(07-09-2023, 07:28 PM)Albicacore Wrote:
The world of SWAT 4 is a reproduction of the real world. It's very utilitarian, these are cops after all. The digital world of Swat 4 is like a model of our own. The buildings you breach with your team don't feel like video game buildings with cordoned off sections to funnel you to the boss, they feel like actual layouts of a building. They are designed like they would be in real life. A loading zone at the back of a convenience store leads to a storage area which leads to a staff area and register. It's all very convincing.
Something I find interesting is that there is an explanation for the way you get each blueprint. For the convenience store you get the real blueprint from the owner, for the bar you get an off duty bartender's approximate drawing on a napkin. Each story is believable.
SWAT4 is a very cool and very interesting game. It's probably some of the best use of incidental detail in a video game. Very elaborate and well thought out without drawing attention to itself like later games, including the later works of this very developer. Things like AUDIO LOGS, passwords to locks scrawled in GIANT letters on walls, extremely staged and attention grabbing scenes which all but SCREAM what happened here at you but aren't TELLING you so the video essay dictums are technically being obeyed. SWAT4 is a game which
shows rather than
tells without being a gigantic faggot about it. Actually quite rare. For an example of what I mean, I can't remember why but I was discussing Dishonoured with people recently.
This is related to what you've said and I've said above, this doesn't look natural (you could say one character is like this but EVERY DESK in Dishonoured looks like this), it looks retarded, busy with detail because they're showing off. It also relates to what I said about the newer Resident Evil games. You're meant to interact with certain objects on this desk. Can you tell which ones? You might be able to guess if you look close. Then imagine this for every room in the game. Like Resident Evil glowing outlines and pickup prompts are made necessary by the excess of high fidelity clutter. SWAT4 doesn't have this problem both due to restraint and not demanding fine interactions with small objects.
Other thought on SWAT4. It's very faithful and restrained on this end. Real. The violence might seem excessive, and also the police restraint laws. It's a kind of exaggeration of reality on these levels and I can tolerate that just fine. Where things get silly is in the stories of the levels. What's happening and why. The buildings and interiors are a kind of virtual social realism.
But the stories are also social realism. And by that I don't mean this game is held back on story by its adherence to reality. By that I mean the stories are a neurotic Jew's caricature of American society. A couple of minor ethnic scuffles and gang fights justify a couple of levels, highly organised white guys doing Michael Mann stuff are a few more, then for the rest of the game you're fighting an out of control wave of RethugliKKKan Crime Squad raids against the liberal institutions of are democracy.
These guys are not Michael Mann fans. We didn't just stop North Hollywood. These guys are a Catholic militia who raided a university to stop genome research. Now, Catholic Militia who dress like Heat characters and wage paramilitary crusade against bug-science is actually an awesome idea. But which is it? Are we hard social realism with a bit of exaggeration and style? Or is this Predator 2 America in which every group has an insane Saints Row gang armed to the teeth to represent them in street warfare? What it is is SWAT4 America. In which every race except blacks has a problem element who make trouble, and whites make the most trouble because they are entitled and don't like change. Stay safe America. 6 million dead from RethugliKKKan retribution in the last decade.
As you can see from the above screenshot the level we're in is very pretty and well realised. A bit of exaggeration within such scenes would be perfectly nice, but the overwhelming bias within these exaggerations becomes laughable very quickly. Or at least did for me. On the whole I would still call SWAT4 an exceptional example of realism in video game architecture. But a flawed whole because it was written by 2000s American liberals with the writing headed by a woman.