Where The Water Tastes Like Wine Camera

Back in my college days, I would always treasure my pocket-size reunions with high school friends during break. In these go-togethers, rowdy college stories were the commodity amidst my friend grouping and blessing laughter was the currency to exist exchanged. But storytime was ever feet-inducing for me; even with my own wacky and gonzo adventures and experiences from being thrown in a new setting with colorful characters, I always felt that I could never do these stories justice with my own lack of oratory skills. When I played the Where the Water Tastes Like Wine port for Nintendo Switch, I kept thinking dorsum to my trepidation virtually storytelling during that time in my life.

In this take a chance game by Dim Bulb Games and Tranquillity Forge, stories are literally the commodity that the player seeks out to collect and eventually expend. While I adore the concept of the game, which absolutely succeeds in artfully depicting a Great Depression-era America, I had difficultly reconciling with how stories in Where the Water Tastes Like Vino are used as resource.

My realization in those higher days was that a "sequence of events" and a "story" are unlike units—an effect can be turned into different types of stories, depending on who is telling information technology and how they tell it. Stories are versatile and modular, and even with the successes of Where the H2o Tastes Like Wine in creating an atmosphere, I lamented by how rigid storytelling was in this experience.

I had difficultly reconciling with how stories in Where the Water Tastes Like Vino are used as resources.

For those unfamiliar with the game's premise from its original 2018 release, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine has the histrion as an anonymous traveler, who loses a game of cards confronting a wolfman and is bound to travel across the entire U.s. of America from East to West to collect stories. What plays out is what one could telephone call a "walking simulator," equally the actor controls a skeleton holding a bindle traveling on foot, with some opportunities for hitchhiking and train rides.

The game environment emphasizes the open up fields, the hills, the mountains, the railroads, and the occasional industrialized city—images of Americana and the culmination of manifest destiny. Original folk tunes with full lyrics blare in the background, and the player can make their character whistle to the tunes to pace faster. Players will stop by houses and other indicated spots in the environment, witnessing events or participating in bizarre incidents written by a number of authors in the games industry. The prose carries a feeling of grit, matched with the narrator'due south gruff recital.

I had particularly been looking forwards to playing this game specifically on Nintendo Switch. In my head, I had built up the idea that Where the Water Tastes Like Wineon a portable console could be akin to reading a short story collection book, something that I tin can agree while cozied upwardly in bed. While the atmosphere and prose drew me in and briefly led to me that this idea of mine would come to fruition, this Switch port had one ultimate downfall for me: the text was much too pocket-size. In portable manner, these stories were uncomfortable for me to read and would lead to actual headaches, and I was shocked that this port didn't continue the Switch'south size in mind. It'south a simple flaw, and not the only game that suffers this upshot on Switch. Only it is an event that snowballed, equally my slight frustration with the game'southward mechanics exacerbated as I delved deeper into the "storytelling portions" of the game.

This Switch port had one ultimate downfall for me: the text was much too small.

After amassing a number of anecdotes and strange tales, players volition somewhen encounter named characters on their journey; they are vagrants, weary travelers looking for rest and solace. Their source of solace turns out to be stories, and they'll request that you tell them a specific type of story. Perhaps they will want to hear about topics like family or love, or they may seek a specific mood or emotion from your stories, such as sadness or joy. Regardless, they'll show approval and satisfaction to your telling of the story, and in return, they'll open upward and offer you their own personal life stories and recollections.

The story that the thespian chooses will exist picked out of a bicycle, which divides up the stories they've clustered into a number of tarot bill of fare-like thematic categories. They'll be reminded of what these stories are almost from a 1-line descriptor, although depending on their memory and how oft they're on the game, the player might not exist able to recall what the center of the story was (at to the lowest degree, this was my own experience). Your swain traveler may appreciate the story or not, and the thespian will be given chances to requite a "correct story."

This is where Where the Water Tastes Like Vino begins to break for me. The player doesn't necessarily get to come across or heed to their grapheme retell this story and is simply told that your character recites it. Storytelling is a complicated art form, 1 where cadence and disposition can make all the deviation. Perhaps there is a story in the game that could be twisted or tweaked so that while the events may non be what your campfire companion is exactly looking for, it could exist told in a manner that fits the mood they are seeking. Stories are malleable and shift based on who is telling them, but to turn them into objects and to shift storytelling into something transactional felt contradictory.

To have something as organic, blithe, and unpredictable as storytelling into something coded and programmed would be a difficult feat to reach, and I'g happy that Where the Water Tastes Like Wine exists every bit a starting point, at the very to the lowest degree.

It is a difficult balance to play—how does one exactly plough something every bit organic and freeform as storytelling into an interactive video game, as a product? I found myself running into the same frustrations that stopped me from playing games similar L.A. Noire, which I felt was less about figuring out how to handle situations on your own but instead choosing the one strict pick that the game wants you to choose. I felt that my logic was constrained, and I didn't have the liberty to think equally myself in sharing these stories and was cornered into figuring out what the designers had in mind to move forward.

There is no shortage of meta-fiction that tackles storytelling equally a concept: the classic example is, of course, Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, which explores how different people can call up an consequence in ways that slant their own prejudices and agendas. There's a reason why the "Rashomon effect" is a real phenomenon, every bit different perspectives will view and retell the same sequence based on the fashion their brains take in pieces of information. And so there is something like Tim Burton'south adaptation of Large Fish, which has an bilious father with a penchant for telling his life story in a alpine fashion at the heart of the film.

Where the H2o Tastes Like Vino is a cute and ambitious video game, only it feels hamstrung past the requirements of the medium. To have something as organic, blithe, and unpredictable as storytelling into something coded and programmed would be a hard feat to accomplish, and I'm happy that Where the Water Tastes Similar Vino exists as a starting bespeak, at the very to the lowest degree.

For now, at to the lowest degree nosotros can experience the joys of our very own game of storytelling amid friends and drinks.

Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/where-the-water-tastes-like-wine-switch-impressions-editorial/

Posted by: harrisonourch1959.blogspot.com

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