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Things that videogames made you appreciate more

GreyHorace

Member
What are things that were featured in videogames that you developed an appreciation for? To be specific, these are elements that are not unique to gaming such as gameplay, graphics, design, etc. Rather these are elements that can found in other media that you developed a renewed liking for after being featured in a videogame. It could a genre of fiction, a historical period, a lost way of life, etc.

Being a guy with a pretty unexciting life, I'm thankful of some things that an escapist medium like videogames has allowed me to experience and appreciate at my leisure. Things like:

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The Western (Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2) - It's not like I was unfamiliar with the genre. My dad is a big fan of the old John Ford westerns along with the Sergio Leone Dollars trilogy, and I'd watched movies like Unforgiven and liked them. But the genre never really clicked with me until I played the first Red Dead game. Suddenly I could immerse myself in that setting and at least get an inkling of what being a cowboy at the turn of century would have felt like. And the sequel even made things better that I sought out Rockstar Games' biggest inspiration for their take on the genre, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (by far the best Western movie I've ever seen).

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Poland, Slavic fantasy and folklore (The Witcher series) - For many of us gamers, fantasy is a bunch of elements cribbed from Dungeons and Dragons and the works of JRR Tolkien. And Poland was that country the Nazis first invaded in World War 2. How sweet it was when CD Projekt Red came out with The Witcher games and showed the world that Poland could offer entertainment that other countries and cultures could appreciate (the popularity of The Witcher Netflix series should be an indicator). And through their adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski's books we got a glimpse of the kind of fantasy inspired by Slavic folklore that we don't often see.

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The Renaissance (Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood) - As far as I was concerned, this era of history was a time when a bunch of ninja turles lived and created some of the most famous works of art in world. But when AC2 put us in the shoes of Ezio Auditore, we got to see what an intriguing and dangerous place Renaissance Italy really was. Hanging out with bros like Leonardo Da Vinci while fighting off a corrupt church led by the Pope himself, Rodrigo Borgia. I won't claim that the AC games are true to historical fact, but they're proof that learning history doesn't have to be boring.

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The Golden Age of Piracy (Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag) - Like the Renaissance example above, most of what we know of piracy in the Carribbean probably comes from a bunch of Disney movies starring Johnny Depp. Black Flag places you in that era in the shoes of Edward Kenway, who captains his own ship and crew while interacting with some of the more famous buncaneers of note like Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, Charles Vane, "Calico" Jack Rackham and Barthlomew "Bart" Roberts. Sailing the high seas, plundering ships and singing sea shanties. Black Flag is everything you wanted in a game being a pirate.

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World War 2 tactial warfare (Brothers in Arms series) - Most FPS games like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor set in WW2 have in the role of a lone soldier gunning down multiple dirty Nazis. Brothers in Arms disabuses you of that notion, placing you in command of a paratrooper company and commanding them through some harrowing real life combat encounters during the Allied Invasion. Learn to command your troops to lay down covering fire while you and the rest of the squad flank the enemy, just like the soldiers who fought this war for real did. The makers of the game said they wanted gamers to experience the hell of war that the soldiers faced and how they achieved victory through some quick tactical thinking. I'd say mission accomplished.

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Scale (Dragon's Dogma) - Giant enemies in RPGs are not uncommon. But Dragon's Dogma was the first game where I felt the enormity of the monster I was trying to kill. You weren't stuck at the ground level hacking away at it's knees. At times you had to climb the behemoth itself in order to defeat it, which made every victory earned and satisfying. I wish more games took this approach.

So those are things I learned to appreciate because of videogames. What's yours GAF?
 

GreyHorace

Member
Definitely music, I've opened myself to many new music genres I was ignoring in the past (like electronic music or ambient).
I can relate. There are lesser known artists whom I'd never even heard of until I'd heard them in game's soundtrack. Guys like Twin Shadow in GTA 5 or MGMT in NBA 2K. I mentioned Black Flag before, and some of the Sea Shanties are really fun to sing along to and of course, the ending has Anne Bonny's beautiful rendition of The Parting Glass.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Herbalism and alchemy, mining and smelting.
 

xrnzaaas

Gold Member
I can relate. There are lesser known artists whom I'd never even heard of until I'd heard them in game's soundtrack. Guys like Twin Shadow in GTA 5 or MGMT in NBA 2K. I mentioned Black Flag before, and some of the Sea Shanties are really fun to sing along to and of course, the ending has Anne Bonny's beautiful rendition of The Parting Glass.
Don't get me started on the shanties, I've bought AC Rogue mostly because to hear more of them. The first week when I played Black Flag I was humming them in my mind almost 24/7. ;) And of course I've spent way too many hours on the sea ignoring the storyline and all the other stuff.
 
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Daymos

Member
Music. In high school I was into heavy metal, at 40 I'm into yasunori mitsuda.. it's weird but some of the music in xenoblade2 takes me to the same level of emotion as Metallica, ozzy, and megadeth, figure that one out. Nobou Uematsu (final fantasy) kicks the hell out of most modern music, which isn't saying a whole lot.

Secondly I guess I would say anime. I never watched anime until I met a girl who did and I quickly found out that my love of JRPGs matched up so perfectly with Anime that it was like I already knew half of the plotlines.
 
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PanzerAzel

Member
Red explosive barrels.

The overall creative process I suppose. How it’s nigh miraculous how so many people can come together and bring a vision to fruition boggles my mind, especially when it’s on such a massive scale such as TW3 or RDR2.
 
I made a thread about the music I delved into because of video games last year.

When it comes to other things: Chernobyl and other abandoned places, after having played S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.
 

AtlAntA

Member
Having free time. Not feeling the shackles of employment to stay alive. Ofcourse it's all a fantasy like most games. But it's nice to pretend sometimes.
 

Aion002

Member
Exploring, you know, going in to forests, hills and other places that I never went and can't go on real life.


Every time I have to take the highway I look at the view and imagine: if this was a video game I would stop the car and just explore things on foot.

The best thing about FFXV was just that, stopping the car and exploring places at will... When a new Rockstar game is released I do that for a long time, their worlds are so well built...

Lately, I am doing that on Death Stranding, it is smaller, but it's really unique.


However the world of the game must be well made... Not like some Ubisoft games like Watchdogs, where everything is so generic and uninteresting.

I wish I could do that on real life, but Brazil is dangerous and unfortunately I have no time for that...
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
Japanese culture. When you play games that have heavy Japanese influence, like JRPGs, you notice how colorful and cheery the culture is. It’s just very fun and happy and inviting, and I like it. It’s made me want to always visit Japan.

The fact that the journey can be as important as the destination. You find this a lot in games where the meat and potatoes of a game is the stuff you do in the middle. Leveling a character or collecting things or finding weapons or secrets and advancing different areas of a game. Maybe leveling up armor and weapons. Then once you complete a game you have a sense of sadness rather than fulfillment, because the journey is what you enjoyed most, and I think in life you need to appreciate the journey as much as the destination.
 

Nero_PR

Banned
Made me appreciate that I never had to fight in a war.
Lowkey the best answer here. My country has no military prowess, so if we get a WWIII anytime soon, we are fucked. I just really appreciate the globalization phenomenon in general. War seems more and more meaningless as time goes by and we learn to live in constant contact with other cultures.
 

Nero_PR

Banned
Exploring, you know, going in to forests, hills and other places that I never went and can't go on real life.


Every time I have to take the highway I look at the view and imagine: if this was a video game I would stop the car and just explore things on foot.

The best thing about FFXV was just that, stopping the car and exploring places at will... When a new Rockstar game is released I do that for a long time, their worlds are so well built...

Lately, I am doing that on Death Stranding, it is smaller, but it's really unique.


However the world of the game must be well made... Not like some Ubisoft games like Watchdogs, where everything is so generic and uninteresting.

I wish I could do that on real life, but Brazil is dangerous and unfortunately I have no time for that...
Good luck going out of your house during the late afternoon and later in Brazil. I don't live in some super dangerous city like Sao Paulo or Rio, but I'm not dumb going anywhere on foot after 19:00. The time I spent in some other countries (US, Canada, Japan, Italy is not safe at all like my aunt told me :/) and not having to see a sea of properties covered by giant walls everywhere just serves to show how we all live so afraid of criminality as a whole. I love my country, but it is unnecessarily dangerous.
 

Aion002

Member
Good luck going out of your house during the late afternoon and later in Brazil. I don't live in some super dangerous city like Sao Paulo or Rio, but I'm not dumb going anywhere on foot after 19:00. The time I spent in some other countries (US, Canada, Japan, Italy is not safe at all like my aunt told me :/) and not having to see a sea of properties covered by giant walls everywhere just serves to show how we all live so afraid of criminality as a whole. I love my country, but it is unnecessarily dangerous.
It's no man's land in some places and at some hours.

Doing college at night and going home after 10 pm on foot at SP, it's like a mix of Silent Hill with GTA Online... This was 10 years ago.... Today I wouldn't dare.
 
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Nero_PR

Banned
It's no man's land in some places and at some hours.

Doing college at night and going home after 10 pm on foot at SP, it's like a mix of Silent Hill with GTA Online... This was 10 years ago.... Today I wouldn't dare.
I pray for you to never need to do something like this. Nowadays there is no safe place at night. 10 to 15 years ago I could cross the the Downton to the suburbs of my city by foot with no real danger. Today I could cross two or three blocks and get my wallet and phone stolen and lose my life because of it. People from 1st world countries can't really believe that phone theft here can be profitable, but I tell you, actually it is.
 

Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
Culture Japanese

For showing games beyond imagination, always with messages of hope and with orchestral soundtracks. Compared to the western games that I think don't have that creativity and it's just blood, sex and bullets.



God Bless Gravity rush saga and Gravity rush 2 more because their side quest have morals he has given about pet care, family forgiveness, loving fidelity and respect, the fight against addictions, the importance of study, self-improvement.


that is why I play the games to 100%, not like ignorant youtubers or video game analysts idiotics who only try it for 1 hour and give a ignorant opinion.

More, God Bless Japan Studio and NIntendo
 
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MaestroMike

Gold Member
Reading. barely read any books as a kid, but RPGs and video game magazines def developed my reading skills (650 on reading for SATs :) ) also kept most of my friends and I out of trouble growing up
 

TUROK

Member
Not quite what you asked for, but my dad adored RDR2. Said it reminded him of growing up in Mexico. He must have put like 400+ hours into it, which I never would have expected from my pops.

Hell, I hardly ever put that much time into a single game, SP or otherwise.

There's a lot to be said about a game's ability to immerse you in other worlds.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Shooters.

If it wasn't for these kinds of games, I would have never learned about real life guns. I'm not even pro-gun. But after playing Call of Duty you get to know the guns. No doubt it's videogame-ized, but still fun to know, and then compare against wiki articles and YT videos of people shooting them for real.

And those red dot scopes were just like real life when I shot an M16 with red dot.
 
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donfonzie

Member
I like how video games allow me to have experiences that would not be possible. I could be a magic wielding dragon in space, who is also a detective and knows Kung Fu, if I want to.

The possibilities are limitless.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
I got interested in the works of H.P Lovecraft after I played Bloodborne. I knew of Lovecraft before, but other than a couple of movies based on his stories, I wasn't that familiar with him or his themes.

Bloodborne changed all that. I began a deep dive into everything that he had written, reading his novellas and consuming all the media that revolved around him and his works, from movies to books to games and biographies.

I'm very fascinated by his Cthulu mythos and everything that is inspired by it. Great horror writer and far ahead of his time.
 

DonJorginho

Banned
Video Games essentially taught me music in a way, I came from a musical family and always had talent but never really done much with it, but after playing Silent Hill 2 back in my childhood I went back and found the song Promise and set myself that song to be the first to learn on the piano.

Now I am doing music much more often, creating beats for money and have even sold some to semi-high profile artists, and none of this would had been possible without gaming.
 
Death Stranding.

I ended up starting a new game about 15 hours in as the impact on the environment by other players structures really destroyed the beauty of the Icelandic scenery (I wonder if that was Kojimas intent. Heres help, but at a cost).

The OST by Low Roar really helps me slow down and relax.





For all the years Kojima got away with the ludicrous nonsense that is MGS2 -4... for those same Kojima fans and "journalists" to turn around and call DS pretentious...
 
Life. You get one life, lots of things to do in it, and you play videogames. Seriously, as I Buddhist I think about death a bit here and there, but yet I sit and play games day in and day out. Not preaching or anything, that's my honest answer. At the moment of my death, my Rocket League rank won't be of any help (I wish it did lol).

Again, not preaching, as I believe videogames are a truly creative artform and can help us through life. Art is life.
 
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lock2k

Banned
Swimming.

Whenever there's a pool and water level I love to jump in and swim. And experiences like this after the 32bit era made me crave swimming irl
 

Fret Runner

Member
That music can be simplistic and still be some of your favourite tunes/soundtracks.
Older games/Final fantasy titles etc.

FF music is one of the main reasons I started playing guitar. I liked listening to each instrument in the older midi tunes and playing along with each part.
 
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