Since you usually say that the theme and story is superfluous in relation to the game, would you say that, while keeping all of the combat systems, we change the theme of the souls games to be, say, My little pony: friendship is magic themed, they would be just as good games?
I actually discussed a sort of joke mod for dark souls of this variety with friends recently, except I said it should be themed like modern warfare with them swinging long barreled guns instead of swords, and stabbing each other with glocks instead of daggers.
I also discussed making a game where the cutscenes were literally cuts of Citizen Kane, or where they would introduce completely nonsensical or contradictory plot points, like alluding to things the player had just done that had never happened, bringing up central elements of the plot that previously did not exist, providing information contradictory to the layout of levels or the events in the stage. Remark on the player’s use of a weapon (recording the actual weapons the player used and always choosing the wrong one, such as saying you used an axe if you used a sword).
I think it would be a cute message. It would show how the game’s narrative isn’t necessarily consistent with events as they play out.
As long as it is clear what the current game state is, and all the elements of the game are consistently and identifiably represented, it does not matter what those elements consist of. If you represent poison (the effect which drains your health slowly over time) consistently as electrical sparks in all of its instances, it doesn’t matter if you name the effect “fred” in-game, players will learn it and remember it (and probably just call it poison), much like they do with poison in every other game its been introduced in. A lot of games name common concepts weird things and are somewhat remembered for it. There’s a TVtropes page for that. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallAHitPointASmeerp I still call any projectile in a 2d platformer game that moves in an upward arc an “Axe” after Castlevania.
When I first got into Brawl modding, I swapped out EVERYTHING, as many character textures and models as I could. I tried to have every character have at least one new thing to them, and tried to swap out every stage. I’ve done similar things in dark souls, oblivion, and skyrim. I don’t genuinely care.
At most I can say that using the MLP horse models in dark souls would look a bit awkward on the humanoid rigs. Otherwise, as long as everything is clear, it’s the same shit. Otherwise we might well have an existential crisis switching from higher to lower graphics modes and vice versa.
Have you actually watched Citizen Kane? For all you know its plot might perfectly fit a rhythm game.
I have seen Citizen Kane actually. I thought it was a good film, and it’s really obvious how it influenced the medium, even without a background in the topic. Of course I looked up its innovations afterwards, many are less obvious. I thought it would be funny to make a game, like a rhythm game, that blatantly had no relation to CK, but used CK’s footage as cutscenes. You could compare it to the Great Gatsby game someone made in flash. I think the “Citizen Kane of Games” to most people represents the breakout moment when a game will finally show everyone else how to tell stories using games that aren’t stilted and awkward, borrowing from film conventions, in the way that films borrowed from theater conventions originally. I think we’ve already discovered all the techniques for storytelling in games that we’re going to, what other means of conveying information in a game format are there? I think I’ve explained previously why I don’t think gameplay and story will ever be perfectly in sync.
