Song Accompaniment
I consider my last three posts as meditations on the function of 'disposable' art in relationship to memory construction, and characterization. They have been partially about uplifting generally 'disposable' artistic experiences. Consider this the final raid boss post on this topic.
I'm going to be as blunt and straightforward about this before I move on. I think the Frog Detective series would have been much better if it adopted a full on episodic approach before popping its 'finale'. I said the exact same thing about Liar Liar 2, its good but a bit too soon for it to be a capstone.
This is a very bold and startling view of mine but I think if we look at the popularity of Sherlock Holmes in the 1920s, western cartoons, and radio shows we get a different picture. Two of my favorite western shows are My Little Pony and Home Movies. The Frog Detective series taps in to a similar pro social approach to solving problems that MLP presents, and the slow social awkwardness that Home Movies depicts. These examples are all popular and memorable, with MLP still having a strong aspect of memory within it's creation. All of these example build up their audience over years, presenting them with specific charming social dynamics that really flesh out their cast before finally after many episodes freeing them via an ending. Yes it makes sense to free them at some point, The Simpsons and Family Guy are great indications of the inevitable flanderization that happens if you never do, but if you have an enjoyable world you should be free to explore it for a while.
That said, we shouldn't pretend that this has never been done before in videogames. The defunct Telltale had a lot of examples with this with their successful Walking Dead series and, more endearing to me, their 3 season run of Sam and Max. With that said nobody has reference a scene from the Walking Dead episodes in years and I can tell you immediately three really amusing gags from the Frog Detective series and only like 2 across the 2 seasons I played which is like 10 (I didn't bother with the 3rd season it looks pretty bad) games to Frog's 3. This is probably in part because of how forumalaic and quip focused the Sam and Max style by design is. Regardless, low overhead 'episodic' games have been a process in hibernation ever since the liquidation of Telltale, but if anything the excitement people had around those titles should cause people to be more interested in taking up that mantle and running with it.
Any dev is free to abandon their own series or patterns for whatever reason. That said it should come as no surprise that the first 2 games in the Frog Detective series were development projects mainly with the goal of getting used to the engine. This is obvious once you take into account the size and number of internal spaces in each episode. Episode 1 has no buildings and is small. Episode 2 has buildings but no way to enter them. Episode 3 has several quite lush internal spaces. Frankly the introduction of internal spaces in this episode was incredible but I think effected the writing and puzzle design. Since this was the first game with an internal space I hadn't really thought to explore around and look for things to pick up, this is partially probably a result of Detective's highlighting aura for interactable objects remaining the same despite the slightly more complex poking and prodding for items. On top of that, what made some of the dialogue work was the fact the characters were so clearly isolated as clear outside actors so the humor didn't quite express properly (though I think there are less lines during the case overall to with a stretch towards environment ambitions and a lush finale which makes this feel like the least funny of the 3 episodes overall).
Yes, I thought Frog Detective was good, I thought Liar Liar was good to, but they both ended abruptly and early. My friends have made remarks before about how I seem to over consume games, the reality is that I'm often replacing the 'comfort' of a long running show with an interest in the authorial penmenship of a specific developer or how people mod around a game that came out (various interpretations of Undertale for example). While this for the most part works for me, this is in part because there's no long running episodic games at the moment. A lack of reiterating on your own characters in a followup piece is going to cause a chain reaction of people to go back to MMOs and other online multiplayer games instead of being able to see comfort in individual smaller episodic games. It's hard to make this point stick forward but people often take away comfort best from small individual experiences that build over time. This is one of the reasons why television has been so successful to begin with.
You could say that maybe I'm a little too frustrated with this but the other issue here is that this is part of why remakes have been churning. What we apply as nostalgia is instead just having a comfort memory where we want to grab that pattern again and explore a tale through it. Gamers have been mainly taught to care more about gameplay than narrative, meaning that they will just play the same old tune with better graphics (hence the commercial popularity of remakes). The only reason this is the case though is that games like Frog Detective haven't been done more and don't go on for long enough. I would like to have considered the Frog Detective series as a wake up call to devs that people will long for episodic cozy experiences, but unfortunately the fact that this is likely the last game in the series makes me believe it'll take a while until that's fully realized.
I was genuinely excited about Deltarune Episode 1 when it dropped because I was under the impression over the next couple years, that we be seeing an episode spontaneously ever year or so. Not the case, apparently its now closer to every 2 years which I imagine is in large part because of how the overhead on the development side has bloated.
I recently made a list following the Wholesome Direct releases that you can find here I realized after I was done that sure a majority of them look endearing. Even Frog Detective was on there. How wholesome can you be when you show me a small world and then don't take advantage of everything that can be done with it? When I remember A Short Hike a game I genuinely love I smile over how much I liked it, but then afterwards I get kinda sad. I don't have a lot to work with on the characters or the story. It gives me the incredible world and treats it as a 1 time resort I can come back to be never shows me anything beyond that. It creates this sense of futurelessness, everything that I experience with the characters is momentary and I wont know them well enough when its all over.
I didn't get that with MLP, while the show ends in a way I'm not fond of, MLP gave me a rich historied world with a dynamic cast that I got to know in depth over the course of 70 hours across 8 years of production. With comparatively little overhead for each episode. I remember and could tell you more about a character like Fluttershy than a lot of novels I've read. It's not all about me and what I want, but I think there's something to be said for the idea that there is something being squandered both financially and emotionally by not sticking to a great cast for at least a little while longer. No wonder Nintendo is so hyper dominant, they have the good sense not to mess with their cast too much but they have large overhead so they have to make concessions towards mechanical iteration. In my view the best way to attain indispensability for 'comedic' or 'lighthearted' art is to take this and just make the characterization a little more rich and develop something ongoing beyond just mechanical depth.
Give me Homestuck, give me Yakuza, free me of the crushing abruptness of videogame characterization. We don't need any more mechanical depth, good writing is lagging out hard under the weight of ambitions. When am I gonna feel like I've been around a character long enough that I feel I know them? I'd rather jump the shark than hop out of the pond early.
I consider my last three posts as meditations on the function of 'disposable' art in relationship to memory construction, and characterization. They have been partially about uplifting generally 'disposable' artistic experiences. Consider this the final raid boss post on this topic.
I'm going to be as blunt and straightforward about this before I move on. I think the Frog Detective series would have been much better if it adopted a full on episodic approach before popping its 'finale'. I said the exact same thing about Liar Liar 2, its good but a bit too soon for it to be a capstone.
This is a very bold and startling view of mine but I think if we look at the popularity of Sherlock Holmes in the 1920s, western cartoons, and radio shows we get a different picture. Two of my favorite western shows are My Little Pony and Home Movies. The Frog Detective series taps in to a similar pro social approach to solving problems that MLP presents, and the slow social awkwardness that Home Movies depicts. These examples are all popular and memorable, with MLP still having a strong aspect of memory within it's creation. All of these example build up their audience over years, presenting them with specific charming social dynamics that really flesh out their cast before finally after many episodes freeing them via an ending. Yes it makes sense to free them at some point, The Simpsons and Family Guy are great indications of the inevitable flanderization that happens if you never do, but if you have an enjoyable world you should be free to explore it for a while.
That said, we shouldn't pretend that this has never been done before in videogames. The defunct Telltale had a lot of examples with this with their successful Walking Dead series and, more endearing to me, their 3 season run of Sam and Max. With that said nobody has reference a scene from the Walking Dead episodes in years and I can tell you immediately three really amusing gags from the Frog Detective series and only like 2 across the 2 seasons I played which is like 10 (I didn't bother with the 3rd season it looks pretty bad) games to Frog's 3. This is probably in part because of how forumalaic and quip focused the Sam and Max style by design is. Regardless, low overhead 'episodic' games have been a process in hibernation ever since the liquidation of Telltale, but if anything the excitement people had around those titles should cause people to be more interested in taking up that mantle and running with it.
Any dev is free to abandon their own series or patterns for whatever reason. That said it should come as no surprise that the first 2 games in the Frog Detective series were development projects mainly with the goal of getting used to the engine. This is obvious once you take into account the size and number of internal spaces in each episode. Episode 1 has no buildings and is small. Episode 2 has buildings but no way to enter them. Episode 3 has several quite lush internal spaces. Frankly the introduction of internal spaces in this episode was incredible but I think effected the writing and puzzle design. Since this was the first game with an internal space I hadn't really thought to explore around and look for things to pick up, this is partially probably a result of Detective's highlighting aura for interactable objects remaining the same despite the slightly more complex poking and prodding for items. On top of that, what made some of the dialogue work was the fact the characters were so clearly isolated as clear outside actors so the humor didn't quite express properly (though I think there are less lines during the case overall to with a stretch towards environment ambitions and a lush finale which makes this feel like the least funny of the 3 episodes overall).
Yes, I thought Frog Detective was good, I thought Liar Liar was good to, but they both ended abruptly and early. My friends have made remarks before about how I seem to over consume games, the reality is that I'm often replacing the 'comfort' of a long running show with an interest in the authorial penmenship of a specific developer or how people mod around a game that came out (various interpretations of Undertale for example). While this for the most part works for me, this is in part because there's no long running episodic games at the moment. A lack of reiterating on your own characters in a followup piece is going to cause a chain reaction of people to go back to MMOs and other online multiplayer games instead of being able to see comfort in individual smaller episodic games. It's hard to make this point stick forward but people often take away comfort best from small individual experiences that build over time. This is one of the reasons why television has been so successful to begin with.
You could say that maybe I'm a little too frustrated with this but the other issue here is that this is part of why remakes have been churning. What we apply as nostalgia is instead just having a comfort memory where we want to grab that pattern again and explore a tale through it. Gamers have been mainly taught to care more about gameplay than narrative, meaning that they will just play the same old tune with better graphics (hence the commercial popularity of remakes). The only reason this is the case though is that games like Frog Detective haven't been done more and don't go on for long enough. I would like to have considered the Frog Detective series as a wake up call to devs that people will long for episodic cozy experiences, but unfortunately the fact that this is likely the last game in the series makes me believe it'll take a while until that's fully realized.
I was genuinely excited about Deltarune Episode 1 when it dropped because I was under the impression over the next couple years, that we be seeing an episode spontaneously ever year or so. Not the case, apparently its now closer to every 2 years which I imagine is in large part because of how the overhead on the development side has bloated.
I recently made a list following the Wholesome Direct releases that you can find here I realized after I was done that sure a majority of them look endearing. Even Frog Detective was on there. How wholesome can you be when you show me a small world and then don't take advantage of everything that can be done with it? When I remember A Short Hike a game I genuinely love I smile over how much I liked it, but then afterwards I get kinda sad. I don't have a lot to work with on the characters or the story. It gives me the incredible world and treats it as a 1 time resort I can come back to be never shows me anything beyond that. It creates this sense of futurelessness, everything that I experience with the characters is momentary and I wont know them well enough when its all over.
I didn't get that with MLP, while the show ends in a way I'm not fond of, MLP gave me a rich historied world with a dynamic cast that I got to know in depth over the course of 70 hours across 8 years of production. With comparatively little overhead for each episode. I remember and could tell you more about a character like Fluttershy than a lot of novels I've read. It's not all about me and what I want, but I think there's something to be said for the idea that there is something being squandered both financially and emotionally by not sticking to a great cast for at least a little while longer. No wonder Nintendo is so hyper dominant, they have the good sense not to mess with their cast too much but they have large overhead so they have to make concessions towards mechanical iteration. In my view the best way to attain indispensability for 'comedic' or 'lighthearted' art is to take this and just make the characterization a little more rich and develop something ongoing beyond just mechanical depth.
Give me Homestuck, give me Yakuza, free me of the crushing abruptness of videogame characterization. We don't need any more mechanical depth, good writing is lagging out hard under the weight of ambitions. When am I gonna feel like I've been around a character long enough that I feel I know them? I'd rather jump the shark than hop out of the pond early.
Erato_Heti
1 year ago
Also I should note that there are arguable 'mechanical' reasons for the episodic approach not to have seen much use, particularly in the lack of canonical ending dynamism from episodic structure and a sense that none of your actions carry over. I think frog detective does subtlely rebuff both. I think people are completely okay with sacrificing ending control for comfort experiences (similar to knowing a protagonist has 'plot armor' not being an issue when watching a show). Notebook stickers players flourish saving over from 2 to 3 shows that you can acknowledge player actions in previous games in subtle ways.
Episodic is not the way that this needs to be done of course, there's a way to satisfy the player with a great characterization in just 1 game, Night in the Woods is a great example of that. On the whole though I think the lack of operations around this idea is symptomatic wider misallocation of resources by devs.