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Yahtzee on Majora's Mask
Mar. 20th, 2015 10:07 amFrom Why the N64 Majora's Mask Could Not Be Made Today As a AAA Title:
I disagree with everything this man says about race and gender, but he has a lot of cool insights and interesting turns of speech. I wish he would publish a book of gaming criticism. I mean, I enjoyed his two novels (Jam and Mogworld), but I want a serious, Ian Bogost (How to Do Things With Videogames) or Steven Poole (Trigger Happy 2.0) style essay collection from Yahtzee Croshaw.
I also want fic of a fabulous tsundere relationship between Yahtzee and Nintendo.
I find it interesting that there's so much of the game you can miss, just because most of the people and events involved in sidequests are working to a schedule regardless of your actions. It's not the case that characters simply wait indefinitely in their little rooms for the player to enter, at which point they are instantly ready to concisely express the most salient points of the situation.
This is almost completely unique in the field of video game structuring. Most video games simply guide the player along like it's walking a dog, yanking on the leash when the dog takes exploration too far. Even in a sandbox game where the player chooses their own route, all the enemies, story missions and encounters are kept in stasis, waiting for them to approach so that they can activate, like the pop-up cardboard monsters on a cheap ghost train. Meanwhile, Majora's Mask feels like a game world existing without necessarily being aware of the player inside it.
This is almost completely unique in the field of video game structuring. Most video games simply guide the player along like it's walking a dog, yanking on the leash when the dog takes exploration too far. Even in a sandbox game where the player chooses their own route, all the enemies, story missions and encounters are kept in stasis, waiting for them to approach so that they can activate, like the pop-up cardboard monsters on a cheap ghost train. Meanwhile, Majora's Mask feels like a game world existing without necessarily being aware of the player inside it.
I disagree with everything this man says about race and gender, but he has a lot of cool insights and interesting turns of speech. I wish he would publish a book of gaming criticism. I mean, I enjoyed his two novels (Jam and Mogworld), but I want a serious, Ian Bogost (How to Do Things With Videogames) or Steven Poole (Trigger Happy 2.0) style essay collection from Yahtzee Croshaw.
I also want fic of a fabulous tsundere relationship between Yahtzee and Nintendo.
