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Message: [QUOTE="RustySK, post: 142377, member: 1411"] Oh this is difficult to pin down. Intuitively I'd say it's Gameplay > Visuals > Sound > Writing for me. Gameplay because I generally play games to... you know, play them. Generally speaking storytelling has never been gaming's greatest strength in my eyes and even when a game has a particularly good story, it usually works because it interweaves storytelling with gameplay elements, capitalizing on the unique strengths of this medium rather than because it's remarkably well written. Visuals are important to me, but not in the sense that they need to be particularly impressive or anything, but rather in that they need to be appropriate for the intended experience and atmospheric enough to get absorbed into the experience. Even the "ugliest" artstyle can be appropriate and can enhance a game, depending on context. Sound design is simultaneously super important and also incredibly difficult to appropriately appreciate on its own in my eyes. Ideal sound design is the sort of thing you don't even really notice at all, whereas bad sound design will completely ruin an experience. Absolutely essential, but hard to credit for its successes. Now, a good soundtrack though? Hell yeah, that's just a notch below the visual experience to me in how impactful it can be to an experience - your climactic boss fight can be as visually impressive as you like, without a fitting musical accompaniment, it'll fall flat on its face. Writing is usually something I only really notice when it's egregiously obnoxious to my personal tastes and zone out for the most part otherwise. Maybe I need to lower my expecations even further? Quippy, Marvel-style dialogue; desperate attempts to ingratiate a game to the player or player worship in general; overtly fetish-y characterization - that sort of thing makes my skin crawl. There are exceptions of course! I thought Disco Elysium for example was genuinely really intelligently written even when taking the writing on its own terms. [/QUOTE]

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