Fable 3 case

There is a strong incoherence in latest sequel for Fable saga - Fable 3. In the series the player always had a choice to follow good or bad path and according to what player does his character is going to change their looks and NPCs would also change their attitude towards the character. However, in Fable 3 the evil pathway has been neglected a lot.

Basically, the assumption was that the player needed to overthrow his/her brother, who is an evil king of Albion, and then after becoming a king yourself you have prepare the city to face some evil power. Now this is the overall plan for the game, and it works all right until you try to be an evil character. At that point the game tumbles down into numerous broken pieces.

Firstly the plot is designed only for the "good way" because rationally player has no way to convince people to start a revolution running around killing people and doing generally antisocial things. That just would't work. Also, in the later part of the game there is no way to be a bad king, apparently all of the players deeds lead to saving NPCs. Then throughout the game there are always dialogue lines for the "light side" so people thank the player and generally bless him, no matter what mayhem he does around. Also the ending disappoints and is the same for both sides. This is a strong incoherence in the storyline that happens in a rpg game, what shouldn't happen.

Warhammer franchise case

Another media franchise that is coherent is all the property of Warhammer. This title is strongly connected to convergence culture, because it links together a tabletop game, pen and paper rpg, video games, novels, comic books and so on. It is also split into to time periods: Warhammer fantasy and Warhammer 40k. Which keep strong consistency but develop their own unique elements for example in Warhammer 40k the main selling point is the image of a space marine, a hardened soldier, clad in an insanely heavy armour, wielding a chainsaw sword. In Warhammer fantasy universe the main focus is on the threat of Gods of Chaos, also there is a different main god Sigmar, whereas in WH 40k the main god is the Emperor. Warhammer is ever expanding world the proof of that are Warhammer Online which creates new characters for the IP and new Warhammer 40k pen and paper role playing game. This paragraph talks about coherence between both Warhammer 40k and Warhammer fantasy. In this example again there are two different situations former is a sci-fi universe and the latter a fantasy one. They are unified by some characters and elements but above all a strong art style. The races are very similar to each their respective counterparts from opposing universe, for example eldars are 40ks high elves from fantasy universe, or orcs are space pirates in WH 40k and respectively namadic tribes in fantasy. They can be recognized as their counterparts because of the mentioned art style. Elves as well as eldars wear pointy helmets and orcs wield similar short and broad daggers and respective ragged clothes and armour made out of thrash. Also both universes are influenced by Gothic architecture and recurring elements are skulls and scrolls attached to clothes and armour.

Different types of coherence in games

This post aims to outline some particular types of coherent games.

Case of Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy is a series of Japanese role playing games produced by Square Enix. This is a widely recognisable franchise, even though it has spawned games on different platforms and CGI films and cartoons, all of them can be recognised as belonging to that media franchise. Most of the sequels are supposed to be a separate titles working on their own, with worlds differing drastically from each other, but all of them share similar elements with each other. These elements are the unified game play, usually very similar plots with recurring elements like a group of heroes fighting a great evil or inner struggles of the main character. Also names and items. Iconic things for Final Fantasy would be chocobos or character Sin. Additionally, games have unified art style, and most of the games feature spiky haired characters or big swords and general anime stylization.

Stories that lack coherence

We were assigned to find an incoherent world and my immediate response is any film by Uwe Boll. His filmography is full of very bad films, worlds do not hold together, to mention some examples:Blood Rayne, Alone in The Dark and House of the Dead. All of these films are based on video games, at least average games. Shooting bad films does not touch only this producer, films like Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, Prince of Persia, Judge Dredd and Mortal Kombat also call for revenge.

The most problematic about transferring games to films is completely changing the characters or plot. In Blood Rayne we saw some medieval world although the main character still wore the same skin tight gothic leather outfit from the game that took place during second world war and modern times. Mortal Kombat, the most brutal game for arcades and ends up being rated almost a family film. Mario Bros is also nothing like the game it takes place in some Bladrunneresque city. The directors try to be innovative and change things from good to much much worse. This is not only a gamers nostalgia, the films really do not make much sense. Mortal Kombat changes most of the cast from the first film to the sequel, more than that characters that died in the first film appear in the second (Sub-Zero, Scorpion i.e.). Settings are mostly unmemorable and are set from plenty of overthrown statues and ruins, very generic. There is no plot but multum of fighting scenes separated by Raydens monologues explaining the events, at least in Mortal Kombat Annihilation. House of the Dead is an arcade on rail shooting game with a good survival horror atmosphere. The film was about a rave on an island where also was a house full of zombies. Finally the film turned into a stupid shoot out with techno music in the background. The characters were so credible that if they never existed, viewer never gets attached to any of them and the setting is as generic as it can ever be.

Relation of story to the world

During this lecture we were shown short samples of different films that were the examples how world can create a coherent story. We were told not to underestimate the story nor overfill it because that would alienate viewers from it or decrease the field for imagination.

For instant in Gladiators battle in the forest on the beginning of the film the forest was a metaphor of the threats from Goths and Vandals at that time. This effect was busted with music and cool blue colour scheme. All of that gives the unsettling impression to the viewer and tells him what he/she should feel like.

On the other hand Bladerunner shows a twist on the already existing story of Dr Frankensteins creature, only moving the scenery to the futuristic New York. That is a quite common practice, where story is moved to a different setting or for instance Vampire the fall of Rome where rome is populated by vampires and they drive it to its destruction.

Another example was Tim Burton, very well known director, that creates his own unique style based on goth aesthetics. The examples we were shown were Edward the Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollows. Both films were set in completely different timelines, Edward in modern times and Sleepy Hollow in Victorian era. However, they could be easily linked together because of the similar aesthetics or actors. Therefore, Burton even though influenced by gothic style makes his very own genre. Another director that does the same is Quentin Tarantino although in his example he converged so many genres into his films that it's hard to recognise anymore what the film is. He's broken the idea of genres.

A story also can be shown by different settings when we'll see a victorian palace and a nobleman preparing for the day with a crew of servant, or a cowboy horse riding through the rocky desert we will know that both are costium dramas. However, both of the stories differ with the setting and time.

Chris Goodswens Lecture

The lecturer, Chris Goodswen, is a NUCA alumni now working on his Masters is Dundee - Scotland. He talked mainly about his progress so far at university, how he started off as a 2D concept designer, but realised that he wasn't good enough and transferred onto doing 3D character models. Useful information he passed was that even small studios can success in the industry, on the other hand the deadlines are quite tight and they want generalists than specialists, who are wanted in bigger studios. Apart from tight deadlines the lecturer said that during Masters there is much more writing to do than on Bachelor. The lecture was moderately useful cause Chris mentioned most of the obvious things like that Masters focuses mostly on theoretical studies, but it was good to listen to someone who went through the same path we are going now.