I know its a little thing, but I loved how your armor made noise in Dark Souls. And different armors made different sounds sometimes. Every time you clear an area and youre just walking along in heavy armor clanking around, it really boosts the atmosphere.
In Demon's Souls, one excellent use of the sound design in that game was rendering your character utterly silent while in the cursed dead state, and not human. It was a nice touch from a lore standpoint, but more than that, after half a game of getting used to your footfalls and armor rattling, it made your own movement and action sound alien, and quite unwelcome, to your own ears. It was a nice touch.
I think Shadow of the Colossus is pretty much the pinnacle of this particular game design element. The entire game is built around quiet time. The whole world is open to you immediately, and it has virtually no music, it has no ordinary enemies, and only basic, non-essential exploration based collectibles that you can choose to hunt or ignore. Since your sword points the way to the boss battles, which are the only other mode of play, you know exactly when and where your quiet time will end, which gives the player total control over the pacing of the game. When you do go into a boss battle, it's made very very clear that the state of play has changed, because the soundtrack ramps up hard, you get a nice intro cinematic, the boss's health bar shows up, and your camera gains the function to focus specifically on the boss.
Another game that uses quiet time quite effectively is Hotline Miami. You spend 15-20 minutes killing/dying to the rythm of electro music, and when you've finally cleared the place, it all goes silent...And after the frenetic action and music, that silence along with the carnage around you really hammers home the fact that you are fucked in the head.
I always thought there was something wrong with me for wanting to stop off at a town or set up a tent or something while playing a game and relax instead of playing the actual game.
The Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls is a great example of quiet time. I like how you can end up going back there after most boss battles in the game, the world is so intricately designed. The music there is really fitting and Relaxing after a hard days demon slaying.
100% agree. I'm playing Wind Waker right now, and while everyone seems to hate the search for the triforce pieces (Okay, it was rather long in the oritinal) I really enjoyed it. This is the part where the story simply tells you "The world is open now, do what you want." after the more linear first half of the game.
Wind Waker is actually an interesting exception because the most down-time-y part of that game is just sailing around from A to B of which you do a lot. Which, interestingly, is made better by the fantastic sailing music. The sailing certainly would have seemed a lot more tedious without it.
Mostly I just wish you didn't have to stop to fight half the time - in TP you had horseback combat, but if you pulled out the cannon in WW it replaced the sail :(
Oldschool JRPGs and dungeon crawlers had this too, scrolling between fighting, dungeons, towns and dialogue heavy story sequences. Or like in Diablo, you kill a billion monsters then you port back to town to sift through the loot, turn in a quest, and buy potions or whatever.
I actually never noticed it, that Metal Gear Solid 3 had no music, when you are in neutral mode! Hideo Kojima did it again. I mean you really get that jungle feeling with all the birds and frog noises. Then when the epic adrenaline ''spotted'' music kicks in, you really feel like you are in trouble, and you have to fight or escape. MGS2 did also a great job in very, very calming ''infiltration'' music, where you really feel like you are in a infiltration mission, all by yourself. Just epic.
"Level design is the most important aspect in a game." Man, it took me quite a long time to finally be able to perceive this. It actually answers another question that has been in my mind for another very long time, which is: "what is a video game?" Anyway, I am happy now and that is what matters.
+Ben Filsinger In all honesty on my first playthrough especially, the quiet time was so nice and enjoyable, full of story and incredible amosphere that whenever I heard that click or a bandit's voice I would just go "oooh noooo, for fuck sakes". Especially that I played on Hard the first time so it was fairly challenging while also having around 3 bullets for each weapon at a time. That game will remain in my heart as an incredible, refreshing experience for the rest of my gamer days.
Very good points. This is one of the reasons why I enjoyed the Mass Effect series a lot. Interacting with the crew after every mission was a good way to flesh out character development while taking a breather from the missions.
Old video, but it got me thinking about the first Halo game. My favorite levels in it were Truth and Reconciliation and Silent Cartographer and both of those levels had long stretches where the player could explore without interruption from enemies or allies. Compared to the Library which was wall to wall action, they seemed perfectly paced in retrospect.
Couldn't agree more. Compare the relentless blur of a typical CoD campaign to Star Trek: Elite Force, which has sizeable chunks of wandering around Voyager fixing crap. Even Painkiller encourages you to look for goodies after clearing an area. You continue to be a voice worth listening to, George :D
***** I suppose cutscenes can work that way. But I'd probably prefer quiet time that's still interactive. Like the slower pace that bits of All Ghillied Up feature. Plus CoD isn't exactly known for its narrative, so the cutscenes don't tend to be that enthralling, I find.
***** That's why you create one big dream project and call it good. If Lucas can do it... And Kojima can do it... But you don't have to milk your dream project though.
I agree completely with this. Constant action is meant to draw people in but media/art can lack tone and feeling with just that. Similar to your Stalker comparison, Once Upon A Time in the West has a great 13 minute opening scene where 3 guys hang around waiting for a train. The editing, cinematography, and the dubbed natural sounds create tension for just a 3 second shootout. It's one of my favorite things I've seen in a film too. You can see where a lot of the attitude can lie in some producers of video games taking influence from movies when they pick contemporary blockbuster hollywood styles to emulate and forget the rest of the huge medium.
Speaking of Leone the reason why the final shootout in The Good the Bad and the Ugly works so well is because you had to wait through a good three and a half hours of build up. Sure there were exciting moments in the rest of the movie but we never got our climax until the end ergo that shootout is more satisfying. Conversely the reason why set pieces in films like Transformers or games like COD feel weightless is because those works are nothing BUT climaxes.
Happy to see RE4 mentioned, as it's one of the first games that came to mind when you explained the concept of the video. Its sequels failure to use this as effectively is probably part of the reason they weren't as well received. Both have a few moments like that, but not nearly as often, and the co-op play makes it a bit harder for anyone playing to stop and relax if they have a partner. And if they're going solo the frustrating AI is probably annoying them enough that they just want to rush through things. The older Resident Evil games did this superbly as well, what with the player spending most of their time hunting ruined environments populated by a few enemies, yet every time a foe appears a striking chord plays and music begins until the encounter is over.
I guess the co-op (loved these games because of co-op thou) is to blame and the fact that they tried to make it to appeal to the masses, to follow the Call of Duty path.
If a game can't get the pacing down, from my perspective that simply isn't a game for me to worth putting my time in. And if you think about it, all the greatest games you played will have excellent pacing, from DMC3 to Gothic to Zelda to Warcraft 3 to F.E.A.R and so on.
***** That's a pretty good question. I am not sure. Shadow of the Colossus has the best boss battles of both though. But perhaps Ico makes you feel more involved storywise?
ShyanTheLegend I think for what it's worth, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag did it well to. *A lot* of people found traveling by Sea boring but I think some of the best moments were just being on the Open Sea. Listening to the Waves crash or even the Boys sing a Diddy or two. I almost never used Fast Travel when I played.
CoD was never a good game. But I hear ya, at least CoD4 was better than the rest. W@W was good, too. At least the multiplayer because CoD's singleplayer always sucks.
I really like how the video ends with nothing but the sounds of gentle wind and armored footsteps. That by itself completely represents the atmospheric mood and tone of all of Dark Souls in just two subtle sounds. It's silence is one of the most beautiful aspects of the game and it elicits that oddly enjoyable, calming, but also sad and empty feeling of melancholy that truly represents the game at its heart.
Yet again you have elicited something from my subconscious which I knew about, but couldn't put into the right words. I personally call this concept "Downtime" and it's a common feature in literally all of my favourite games. MGS, FF, Persona, classic Tomb Raiders, Portal, Uncharted, Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot (hub worlds). In fact it can probably be said one of the big reasons why FFXIII was such a disaster in many fans eyes is because there were barely any moments of downtime outside of the cutscenes. It was basically COD level design applied to a JRPG, which was blasphemous considering this is a genre that has traditionally been at the forefront of Quiet Time/Downtime. BioShock Infinite also could've done with a few more moments of downtime, it had some (the start of the game and also the beach section) but not enough and at times the action segments and waves of enemies started to grate. Also I mentioned the classic Tomb Raiders. These implemented this concept perfectly. The quiet time was actually related to playing the game, since they were the moments where you would be figuring out where to go next (90% of the game), and in these games getting lost was an inevitability. In fact considering how the soundtrack was mostly silent except for key moments (just like HL2 and MGS3 as you mention and I'll also throw Portal in there) the vast majority of time spent in the old Tomb Raider games was quiet time. Even the newer game wasn't too bad in this regard, though I'll have to replay the Definitive Edition as my memory is a little hazy and I remember sections that would grate me like BioShock Infinite's action.
Dark souls/demon's souls,mgs series and the last of us...best games i've ever played.the last of us is the perfect example of quite time and amazing level design and pacing(and story and gameplay and everything too of course)
"The whole game rarely uses music, and when it does, it doesn't last very long ... most of the game time actually involving more exploration and scavenging than [firefights], and once those fast, loud [firefights] are over and done with, the game gets very, very quiet." This much, with "firefights" replaced with brawls, describes none other than Minecraft, which takes them all a step further by randomizing those moments enough for them to be enjoyable again and again.
This entire pacing point was something I tried to incorporate into my A Machine for Pigs review. It does have some quiet moments but you're always on edge, it's never really quiet time, not really. And if there is a quiet moment in that game it's next to a door to load the next chapter. There is nothing in the room and it's the size of a closet so, you could theoretically just sit in there for 5 minutes, but it's not gameplay time. That pacing problem of it just being constant droning machine sounds and rumbling caused me to just become incredibly fatigued after 30-40minutes of playing. I've begun noticing that in many games I play these days. Some games have quiet time lasting too long and it doesn't feel organic, while others never stop and I have to pause to go walk around because my ears and eyes are just completely numb from it.
I see what you mean, the actual firefights and stuff seem to take a lot less time than walking, running, buying stuff between rounds and camping but at the same time the game builds up tension the whole time because you need to do split second stuff and any tiny mistake can kill you, especially since a ton of weapons can 1 shot.
I've recently been replaying the original F.E.A.R., and I've noticed that game does a heck of a good job with quiet time as well. Hell I actually thought about this video while I was playing it. Between all the intense firefights and all the flickering lights and attempted jump scares and hallucinations and whatnot; a good chunk of the game just involves wandering around empty, quiet, abandoned industrial areas and offices and laboratories. Said moments of silent exploration sprinkled with the occasional answering machine or radio that helps add to the slow reveal of what the hell is going on in the first place. And after every firefight, things get very quiet. Giving you the chance to regain your bearings, use a few medkits if you need them, and scour the area for more ammo and medkits and maybe a reflex or health booster before continuing onward. Really keeps the game from feeling exhausting due to constant combat or constant horror or constant... anything, really.
I have to say I really didn`t think about this aspect in any game before you brought it up. Some of my favourite games all have clear quiet time which lets you take a break, absorb the environment and feel the atmosphere. I appriciate it alot after a huge epic boss in which you get the time to reflect upon what actually happened and prepare for the journey ahead. I have overlooked the importance of it, until now. Great video btw. I have watched quite a few of your videoes now and I enjoy alot of your content/ your perspective on video games in general.
I know this video is almost a year old by now, but looking back att 2014, for me it has become very apparent how important this is. Two games released this year that I have played really suffers from the lack of quiet time in a way that, when I played, I could actually pinpoint that one problem as my main problem with both games. For me, these games where Infamous: Second Son and Middle Earth: Shadow od mordor. In the previous Infamous games when you completed a side mission that part of the city were "cleared", it became safe zone where you could jump around and search for collectibles and such without running in to enemies, and when you had done a action packed main story mission or bossfight you could go to these areas and just goof around and chill out. Heck, Cole even had a rooftop "HQ" with a sofa and a TV. In Second Son the act of clearing out an area from enemies demanded a much bigger effort on the players part, and for me it was easier just not to bother and instead stick to the rooftops and move as fast as possible between areas. The "chilling out" part of the previous games were gone, and the experience was a far more stressfull one. The same goes for Shadow of mordor. You are NEVER safe in that game, and while it stays true to the concept of mordor being a dangerous place, the only time you can relax is when you climb on top of a tower. From the second you hit the ground you constantly have to stay hidden and be aware of your surroundings, and that would be fine if there were any parts of the map or points in the game where you could just let down your guard and not have to be afraid that if you make a mistake you would be ganked by 4 captians, 15 orcs and 2 caragors. The games design with the random spawning enemies makes this worse, even if you make sure to clear out a whole area of orcs and you don't see any enemies on the map, you could still round a corner in that exact same area 20 seconds later and there will be 20 new orcs that just spawned in to existance from nowhere. The game forces you to keep your guard up at all times, never letting you feel safe for even a short period of time, and after 20+ hours of this constant tension the game just gets exhausting to play.
communilogic I never finished the first infamous game because of this reason. Every time you went to a new area it was just constant respawning enemies on top of buildings and it was just an incredibly fatiguing experience. Sounds like Second Son is _definitely_ not for me.
The quiet moments in Dark Souls are what made me the most terrified. Also, the most terrifying moment in Dead Space 2 was the initial parts of the Ishimura level due to the complete absence of necromorphs. Quiet time is good for horror.
I definitely agree here. I'd also say that this lack of quiet-time is only going to get worse given how pervasive Twitch integration, and stringing together RU-vid-able moments, have become. There are games I love that I just wouldn't do as Let's Plays because there isn't enough spectacle or enough to comment on in real-time. And unfortunately, that means that low-level shmucks like me generally end up promoting the most action-packed games, good or bad, instead of the most fulfilling games. Hell, even glitchy games have their own spectacle that makes streamers more likely to spotlight them over real masterpieces. Something uncanny and infuriating is going to be more memetic than something fluid and enjoyable, and I can't help but think that's going to keep influencing game design as consoles get more and more into recording/streaming. But shit, even the TV news has this problem of well-paced relevance vs quick and constant stimulus for the short-attention-spanned. It's a widespread problem of our era.
This quiet time is really why I enjoy games so much. I love games like Minecraft, The Sims, The Last of Us, To a degree GTA, and more single player creative typed games because I personally have issues with anxiety and games like COD almost overwhelm me, so I usually just play slower games where I can almost meditate on it and enjoy the game.
Do some developers maybe not see the difference between pacing and padding? You'd think pacing would be a basic thing developers would strive to get right when designing their game. I mean it's a basic thing for movies, and it's an idea that should be easy to understand. But I know from movie commentary tracks that good pacing is sometimes created by accident because the director wanted to pad the scene. I'm thinking specifically of Assault on Precinct 13 by John Carpenter. An example which is recent to me is Resident Evil Revelations, which had a great sense of pacing and ebb and flow to the story and set pieces. Resident Evil 6 on the other hand completely botched this aspect, which made the game an utter slog to play. It's no good if the game is constantly keeping the speed at 70%-100%. It has to come to a complete stop at some point to give the audience time to breathe. If a team of developers take advice from critics who don't know what they're talking about, or can't properly express it, we end up with "non-stop" action games with no regard taken to pacing. Because that's what supposedly is good! But like you said in the video, the reason someone might have perceived the action as being outstanding, or "non-stop" is because it was built up properly.
Maybe it has a bit to do with technical limitations as well? Revelations was designed as a portable title after all, while RE6 was not. And I feel like the gradual convergence of action sub-genres like stealth and horror have a lot to do with the "technical" evolution of control schemes and game designs.
Super Bunnyhop I do not hope to get a reply after one year but did control schemes evolve that much since the advent of accelerated 3D? I thought the early 3D era was the one during which developers of 3D 1st/3rd person games struggled to figure out how to allow players to move, look and interact efficiently in and with the game world and it seems to me that since then most changes to control schemes have been mostly superficial. Game design wise I also do not feel that games have evolved that much either. If you boil most games down to their mechanics they could still probably play in some form of 2d and you could replace most NPCs by robotic dull looking boxes with very limited sensors, intelligence and breadth of reactions. Nobody but a niche would play them though because the looks of them would break the suspension of disbelief for most. What changed the most is that games can now tell a story without recourse to imagination and ellipsis since they can synthetize about any image (and most sounds) they want in real time but gameplay has frankly been very stagnant for the past decade for mainstream games. The limited capabilities of early gaming systems (consoles and computers alike) were a godsend in that the crude presentation which was a ridiculous simplification of the depicted situations allowed for gameplay rules which were unrealistic or absurd to work perfectly well. In a 3D world populated mostly with humanoid looking and moving creatures your interactions with the world will necessarily ressemble those of real life. Walking, running, aiming shooting, how these actions operate is constrained by real world physics and the limitations of the human body and of the most acceptable controllers (mouse/keyboard and console pads). If you want to tell a story people can swallow you will have to abide by these constraints. These limitations do not exist if the environment the gameplay takes place in deliberately distances itself from reality. Pac Man is an extreme example because it is repetitive but it is good gameplay which would make very little sense in a realistic setting and does not need to. Games subgenres converge because they all want to do the same thing: tell a story. To human beings. In an accessible way. So they end up with the same constraints, and the same solutions. Evolution made us converge into our current physical form because it was apt to solve most of the problems we encountered in reality. Except that the limitations of the input systems of computers/consoles are enormous compared to human ones (and the Oculus Rift does not solve that issue, it just helps telling the story better (in a sense), not act better) so we end up with soups made of different ingredients but built with the exact same methods. Games probably have become mainstream because the media now can present realistic images, sounds and movements which do not need a conscious effort by their audience to be appreciated. It seems inevitable that unless we manage to educate people to think out of the box and to learn to appreciate the effort needed to decipher and interpret a system for its own merit then all story/reality driven games will converge toward the same game mechanics and representation. "Realism" and deep/rich gameplay are maybe not that compatible (*). Otherwise we would not game in front of computers, we'd just be outside with our friends, experiencing this gameplay live. That quote about the 90% of gamers not ever finishing a game says it all: gamers are not in it for the effort and will bail out at the slightest obstacle, if you want to retain them then there is little precious choice than the most common denominator. That or... maybe better education that is. :) I am obviously over simplifying, there are more genres available than the "story" reduction I used implies (multiplayer games do not fit into this mold) but I think my point about the uniformity of gameplay and representation has some value. (*) at least unless we can have rich and complex interactions with the NPCs but I have been complaining about a lack of interest of the industry toward advanced AI since I entered it so that's unlikely to ever happen without indies demonstrating it first.
The Life is Strange series has a bunch of these moments scattered around each game, usually a place you can sit and watch the world around you. The protagonist monologues for a moment, reflecting on their situation, but then you just have some soothing music and your own thoughts. It's so good.
It's funny to feel now how these quiet moments are important. When I want to play Dark Souls 1 nowadays, isn't for the combat, but I want to play it because I want to feel what that game gives me. And this unique feeling that the games presents me are these "virtual realities" experiences that games like that give us
You were about to become my favorite voice regarding talking about video games....and then you made a reference to my favorite Tarkovsky scene and you solidified that position.
George, you really drove the message home during the last 15 seconds of the video when you gave the viewers themselves to experience the importance of quiet time. With the last few lines being poetic, the quietness really stuck out to become meaningful. That's why films like No Country for Old Men are truly the thrillers they want to be as they have no music score and give spurts of high tension action and then die down immediately afterwards. Snake eater anybody? :) I really liked this video!
I feel like a good recent example of a game that tried this was Killzone: Shadow fall and I loved it for its mixed pacing. It wasn't the most solid form of it, and the campaign has plenty of flaws (a couple of QTEs and trial and error free falling moments were present and painful), but it was a breathe of fresh air compared to the typical military shooters and a step in the right direction. I actually loved that game's platforming moments, the weird electronic tribal-ish music at certain pieces coming in at the right times to make me actually pay attention and love the soundtrack, carrying power cores around dark ghostly hallways with a slight mystery to it, finding those audio logs, and observing some of the subtle environment details. Replaying the game, especially the first half of level 5, showed me quite some things I missed and it felt good piecing things together and playing a smarter overall shooter.... even if it has those clumsy and weird moments as well as failing to live up to its story potential. With that being said though, it still doesn't beat the fun I had with killzone 2 due to its smarter AI, better cover system, more core gunplay, and better physics. Sadly people don't seem to have much respect for this kind of thing anymore. People like Angry Joe have considered it as "last gen" thinking while many others online talk about getting lost or finding the game too hard. I suppose the game could have been done better, but that's the thing... "Quiet" time is a bit more risky and harder to do than gimmicky scripted events being shoved in your face every 5 minutes, and so a lot of developers probably just try to avoid breaking up the pacing with smart techniques and just throw in rail pieces for it instead.
I enjoyed how Shadow of the Colossus had such a stark contrast. The game was 50% quiet, with just the noise of the wind and horse hooves hitting the earth, and then the other 50 % is intense boss music and the Colossi.
This is something I have been saying about recent movies! Looking at older movies, some of the quiet break scenes really add to the tension. They also can give the viewer a much needed break, so when the music does play, it makes a much bigger impression.
I never thought I would see an allusion to Tarkovsky in a video of this content, specifically one of my favourite scenes... ever. Thank you for all of your videos.
Indeed. That is absolutely correct, my friend. That was one of the reasons people loved Resident Evil and Silent Hill back in the day. We had quite time of exploration and then a very nervous time of battling a suddenly appeared monster. That is why and how survival horror games work.
So very well put. I totally agree. This is something extremely important in the general horror genre across any medium and writing in general. Look up any chart on how stories go, and they always have dips in action before they rev up; it's just common sense.
One of my favourite parts of Mgs 3 was walking along that river after you’ve fought the end. I had no idea why I just always loved walking though that environment.
This is why Shadow Warrior, Zeno Clash 2, and Metro Last Light last year were my favourite FPSs of 2013. Yes, even Shadow Warrior, an intense arena style slasher/shooter has plenty of quiet time to make you appreciate the beautiful environments, scavenge for resources and collectibles, and recharge before the next big battle.
One of my favorite things about ArmA 3 is that there's plenty of quiet time - if you look in the right places. You'll get an option and go through a briefing put on by an AI or, if you're lucky and are part of a large mil-sim clan, an actual person. From there you'll brief your squads and then you'll get to it. You'll know the tactics, the strategy, the game plan. You'll have a general idea of the roles of your squad, if they're people and not bots. This phase is what I like to call "Quiet Action." You're not directly fighting, not directly controlling anything, but at the same time your mind is being stimulated and interacted with in a way that isn't quite a puzzle, isn't quite action, but is still engaging you in a sort of half-way, as you listen attentively, make suggestions or reports. Then there's the time you spend in transit. You and your team, or maybe just you if you're piloting something, will have a surprisingly substantial amount of time as you leave your base and head for the objective, leaving yourself and your team free to crack jokes, mess around. Although considering this quiet time is debatable since you're still interacting with people, its not the serious kind of interaction you'd see from game dialogue or a briefing. Meanwhile, you have time to think to yourself. You sure you still want to stick with the original plan? Maybe, now that you're in the field you see a terrain feature you can exploit. These little puzzles you're working out as you go, all the while having a good time. Then when you get there, the action lights up. No more messing around, no more planning. Its do or die, direct action. Execute with extreme force. And finally, when its all over, when you're returning, you have time to reflect. More quiet time. What went well? And what went wrong? What could have been done instead?
Great video, I distinctly remember stopping for a while at the same spot in Dark Souls and looking over the city while I listened to the wind. It's nice to have little moments of respite in an otherwise tension-riddled and rock-hard game.
I think the same is true in most modern Bollywood movies. I found an interest in some really old classic Bollywood movies and after watching some of them I realised why I liked them more than the newer movies. The reason is quite time. The small moments of quite time that gives the viewer to get involved in the world that the story is set in.
Fallout 3 had some of the best quiet time. It's emotional messages along with the heart felt dialogue from your father all conveys a deeper meaning when you take your time in the game.
I think the Last of Us was an excellent model of how to appropriately utilize quiet time in a linear game. Todd Howard, along with many other developers and critics, say that future games are going to be all about characters. The Last of Us is brimming with laid back moments that serve to accentuate not only the tension of the game's tone, but to strengthen the relationship between the two protagonists; Joel and Ellie. Those quiet moments spent scavenging, crafting and assessing how well you handled the last infected encounter are handled beautifully. The ambient dialogue is cleverly as laid back as the moments you spend just relaxing and breathing in the game. They aren't needed to fully understand the plot and yet I feel as if they were arguably the most important moments in the game. The main characters just have small talk; it's nothing you have to ponder about or analyze. In games that try to emulate reality, most video game characters don't talk like regular people; they always serve an explicit and necessary purpose. The ambient dialogue in "The Last of Us" is literally just small talk but it still manages to get the player to empathize with one of the biggest anti-heroes in gaming and cohese the relationship between him everyone else in the game. (For the record, I'm aware that this has been done before. I just think that The Last of Us handles it the best.)
It's great that such topic was brought up here as the same issue is currently discussed in movies as well, e.g. the numerous works Filmcrithulk wrote about action scenes and importance of understanding cause+effect; or Shane Black in some interview exactly mentioning that TV shows in particular are trying to eliminate the "preparation phase" and have only the nonstop action/comedic climax. ("They could save so much money..")
The Last of Us anyone? Perfect example of a game that uses a lot of quiet moments, so that the player can scavenge, take in the environment, listen to some of Ellie's jokes. And when there's enemies around, it's super tense!
This. TLoU would still have a strong single-player mode based purely on the strength of the writing, but it has masterful pacing that puts it over the top.
Shadow of the Colossus is a great example of this concept too. Having to ride to each level really let you absorb the world and reflect, which would have been missed by many players if it was just a 16 rooms each with a colossus in it. It was also great with the last colossus having the (at least what felt like) longest lead up to it over a huge wide open area. Made you really feel like this was the final moment.
7:39 "But isn't the one Call of Duty level, that everyone seems to enjoy the most, one of the quieter moments in the series?" Haha, I thought about "All Ghillied Up" before you mentioned it. :D
Along with its stark interiors and it atmospheric sound design, you've just described an element that made System Shock 2 such a great game that is still played 30 years later. The freedom to loiter...
You confirmed all my thoughts about post-MW CoD! I also feel that this was the main problem of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (and most post PS2-era Ace Combat, actually). Earlier games all had quiet times where you have just flown to your target, talked with your wingmen and took in the scenery. The newer games just push you straight from a cutscene into a dogfight, then back to the cutscene. In fact, the most memorable level from ACAH was IMO where you flew over a city on a solo mission and had a lot of (relatively) quiet time between objectives.
good example of this is the Metro series. When you reach a friendly station after barely managing to survive an encounter on the surface or in 'abandoned' tunnels it really lets you take in atmosphere, collect supplies, have a break etc
Quiet times are usually my favourite sections in games. I'm all about that introspective, moody, calm stuff. Even if the whole games is just that(although in my opinion its best if there are little moments of intensity sprinkled troughout). Those are the golden bits for me. Half-life 2's intro,when you arrive to the lab, when you arrive to white forest and hang out etc...Like I want a walking simulator where I still have a gun.
Climbing a lader or listening to music with a skull disguised as Zorro are really good examples og quite time. They both happen before huge events of their respective games and let's you relax before the drama !
Great insight. I have a similar experience on this form of "action fatigue" in Bulletstorm, and it was made more prevalent where in one part, I was getting really tired of shooting enemies, and then more enemies came and the main character said something along the lines of "I am not tired of kicking ass". That hit me, hard. I am tired, but it appears that there is a miscommunication between me and the developers.
I started noticing this in level design when I first heard about it, but what's striking to me is that I also started noticing it in my own feelings when a game didn't handle it for me. Like, recently I've been playing Morrowind with some mods that add some fairly well-written backstories to many NPCs, and since I enjoy reading I often spend some time just talking - but after a while it gets to be too much and I think "okay, time to get out there and fight some stuff, maybe explore a dungeon, otherwise I'll get bored and frustrated", and the opposite when getting tired of combat in long dungeons (Kogoruhn...). Since the game is open-world, it can't automatically handle the constant back-and-forth between action and quiet in the same way a linear game can, so without knowing *why* I was getting bored/tired I'd have had a harder time enjoying myself. Definitely a useful skill, and not just for developers.
I really love how in Hotline Miami once you finished a level, the music stops and you have to walk back to your car and view the aftermath of your carnage, it really makes you truly observe the brutality of your actions in the game and makes the game feel so much more grotesque.
This something I've thought about from time to time myself, how you need those moments in between the adrenaline pumping, high stakes action to slow down for a minute. I always use this time to think about the crazieness I just survived (and how many times I almost didnt) and just how far I've come overall, its a time for reflection but it can also be time for self improvement. Barely making it out of a boss battle can serve as a lesson to be better prepared for your next encounter, I had to learn that the hard way with the Resident Evil series (Tip: if you start receiving a bunch of ammo, weapons, and health items......DONT WASTE IT cuz you've probably got a boss fight coming). Stealth Games and RPGs in particular tend to be good at balancing moments of fast action moments and slow quiet moments (probably a reason why those are two of my favorite genres in gaming) since theres usually alot of both, it never feels like one is necessarily outliving the other.
You bring up some good points and I came to think of one my favorite games of all time bioshock infinite. Bioshock infinite is a marvelous (all be at short) game. Honestly the action was a blast the shooting was tight, the plasmids fun to use and the skyhooks a sheer joy to ride on. But as you bring up the importance of quiet time I thought of this game. Mainly because the most memorable parts of the game is quiet time. My favorite parts of the game were seeing the Barbershop quartet and the slums of Colombia. Having a moment to take in your surroundings and see the Beauty you begin to see a stark contrasts between the violence and the Beaty. This adds a element of humanity to any game I play not only bioshock infinite. It reminds me that although we as humans can be animalistic violent creatures we can also just be calm and enjoy the small things in life creating a player character connection that I really wish more people could enjoy
I just recently started another play through of Half-life 2 to appreciate the level design. The pacing and downtime is great and always allows me to become way more immersed in the Half-life universe. Weather it be exploring the levels for lambda stashes or talking to people in City 17, harassing Antlions or getting crazy in the air boat. Taking the time to smell the roses in the Half-life series is why they will always be classic games in my eyes.
Could you just look at this superb comment/joke from the maker of the video? He actually looked at the comment section, saw this other comment, thought of the joke, and wrote it. Beautiful.
Max Payne 3 is one of the major offenders of quiet time, the only moments that you can stop at a certain room you have Max or other characters constantly pestering you for not moving forward (Max Payne 1 and 2 in comparison were great and had many quiet time scenes) I find myself enjoying Max Payne 3 creating my own quiet scenes. Instead of playing through the campaign again, I prefer to play a individual level, enjoy all the action, then quit after the level is done and stop for a while, selecting another level later. Its funny how this is an important yet so overlooked concept.
It happens that my favorite games of all time are masters of quiet time: HL2, System Shock 2, RE4, Dark Souls, Metroid Prime, Shadow Of The Colossus. And a recent find that has awesome quiet time is Hotline Miami, when the ambient sound plays each time you finish a mission.
Great video! Two other narrative-driven action games that are big award winners also knew when to stop the action and let the player take in their surroundings (Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us).
I love games with a lot of quiet time. Its part of the reason i think excessive fast-travel is bad for open world games. I think its part of the reason I still love Morrowind more than Skyrim. (The writing is definitely another factor) People complain about 'boring' downtime in games, but even those people enjoy games more when the pacing of the game has slowdowns. Its just bad to have non-stop action. I like that you brought up Revengence, because it makes the point well. It is always described as a wild ride full of frantic action, but there is a surprising amount of downtime. You get little bursts of downtime in between little bursts of action, it's lovely. I also enjoy when games let me stop and plan out my approach to an objective on my own time, which seems to be a feature of the better stealth games.
This is something Metro 2033 and Last Light do really well. You spend a lot of the game just traversing dark tunnels, but those can be some of the most tense moments, since you don't know when you might be attacked, or by what, and you still have to worry about filters, flashlight charge, etc.
The Last of Us probably has some of my favorite "quiet time" moments. The enemy encounters can be pretty draining sometimes, and there's always some very nice dialogue between the two leads during these moments.
I think no quiet time can be good too sometimes. Yes its exhausting, but thats a part of the fun. I actually wish to play a shooter that is extremely fast paced (Imagine Crysis Speed mode all the time) allows all around freedom of movement (wallruns, double jumps, etc..) and gets crazier and crazier without letting you take a breather, driving you to the limit and exhausting you so that you wont be able to play the game more than 2 hours at a time. Story can be some equally ridiculous bullshit too to fit.
about 20 times ive watched this video over the years simply because ive been very tired and misread the title as "the importance of quiet theme", yet every time i watch it to the end anyway.
Ive only recently finished the game the last of us for the ps3. This game had so many of those breath taking scenes within the game where i found my self just stop and look at the scenery around. I wish more games had this balance of action and beautiful backdrops to explore when not been scared out your mind in dark rooms with zombie like monsters after you indoors. I encourage you if you haven't already played the last of us to give it a try i was hooked and found myself wanting more after the 16 hours it finally took me to complete it and after hearing another game is coming out i am definitely looking forward to more.
