In this week's Gaming: The Podcast we discuss, dissect and deliberate on the concept of environmental storytelling, talk through some interesting examples and how it can work to change how we respond to games.
Good environmental storytelling can deeply impact our emotional response, how we see our own player characters and cause us to question our initial responses to our experiences.
"Dark Souls: Archthrones is like playing a brand new FromSoftware game, and that speaks volumes about just how much good modding can do," says Hanzala from eXputer.
Parrying has been creeping into more games, with almost every high-profile title of the last few years featuring it in some way. Why?
i understand the authors frustration i'm not the best at parrying in games. not that i can't complete a game that requires it but it is a definite harder thing for me than other kinds of techniques in games. which might be the main reason it's so heavily added in games nowadays. want to make your game challenging without having to do a lot of work? just add a parry boss. (what i mean by parry boss is a boss you have to beat by parrying such that their attacks will kill you otherwise)
I always think it's fine as long as such games also have the roll/dodge panic button. But I understand the will to parry, it seems so cinematic in a fight when you pull it off.
TheGamer writes, "Some weapons resist the test of time."
My favorite kind. Bioshock is easily my favorite game because of how well done the environmental storytelling is.
Hollow Knight made me wish that more Metroidvania games could do what it does. While the genre is very much about exploring unknown labyrinths, caverns and any other manner of spaces, I never really connected with those spaces like I did with the environment in Hollow Knight. There's just something about its use of environmental storytelling that really helped build that connection for me.