Jon Blow on Shooting Guys in the Face as a Crutch of Game Design

now I want to know his opinion on System Shock

So so true... Thank you.

I think Roger Ebert, who ironically had a notoriously negative view of video games, said that you couldn't really be a good film critic if you only knew film. You had to be reasonable knowledgable, intelligent, and emotionally mature as a whole to have a good perspective on movies. I'm sure he's not the only one to express that view but it's stuck around in my head and I feel like this is also a good explanation of a similar view.

This is what I feel about all rpg games, especially breath of the wild. 90% you are doing the same thing in all of them, either follow a mission icon or battling 'minions'.

The Catcher in the Rye is a ridiculous book.

Deus Ex games and Metal Gear games kind of bypass this issue by letting you sneak around and not hurt anyone.

I can understand the criticism towards RDR but what did you expect from First 'PERSON SHOOTER'?

The same could be said of all art forms. A shitty book that talks about a womanizer that finally settles with a retarded submissive woman has a very inadequate and mismatching plot-ending dynamic. A shitty movie that shows senseless, long Noir scenes throughout the plot just to show at the end a secene that makes sense creates the aforementioned sense of mismatch.

In hindsight, I guess he's right. Shooting a bunch of ppl in the face and then coming home to a family and sharing a hallmark moment... that's kinda psychotic. lol

Jonathan Blow took a walk, took a walk, took a walk, whooaoaaaaoooo

Games shouldn't be emulating books though. Games should be the exact opposite of a book; something which could never be done in a book.
After all, it would be incredibly stupid to use all this advanced computing technology just to replicate what can already be done by a bunch of lines on a thin sheet of wood.

I don't want to reply to years old comments, but I think the point is if you want to design a game that is about shooting guys in the face, use a setting like doom.
There are a lot of games where killing tons of enemies makes sense, and it doesn't undermine emotional scenes, i.e. Shadow of Mordor, Far Cry 3, maybe ghost of tsushima. Instead there are tons of games where you butcher 20+ enemies, then you talk to a child npc like nothing happened.

I think there is an encounter(or cinematic?) in The Witcher 3 where you help a lady by brutally killing 3 guys, and she escapes from you in fear instead being grateful, which makes total sense. I don't think there is another scene in the whole game like that.

bioshock is the most overhyped game of all time

Mechanics toys are a crutch of puzzle games. Emotionally poignant moments are trivialized when they're locked behind drawing a bunch of silly shapes in slightly different places. Outer Wilds doesn't depend on this kind of crutch.
That said, there's a place for mechanics driven puzzle games, like anything else. I just love to hate Jon Blow.

Bloodborne did it right