Touhou: Plot or not?

[AxelMill]

Funny how people defending Touhou don't write anything beyond the follwing:
- Stop bashing Touhou
- Read the books for the plot of the game
- You are shit
- Your opinion is shit
- Everything is shit

I would really like to be on your side for once, but I also want the reason to do so.

[chum]

Imagine if you people cared this much about what actually matters. Only secondaries play for the in-game story, Videogames can be a decent storytelling medium (see for example graphics adventure games) but shmups are horribly suited for any kind of narrative or exposition, they're better off doing that whole worldbuilding whatever someone touched on before, thankfully you can skip Touhou boss dialogue with the control key, no harm done.

[d0s]

Friendly reminder that Milestone games have similar in-game dialogs and better artwork than touhou, but you don't see people making threads about it every fucking month.

Better music too

[Strikers1945guy]

Friendly reminder that Milestone games have similar in-game dialogs and better artwork than touhou, but you don't see people making threads about it every fucking month.

Better music too

Yeah the Milestone games have great music. Shame about the gameplay though.

Anyways guys can't we just all get along

If the storyline bits in touhou are skippable then there's really no problem. If they forced you to sit through that then yeah I would be turning that game off pretty fast.

[qmish]

Touhou music was good on PC-98! Though it still always around "high tempo pianos" etc

[d0s]

Shame about the gameplay though.

Oh hell naw

[Shepardus]

Funny how people defending Touhou don't write anything beyond the follwing:
- Stop bashing Touhou
- Read the books for the plot of the game
- You are shit
- Your opinion is shit
- Everything is shit

I would really like to be on your side for once, but I also want the reason to do so.

That's because the people bashing Touhou, aside from Squire and Durandal, have yet to post anything more substantive to defend against than "it sucks because it's bad." It's okay to not like something but when someone says something that amounts to "I haven't actually read any of the dialogue but it sucks," and nobody bats an eye at that, it doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in their opinion. For once let's go beyond the usual circlejerk over this subject, and actually produce some reasoning about what makes Touhou plot bad, especially in comparison to the myriad of shooters that basically have no plot. Even if we were to suppose that the characters are utterly one-dimensional, that's still more characterization than a game with no characters to speak of, so to me it makes little sense to hold that against it.

And yes, you can hold Ctrl to skip past almost any dialogue so it doesn't have to break the flow unless you want it to.

Also you don't need to read the print works for the plot of the game, it's in the accompanying text file that everyone skips over because they just want to play the game (can't blame them) and translation patches typically don't do anything about it.

RayForce

RayForce impressed me in a way Dark Souls impressed me with level design: on each stage you see glimpses of next stage, providing a visual connection between areas which makes feel of progression stronger. It's amazing how in RayForce you go from space stations into planet's atmosphere then fly over cities then going underground etc and for exemple when you are above ground you see how hatches open and from underground factory new mechas appear.

But that has nothing with "plot", though it's part of narrative in a way how action's of player in game is his own "story".

I was trying to get at something like this earlier, RayForce is great and all but I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here when people deride Touhou and uplift RayForce. I'm honestly not sure at this point whether we're talking about the story itself, the presentation of said story, some hazy combination of the two, or something else entirely. This whole thread is making my head spin.

[d0s]

Who is deriding touhou? I don't get why strident fans of the series think not caring about the plot is shitting on the games themselves. The games are good, the music is good, the story is whatever. Who cares? People aren't "deriding touhou" by pointing out that Rayforce has a better told story, the story is the most meaningless part of an STG

[Shepardus]

This whole thread is pointless because yes, ultimately it is the gameplay that matters, that we can agree on. The plot is the topic of the thread, though, so I've focused on that even though I'd much rather talk about the gameplay.

It's one thing to simply not care or to prefer another game's approach (I myself think the story is "whatever" and almost always skip the dialogue), but another to call it "drivel," "pretty shit," "abysmal," or "atrocious" (all phrases from this thread) with little to no indication that you have any idea what you're talking about. That is deriding Touhou, even if it is deriding the least significant part of the games and one that shouldn't affect anyone's decision to play or not to play the games.

[Strikers1945guy]

This whole thread is pointless because yes, ultimately it is the gameplay that matters, that we can agree on. The plot is the topic of the thread, though, so I've focused on that even though I'd much rather talk about the gameplay.

It's one thing to simply not care or to prefer another game's approach (I myself think the story is "whatever" and almost always skip the dialogue), but another to call it "drivel," "pretty shit," "abysmal," or "atrocious" (all phrases from this thread) with little to no indication that you have any idea what you're talking about. That is deriding Touhou, even if it is deriding the least significant part of the games and one that shouldn't affect anyone's decision to play or not to play the games.

Okay so you don't want people to say the story is crap when many people actually don't even read the stuff and just skip it? Fair enough, but what about people like me who hate ANY story in game for shmups? Ibara is the greatest game ever made and if it had story parts inside of the game itself I would be pissed right off.

Backstory is awesome, in game story time... not so much.

[Shepardus]

That's fair enough, I myself don't mind having in-game story bits in my shmups but they better be skippable (like Touhou) or otherwise unobtrusive (overlaid voices like in Astebreed, that yes, you can disable, or limited to the attract mode or end credits like in many games) since these are games you're expected to play many times. No matter how good a story is it's not something I want to see every time I shoot for a new score.

[Bananamatic]

it's unimportant until it's an excuse to shit on touhou

[Doctor Butler]

Who is deriding touhou? I don't get why strident fans of the series think not caring about the plot is shitting on the games themselves. The games are good, the music is good, the story is whatever. Who cares? People aren't "deriding touhou" by pointing out that Rayforce has a better told story, the story is the most meaningless part of an STG

Agreed. The narrative is superfluous - it's whipped-cream on a pumpkin pie. I prefer my pumpkin pie without whipped-cream, because pumpkin pie kicks ass on it's own. The whipped-cream enhances your enjoyment of the pumpkin pie, but it's neither necessary, nor substantial enough to eat without the pumpkin pie.

I want pumpkin pie.

[shoryusatsu999]

it's unimportant until it's an excuse to shit on touhou

At this point, it seems like anything will be used as an excuse to shit on Touhou. Or anything else that's not the forum's resident sacred cows.

Anyway, I do agree that the plots in Touhou games are somewhat meh, what with the frequent appearances of new characters for no good reason, fairly generic threats looming over the protagonists in each entry (except for oddballs like UFO, Fairy Wars and IN) and lack of climactic resolution other than a single spellcard duel. However, the story of the latest incident is not what fans flock around Touhou for. They're in it for the world of Gensokyo and the fanworks.

The world and lore of the Touhou Project appear to be much more fleshed out than most other shmups thanks to multiple official print works like Perfect Memento in Strict Sense and Curiosities of Lotus Asia. However, everything described in said print works and other official sources is still vague enough and subjective enough that it is incredibly easy for fans to create their own stories that take place in Gensokyo and still have them be based on what's canon. That reason alone is probably a big reason why there are so many fans of Touhou, but ZUN basically threw open the fanwork floodgates with incredibly lax terms of use for the world and characters he created. That combined with the amount of time Touhou has been around means that there is a ridiculous amount of Touhou stuff that focuses on lore, to the point that there are fans of Touhou out there who have never seen the original games in action. I completely get why that's the case. After all, who'd want to be stuck looking at ZUN's atrocious art for 5 seconds, let alone half an hour or more?

Now, what I don't get is why some people treat this increased focus on lore as a bad thing, or at least an unnecessary thing. I know that you may care more about the gameplay than anything else, but there are other people out there who think that good game series need more than just good gameplay, and I think that Touhou usually straddles this line rather nicely, with the gameplay being the focus in the actual games and the lore being the focus in the print works, but with hints of the other focus in each side that can be completely ignored and skipped over if you don't want to see them. Due to how crazy the usual Touhou fans seem to be about Gensokyo, though, I think focusing a little more on story than in the past might be the best avenue to getting new shmup players. Sure, the gameplay's likely what will attract the hardcore group, but new shmups need something else in order to stand out from the rest of the genre to the casual crowd, and without the casual crowd to sustain it, the hardcore group will only wither and die as time passes.

Slightly off-topic sandwich: I'd bring up my own suspicions as to why Touhou seems to get a lot of flack around here, but that might be beyond the scope of this thread. If others feel that it's necessary or at least wanted, though, I'm more than willing to share my thoughts on that matter here.

[BIL]

Slightly off-topic sandwich: I'd bring up my own suspicions as to why Touhou seems to get a lot of flack around here, but that might be beyond the scope of this thread. If others feel that it's necessary or at least wanted, though, I'm more than willing to share my thoughts on that matter here.

DO IT. SHOW THEM NO MERCY. (・｀W´・)

[Xyga]

Slightly off-topic sandwich: I'd bring up my own suspicions as to why Touhou seems to get a lot of flack around here, but that might be beyond the scope of this thread. If others feel that it's necessary or at least wanted, though, I'm more than willing to share my thoughts on that matter here.

What does the Touhou crowd expect ?

It's a community in which many (if not most) members are in their 30's or even 40's, raised with 20th century metal and techno culture from the time of roaring technological and sci-fi fantasies, of Japanese productions and around the world, in various media and merchandise forms like video games and in particular one the most noble and pure genres: shoot'em ups.

And you're asking why we find this trend of little girly cutesy pedo crap hysterical fangirls risible ? For most Touhoutards it's not even about the games, I've been to those Touhou communities and it was like walking into another dimension, full of frilly things, fragile teenagers and barely-crypto paedophiles.
As 'shmuppers of yore' we're 99% focused on the games, the rest is annoying merchandize bloat attracting younger males with a desire to play dolls and wear dresses, drool over badly drawn little girls in yukata while listening to hysterical synthetic shrieks impossible to qualify as music of any genre.
And plot ? Seriously is that 10 years-old level dung supposed to be of any interest to an adult brain ?
Yes, there is something, unsettling, creepy about that Touhou phenomenon.

You see at least if Zun would really rework his approach of shmups and innovate, bring real novelty, fresh air to his series, and maybe quit the loli crap for good, maybe then this community would look again at his games.
Every formula becomes boring with time, look around more and moremembers are getting into obscure average shmups that are not Cave or Raizing or whatever popular titles, because we've seen enough and we're bored.

But just to double-confirm an absolute truth: the loli otaku bait shit around the actual Touhou games is of no interest to the huge majority of members, it will never be, it will always be ridiculed on the forums.
If you don't get the cultural gap, whoever reading, you were probably born too late and did not grow up living the 20~30 years this community is all about.
The fact the Touhou fangirls keep coming at us begging for flak also makes the whole thing worse of course, but they'll keep coming and ask for more anyway, maybe they like the spanking ?
I know I'm wasting my time.

[qmish]

many (if not most) members are in their 30's or even 40's

So that's why you hate lolis (not mentioning moes)!

[Xyga]

many (if not most) members are in their 30's or even 40's

So that's why you hate lolis (not mentioning moes)!

Of course taking this out of context you missed the point.

[qmish]

You think so?


And, about music. Ain't Touhou 8 music is something that make you full of energy?

[Xyga]

You think so?

Oh yes.

And, about music. Ain't Touhou 8 music is something that make you full of energy?

It makes me puke from the ears.

[qmish]

If pc-98 2ho music also makes it for you, that's kinda disqualify your taste

[Nameschonvergeben]

Slightly off-topic sandwich: I'd bring up my own suspicions as to why Touhou seems to get a lot of flack around here, but that might be beyond the scope of this thread. If others feel that it's necessary or at least wanted, though, I'm more than willing to share my thoughts on that matter here.

What does the Touhou crowd expect ?

It's a community in which many (if not most) members are in their 30's or even 40's, raised with 20th century metal and techno culture from the time of roaring technological and sci-fi fantasies, of Japanese productions and around the world, in various media and merchandise forms like video games and in particular one the most noble and pure genres: shoot'em ups.

And you're asking why we find this trend of little girly cutesy pedo crap hysterical fangirls risible ? For most Touhoutards it's not even about the games, I've been to those Touhou communities and it was like walking into another dimension, full of frilly things, fragile teenagers and barely-crypto paedophiles.
As 'shmuppers of yore' we're 99% focused on the games, the rest is annoying merchandize bloat attracting younger males with a desire to play dolls and wear dresses, drool over badly drawn little girls in yukata while listening to hysterical synthetic shrieks impossible to qualify as music of any genre.
And plot ? Seriously is that 10 years-old level dung supposed to be of any interest to an adult brain ?
Yes, there is something, unsettling, creepy about that Touhou phenomenon.

You see at least if Zun would really rework his approach of shmups and innovate, bring real novelty, fresh air to his series, and maybe quit the loli crap for good, maybe then this community would look again at his games.
Every formula becomes boring with time, look around more and moremembers are getting into obscure average shmups that are not Cave or Raizing or whatever popular titles, because we've seen enough and we're bored.

But just to double-confirm an absolute truth: the loli otaku bait shit around the actual Touhou games is of no interest to the huge majority of members, it will never be, it will always be ridiculed on the forums.
If you don't get the cultural gap, whoever reading, you were probably born too late and did not grow up living the 20~30 years this community is all about.
The fact the Touhou fangirls keep coming at us begging for flak also makes the whole thing worse of course, but they'll keep coming and ask for more anyway, maybe they like the spanking ?
I know I'm wasting my time.

How old were you when touhoufans killed your parents?

[Skykid]

Shoutout to NTSC-J and Eaglet for two high quality posts.

The popularity of the Touhou mythos has always been a bit of a mystery to me. To an outsider like myself, it looks mediocre. So when I hear that a fan-made series that is then fan-translated is actually really well-written, you've piqued my interest. I'm thinking this is the video game answer to Milton and Dostoyevsky. Then I read:

Stuff gets serious, people die. In one of the more recent series, Reimu straight up kills someone

and it all makes sense again. When the peak of your drama is who lives and who dies, you know what you're getting into. This is like Spider Man stuff. And that's ok, I liked Spider Man when I was growing up, but we're once again running into the "it's well-written, for a video game" thing and I'm just reminded of how far games have to go before they reach genuinely quality writing. It took comics several decades to produce anything that educated readers respect and games aren't there yet.

Just a quick jump-in on the whole debate about subjectivity:

What a lot of people fail to see is that any sort of creative expression has two distinct traits (or factors, depending on how you see it); Art & Craft.
One is entirely subjective (Art) while the other one (Craft) isn't.
Art is the expression the creator wishes to purvey while Craft is the ability to do so.
As expression (and interpretation of it) is subjective in value it's entirely left up to the inidividual to make their judgement on it.
Craft however (as in grammatical structure, vocabulary, knowledge of verse structures etc. for writing and technical ability with an instrument, compositional and arrangement skills etc. when it comes to music) IS objective. Mastery of Craft brings the ability to deepen whatever expression one wishes to portray. Someone with low ability in Craft might use the word "sad" to express whatever a character is feeling while someone with a higher level might use less general and more accurate descriptions like "melancholic" or "disillusioned" to better portray whatever they had in mind.

Now, I can't speak on the level of Craft in Touhou writing as i haven't read the scripts in japanese, but from what i remember of the games story and character interaction it's all just typical childish/teenage drivel with no poignant points whatsoever aside from the sort of "cutesiness" that has completely taken over otaku culture (albeit more subdued than the whole moe-blob thing).
As people have touched on here before, stories and writing in video games are generally pretty shit. Even the ones heralded as containing a great story or great writing are simply lacking the sort of depth that's necessary for me to call it great. What i find to be a problem is when people (because of low expectations or lack of education, I don't know) portray something as being greater or having more value than it actually has. MGS is a great example of this.
If you like the games, fine. If you think the writing is fun, fine. But don't try to give it some sort of deeper value than it actually has because it won't stand up to comparison and just retard general development.


I personally think games are at their best when they focues the most on being what they are (games) and use the nature of the game to portray what (little) story there is.
Rayforce, as people have mentioned before, is very simplistic. But it's well executed and works. A perfect fit for the genre.

[Strikers1945guy]

Slightly off-topic sandwich: I'd bring up my own suspicions as to why Touhou seems to get a lot of flack around here, but that might be beyond the scope of this thread. If others feel that it's necessary or at least wanted, though, I'm more than willing to share my thoughts on that matter here.

What does the Touhou crowd expect ?

It's a community in which many (if not most) members are in their 30's or even 40's, raised with 20th century metal and techno culture from the time of roaring technological and sci-fi fantasies, of Japanese productions and around the world, in various media and merchandise forms like video games and in particular one the most noble and pure genres: shoot'em ups.

And you're asking why we find this trend of little girly cutesy pedo crap hysterical fangirls risible ? For most Touhoutards it's not even about the games, I've been to those Touhou communities and it was like walking into another dimension, full of frilly things, fragile teenagers and barely-crypto paedophiles.
As 'shmuppers of yore' we're 99% focused on the games, the rest is annoying merchandize bloat attracting younger males with a desire to play dolls and wear dresses, drool over badly drawn little girls in yukata while listening to hysterical synthetic shrieks impossible to qualify as music of any genre.
And plot ? Seriously is that 10 years-old level dung supposed to be of any interest to an adult brain ?
Yes, there is something, unsettling, creepy about that Touhou phenomenon.

You see at least if Zun would really rework his approach of shmups and innovate, bring real novelty, fresh air to his series, and maybe quit the loli crap for good, maybe then this community would look again at his games.
Every formula becomes boring with time, look around more and moremembers are getting into obscure average shmups that are not Cave or Raizing or whatever popular titles, because we've seen enough and we're bored.

But just to double-confirm an absolute truth: the loli otaku bait shit around the actual Touhou games is of no interest to the huge majority of members, it will never be, it will always be ridiculed on the forums.
If you don't get the cultural gap, whoever reading, you were probably born too late and did not grow up living the 20~30 years this community is all about.
The fact the Touhou fangirls keep coming at us begging for flak also makes the whole thing worse of course, but they'll keep coming and ask for more anyway, maybe they like the spanking ?
I know I'm wasting my time.

Petition to have this the forum motto please

[Bananamatic]

And you're asking why we find this trend of little girly cutesy pedo crap hysterical fangirls risible ? For most Touhoutards it's not even about the games, I've been to those Touhou communities and it was like walking into another dimension, full of frilly things, fragile teenagers and barely-crypto paedophiles.
As 'shmuppers of yore' we're 99% focused on the games, the rest is annoying merchandize bloat attracting younger males with a desire to play dolls and wear dresses, drool over badly drawn little girls in yukata while listening to hysterical synthetic shrieks impossible to qualify as music of any genre.

that's funny, because the 15 year old weeaboos are more interested in playing their games than this community is

[Skykid]

And you're asking why we find this trend of little girly cutesy pedo crap hysterical fangirls risible ? For most Touhoutards it's not even about the games, I've been to those Touhou communities and it was like walking into another dimension, full of frilly things, fragile teenagers and barely-crypto paedophiles.
As 'shmuppers of yore' we're 99% focused on the games, the rest is annoying merchandize bloat attracting younger males with a desire to play dolls and wear dresses, drool over badly drawn little girls in yukata while listening to hysterical synthetic shrieks impossible to qualify as music of any genre.

that's funny, because the 15 year old weeaboos are more interested in playing their games than this community is

Highly debatable.

They're certainly more interested in singing the intros and quoting the Japanese than watching the anime though.

[Xyga]

Nothing against the shmups and people playing those.
My personal opinion of the franchise again is that it used to be great but the formula is getting old, and probably would gather different people or renew the interest of shmuppers who played the older titles if Zun could make his ideas evolve.

But really no, it's not the games I have a problem with, it's all the weird shit around and the fact fans keep coming bawing we shmups ommunity are mean because we make fun of it, and them.
It's like those 'Im vegan' memes. Stop it.

[Bananamatic]

you should check out the biggest touhou forum's gameplay section, there's strategy discussion on a daily basis

something we have here once a month if we're lucky

[Skykid]

Shmups forum in too casual shocker.

[ARF]

My only gripe with 2hu story is that I wish it had a few more theatrical moments like Yuyuko's last word, Miko telling you to get rekt in the middle of the fight or even stuff like Kaikan TLB appearance. That would make 2hu sooo epic!

Like imagine in LoLK when you go to the moon, instead of a vacated lunar capital with some orb enemies, there's instead a lot of huge ass laser cannons and lots of jedi knight moon people running around on the ground and moon tanks and shit, (SA did good, with rocks falling from the ceiling you actually destroy them with amulets, so great!!!) then when you've destroyed half the capital this super terraforming spider appears and music changes, you're like oh sh*t!!1 Then immediately after the spider has powered up Yorihime appears and cuts the spider in half! Omg she actually the real boss and the music changes again as she says some cheesy one-liner.