Fatale

By: Derek Yu

On: October 23rd, 2009

Fatale is the latest mystical experiment from Tale of Tales. It’s inspired by Oscar Wilde’s interpretation of the biblical character Salome, although, in my opinion, knowledge of the story is not required to enjoy the game. I wasn’t familiar with it before I played.

I think the game captures the spirit of the story very well. I don’t think it’s meant to retell the story, per se, but to give it a certain added richness by letting you explore a few of the critical scenes in interesting ways. It’s worth mentioning that Takayoshi Sato (of Silent Hill fame) did the character design, which is perfect considering the sensual and macabre nature of Salome’s tale. Overall, the graphics and audio are quite good.

I enjoyed Fatale and came out of it thinking about its implications and intrigued by its source material. However, I still feel that it’s a good game that’s shy of great. For it to be great would require more detail in the simulation, which sometimes feels clunky and uninspired. Whereas these flaws might go unnoticed in the games of “seasoned gamers” (a phrase playfully cribbed from the website), in Fatale they really stand out for the simple fact that looking around and taking in the environment is the game’s primary focus.

TIGdb: Entry for Fatale

Posted in Macintosh, Unique / Bizarre, Windows | Tags: TaleOfTales

Anarkex

And by everything I of course don’t mean *everything*. Maybe I’m getting too into this. I’m sorry, guys.
Michaël Samyn

I’ll just add that not everyone agrees with you, Anarkex. Just for your information. Many people (including myself) found Blueberry Garden a wonderful experience. Some people enjoy whimsy and cuteness more than bullet patterns. They are not wrong. Just different.
Paul Eres

yeah, it just sounds like a matter of taste. i play a lot of indie games, both western and doujin games. and i don’t prefer doujin games at all. they tend to have much more polish, and more attention to detail, but lack creativity, experimentation, or variety. for instance, shoot the bullet was a great game, but zun has nothing in terms of creativity and variety over cactus’s shooters.
ctankep

Need to play ICO again, just picked up a PAL copy recently so it’s probably time to blot out some time and dose up; got to break this habit of being such a gaming magpie picking at shiny bits + pieces ..

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However, am finding the term “art game” a bit of a misnomer in that art is predicated on being an “open” system where the participant actively responds to create much of the experience, whilst a game in the classic Huizinga burger sense is all about a “closed” system and enactment of rules as it’s generative force. That’s not to say that one is inherently lesser than the other.! The abundance of bad art and good games speaks volumes.

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As for thoughts on development: it’s worth noting that Ueda’s core team is usually about 10-12 people with other people coming on board later to help with crunching out assets and helping polish. Same with Keita Takahashi at Namco JPN when he made Katamari.

For what it’s worth, I really don’t think a truly creative game would actually benefit from a team that’s bigger than that since delegation brings with it an act of “interpretation” or “translation” of the ideal that may not be beneficial in creating a unique statement.

Of course, this doesn’t explain how people like Kubrick or Tarkovsky are able to get their stuff done with a persistence of vision; without being complete tyrants. Personally, I can’t wait to see more games created by a single person [ respect to Paul Woakes + CC speaker of dragons ] as in theory at least it’ll mean we get more richly nuanced experiences. Unless everybody mindlessly copies each other – ho hum.

Prodigious-ness of certain Japanese game designers is also an inspiration and intimidation. Just thinking of how Yu Suzuki could have come up with the fighting and 3D systems for Virtua Fighter in 1990 without any precedents just melts th’ mind.! I can understand how he must’ve approached it from studying martial arts and applying the Sega-technique of distilling the experiential; however the rest is just some scary talent at work.

Particularly with respect to say game balancing in VF2, and all the emergent complex gameplay [ crouch dashing, Akira’s knee, move buffering ] they managed to eke out of quite a simplistic premise. Suzuki’s frame + hit detection system in VF2 is a thing of real beauty and we just don’t see that kind of ungodly attention or consideration paid to crafting gameplay mechanics in alot of western games.

Perhaps part of this reason is cultural too, for the minutae of game design especially that of fighters is disseminated through magazines like Arcadia, and gets magnified tenfold through application in social and competitive play. One is always testing and teasing out knowledge of game design s in such a situation and this must feed back into the attitude of game creators there.

That said, from speaking to those who have worked professionally in Japan their company and production structures are pretty horribly rigid, so when given the chance I can see how the likes of Ueda, Takahashi, Eno definitely run with things and push hard against convention.

— Chuan
Paul Eres

one point regarding ico’s team size: money goes into more than just team size. it also goes into software, hardware, contract work, paid playtesting, and all other kinds of things, so even given an indie team of 6 people voluntarily working in their spare time with no budget, and a mainstream team of 6 people with ten million dollars at their disposal working full time for a salary, the second team is always going to have the advantage