tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post3622231216851020398..comments2023-11-05T07:27:43.837-05:00Comments on Narrative and Technology: Cup of Death and Chrono TriggerAdamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post-39273246206539877372012-03-03T22:52:28.620-05:002012-03-03T22:52:28.620-05:00Even at the start, it would be good to be more cle...Even at the start, it would be good to be more clear about why Chrono Trigger is especially interesting in relationship with Cup of Death.<br /><br />While you aren't exactly providing a definition, it's interesting to note how you define interactivity in terms of an ongoing or repeated relationship with a text or artificat. It's interesting already; formalizing it further might ahve benefits (I think there are arguably philosophical dimensions to the importance you're placing on repetition here).<br /><br />You use "interactive" in a very difference sense when you start talking about Chrono Trigger ("interacting" with characters. It's confusing!).<br /><br />Too much of your discussion of Chrono trigger is tautological - a game with multiple decisions has multiple decisions. Maybe talking about it in terms of the *experience* of playing multiple times (at least in the sense of dying and restarting/reloading) would clarify what you're actually trying to say here.<br /><br />In the last paragraph, you give in even further to tautology, by celebrating interactive works for being interactive - but you're vaguer than before, getting away from the idea I thought I detected earlier (and at least sporadically throughout) that repetition, doing and redoing, engaging and reangaging, is at the heart of what *you* mean by interactivity. That idea is swallowed up in vagueness at the end.<br /><br />What this most needs is to be rewritten around your working definition (which I might not even be right about!) of what interactivity is in the first place - or at least interactivity as far as it is useful/valuable/etc. You repeatedly fall prey to doing some fairly uninteresting summarization - and yet there's potential here in the idea of embracing doing and redoing something as a different kind of experience. I'd like to see you articulate that and bring it to the forefront. Writing more clearly about the experience of playing Chrono Trigger, rather than summarizing the experience that one *can* have when playing it, might be very helpfu.Adamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post-80177451038459954622012-03-03T10:15:19.585-05:002012-03-03T10:15:19.585-05:00I think your main point is in your second to last ...I think your main point is in your second to last paragraph. "Perhaps you want to figure out how to access an alternate ending, want to perform sidequests in a different order, or even want to change the past and save a character’s mother during a critical scene. All of this is possible due the interactive nature of the medium." I like this point and it strengthens your argument about Chrono Trigger being interactive, but simultaneously shows how Cup of Death is not lacking in this type of interactivity.<br /><br />Perhaps to take your idea to the next level you could touch on what we talked about in class, maybe introducing the idea of thinking critically versus thinking operationally, parallel to the idea of making decisions that affect short term and long term scenarios.<br /><br />As for quotes, I'm not sure that I could identify a place that you necessarily needed them, and perhaps for a paper of this kind they are unnecessary.Kira Scammellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04911668186820364330noreply@blogger.com