Interactivity, yes. Action, no. Getting locked inside a room or waiting for a progress blocker to be done with is hardly "keeping the action".

I think you dont quite remember the context -- before Half Life 1's continuous 3D story telling, games would cut to video to move the story forward.

It was actually a revolutionary new story telling technique at the time that did "keep the action going" because you could explore the room as the characters talked.

I was pointing at HL2. As far as I can remember HL1 had like 2 or 3 lock in sequences (besides the loooong intro), while HL2 stops everything whenever someone talks and episodes have sequences that even lock the camera.

Yeah, HL1 was was revolutionary in that regard.

You're right, when I say action here I actually mean interactive. It doesn't play a pre-recorded video clip, it lets you keep some amount of control over your character and keeps you in the game world.

Another thing that Half-Life 2 did, in order to turn the player's attention to an interesting bit of scenery was to position an enemy solider near that scenery. The solider would shoot at the player, and most people would turn towards the threat... And got their attention drawn to their setpiece.

They'd also use clever geometry to guide the eye toward important sights. A plank sticking out of a pile of debris can do wonders for guiding the viewer

This "cleverness" of HL2 is what ruined it for me. The environment felt heavily contrived, and destroyed my desire to explore, because I felt funnelled. It was worse than what came before, because before, exploring was rewarded by finding nooks and crannies, and hidden passages. With HL2, increasingly you were forced to find the alternative routes (when the main path was blocked), which killed my desire to look for them.

I did not enjoy HL2 or its successors as games.

See and I feel somewhat opposite, so I love that we have such a diversity of choice in games. For me I've always had a hard time getting into games where there was a ton of pointless stuff lying around. Like a game that lets you pick up a wooden fork from someone's table... is this going to be important later? Why else would they let me pick it up? I'm going to take it because it must be worth something. And it's still in my inventory when I finish the game. Ooh, a book I can read in the game, must be important... nope, it's just a story you can read, because I guess the story of the game isn't good enough to keep players interested.

Games like Skyrim and GTA I like because most of the time the stuff you find hidden here and there are interesting things happening in every corner you look. But some of the modern takes on CRPGs like Divinity: Original Sin, I have a hard time with. They encourage you in tooltips and loading screens to talk to everyone, try to trade with everyone, because some random person might be super important. But 90% of them are useless. So I waste how much time searching empty chests and pointless NPCs to find maybe one out of 100 that's actually important?

I don't like 100% on-rails stuff, but I do like a little guidance. I don't play games to waste time, I play games to be entertained. I really liked HL2's guidance. It's one of those games where you play it as a cinematic experience, not to explore an vast and complex world. There are plenty of games on both sides of the coin.

I enjoy the reprieve from Chekhov's gun.

HL2 made heavy use of going the "path less traveled" to find drop boxes and ammo stashes.

In fact, there were parts of the game that told an "ambient story" that were totally skippable during the driving scene along the coastal highway. The only reason you get out of the car is if your curiosity to see what's in that damn house gets the better of you. Otherwise it is total inconsequential.

Here's an example from the HL2:E1 commentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vr6n53jPR0&feature=youtu.be...

I'm glad someone mentioned Half Life since looking around in the various "someone is talking and you're not going anywhere" scenes was the first thing I thought of while reading this article.

? Binaural audio with headphones can give you full 360° awareness, the Vive is fantastic at this, such that I can dodge bullets with my eyes closed.

Headphones are definitely enough.

22.4 sounds utterly ridiculous. Bass is omnidirectional, so the .4 is largely pointless, and 22 speakers in a room sounds like an impossible nightmare for the average consumer to set up and an inevitable mess of diffuse confusion and comb filtering in terms of actual delivery. I hope you wouldn't expect content creators to mix 22 spatial channels, either - 5 is painful enough.

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