ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: FAHRENHEIT

[Ross Scott]

Merry Christmas Dungeon!  This episode ended up getting away from me, I meant to have it much shorter, but ended up seeing too many things I wanted to talk about.  Have a good Christmas!

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[TotallyNotSatan]

This is the unfiltered Cage Experience, Ross. The other games are "less" batshit because he's been progressively put on a leash as Quantic Dream releases games. Detroit is his most sober game, mostly because it's the first QD game that has another writer beyond Cage and that guy that other guy that has a name sounding like a disgusting variety of cheese. The rest of Cage's games are more "subdued", in the sense that a trip on LSD, PCP and Thunderbird is technically a comedown once you take out the Shrooms (if you truly want to keep those shrooms and add some organic solvents as well, make the effort of playing Omikron).

 

The thing is, though, that when you say that there is latent talent in David Cage you're confusing having cool ideas with having talent. Cage cannot execute his ideas for shit. Why? Because he's well... He's fucking stupid. He does not know how to write. It's as simple as that. David Cage does not write stories, he writes what he thinks are cool plot-points and threads them as barely as he can without fleshing out anything. You just saw it in Indigo Fahrenheit: It kept introducing plot elements and tropes even at the end of the story, not because it answers things meaningfully, but because David Cage wanted to have AI demons from beyond the stars. It's like the elephant graveyard approach to storytelling. This isn't Jackson Pollock, this is a monkey with a brush.

 

Again, Detroid is the outlier mostly because of that additional writer, who clearly filled the plot ditches that Cage leaves in his wake (even though Detroid is not well written at all). In fact, if you manage to find it on sale, I recommend playing that one over the others since it does has some Deus Ex style newspaper clippings talking about life in 2038. But the main plot is just Life is Strange style melodrama for melodrama's sake, everything around it is way more interesting that anything shown in the game, because engaging with the world they've created is too difficult for Cage to engage with, since he's just not intelligent. Again, you're thinking this could've been the movie "Her" if it was ironed out, the reality is that if this was ironed out it'd come out more like Transcendence.

 

In short: If I had any money, I'd gift you the Modern Cage Collection on Steam.

 

We have such sights to show you.

[Deep Dive Devin]

What an utterly strange game. Other than a couple Zero Punctuation episodes and the articles exposing David Cage and Quantic Dream for worker abuse and general creepiness, I'd never actually experienced anything he made in much detail.

 

Having seen this, I think a window of someone else playing them is the best way to see them, this episode was a blast.

 

That kickboxing scene where Ross ignored all the QTEs reminds me of a later Dragon Ball Z fight, where a large man brutalizes a teenage girl, steps on her head and knocks out several of her teeth. The previous material of this arc was mostly comedy. Goku eats a lot, Gohan plays at being a superhero, Vegeta breaks a punching machine, the usual. But then this just hits you outta nowhere.

Merry Christmas, kid.

Now, they both have superpowers, she can fly and even knocks his head most of the way off (he puts it back on), but it's still a shocking tonal shift.

 

Except it's the exact opposite of Fahrenheit here, because we went from silly invincible kung fu battles to Videl, who mostly exists outside the superpower stuff (being the daughter of a guy who famously denied these were real), taking some of the most realistically-violent punishment in the series.

 

I guess the change of tone works better in one direction than the other.

Spoiler

Also, I like how much Ross's story flowchart reminds me of Shadow the hedgehog.

Bad as they might be, that game DOES have ten distinct endings with different conclusions for the character!

 

...So of course they end up shoving this structure into a 3D platformer that really didn't need its story substance reduced to begin with, and then add an eleventh ending on TOP of that that is officially-canon, making the others not matter at all...even though you need to get all ten to even see the last one.

 

Y'know, sometimes I think game development is hard, and that's probably true, but stuff like this feels like anyone with an eye for editing could see the problem here...

 

Edited December 26, 2022 by Shaddy (see edit history)

[ScumCoder]

Wow. I like most Game Dungeons, but this one is truly a gem. I'm pretty sure I'll be rewatching it for years to come.

 

Thanks a lot, Ross. You saved so many Christmases by this time, I think you deserve some kind of award.

[Steve the Pocket]

It might not be a Christmas game, but it is oddly fitting for those of us in parts of the US right now, because it's been unseasonably cold here. It dropped below zero Fahrenheit (-15C) the past few nights in a row, and a lot of people are currently snowed in not because there's been a lot of snow (it was only a few inches), but because it's been too cold and windy to safely go outside to dig themselves out. We don't have to imagine what it's like to live in a supernatural ice age scenario this year!

 

I don't have much to add, other than to say misjudging the timeframe it would take to get from New York to Area 51 is probably the most excusable of the obvious mistakes in this game. I don't know why Europeans would have an issue with underestimating the size of a country that a single glance at a globe would tell you is about the size of their entire continent, but apparently it's a common problem. Oh, and the big double-Simon HUD is the worst implementation of QTEs in any game ever for exactly the reason you described, and it's incredible nobody realized it. Or maybe they did and were like "OK but what else can we do? Our whole design doc hinged on this."

 

...Actually that's something I think needs to be brought up more often in discussions of badly designed games. I bet there are loads of games that reached a point where everyone involved realized there was no way it was going to work, but it was too far along to scrap the whole project and start over. Sometimes studios don't even have the budget to throw together a basic prototype before they have to start begging publishers for investment bucks, and at that point they have no choice but to deliver the game the publisher greenlit.

[NightNord]

I knew that Ross will hate the room scene

A bit of trivia about Farenheit and Quantic Dreams in general

1. They are the guys that popularized if not invented QTE. So if you hate QTE, you know who to blame
   1. Their later games are a bit lighter on QTEs (mostly reserved to action scenes) and more about dialogue choices, but that's still a staple of the genre
       
2. They basically invented the "interactive movie" genre
   1. Telltale adventures are heavily inspired by Quantic Dreams. So you can blame them for that sub-genre of adventure games as well
       
   2. The Supermassive Games titles are also heavily inspired by Quantic Dreams, especially the part where the story doesn't matter (the focus is the intercharacter drama) and which-of-your-own-legs-you-want-to-cut-off style of choices
       
3. The official genre of Farenheit is the "interactive movie", so it's not really meant to be non-linear (the choices are more like "fail/succeed" and, in case of Farenheit, if you succeed you get a bit more information/plot development)
    
   1. Heavy Rain is a bit more non-linear, but mostly in terms of which characters are going to die (which is what the Supermassive Games are really based on)
       
   2. Interestingly enough, QD are also managed to get closest to the true branching story in Detroit: Become Human. Even though it still has a set of fixed events/scenes, in each playthrough you will only see a 30-50% of them and the shared scenes that happen in every playthrough may have different characters with different roles (sometimes opposing)
      
      Before Detroit the official idea for choices is that you are NOT supposed to replay or reload the game and supposed to just live with the consequences of your choices
      
      In Detroit they changed to formula to showing you the potential story tree with your choices highlighted and explained and other branches left dark/unspecified, but still visible. And the idea is that you are supposed to play through multiple times to get all the variations. But most people still don't do that and only ever see a third of content (which is why most companies don't do that)
       
   3. The idea that you should always be able to progress at least somehow even if you fail everything is at the core of many games, including most RPGs. JRPGs - like Mass Effect or Final Fantasy - do this more directly by simply routing all your choices into the same consequence. Like Farenheit does. CRPGs - like Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Ultima, etc - do this indirectly by providing layers of mechanics and content to make sure you can come out of any situation.
      
      That style of storytelling really predates Farenheit and mostly stems from the fact that most people don't replay the game and people choices are usually normally distributed around "safe" choices. So anything stemming away from those choices is effectively making content that only a tiny portion of the playerbase will ever see - diminishing returns
       
4. The weakest/usually criticized point of all QD games is writing. Because it's heavily influenced by David Cage, who is a director and not a writer. Although after Farenheit they went to more mundane things, it is still more about spectacle and drama than about actual substance. For instance, Detroit is a great game with a great setting and engaging story as long as you are not digging too much into it. If you will, the seams and the writer hand/intent is way too obvious
    
   1. That said, the story of Farenheit was heavily cut due to budget constraints. This explains some of the jagged narattive and rapid spiraling into supermen movie stuff
       
   2. The floating combat is not a stylistic choice, but a technical limitation. The synchronized animation is notoriously hard and it was just too janky with the tech they had to work with. This is also the reason for some over-the-top action scenes - it was just cheaper to do it that way
       
   3. Temperature in Celsius and other oddities with locations like desert vs NY (and many other stuff really) - that's because the studio is French. The only reason why this game set in the USA is the same as with many other European-made games at the time. The main market was USA and the idea was that unless you make the game set in USA the americans won't buy it
       
5. Both Detroit and Heavy Rain were originally PS exclusives because of the deal with Sony. After Detroit success they managed to get out of the deal and release both to PC. The deal with Sony is also why Heavy Rain switched the platform abruptly. Those games are extremely expensive and long to make and both Farenheit and Heavy Rain were not super successful, so they had to rely on the publisher. The Detroit was super successful which allowed them to get off the hook
    
6. There is no Dimension X. The starting set is just the ending set without the background. The background (the lush nature, the hobo camp, the appartment) is set based on the ending. The bugs and other stuff are just nightmares sent by the Oracle to kill you indirectly/by sleepwalking (the nightmares can't kill you) - if you fail the room scene, you'll end up hanging from the balcony and will be saved by your brother

Edited December 25, 2022 by NightNord (see edit history)

[NightNord]

On 12/25/2022 at 9:22 PM, TotallyNotSatan said:

The thing is, though, that when you say that there is latent talent in David Cage you're confusing having cool ideas with having talent. Cage cannot execute his ideas for shit. Why? Because he's well... He's fucking stupid.

I think that's unfair. He has imagination and talent, he just doesn't know how to control them. It's a skill a professional writer or an artists acquire with experience, because you need to write/draw what you are told to, not what you want

David Cage is what people call "visionary" or as it's known in the gamedev industry - "primadonna". Apparently he never had much of a creative constraints and therefore never learned how to structurize and control his imagination - which is a usual case with such people, hence the nickname. I worked under one such guy and despite having a team of 20 (twenty) writers at the later stages, the main story was still mostly incoherent because if the guy with the money wants the dragons here and you'd be damned not to deliver dragons here. Doesn't matter how illogical it is. And the guy wants dragons because it's cool and that's what his imagination generated and he can't force it generate something more fitting

That's one of the things that mundanization of the game development brought - it pushed out such people with wild ideas and brought more professional people who can control their imagination and produce something more coherent. And incidentally something more safe from the perspective of the sales department. So that's also the reason why the high budget gaming industry is so dry with ideas

You need a leash and some creative constraints to make more refined product, but you should always be careful not to totally kill the creativity in the process

[Steve the Pocket]

I assumed the temperature readings were in Celsius because Ross was playing the European release of the game (as evidenced by the title screen not saying "Indigo Prophecy"), which obviously would have used Celsius for localization purposes. 'Course, if you're gonna call the bloody game "Fahrenheit", and especially if it's set somewhere that uses that scale, it's still weird that they didn't have the temperature readings in F in all regions, with the C equivalent put in parentheses next to it.

[TotallyNotSatan]

On 12/25/2022 at 6:43 PM, NightNord said:

I think that's unfair. He has imagination and talent, he just doesn't know how to control them. It's a skill a professional writer or an artists acquire with experience, because you need to write/draw what you are told to, not what you want

He's had 22 years to acquire that skill. If that's not stupidity then I don't know what is.

On 12/25/2022 at 6:43 PM, NightNord said:

And the guy wants dragons because it's cool and that's what his imagination generated and he can't force it generate something more fitting

This is why primadonnas don't get a pass anymore. They are production cancer unless the project is tiny and even then there's the possibility that they sabotage everything once their precious vision is compromised. Cage is just an outlier.

 

[ThatOneDraffan]

Quick note on the fingerprinting comment Ross made in the video, maybe this is an aspect of post-9/11 America, but even though I have no criminal record, myself (and the rest of the school) were fingerprinted sometime in elementary school, so it actually is plausible that the murder weapon would have fingerprints that could be linked to Lucas.

[ScumCoder]

On 12/26/2022 at 9:18 AM, ThatOneDraffan said:

fingerprinted sometime in elementary school

Jesus Christ.

[Ross Scott]

On 12/26/2022 at 7:18 AM, ThatOneDraffan said:

Quick note on the fingerprinting comment Ross made in the video, maybe this is an aspect of post-9/11 America, but even though I have no criminal record, myself (and the rest of the school) were fingerprinted sometime in elementary school, so it actually is plausible that the murder weapon would have fingerprints that could be linked to Lucas.

I was really close to bringing this up, but two things:

1. I'm not sure it's a guarantee the police fingerprint kids and keep them on record so much as chance (that could have changed post 9-11, not sure, but Lucas would be too old for that to be a guarantee).

 

2. The police can't legally use those records as evidence, however, they of course probably would and then find another excuse to find the suspect, like "an anonymous phone call" ID'ing him.  Even then, I'm not sure if that would be state police that would do that or only federal.

On 12/25/2022 at 7:22 PM, TotallyNotSatan said:

The thing is, though, that when you say that there is latent talent in David Cage you're confusing having cool ideas with having talent. Cage cannot execute his ideas for shit. Why? Because he's well... He's fucking stupid. He does not know how to write. It's as simple as that.

I disagree, the beginning is simply too well done.  Also what little I played of Omikron looked really promising, it started off great.  He obviously has a problem with not being able to cross the finish line properly, but that's not the same as being stupid or untalented.  From what I saw, he needs someone with more taste who can say "this sounds great, let's do it" v. "this wouldn't work / doesn't make sense for the story we've started" that would have authority on the project, even if that's probably not something he would want.

 

 

 

[ScumCoder]

@Ross Scott If I have just one criticism, it's that you didn't add mistletoe to the video's preview. That would've been perfect.

[Ross Scott]

On 12/27/2022 at 10:49 AM, ScumCoder said:

@Ross Scott If I have just one criticism, it's that you didn't add mistletoe to the video's preview. That would've been perfect.

I was going to, but couldn't find a good spot to add it that made it look more cluttered since I had the screaming face.

[Th3Dark0ccult]

I like every GD episode, but, boy, this one was especially good.
 From the cop beating his partner senseless, to the David Cage rant *chefkiss

[The Screw]

Man, I loved this game at the start. I played both Lucas and the detectives as well as I could, because playing both sides of the investigation was so interesting. I kept hoping it would go back to that. The airborne fight with the oracle was my breaking point. Even if the game had tried to dial it back after that point, it would have been impossible to take it seriously. I guess that's the David Cage experience.

 

Super Best Friends Play did a playthrough of Omikron. I'm pretty sure it was a contributing factor in the end of their channel and their friendship.

[RocketDude]

I'm surprised you're not that knowledgable about David Cage, Ross, since, uh...he's kinda infamous these days. I won't explain, however, since Fahrenheit has given you a half-correct impression of him. Probably better for you to remain blissfully unaware of the full picture.

[Steve the Pocket]

As luck would have it, New Car Syndrome hit me when I was wandering through the thrift store's book section, and I learned that the "indigo child" isn't just something Cage pulled out of his ass. Rather, he pulled it out of someone else's. It's based on a new-agey idea that kids with apparent mental disorders like ADD are actually the first of a new species of highly-evolved, more spiritually-attuned humans who have, like, ESP and shit.

 

I have no idea how this shapes the narrative surrounding this game, but it was interesting.

[Mira]

Quite a bold move to diss the music so harshly while showing Angelo Badalamenti's name right upfront like that at this time

 

Omikron has a soundtrack by David Bowie but I've never played the game and somehow never heard the music either so I can't say if it fares any better.

Edited December 29, 2022 by Mira (see edit history)

[RocketDude]

On 12/29/2022 at 3:34 PM, Steve the Pocket said:

As luck would have it, New Car Syndrome hit me when I was wandering through the thrift store's book section, and I learned that the "indigo child" isn't just something Cage pulled out of his ass. Rather, he pulled it out of someone else's. It's based on a new-agey idea that kids with apparent mental disorders like ADD are actually the first of a new species of highly-evolved, more spiritually-attuned humans who have, like, ESP and shit.

 

I have no idea how this shapes the narrative surrounding this game, but it was interesting.

Yeah, I forgot to mention this...so when Ross joked about the Indigo Child being "pure of thought," he may have been more on the mark than he realized.

 

On 12/29/2022 at 4:31 PM, Mira said:

Quite a bold move to diss the music so harshly while showing Angelo Badalamenti's name right upfront like that at this time

 

Omikron has a soundtrack by David Bowie but I've never played the game and somehow never heard the music either so I can't say if it fares any better.

 

As I understand it, certain tracks from Omikron are...infamous.