Do you ever feel like modern video games try way too hard to be funny?

Thread Description
Just a place for gamers to vent about bad comedy
Gondolindrim

Gondolindrim

Regular
Regular
varishangout.com
God of War Ragnarok comes to mind. Being a boring movie game wasn't enough I suppose, it needed to have MCU-tier quips all over it's dialogue.

Ragnarok_Ratatoskr_2.jpg



Any other examples you can think of?
 
Video games have tried to be funny since Wizardry and its Blade Cuisinart.

blade_cuisinart.jpg

Source: Pixiv

The amusing thing about Blade Cuisinart is that Japanese localisations of Wizardry completely let the farcical nature of the weapon fly over their head, and mistranslated it as a genuine and serious weapon. One Japanese game company did remakes of the older titles for the Sega Saturn, which had weapon lore, and they gave Blade Cuisinart this elaborate backstory, taking it very seriously, which makes it funnier when you know the truth. Fortunately, younger Japanese users, who are true fans of Wizardry, learned about the joke nature of the weapon, hence the above Pixiv illustration in 2008.

But your OP image just just reminds me of western video games in general. Baldur's Gate had Minsc and his space-hampster companion Boo, and some space trading game (Privateer?) had a newspaper letting the player know that somewhere out there in the galaxy people would race each other, sliding down craggy mountains on their bare buttocks. I guess this stuff looks goofier with the much higher resolution and 3D-graphics, but I personally cannot tell how one would go about differentiating whether the OP game is 'trying too hard to be funny' rather than just 'trying to be funny', which is what video game writers have been doing since time immemorial. Have I been sleeping under a rock and there's been this dearth of funny western games, so there's been nothing but boring titles taking themselves as seriously as the Japanese Wizardry localisations?
 
I would say I do not just feel like that but I see it constantly. Feels like every second game needs long winded dialogue filled with jokes and modern memes to hammer in how creative and funny the writer is.

Like I would not mind if a comedic setting throws some jokes, but usually the setting is either bleak or wants to be realistic but the tone of conversations is more akin to a Marvel movie that needs a round of laughs every few minutes.

Most recent example for that nonsense on my end was to watch someone play that new Guardians of the Galaxy game however that might be called. Was just "wacky" scene after "wacky" scene while trying to have the characters act as if there was any chance for danger or death somewhere while they just behaved like morons.

Though supposedly that falls under humour now if the characters in a story seem legally retarded.
 
I dont know if god of war would fall on the trying to be funny spectrum, at the very least it didnt feel like that to me.

But the reason behind the mcu tier writing is exactly that theyre just trying to capitalize into whats popular its basically the how do you do fellow kids meme all over again. Now to me the problem is that does not mesh well with the rest of the game specially those that try to go for the "realism" stuff.

I think the worst case Ive seen of that is forspoken. We have this character with a sad background trapped in a world she doesnt understand and yet she is cracking (bad) jokes like a 2009 youtuber. It completely destroys the atmosphere and just takes you out of the game.

Using that wizardry quisinart example. It would be like instead of just having the item and having the player react to it. Instead the character or someone else paused everything, looked at the screen with a snide smile and said "hey this sword is named after the kitchen appliances (idk what cuisinart is sorry) isnt that wacky" it takes you out of the story, it makes the character look foolish and it ruins the joke.
 
I thinks it's more a symptom of people entering the industry (especially the writers) that are normie to the extreme and don't understand how to naturally integrate jokes into their works.
But that said I don't mind humor in my games. For a recent example in Atomic Heart there is an early interaction where you need a train ticket and you are talking to a robot. I though that was quite good and I didn't mind it. However you can also go far back into the early days with Kings Quest and it's deaths or Leisure Suite Larry and it's raunchy humor. Both are great and benefit from it. On the Other spectrum the best example I have is the new Saints Row. SR Third was alright, in 4 they started to lean to strongly on it and now in the new one it's this humor that seems like it was written by an AI that was trained on Reddit.
I also however think that a lot of modern games have some suite see how well some games do with "MayMays" as marketing and command the writers to write memable scenes.
 
Modern western games for sure. I can't remember the last time I laughed at one that was released post ~2015 or so. I think a good chunk of it has to do with the whole "safe edgy" genre of humour where you can only tell jokes that feel like toy knives. Also I don't know why but a lot of millennials seem to think humour is consisting of "being as obnoxious as possible" like with Borderlands 3.
More importantly I think is not how unfunny the games are, but the modern tendency that every game has to be either super serious edgy game for MEN or a basically some bullshit with MCU like humour.
A lot of it seems to stem from the fact that, and this is gonna sound crazy, but a lot of M-rated games seem to be actually marketed at kids nowadays so the devs think they have to be fucking shit.
 
Yes. The problem is it's not funny just cringe. Humor is subjective but comedy isn't, what you find funny differs from person to person but the joke needs to be structured correctly to at least make you smirk at it. Comedy writing is difficult and many writers don't have the ability to create something funny so alternatively they make it loud or obnoxious, this might work with children who don't understand but it won't with adults.

It's not about a video game but it has a good explanation of comedic writing and why some comedy works while others don't.

Why is it in nearly every game? No idea honestly.
 
anotherhiki said:
Yes. The problem is it's not funny just cringe. Humor is subjective but comedy isn't, what you find funny differs from person to person but the joke needs to be structured correctly to at least make you smirk at it. Comedy writing is difficult and many writers don't have the ability to create something funny so alternatively they make it loud or obnoxious, this might work with children who don't understand but it won't with adults.

It's not about a video game but it has a good explanation of comedic writing and why some comedy works while others don't.

Why is it in nearly every game? No idea honestly.
Click to expand...
they also try to not offend any shitty social group of crybabies that will start threatening and call for boycotts on twitter. You cannot make a comedy when you are not "allowed" to make fun of anything.
 
They're all trying to copy the "Marvel comedy" going on right now with pretty much everything. The one-liners, snarkiness, wackiness, ruining any type of drama and suspense trying to sound "cool".

There's other type of "comedy" that just irks me to the extreme, like Borderlands is no longer "Marvel comedy", it's something even more obscene, it's just random shit being said and happening with the constant explanation and logic behind every little "comedic" word. "You see this banana? Yeah you're probably thinking I'm going to make a phallic joke, but no man, you're sick, nah, I wouldn't do that, I'm still gonna stick it up your ass" or some retarded bullshit like that.
YakuInTheFlesh said:
I thinks it's more a symptom of people entering the industry (especially the writers) that are normie to the extreme and don't understand how to naturally integrate jokes into their works.
But that said I don't mind humor in my games. For a recent example in Atomic Heart there is an early interaction where you need a train ticket and you are talking to a robot. I though that was quite good and I didn't mind it. However you can also go far back into the early days with Kings Quest and it's deaths or Leisure Suite Larry and it's raunchy humor. Both are great and benefit from it. On the Other spectrum the best example I have is the new Saints Row. SR Third was alright, in 4 they started to lean to strongly on it and now in the new one it's this humor that seems like it was written by an AI that was trained on Reddit.
I also however think that a lot of modern games have some suite see how well some games do with "MayMays" as marketing and command the writers to write memable scenes.
Click to expand...
This, pretty much. Normies haven't yet gotten out of their shell and still have the humor of a 10-year-old. "Random mayhem is funny, haha"
 
immahnoob said:
They're all trying to copy the "Marvel comedy" going on right now with pretty much everything. The one-liners, snarkiness, wackiness, ruining any type of drama and suspense trying to sound "cool".

There's other type of "comedy" that just irks me to the extreme, like Borderlands is no longer "Marvel comedy", it's something even more obscene, it's just random shit being said and happening with the constant explanation and logic behind every little "comedic" word. "You see this banana? Yeah you're probably thinking I'm going to make a phallic joke, but no man, you're sick, nah, I wouldn't do that, I'm still gonna stick it up your ass" or some retarded bullshit like that.

This, pretty much. Normies haven't yet gotten out of their shell and still have the humor of a 10-year-old. "Random mayhem is funny, haha"
Click to expand...
What's interesting to me is that Marvel comedy only seems to get a pass when Marvel does it. Otherwise, they're hit with the Battleborn effect where people are making fun of how hard they're trying.
 
immahnoob said:
They're all trying to copy the "Marvel comedy" going on right now with pretty much everything. The one-liners, snarkiness, wackiness, ruining any type of drama and suspense trying to sound "cool".

There's other type of "comedy" that just irks me to the extreme, like Borderlands is no longer "Marvel comedy", it's something even more obscene, it's just random shit being said and happening with the constant explanation and logic behind every little "comedic" word. "You see this banana? Yeah you're probably thinking I'm going to make a phallic joke, but no man, you're sick, nah, I wouldn't do that, I'm still gonna stick it up your ass" or some retarded bullshit like that.

This, pretty much. Normies haven't yet gotten out of their shell and still have the humor of a 10-year-old. "Random mayhem is funny, haha"
Click to expand...
Pretty much the type of "humor" that people defend by saying that you just do not understand the nuance or the depth of whatever crime against comedy they are committing there.
Forgot the name of it, but is that one weird comedy shooter that had the "Rick & Morty" people involved not pretty much the perfect example for that?
The game feels like it needs to comment on every tiny thing the player does, but usually in the flattest kind of joke tier possible.
 
Arania said:
Pretty much the type of "humor" that people defend by saying that you just do not understand the nuance or the depth of whatever crime against comedy they are committing there.
Forgot the name of it, but is that one weird comedy shooter that had the "Rick & Morty" people involved not pretty much the perfect example for that?
The game feels like it needs to comment on every tiny thing the player does, but usually in the flattest kind of joke tier possible.
Click to expand...
I don't mind lowbrow comedy though, it's the fact that everything has to have it that annoys me. I love isekai, but there's a reason I don't read all of it or watch all of it, I already know what's going to happen just by reading the title. Repetition is the bane of my existence.
I also don't mind if a game picks up this comedy as its main thing, considering that same game (High on Life) pretty much advertised itself as such, so it was made for the retards in the first place.
Gondolindrim said:
What's interesting to me is that Marvel comedy only seems to get a pass when Marvel does it. Otherwise, they're hit with the Battleborn effect where people are making fun of how hard they're trying.
Click to expand...
"Marvel comedy" gets a pass from most of the people playing, watching, reading this type of shit, why do you think it continues to happen? Those that laugh at it in derision are a minority and/or it's more of a symptom of the media being shit for other reasons as well.
 
XKOJM-N6KDI-JFKDL said:
they also try to not offend any shitty social group of crybabies that will start threatening and call for boycotts on twitter. You cannot make a comedy when you are not "allowed" to make fun of anything.
Click to expand...
I agree although I think it's possible to create comedy that is both funny and inoffensive but it's extremely difficult and you have to be a very good writer to make it happen.
Mr. Bean is probably the only example I know of that's funny and I believe is inoffensive but I could be wrong and it offends someone out there.

immahnoob said:
They're all trying to copy the "Marvel comedy" going on right now with pretty much everything. The one-liners, snarkiness, wackiness, ruining any type of drama and suspense trying to sound "cool".
Click to expand...
This is what I don't understand, 4-koma which is just jokes, occasionally has drama, suspense or poignant moments to balance things out and keep you invested in the world and characters, these writers have to be incompetent if they think this type of writing is "good".

Wasn't this style of writing popularized by joss whedon?
 
anotherhiki said:
I agree although I think it's possible to create comedy that is both funny and inoffensive but it's extremely difficult and you have to be a very good writer to make it happen.
Mr. Bean is probably the only example I know of that's funny and I believe is inoffensive but I could be wrong and it offends someone out there.


This is what I don't understand, 4-koma which is just jokes, occasionally has drama, suspense or poignant moments to balance things out and keep you invested in the world and characters, these writers have to be incompetent if they think this type of writing is "good".

Wasn't this style of writing popularized by joss whedon?
Click to expand...
What I meant to say is that this comedy is usually a second thought, the writing's supposed to be dramatic, 4-komas instead do the opposite for more comedic effect.
It's how some people would watch something drama and make quips during the scene to lower the negative emotions happening. I do that when I don't give a shit about what I'm watching instead, for example.

Also yes, Buffy is one of his creations and it has this type of comedy.
 
For me it is less that I mind the lowbrow humour and more that people are utterly obnoxious about it. You have normies spamming the same tired stuff over and over and if you do not agree with them on it being funny they easily become offended. Differing opinions by now often get seen as something outright bad and despicable.
 
anotherhiki said:
I agree although I think it's possible to create comedy that is both funny and inoffensive but it's extremely difficult and you have to be a very good writer to make it happen.
Mr. Bean is probably the only example I know of that's funny and I believe is inoffensive but I could be wrong and it offends someone out there.
Click to expand...
actually I heard this opinion about Mr Bean irl as well
www.quora.com

Is the Mr. Bean character mocking autism? I just find they are making fun of people on the spectrum.

Answer (1 of 5): This question is a double edged sword. You're hinting that Mr. Bean's behaviour is typical of autistic people. I'm pretty sure that's not your intention and in some cases, some people might actually behave like Mr. Bean involuntarily, But the thing is, since it's not typical b...
www.quora.com www.quora.com
 
Been this way in entertainment in general, for as long as its been around thing is with the mcu anything now must be high stakes multiverse franchises or else it will flop. Another reason why, i stick to Japanese entertainment these days not everything is supposed to be the m she u.
 
The problem is not that they are trying to be funny, the problem is it's the "Marvel humour" type of funny, my favourite game is Jagged Alliance 2 which it's full of humour and one liners from characters, but it's done well.
 
what I think is that the current scriptwriters are assholes who copy each other.
but it can also be a consequence of being forced to stretch a franchise to the limit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top