Squinky

...and then proceeds to tear it to shreds in blog form.

It's long. I apologise. Still, I think it might interest some of you.

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Squinky is always right, but only for certain values of "always" and "right".

Jatsie

Such a landmark event deserves at least one reply, so here I go.

I liked The Longest Journey, but I must agree with you about the dialogue. If I like a game, I'll talk to everyone I can, about everything I can, I really like to immerse myself in the story, and that comes through character interaction. With TLJ the characters were just wind bags, which would be fine if what they were saying was worth listening to, but half the time whatever was being attempted just fell flat on its face. The whole "let's be edgy and have lesbians that speak explicitly" thing, only served to gain my contempt.

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"Jatsie is amazing." - Jazhara

"My mental image of Jat is a gentleman sitting in a leather armchair, wearing a robe. The light in the room is dim and strangely he's not sitting in front of a computer, but next to a small, round table with a box of cigars on." - Jelena

XerxesLetifer

I did find the dialogue a bit tedious at times (one particularly long piece of exposition by a priest in Arcadia springs to mind), but I can't help but hold TLJ in high regard.

I found it about a year ago discounted to about $10, and I thought the price was worth giving the adventure game genre another try (I had been burned by the likes of Starship Titanic and Necronomicon). A couple of months later, when I actually got around to playing it, I immediately became absorbed in the story. I loved the contrasting settings of the dirty but comfortable poorer areas of Stark, contrasted with the sterile high technology of the affluent upper reaches, and the simple, earthy qualities of Arcadia.

Playing the game reawakened the joy I had felt during the time when "computer game" was practically synonymous with "adventure game". As a result, the number of adventure games I have purchased within the past six months has surpassed the number of games I have ever previously owned of all other genres.

The game is not perfect, but it will always be special to me.

Marek

This is not really a response to your opinion, but there's two things to point out: Ragnar Tornquist studied (and so presumably lived) in the US for some time, so he's had the opportunity to learn about the country. He also wrote the script in English, not Norwegian, though I do believe English is his second language.

Anyway, that's all.

Squinky

Ah. The lesbians-obsessed-with-sex thing. I'd heard about this, and as I was playing, I thought about a concept I've heard consistently in various university courses called "out-group homogeneity". That is to say, when a lesbian talks about sex all the time, a lot of non-lesbians take it to mean that all lesbians are obsessed with sex, whereas if said person were a member of a majority group (e.g. a straight man), they'd just think of this person as an individual who just so happens to be obsessed with sex.

I don't know how much time Ragnar has spent hanging out with GLBT people, so it's hard to tell if he meant to imply that all (or most) lesbians were perverts, or if he just wanted a perverted character in there who just so happened to be a lesbian. In any case, people who talk about their sex lives ad-nauseum annoy me in general (just as much as that Burns Flipper guy did, with saying the eff word in pretty much every sentence and all); however, I'm going to give the game the benefit of the doubt here and assume that lesbianism wasn't put in for the shock value.

You make a very good point, which leads me to wonder exactly how much time Ragnar spent in the US, what area(s) he lived in, and which cultures of people he interacted with. I guess it just struck me that his command of sarcasm and idiomatic language in general was a bit off when it comes to things that people belonging to an American artsy subculture would say, and just didn't deliver that same atmospheric oomph that someone like, say, Tim Schafer would write.

Still, it might not specifically be an ESL thing, but more of a generally bad writing thing. (Or rather, more of a "writing with a sense of humour that doesn't suit Deirdra Kiai's tastes" thing.) In either case, I look forward to seeing whether his writing style's improved at all in Dreamfall.

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Squinky is always right, but only for certain values of "always" and "right".

After a brisk nap

I find the criticism of TLJ's sex talk a bit hard to fathom. It's clearly reflective of real life, in that there are people (both gay and straight) who insist on discussing their sex lives in excruciating detail. Is it possible to have been a regular on this forum for any length of time and yet find "gay person makes sexual innuendo" implausible?

I agree with the general point about Euro-takes on US settings. For me, the most blatant offender in this regard is Runaway. I would tend to give TLJ a pass on this, though (I've only played the Norwegian version, so would you care to point out some parts you thought were "off"?), both because it's set in a future that has seen some major political and cultural realignments (as made more clear in Dreamfall), and because the location of Newport is somewhat vaguely defined. I don't think it's ever explicitly stated that it is in North America.

Wikipedia knows all. He spent three years at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and another year working for a game studio before returning to Norway.

I think comparisons to Tim Schafer are a bit apples-to-oranges-y, since Schafer has mostly written stylized, comedic dialog, while I think Tørnquist is going for greater verisimilitude. People I know come closer to talking like the characters in TLJ than to the characters in Full Throttle. Of course, how people talk in real life isn't necessarily the best model for dramatic dialog. Joss Whedon has two of the best ears for dialog in Hollywood, but that doesn't mean that how the characters in Buffy speak is anything like the speech patterns of real teenagers.

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Jatsie

I'm going to disagree with you here. In my experience with the media, a character is never gay unless there's a reason. When a "normal" character in any production is being created, they're automatically straight. It's only when the sexuallity of a character becomes intrinsically important, that they become gay. This is self evident here, the character is a lesbian, and thus flaunts her lesbianism mercilessly.

If we look at April Ryan, as far as I can recall she doesn't engage in any heterosexual relationships throughout the game, so why shouldn't she be a lesbian? Well she isn't, because her sexuality isn't important to the story, so she's straight by default.

I didn't really buy the whole lesbian situation anyway, lesbians in general, and especially those in committed relationships, just aren't that crass, lesbian bed death anyone?

To me, the whole situation just said "I'm trying to be in your face and provocative", and could have been handled better.

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"Jatsie is amazing." - Jazhara

"My mental image of Jat is a gentleman sitting in a leather armchair, wearing a robe. The light in the room is dim and strangely he's not sitting in front of a computer, but next to a small, round table with a box of cigars on." - Jelena

ozzie

I played recently the first two chapters of TLJ again and I remember that the first time through it I didn't even realize that much that the border house owners were lesbians.
Okay, I played the german version, so the dialogue may be toned down.
At least Flipper doesn't use the word "fuck" at all.

But all what the one woman said (forget her name) was that Mickey had nightmares and couldn't sleep all night. Maybe there were some more subtleties, but, hm...

And I disagree that she is just a lesbian because she talks about sex (if she does in the english version...).
Ragnar posted on his blog that some characters in Dreamfall were gay, but didn't threw it in your face (I guess he meant some guys/girls in the Fridge Cafe).
Also, Emma talks much more and openly about sex, but she dates guys. Strange, huh?
You might believe that created characters are automatically hetero until it's clearly stated otherwise. I guess this depends on the writer, but it definately can't be generalized.

And I'm the most surprised that there are so many complaints about it in TLJ while Fahrenheit had a much more stereotypical portrayal of a gay person (afaik at least).

Squinky

Well, I kept hearing their general location being referred to as "America" several times (don't know whether that's in the Norwegian version or not), and usually when people say "America", they mean "the United States".

I'd actually figured that in the future there would be changes in culture/politics, but as I said in my blog, it was a little bit confusing to tell because of the late 90's pop culture references. (Something about "Kodak moments" was mentioned, as I recall, along with a load of other things.) Then again, once I've actually played Dreamfall, I'll be able to formulate a more informed opinion.

I'd probably have to actually go back and find more specific parts of the game that bugged me, so I'll do that later, if I get around to it at all.

The media, to me, seems to do nothing more than portray the prevailing beliefs of society. Hence, I don't think it's the media you should be blaming.

Maybe she's asexual. She never does have inner monologues about wanting to boink anyone, after all...

Now you're the one who's stereotyping. I've met as many perverted lesbians as I have prudish ones.

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Squinky is always right, but only for certain values of "always" and "right".

Jatsie

I'm not blaming anyone, it's merely an observation.

Yes I was, because I was being satirical.

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"Jatsie is amazing." - Jazhara

"My mental image of Jat is a gentleman sitting in a leather armchair, wearing a robe. The light in the room is dim and strangely he's not sitting in front of a computer, but next to a small, round table with a box of cigars on." - Jelena

Wormsie

Fiona told in some detail how she mad met Mickey and fallen in love with her - but I think it was possible to miss that conversation.

Judging from Ragnar's blog posts he most certainly doesn't want to portray lesbians in a bad light, but I do think he wanted to shock/annoy with an openly sexual non-straight character, and at least in Squinky's case it looks like he succeeded.

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Fairygdmther

I dislike it when someone of any sexual persuasion talks incessantly about sex. I feel it is something that is inherently a private issue, and not a subject for general discussion. I feel that Ragnar hit us over the head with Fiona's discussion, but at least he got it right.

The American (USA) straight male's fascination with lesbian sex is that lesbians mimic male/female sex by using a phallic device, and enjoy being watched. This is the porn view, and highly unrealistic. Ragnar portrayed two (though mostly Fiona) realistic lesbian women, although one is very verbal. Fiona never hit on April, IIRC. She was flirtacious, though.

Fiona is warm, supportive and obviously very sexual, so her constant sexual banter bothered me less than that idiot Zack(? whose apartment was across from April), who was a bully.

<off topic>
Good-natured flirting can be fun as long as no pressure is being applied. I've enjoyed, for instance, much of the flirting in the chat room in this forum, though others obviously have not. The particular sexual orientation bothers me not at all. We have a significant minority of gay males here, and I'm glad to see that the gays and straight guys seem to get along well, unlike what I've seen in real life. If we have any lesbian females here I have been unaware of them, so I can't comment.</off topic>

While TLJ is considered a 'classic', it is also 8 years old, and needs to be viewed through that perspective. It is by no means perfect, yet it gives us a gauge to measure other games by. Yes, the rubber float/key puzzle was terrible, and yes, the eternal exposition by the minstrum was done poorly, but the game had many parts that pleased most of us.

The characters were developed, seemingly real, not paper-doll cut-outs. You may not like them, but they had realistic personalities. The story was epic in proportions, and many don't like that kind of story, of saving the world, but some do like them. The Stark/Arcadia dichotomy was well expressed, each having its own advantages/disadvantages; they weren't just pretty painted scenes, in Myst style.

In your blog, Squinky, one poster, in his/her discussion of the unexpected heroine, used only Ragnar's and Benoit Sokal's characters as examples of the female protagonist. While the use of females to 'save the world' is a more recent device, this concept, the 'everyman', is a good expository device for the reader/player. This enables those who have no prior experience in that particular field to gain knowledge along with the protagonist. It is a common literary device used well in games, to make sure that no one is left behind.

All that being said, I have enjoyed reading all of your adv game discussions, Squinky, as they are well thought out and informative. Keep up the good work!

FGM

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Erwin_Br

But if you look at it within the context of the game: She wasn't exactly talking about her sex life to complete strangers. I mean, it was a private conversation.

--Erwin

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Squinky

This is true. I didn't mean to say the conversation wasn't realistic (I thought it was, really), but that if I actually talked to someone like Fiona in person (and I have, I'm sure), I'd probably get annoyed with the constant sex talk. This is because I, myself, am a private person, though I realise that others might not be.

Thanks, FGM!

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Squinky is always right, but only for certain values of "always" and "right".

Fairygdmther

Erwin - yes it was definitely a private conversation among Fiona, April, you, me, and roughly 3 million others! LOL

Seriously, though, what did it do for the game? If it was April's life, well, you could argue that it went toward character development, but Fiona was a minor character. I agree with Wormsie about it being for shock/annoyance value, or to show how 'hip' they are.

FGM

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Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson