Frame Trap - Episode 29 "What We Want Out of Video Game Stories"

Also, the villain was vastly superior in volume 2 than Ronin was on 1.

Daniel Askew

I know this post is older now. But after listening and play Little Nightmares I decided to make some ultra low polygon fan art for little nightmares. Hope you enjoy. <a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zNAy4" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zNAy4</a>

David Edgar

I've said this time and time again: FrameTrap is just the best. It's a Ben Moore special.

Daniel Ray

I totally understand the Ian struggle with gaming story. If I find myself playing a game more for it's story than the gameplay I kinda wish that I could just get that story in a more time friendly product like a movie, comic or tv show. I played an indie game with a killer story.. but the gameplay was kinda whack. Still I played on for a couple hours. When it was all said and done I couldn't help but realize the story that kept me playing for so long could have easily been distilled into 30 min and been just as good.

Raven Perez

Reminder that THERE IS NO "CANON" ENDING FOR BLOODBORNE, just ones that offer more bosses to fight than others. In terms of story, they're all equally valid, and you may fancy whichever one you want depending on your personal outlook. For me, I'm fond of Yharnam Sunrise not just because it's the first ending I got, but also because it places the most value in humanity and rejects the foolish pursuits of all these awful cults that are, by all accounts, out of their fucking minds.

I had Edith Finch downloaded, so I paused the podcast before you went into the discussion. I went through it, and I love it as much as my 100+ hour playthrough of Persona 5. What it does for interactive storytelling is amazing, and it's refreshing how much variety is in it in such a brief amount of time. I never knew what was going to happen next, and I was floored with how each story played out.

Larry DuPreez III

Make Frame Trap better? Easy. Make it even longer! I love these long conversations, it really makes my day!

Miguel Pires Ramos

Loving the separate time stamps for games thing! Great episode, as per the us'!

Mattias Bäcklin

Same, I honestly came out worried I would not enjoy spiderman. I swear if I don't enjoy the spiderman movie I am just going to take a break with marvel movies.

Nothing has come up on my RSS feed as yet...... any chance this gets fixed ? would love to listen on my commute to work tomorrow

I've been waiting for it as well...

Alex Castellanos

I believe it's: askeasyallies@gmail.com

Alex Castellanos

The fact that you guys can't keep the episodes short even when you're trying to just means you have THAT good a time talking about these things. And that to me is great.

ZyloWolfBane

no rss feed for framtrap?

I don't know if it's superhero movie fatigue, but I really didn't like Guardians 2. As soon as the opening credits happened and it didn't get me in a jolly mood, I knew it was gonna be tough to pull me back in. I had a few laughs and I gasped at the twist, but other than that, the movie didn't do much for me. Even the very emotional third act didn't move me. I really do hope Spider-Man: Homecoming &amp; Thor: Ragnarok get me excited after both Doctor Strange and Guardians 2 left me disappointed.

Karl Williams

Hey Guys, My email was supposed to be Going against the idea that games are all the same but somehow it sounded to you guys as if i was saying the opposite maybe? i dunno maybe i worded my Words wrong lol

Calvin Delaney

Ian is Naruto's mom confirmed.

The moving around realy bothers me, and i can see it bothers Ben aswel.

Randy Verschueren

Hey man you are 100% entitled to your opinion. For me I can't get enough of Frametrap. I love how long the "What have you been playing" section. Thanks to the timestamps you can now skip things that you dont like but I love every second of it. In this section they discuss games that they normally in a other podcast wouldn't really talk about and I enjoy that. I would agree with you that sometimes they take the fear of spoiling something to far. Now with the timestamps I feel the responsibility of spoilers lies with the viewer and they cantalk about games more openly.

FreeDoM

OK, I'm gonna voice a probably unpopular opinion: the show is too long. You spend 2,5 hours on what you guys played, when that would be a perfect length for the podcast. My problem isn't with you talking about the games you're playing, but with the way you do it, and that it takes away time from Hottake and questions. The problem with the way you talk about it is simple, you tiptoe around it and are too vague about you're opinions because of spoilers. Now that there are time stamps for individual games you could change this at least, altough it would still spoil it for you guys...

Love you guys keep up the great work. Ian ur awesome dont let the youtube haters get to you

Kc Wright

Hey allies how do I email in to you guys for the podcast?

I'm gonna keep repeating this every Frame Trap until it comes true: This is my favorite show on Easy Allies and I hope it'll be a weekly show! :D

Nut Kon

Frame Trap is definitely one of my favorite EZA podcasts. It could be 10 hours long, and I would still listen to every minute of it. Great job, Ben and everyone else! We all appreciate your hard work!

~First off, I loved Guardians 2. Having said that it made me question things from the first one. Plot holes(?) started showing. I won't mention them simply because spoilers. Also the end credit scenes were really good and takes some knowledge to appreciate some. ~Should The Fire Emblem be a faithful remake or should it change it up? When is it OK for a remake to stay so faithful to the original and when is it not? ~great side quests. Borderlands side quests can give you really unique items. Breath of Fire 3 masters and Fairy Village.

Chris H

Ben don't have hangups with Guardians of the Galaxy. It's not just more of the same, and it makes fun of the formula and tries to do something new and important with it. A lot of people don't understand this, but they might not be ready for it. James Gunn is unlike any Marvel director, he has such an understanding of genre and elevates it in so many ways. Watch the movie 'Super,' and you'll understand where this guy is coming from. Ego is such a great character too, you just have to look deeper than most people think they have to look into Marvel movies. Also Ian or anyone, check out birthmoviesdeath.com for movie reviews and editorial pieces. They go way more in-depth than avclub and they have the best community. Closest thing to EZA in the filmosphere in my opinion. Just a one-time recommendation.

confusedhulk

Great episode again! Thanks guys!

"It must be pretty hard being a person going through life, if things don’t align with your own expectations that you have in your head, then the world is wrong" <a href="https://youtu.be/1FCGFfCLpP0?t=2178" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/1FCGFfCLpP0?t=2178</a> Very cool and provocative statement. I have learned that the difference between expectation and and reality equals disappointment. If the expectation is higher then the real thing there can be two reasons for that. First, the real thing could just suck. Second, the expectations were set to high. Both can be true at the same time, of course. Avoiding too high expectations takes two parties. The person on the receiving end has to check on his/her end on how realistic his/her expectations are. The person who has to deliver has to clearly communicate on what is to be expected. This is applicable in pretty much every part of life (job, relationships, etc). It the case of the discussed game it seems as the game developer might not have done everything possible to market it the right way. But also there seems to be a fair share of people that should have done some more research to keep their expectation in check. Coming back to Ian's statement: I have learned that the right expectation management is one key element of leading a happy life. E.g. if you don't expect to own the biggest house, the fastest car, you can be very happy with a normal salary.

watch those "y'knows" guys

Cash

At the end the only thing important to story telling is how good the story is, not how it was told. I have in my life came into contact with numerous style of story telling techniques, all of them come in good and bad examples, the only stories that remain in my heart to this very day are good stories, many of which I have even forgotten how they were told in the first place. Same as games, you can't label a game good or bad base solely on genre and types of gameplay alone, there can be good Walking Simulators and bad RPGs for example, personal affinity and prejudices also factor heavily into the equation, I personally have quite a dislike to playing a game set in a school setting no matter how good it is for example, therefore to me the Devil Summoner series is much more attractive to me than Persona series as it is now (Persona 2 Eternal Punishment was much more my cup of tea). As for who has the right to label a game, that right is solely granted to the creator, whether anyone else agree or not is irrelevant, a definition is a concept, not a fact, and thus can not be argued with.

BHL

The time stamps by game are great!

Bdun912

'Walking simulators.' The response to them is naturally partially the internet being the internet. But I don't like assuming that simply because the internet is always going to be complaining, that there is no legit disappointment driving the response. There could be a problem with how they are sold. I hope that if you read this it will help extend your understanding of what makes something a game, and why a broad interpretation can lead to negative reactions. The way I personally define a game is that it consists of a certain amount of play and pretend and goals: In a game things are considered valuable or meaningful even though they are realistically arbitrary, unimportant (the magic circle in which we pretend) and have rules that form both challenges and actions that the player can take in the game (together forming the gameplay). They also have fail and win conditions. A toy for instance could be considered a bit like a game but without a predetermined fail or win condition. Like when you play with a toy car you are probably pretending the car has a personality or an importance to the story that it doesn't possess in reality (pretend), and you restrict yourself to think the car has to drive on the floor until it gets to the building with the jet engines (the play), and any win or fail state is made up by yourself as you go along. Soccer is a game because it has a ball and goal posts that really don't mean anything outside the game. But we pretend they are very important and players have certain actions they are allowed to take and not allowed to take, and rules about when the game ends and who wins. Something like Minecraft then, for me, gets just a little closer to being a toy than most games do, but is still a game. Playing Minecraft you will often make up your own fail/win conditions as you are building something, like when you were playing with LEGO's. Some people half-jokingly call it digital LEGO's. So in that sense it is 'more like a toy' than most games out there. (I love Minecraft by the way.) And for me, personally, I don't consider the usual visual novel to be a game. Because a visual novel (at least the ones I've... played) have about as much interaction as flipping pages in a book. (I also love visual novels.) If someone sold me on a game, and it turned out to be a visual novel I would be taken aback or perhaps even disappointed that I didn't spend the money on what I thought I was buying. That is to say: it doesn't take away anything from the quality or value of a product to not be considered a game, but it can be important when you sell the product to categorize it correctly. Think of it like this: We frequent a shop that happens to be called Steam that sells board games. We occasionally play board games and we think we have an idea of what to expect from such a game. There are many different types of board games but they do have some things in common. And I pick up one of the many game boxes on the shelf and it is covered in beautiful art. A box we've never seen before. And you pay money for it because I look interested -you sweetheart. We take it home, open it up and to our surprise inside it we find a book. And it's a giant lovely book with bits of art in it that you can move around by pulling pieces of paper. We can't really 'play' it, but we can still go through it together. How would it make us feel? Maybe we end up loving the book. Maybe we should have done some research. But at least initially, we would likely feel a little salty -it's not what we paid for. Can you imagine that if thousands of people that day bought the same box at similar shops, expecting a game, that it would get a negative response? Even with a book that lovely? The internet is mostly eliciting impulse driven communication. You would see quite a negative response on the internet. All of this is in some ways personal: We all create our own variation of the definition of a game. I'm sure most people would disagree with my definition to some degree. And I know it sounds like starting a war on words (and nothing could be less meaningful than starting than a war on words). However what I'm trying to say is that I think selling something as a book or a car or a game does come with certain expectations. When you buy them you don't expect the game to turn out to be a book or a car. If something essential is missing -if you buy a car but it has no wheels- that could be a legit cause for some extra backlash. I haven't played these 'walking simulators' but could it be that they are missing -or barely containing- some of these aspects that people come to expect to be a core element in something that is categorized as a game on the storefront? Because if that is the case, then maybe the correct and simplest solution is to not categorize them as games at the store so that people don't feel baited. Maybe the people aren't rallying against diversity or fighting about words for no good reason. Maybe this need to draw a line around the word game is emerging simply because of this great diversity of software blurring all the lines, and maybe there is a clarity argument to be made for drawing a line? P.S. to Ben: Some of my most beloved (sub)genres are kinda dead, like God Games and their hybrids, and tactical FPS :( I miss God Games so much. I feel like they died off prematurely. There is still so much we could do with those genres that are left unexplored. Have you ever played Populous: The Beginning or Black &amp; White or Sacrifice or SWAT4? If anything, I hope we see more diversity in the future because there is still room for it.

Bart Spits

Hey Ben. Is it possible to put Frame Trap on Sticher? Would be kewl.

Claus Larsen

love the ian and huber chemistry. Its forever my fav! so much L&amp;R

Chris