Quote from: Born Of Cold Light on Sep 28, 2015, 12:58:53 AM
Isolation itself wasn't all that intellectual, but it was miles beyond in that regard to the previous first person shooters where everyone was telling each other to stay frosty all the time.
Again, that's more to do with presentation style: Level design, sound effects and so on. It's a repetitive fetch-and-carry/hide-and-seek quest system. It's just presented very slickly.
QuoteWhen I said "intellectual," I was more referring to Prometheus which began to take the series back to its psychological horror roots.
Ehhh... I can't say I found anything about '
Prometheus' successfully unsettling/disturbing/scary.
Quote from: NickisSmart on Sep 28, 2015, 12:30:30 PM
How would you define intellectual? If you view the game as a haunted house in outer space with a monster that has metal teeth, with lots of hiding and screaming, then by all accounts, Alien isn't intellectual, either. But I think it is, and so is the game. The chief difference is one's interactive.
But you're right - '
Alien' very much
isn't intellectual.
Even Scott famously said it wouldn't have worked if the characters hadn't been stupid.
It's a lot more famous for its artistic presentation than an intelligent story.
QuoteIs it wrong to say that the game is intellectual because it understands fear and tension? I don't think it is. Sure they pared down certain ideas and the communication is visual, but so what? Does intellectualism have to be isolated to literature alone, or can it extend into any medium, of any of the 5 senses? Can paintings be intellectual to? I think so. What about subject matter? Prometheus may have had a flawed execution, but it appealed to intellectual, academic literature, including Paradise Lost and Frankenstein.
Artists and symbolism can be intellectual, because there's just as much room for interpretation in literature as there is in paintings. There's no "transcendental signified."
But you're talking about art. For something to be intellectual, it needs to engage or appeal to the
intelligence of its audience. The '
Alien' series is visceral and artistic when at its best, but I'm not convinced it can be regarded as truly intellectual. There are points where it can
feel like that, but it's fleeting and illusionary. The whole point of why '
Alien' succeeded was because it was essentially a B-movie which dressed itself up as an A-lister.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Something doesn't have to be intellectual in order to be good. Many things which
are intellectual can come across as plodding difficult to understand and even pretentious. Having layers of artistic sub-text (mostly in the special effects, not the story they play a part in) doesn't equate to being 'intellectual' - just very talented.