Considering the fact that my mind has been all over the place in the past few weeks whilst getting this dissertation together, I felt that I was finally progressing in a better direction during today's tutorial session with Annabeth.
Despite the fact that we have narrowed it down to video games since my presentation (Instead of attempting to cover all forms of media, though they still could be briefly written about within the dissertation), there are definitely a lot of areas that can still be discussed upon from there.
I was gently reminded that it should be the acting that I must analyse in this dissertation (A good reminder seeing as I tend to go off topic way too easily), and not the premise of the story (Granted, that can be mentioned if it adds to my argument), otherwise, I should simply be focusing on screenplay writing than acting in animation.
Other games that I was referred to are 'Eternal Sonata', 'Ni No Kuni', 'Shenmue', 'Team Fortress 2', 'Ico' (Seeing that it was also mentioned in Ed Hooks' book), 'Shadow of the Colossus', 'Journey' (Unique for their lack of dialogue), and particularly, 'Thomas was not alone' (Regarded as one of the most uniquely empathetic indie games around, the game is unique for its minimalistic approach (Think "The Dot and the Line"), which makes one question just how far they can remove you from that emotional marker. The quality of the movements of these 'characters' give off a special sort of performance hardly ever seen in most games. But another question that comes to mind is whether the voice over contributes far more to the game than the animation does?
I should definitely focus on more recent game titles (Seeing as I have to show how far games have come along as well as how much more still needs to be done before they can reach the same level as empathy as contemporary animations in other medias), but old game titles from past consoles can also be briefly mentioned in a background write up on the progress of games.
While I do believe that there are a few good examples where games with heavy dialogue can still tell a good story, exposition is still considered a no-no when it comes to successful storytelling for games (And quite frankly, not many can pull it off).
All these indie games tends to lead to another interesting question, about why is it that independent game developers are much more successful in producing as compared to major game studios, while both types of studios definitely have their hits and misses, indie games are faring much better when it comes to presenting games as works of art as compared to bigger studios.
Another game that Annabeth referred me to was 'Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons', which could be use as my argument against Ed Hook's statement due to its quality acting and performance. These following games have a more unique style to them and are necessary for comparison with more realistically styled games. And while 'Heavy Rain' and 'Beyond: Two Souls' have already been listed under my list of references, I feel that it is necessary to have a much more thorough look into Quantic Dreams' works due to their specialty in motion capture technology and heavy focus on dramatic narratives (And so 'Fareneheit' and 'Kara' also comes to mind by this stage).
I also still feel that interviewing Ed Hooks (Or at least asking a few questions) would benefit me in my research, to see how much his opinion has changed since his book was first published. The only issue I am presently dealing with at the moment is figuring out how to properly word what it is that I wish to say to Mr Hooks, while I disagree with some of the things that he has written, I most certainly do not want to come off antagonistic in any way. In the meantime, I definitely still have a lot more books to read up on, but at the same time, I should probably consider what questions I should actually ask before I run out of time.
