[HN Gopher] Truths about video game stories
___________________________________________________________________
Truths about video game stories
Author : Tomte
Score : 218 points
Date : 2021-10-31 07:26 UTC (15 hours ago)
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| [deleted]
| vjancik wrote:
| This author seems to have never played a game with an actual good
| story. You can tell from his comparison of game stories to
| movies.
|
| How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour
| narrative?
|
| This article grossly overgeneralizes stories in games and ignores
| the unique storytelling device that is a "game".
|
| A good book doesn't necessarily make for a good movie and a good
| movie doesn't necessarily make for a good game (and the other way
| around, as we've seen over and over again).
|
| This article seems like a self-congratulating piece by an indie
| developer for being an indie developer.
|
| Good for you. That doesn't mean AAA studios can't make a good
| game story, same as big budget movies can have a compelling
| story.
| [deleted]
| ketzu wrote:
| I didn't get the same impression as you about the author.
| Especially later points sound like they played games with good
| writing and most points are just "many games" points.
|
| Personally, I have seen and played games with 100 hours of
| playtime - none had a _story /narrative_ of 100 hours (edit:
| most of it was "filler" aka gameplay without much
| narrative/story).
|
| I also agree with many parts of the article regarding bad
| stories overall, despite playing some games with good stories -
| or stories I felt were good when I had little exposure to video
| game stories.
| Cybiote wrote:
| I've played many of the author's games and consider them to
| have better stories than most. I'd have to reach for the likes
| of Planescape or Disco Elysium to find something I'd consider
| more compelling.
|
| As you imply, there are many games whose brief summary might
| sound weird, cheesy or cliche but are actually very well
| crafted story experiences when played. For me, some would be:
| Life is Strange, Soma, Deus Ex, Human Revolution, Alpha
| Centauri, Alan Wake, Control, Quantum Break and Detroit Become
| Human.
|
| Then there are the Soul Reaver games with middling stories but
| whose written dialogue and delivery easily put them at the
| level of great literature for me.
|
| Storywise, some of the author's games would not be out of place
| if ranked highly amongst such a list. It's like Berkson's
| paradox, his studio has had staying power but you certainly
| couldn't point to graphics or unique game mechanics as
| explanations for why.
|
| >This article seems like a self-congratulating piece
|
| I'd go as far as to argue the author undersells his abilities.
| His RPG world building and stories are a great deal more
| entertaining if compared to many fantasy books.
|
| > That doesn't mean AAA studios can't make a good game story,
|
| They could but rarely do. Meanwhile, the majority of those few
| attempts get workshopped to death (it's easy to tell when a
| game with potential got derailed in this way). The author isn't
| saying good game stories don't exist, only that they're rare
| and most often from smaller studios.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > (...) his comparison of game stories to movies.
|
| > How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour
| narrative?
|
| Not only the length makes video game stories different. Another
| huge difference is that in video games you actually get to _be_
| the character(s). You don't just passively experience the story
| like in a movie or a book, you're an active part of it. Even
| better: you can have the player make meaningful choices that
| affect the plot, which is something unique to games as a
| medium.
| bananamerica wrote:
| You don't get to be the character, you get to control it
| within very narrow constraints...
| ddingus wrote:
| This is all up to the player.
|
| In SSX, they broke that wall by referring to the characters
| as riders we identify with, explicitly challenging the idea
| of them being characters we pretend to become.
|
| Other titles do that, but that was the first one I noticed
| the distinction made in an overt way.
|
| People are all over the place on this too.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Exactly. And even if you don't have any real choices to make,
| you still get to experience the story as _your story_ , not a
| tale.
|
| The author would probably think I'm a lunatic for it, but I
| consider the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare trilogy to
| have _a good story_. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and unlike with
| other shooters, and even though it followed multiple
| characters simultaneously, I was able to suspend disbelief
| enough to experience it as if it was _my story_ , my world.
|
| The writing of CoD: MW 1-3 would probably be considered a
| passable military fiction by most critic, if even that. But I
| bring this particular example up, instead of say Mass Effect
| trilogy, to highlight the unique aspect of videogames: it can
| make you _live through a story_ , which neither books nor
| movies can. It's a distinct kind of experience.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| You can enjoy a story without the story being particularly
| innovative or good. That's why twilight was popular.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> it can make you live through a story, which neither
| books nor movies can. It 's a distinct kind of experience._
|
| SOMA is a great example of this; It could maybe also work
| as a movie or book, but the FPS perspective fits the story
| and narrative so good that it elevates the whole thing to
| its own unique experience.
|
| A VR version could turn this to 11, but sadly any work on
| that seems to have fizzled out.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Mass Effect storyline is really nice but if it was put into
| a movie format it would be a generic scifi flick without
| emotion. A lot of time is needed to develop the characters
| and the details possible more than what TV viewers would
| have patience for but because its a video game it means you
| get breaks from the narrative because yuou live the story.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Its show dont tell in movies.
|
| Its act dont show in games.
|
| Alot of the traditional writers never grasp, that the game
| mechanics are the plot and story.
| nottorp wrote:
| > How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour
| narrative?
|
| Larger numbers are better? Let's take as an example the
| criticaly acclaimed Ghost of Tsushima. If you ask me, it could
| have been half as long and exactly as good if not better. There
| was too much identical padding to reach your 100 hour
| "narrative".
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Doesn't matter, because the vast majority of players just tune
| out the story. As long as you let them skip past it, it's fine.
| There are a lot of people out there who have put hundreds of
| hours into World of Warcraft, myself included. If you quizzed us
| all on World of Warcraft lore, 99% of us would get an F-,
| guaranteed.
|
| Doesnt compute. Not only the above particular tidbit about Wow is
| his own personal perception, but also the longer you game, the
| more you get bored of 'pew pew' and you want something that
| actually is memorable.
| bombcar wrote:
| I played WoW for almost a decade and the only story I remember
| with much clarity is that of Pamela.
|
| Otherwise things happened quest objectives lit up and I think
| Arthas married Thrall or something.
| VortexDream wrote:
| I used to be deeply immersed in Warcraft lore. WoW helped me
| kick that habit, ironically. I think though if the game had
| good stories told well, more people would be interested in
| paying attention. And people _are_ interested in WoW 's
| story. Or else there wouldn't be as much squabbling about the
| latest way in which Blizzard butchered the story.
|
| FFXIV shows how much many players _want_ to care.
|
| Some of my favorite story-based experiences in gaming were in
| an MMO (The Secret World).
| bombcar wrote:
| MMOs are uniquely suited to a particular type of
| storytelling- drawn out over many quests in many parts of
| the world, where major aspects of the main story are only
| glimpsed at.
|
| But to do that you need the main story set well which WoW
| has lacked since post-Arthas.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Yeah, and that's your personal experience.
|
| I dont care about Wow's story, I didnt even pay attention to
| the quests or cinematics, yet even i can count 40-50% of the
| chronology. Likewise many people on my server.
| bob229 wrote:
| Video games are for incels
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| For me, this depends on the game genre...
|
| FPS? All the story I need is the 'end condition' (basically what
| do I have to do to win this level), and I can play. "reach point
| X", "detonate bomb", "kill everyone".... sure.
|
| Strategy games? Same... kill everyone, destroy base, done.
|
| But for example, point and click adventures with a shitty story?
| Totally unplayable for me.
| powersnail wrote:
| Reading this article makes me realize how little I know about
| games. I've never heard of any game the writer used as examples,
| except World of Warcraft (which I never played, however).
|
| The author made a lot of pithy statements, but the article feels
| strangely lack of substance. There's little evidence or
| elaboration. Just statement after statement, with a lot of
| repetitiveness.
|
| And the writing. Paragraphs like these:
|
| > Now let's be clear. I'm not a great fantasy writer. If I was,
| I'd be writing books nobody buys because nobody buys books
| anymore. Still, as a writer I'm simply competent. Which, by video
| games standards, makes me awesome. Overall, I'm good enough that
| people give me money, and that is sufficient.
|
| ...... are just strange, and made me grimace. He's quite plainly
| saying, that he's mediocre, but because everyone else is bad,
| he's great.
|
| And what's with the "nobody buys books anymore"? Plenty of people
| do.
|
| > Good story isn't what gamers are after. Which is good, because
| they ain't gettin' it.
|
| While not having played many games, I remember some GBA games
| having decent stories. They are not Charles Dickens level
| literature, but comparable to good short stories, definitely
| worthy of "good writing".
|
| ---
|
| I had expected much more---more substance, better writing---from
| a "successful" story writer of a game company.
| watwut wrote:
| > He's quite plainly saying, that he's mediocre, but because
| everyone else is bad, he's great.
|
| Why is this bad thing to say? If he thinks this is true, then
| it is OK to say it. And earning money making games is actual
| achievement - most indie game makers are in financial loss and
| that is it.
|
| Someone who make small profit is exactly people who can say the
| above.
| powersnail wrote:
| Because not everyone else is bad? It's not like he's the only
| one writing stories for games that make a profit.
|
| I mean it's fine to like your own achievement. Nothing wrong
| with that.
|
| But he's certainly not successful enough to be so cocky as to
| detract everyone else's work (and again, he did so without
| much evidence or elaboration).
| watwut wrote:
| Yes he is successful enough to definitely have right to
| voice opinion on industry state or criticise it. We are
| talking about notoriously difficult market to succeed in.It
| would be absurd to expect him to be only one who ever
| earned profit in order to comment on quality of stories -
| both his own and other peoples.
|
| And frankly, playing a game once is enough to give you
| right to criticism that game story. Playing a couple of
| popular games gives you right to comment on popular games
| stories.
|
| "I am not too good and I am still succeeding because bar in
| this aspect is low" is incredibly fair thing to say. It
| might be too self depreciating for some people's taste, but
| we should not require everyone to brag and exaggerate own
| skills each time they want to comment on something.
| powersnail wrote:
| Self-deprecating is the opposite of the article. The
| article "self"-deprecated others in the industry on their
| behalves.
|
| Of course he has the right to comment on whatever he
| likes to. I'm not suggesting that anyone should take away
| his freedom of speech.
|
| I was merely criticizing the quality of his criticism.
| watwut wrote:
| But you ended up taking offense on a single sentence
| where he says his own writing is not good enough for
| cheap fantasy novel.
| powersnail wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by taking offense. I don't
| feel offended; I'm not a game story writer, so whatever
| he writes cannot possibly offend me.
|
| I also am not criticizing the first part of that single
| sentence ("I'm not great"). I find the paragraph in its
| entirety distasteful, when he said others are so bad that
| he was awesome.
| aspaceman wrote:
| > Good story isn't what gamers are after. Which is good, because
| they ain't gettin' it.
|
| I emphatically disagree. Good story is what I'm after. Good story
| is what I've gotten. (Undertale, the Nier games, even Ocarina of
| Time has a very unique story-telling experience).
|
| A game can tell a different type of story than a book or a movie
| - these stories are interactive, and involve an element of meta-
| narrative story-telling. What was that fight like? What was that
| choice like? Did the choice _feel_ meaningful? The story is told
| through these mechanisms rather than simply words on a page.
|
| I very much agree that many players come to games for a carnal
| feeling. A release that comes from the ticking of boxes or
| completion of objectives, or the satisfaction from a skilled
| execution.
|
| But these elements as well can contribute to a narrative
| experience (ex Undertale).
|
| Really disagree with this article. Reminds me of those historical
| articles about movies being a worse version of the theatre and
| opera (which they were).
| senectus1 wrote:
| yeah I yearn for good story line, but I find myself putting up
| with weak ones.
| t-3 wrote:
| It's gotten to the point that I just don't buy or play new
| games from American or Japanese studios. It's too
| disappointing to pick up new releases of series that I've
| played for more than half my life (such as the Tales series)
| and find everything that made them great ripped out and
| replaced with consumerist trash that panders to the lowest
| common denominator.
|
| China seems to be the only country that still has some
| original and compelling new games and stories being produced.
| haunter wrote:
| I feel the opposite there are good story games coming from
| Japan still. Yakuza Like a Dragon, DQXI, Death Stranding.
| And FFXIV of course going stronger and stronger. Just a few
| from the recent years.
| yunusabd wrote:
| Got some examples for good games from China?
|
| As a counterexample to the first part, check out Nier
| Automata. One of the most original and compelling games
| I've played in recent years.
| t-3 wrote:
| I own Nier, but never beat it. I enjoyed the aesthetic
| and gameplay, but often end up going back to old
| favorites when I sit down to relax. I should take a
| weekend or two and get back into it.
|
| Bright Memory Infinite is a new game from China that's
| coming out in November, the demo is incredible and I'm
| excited. Gujian3 is an open-world action rpg, similar to
| Nier but with a xianxia theme, it's pretty good. Amazing
| Cultivation Simulator is a Rimworld clone with a lot of
| fun features. Path of Wuxia is a very original and fun
| martial-arts-school/dating-sim/srpg with a lot of
| replayability (only fan-translated for now, but an
| official english translation is slated for when it comes
| out of early access).
| yunusabd wrote:
| That's really interesting, I remember trying to get my
| hands on Gujian 2 when it first came out, which was
| impossible at that time. Glad to see it's now on Steam!
|
| I think at first I played Nier Automata mainly for the
| mechanics. The worldbuilding and backstory take a while
| to pick up steam. But once it gets going, it has some
| unique and interesting ideas. I still feel they could
| have gone a lot deeper with a lot of things though. For
| example, the idea that robots would start their own
| religion seemed intriguing, but in the end they didn't
| really do much with it. Still very enjoyable and
| surprisingly a lot of food for thought.
|
| Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check them out!
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I actually found nier automatas story beats so cringey
| that I was turned off on the playing of it, honestly.
| Pretty early on a pile of robots start an orgy that
| creates a human-looking clearly-not-a-human villain. It
| felt totally directionless and random at the time. I
| didn't really want to continue if I was just going to get
| weird shit happening with an overlay of philosophical
| hand waving.
| hhjinks wrote:
| You got 2 hours into the game and dropped it because you
| felt the themes were surface level?
|
| You were unironically filtered. The game does name drop a
| lot philosophers, but it's meant to contextualize, not as
| part of the game's themes. Hell, the game doesn't even
| care about the "humans and robots aren't actually so
| different" question. I don't want to write a whole essay,
| so I'll just say that Automata is probably the best
| existentialist story written this decade, with a lot of
| subtle details, some _great_ acting, and melding of story
| and gameplay that has not even been attempted elsewhere.
| It is unique, and uniquely excellent, beyond the point
| where it can just be described as "a fantastic game".
| Doom 2016 is a fantastic game. Nier Automata is a game
| I've had as much fun thinking and writing about as I had
| playing it.
| yunusabd wrote:
| Yeah I get that, for me there were enough interesting
| things to offset the cringy bits.
|
| Just off the top of my head, I remember being intrigued
| by the robots-trying-to-be-human thing, and how
| consistent they were with the fact that you're an
| android. For example, removing your OS chip actually
| killed you, which is one of the 26 possible endings iirk.
| That and the dynamic combat and the smooth mix of
| different genres were enough to keep me going.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Chinese Parents is a pretty cool game if you enjoy
| puzzle/clicker.
| saurik wrote:
| Yeah: while there certainly exist people who don't care about
| the narrative elements of a game, that largely becomes a self-
| fulfilling prophecy more than anything else, as the audience
| and market for your products evolves to be the subset of people
| who like the things you build, which is not the same thing as
| "people in general like the things I build", and certainly the
| same as "everyone likes the thing I build". (A lot of software
| developers--and I think particularly designers--fall into this
| analysis trap of ignoring selection bias.)
|
| The games that had the biggest impact on me were adventure
| games and role playing games that had deep stories written by
| people who knew how to blend intrigue and humor into an
| enjoyable experience of you living in the shoes of the main
| character. I play games without good narratives, but they have
| to be much better games to compensate, as a good story can make
| me ignore some pretty horrible mechanics. (I also play certain
| classes of puzzle and rhythm games where story is irrelevant,
| but those are a totally differently head space and don't
| compete for my time with other games.)
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I think the author is right that games generally have poor, or
| poorly executed stories, and even great stories need to be
| squeezed into the game play box (e.g. his "ends with
| bang"-trope.)
|
| But I also feel like the author misunderstands how the medium can
| elevate a story:
|
| "Old mans Journey" was critized for having too simple puzzles,
| but it is not a puzzle game. It's a story, where a few simple
| puzzles gives you time to interact with the landscape and soak up
| the atmosphere, which enhances the impact of the worldless
| storytelling between levels.
|
| It's a simple, nothing new story, made extremely impactful
| through the medium.
|
| I also felt the story in Celeste was very impactful, even though
| it probably would make for a boring movie. But I struggled as
| Madelein as she conquered the mountain and her fears, and that
| struggle primed _me_ to feel _her_ struggle through the sparse
| dialogue.
| ajuc wrote:
| Yes. It's like saying stories in opera are worse than in novels
| because dialogues in opera aren't realistic and the story is
| too short :)
|
| You have to play to the strengths of the medium. The less
| defined the story is the more freedom players have. It's a
| design tradeoff that makes stories in games different, and they
| should be judged based on these different media constraints.
| roenxi wrote:
| Stories in opera are worse than in novels. Good opera is
| usually paired with woefully poor story. The whole point of
| the story is to provide basic context to the songs.
|
| Consider Turandot. The story is bad to the point of being
| objectionable, and whatever is left verges on gibber. And
| yet, without it, a song like Ho una casa nell'Honan is
| lessened because there has to be at least some reason to care
| about why this guy has a house in what sounds like a badly
| corrupted pronunciation of Yunnan.
| ajuc wrote:
| But that's the point. What makes a story good for one
| medium makes it bad for other. So it's not fair to compare
| them abstracting from the medium.
|
| You can still have better and worse stories withing given
| medium, and you can compare them between media if you
| insist, but you have to separate the inherent trade-offs
| from real quality differences.
| vlunkr wrote:
| > how the medium can elevate a story
|
| I agree that it can, but many (especially AAA) video games try
| to imitate film, rather than using the strengths of the medium.
|
| This is why I hate cutscenes. I'm sitting here with a
| controller in my hands, ready to do something fun, and you're
| going to make me sit and watch some expository dialog instead?
| Where the voice acting, animation and writing are all below
| movie standards?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Another game in the "I can't imagine this working well in other
| media"-category is Senua's Sacrifice. Like, sure, the story
| could be critically subsumized as "generic identity struggle",
| but the way it's written and and delivered only works in a
| game. Perhaps that's a decent first cut for a story in a
| videogame: If you made this a movie instead, would it still
| work? If you make a movie out of e.g. any of the Call of Duty
| games, you'd mostly end up with a generic action movie without
| having to change the script.
|
| This question hints at how well gameplay and story interact
| which each other. In most action games, they barely interact at
| all.
|
| (Also, as interactive experiences, games just are not
| necessarily dependent on having a story, as the article points
| out. If the experience is good enough, a story isn't really
| necessary. Alien Isolation doesn't have much of a story, but
| visceral, devastating gameplay. Bethesda games generally have
| poor stories, but it doesn't really matter because the gameplay
| is open ended enough that everyone can just make their own
| story inside the game. Online games don't have a story, or some
| thin veneer to put on a loading screen; they don't need that,
| because the people are here solely for the gameplay
| experience.)
| handrous wrote:
| > If you make a movie out of e.g. any of the Call of Duty
| games, you'd mostly end up with a generic action movie
| without having to change the script.
|
| This is kind of a funny comparison, because the first Call of
| Duty game was practically a string of set-piece action
| scenes, and sometimes plot lines, that were very obviously
| lifted from popular WWII war movies from the prior few years.
| IMO--and I doubt this is an uncommon sentiment among people
| who played it--those were also easily the best parts of the
| game.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Exactly. Sure, Last of Us has the story of a generic zombie
| movie. But in a way, that was _my_ twelve year old daughter I
| watched die. I don 't think it's fair to criticize games for
| not having as good a story as a novel when you'd never imagine
| criticizing a music album for not having as good a story as a
| novel.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > Observation 6: Good writing comes from a distinctive,
| individual, human voice. Thus, you'll mainly get it in indie
| games.
|
| Outer Wilds.
|
| Hands down one of my top games of all time, a total sleeper. But
| has more heart than any AAA title I've ever played.
|
| If you haven't tried it, super highly recommend.
| npinsker wrote:
| I guess 'The Lord of the Rings' is a bad story then? After all it
| is exactly the kind of story this person is complaining about...
| baq wrote:
| It was a good story at the time; it created a genre and is
| indirectly responsible for many, many great works.
|
| If it was created today, it'd be a generic high fantasy work.
| dudul wrote:
| It would be generic high fantasy work maybe because it
| literally defined all the codes of this genre.
|
| Blame everyone else who came after Tolkien.
| awild wrote:
| That's exactly what GP is saying though?
|
| There's a borges fake essay on exactly this topic: Pierre
| Menard, Author of the Quixote
| watwut wrote:
| No. One of the six things article complains about is
| repeating the same trick to death. Lord of the rings did
| not repeated the trick from other books, it created own.
|
| It does not fit other points either. It does not uses
| meme humor. It does not allow you to ignore the story. It
| has individual human voice.
|
| It does not fit the thing article is complaining about at
| all.
| nottorp wrote:
| LoTR's _execution_ of the story is high quality though. There
| were fantasy stories before and after it, but most aren 't
| remembered..
| Jensson wrote:
| Forcing people to read through the story or sit through cutscenes
| is like forcing people to play the hard version of a boss. Sure
| playing the hard version might be more interesting, but many
| people don't really care much about interesting gameplay and just
| want to relax and enjoy themselves. The same thing with the
| story, sure it might be more interesting for the player if they
| read through and properly embraced the story, but that is a lot
| of work and will just feel like a chore to many people.
|
| You can make many more interesting games if you assume everywhere
| that the player cares about the story. Same as how you can make
| more interesting gameplay if you know the player wants an
| interesting challenge and always plays on hard, like in Dark
| Souls. But ultimately most people don't want to challenge
| themselves, regardless if it is trying to remember a lot of story
| content or practicing a boss fight.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| What's everyone's favorite videogame plot?
|
| First thing that comes to mind if Planescape Torment but oddly I
| don't really remember much details.
|
| Trying to remember if any videogame has actually moved me in a
| way some book or film did and, frankly, I don't think so.
| lukaszkups wrote:
| One of the greatest game stories I've ever encountered is the one
| without any words- Hyper Light Drifter.
|
| The way the Heart Machine decided to tell it (images only) still
| amazes me. It totally opened interpretation for the players.
|
| And you didn't have to click through tons of dialogs to dive into
| the lore.
| krumpet wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning Ultima IV! My favorite game of all times
| and, to your point, a definite departure from what other games
| were doing at the time. Having to consider the long-term impact
| of the actions my character took changed everything about gaming
| for me in the mid-80s.
| jrootabega wrote:
| The Talos Principle is an interesting example of the weird
| relationship between a game and its story. The gameplay is just a
| ton of small, repetitive, Portal-like puzzles, and I don't say
| that as a criticism; it's just reality. The story is presented
| almost completely passively through notes and computer terminals.
| You could easily believe the game was developed first and then
| the story was written afterwards. But somehow they combine to
| make a very engrossing experience.
| patrec wrote:
| This article is refreshingly honest about the general inanity of
| video games. Does anyone have a compelling explanation why video
| games are such an artistic wasteland even compared to other
| mainstream forms of entertainment like TV or cinema?
| Toutouxc wrote:
| How exactly are Raiders of the Lost Ark or Breaking Bad
| storylines better than those of the first Mafia, The Witcher 3,
| Uncharted 4, Metro Exodus, Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Half-Life
| 2 + episodes? And I'm not even mentioning artistic pieces like
| What Remains of Edith Finch or Life is Strange. There are quests
| in The Witcher 3 you could make a movie from (Bloody Baron).
| bananamerica wrote:
| In almost every way?
| etiam wrote:
| Out of curiosity, would you be willing to expand a bit on what
| specifically what you liked (and maybe didn't) about The
| Witcher 3?
| splatzone wrote:
| Human actors - Breaking Bad is about the process of a man
| changing into a monster. It takes great acting to make that
| story work
|
| Video games will never do drama as well as theatre or film,
| because we can't see into the actors souls - video game stories
| are puppet theatre
|
| Edit: thinking about this some more, I think I might be wrong -
| there are many animated films that I've found emotionally
| moving and involving that don't have human actors (Ratatouille
| for example!)
| thriftwy wrote:
| Games may do even better by forcing you to change your
| character into monster. Can't argue if you're the killer.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| To me the witcher 3 had the feature of collectible women cards
| from sex as a game mechanic, which really takes away from the
| notion of a deep or compelling story.
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| That was only in The Witcher 1. They didn't have them in 2 or
| 3.
|
| And it wasn't really well received at the time either, but it
| was _a_ way of handling romance without the awkward cut-
| scenes that existed at the time. They only briefly showed on
| screen and IIRC weren 't accessible later. It wasn't really
| collectable in the sense of collect-a-thon games like Mario
| Odyssey, either. Out of context it sounds horrible, in
| context it's a bit of a nonsensical addition.
|
| They were going after a "french postcard" feel and it just
| didn't work that way. Possibly because people aren't as
| familiar with what they were referencing.
| rdedev wrote:
| If it's the Gwent mini game you are talking about afaik you
| have to defeat certain NPCs in a card game to get the cards
| that you are talking about. Also there are a lot of charecter
| cards not just women. Not to mention the fact that playing
| Gwent is completely optional in the game
| [deleted]
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| Are you really suggesting Uncharted 4 has as good a story as
| Breaking Bad?
| gambiting wrote:
| I'd say better personally, but that's just me.
|
| Edit: to explain a touch more - I liked the story and its
| characters more, and even though I played it over 2 years ago
| I still remember the story pretty well. Breaking bad had a
| couple interesting points but I couldn't tell you what
| happened between seasons or really much outside of the main
| points.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Well Breaking Bad is a series and Uncharted 4 is a pretty
| short, intense ride, so it's a little apples to oranges
| comparison, but if I compare the first season of Breaking Bad
| (the only one I've seen) to Uncharted 4, which are both a few
| hours worth of entertainment, I don't remember the storyline
| of Breaking Bad being any more intricate or innovative, I
| mean, terminal patient does questionable things with an
| unlikely sidekick with expected results.
|
| Of course I may be entirely wrong, it's been some time, but I
| remember both leaving a similar impression on me.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _the first season of Breaking Bad (the only one I 've
| seen)_
|
| Breaking Bad is one of those shows that gets better with
| every season (the Metacritic score goes 73 - 84 - 89 - 96 -
| 99 from season 1 to season 5). The first season wasn't
| really anything special but it's gangbusters by the end.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Pacing and editing. In video games the director can't control
| the pace and (to a degree) sequence of events to achieve
| maximum emotional impact, as it is possible in movies.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| There was a story to Kingdom Come: Deliverance that went beyond
| "my parents were killed by baddies, and luckily I was
| recognised as a badass because of the plot, now I'm going to
| become more of a badass, and kill all the Cumans?"
| thom wrote:
| With the caveat that I very much enjoyed Kingdom Come, it's
| bog-standard story didn't even _end_ in the game.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Yes. My parents (and almost everyone in our village) were
| killed by baddies hired by someone for some political reason,
| I was recognized as a lame illiterate nobody and was only
| reluctantly accepted to serve under a master of regional
| importance, who is pursuing his own political goals (and has
| a special connection to me through something) and making the
| most of the difficult situation of the kingdom. I was sent on
| several wildly different missions to investigate, bribe or
| fight my way through several interesting events and
| situations, all totally believable and anchored in the
| context of the story and actual history, meeting dozens of
| different characters, some of them real historical figures,
| each with their own carefully written backstory.
| watwut wrote:
| Is it just me or it really sound completely standard plus
| backstories for side characters? I mean, the story can be
| well executed without it being super original. But what you
| described here is one of super standard fantasy plots.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| It's wrong to compare literature with games and think about the
| story.
|
| In literature you have to do two things: tell a story and do it
| in a pleasant way. If you fail at telling the story, you fail at
| it.
|
| Games have much more to them than just telling a story. You have
| mechanics, you have visuals. It is interactive and it has
| outcomes.
|
| To not fail a game you have to give player satisfaction.
|
| It would be nice to think of all of the things that might appeal
| to players, the story being just one thing among lots of others.
|
| If story would be the only important thing then people would play
| lots of text based games but they do not.
|
| The bad thing is that most of the times players get what
| designers think is a good game, not what they actually think it
| is a good game.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I tried to develop a small RPG and immediately realized that the
| most difficult thing to get right is the story, and the second
| difficult one is the arts. And no wonder most of the Indie RPG
| (that I know) are of roguelike/roguelite. It's a blood sea.
| everdrive wrote:
| Many video games have very poor or bare plots, but amazing
| settings. In fact, I'm not sure that video games are actually
| good vehicles for plots. Video games are interactive, but all
| good plots require careful pacing and timing in order to be
| successful. It's possible to force this in a game, but the more
| you do, the more the game becomes an interactive movie.
|
| A great example would be Dark Souls: incredible setting, but
| really bare-bones plot. The plot is effectively: "You're the
| chosen undead, and you must quest for some items." The setting,
| on the other hand, could fill books.
|
| In some sense, it's similar to comparing a good news article to a
| good story. A good story. Good story generally can't be purely
| fact-based, since this interrupts the needs of narrative: pacing,
| good vs. evil, moral decisions, defeats, and victories, etc. A
| good news story may have something like a narrative, but it's
| more of a collection of facts. If there's an narrative at all, it
| exists simply to help explain the relevance of the facts
| presented.
|
| Video games are metaphorically similar: You may have an
| interesting plot in the game, but it is punctuated by the actions
| you get to take as a player. For example, in Wind Waker you must
| rescue your sister, but in practice the player is running around
| an island, breaking pots, and doing sidequests. The narrative
| plot and the play actions are almost totally disparate. The plot
| is nearly a side story, which helps add context to the player
| actions.
| JauntyHatAngle wrote:
| I guess the problem with plot on video games is the sequencing.
|
| Some of the most impactful stories I've experienced in games
| have been more environmental storytelling than plot based. That
| is, the game expects me to find the overall narrative and story
| in my own time, usually because the story beats have happened
| already before my character even existed, and I'm trying to
| find where the current gameplay fits into it, e.g. Outer Wilds.
|
| If you want a normal "movie like" story, you more often have to
| Railroad your player along certain paths, or tack it on in
| between gameplay.
|
| Games like (the finale of) Braid do a good job of showing how
| gameplay and narrative can coexist in a way that films can't
| do, and that's one of the lessons for me.
|
| Plot in the movie sense within games can be a fun way to mash
| gameplay and story together, buy it isn't superior in telling
| the story. You need to do something different in games to tell
| a story in a way where games are stronger stronger film, for
| me, usually slow paced games with environmental storytelling,
| or games that use your feelings of being the main character to
| mess with you, e.g. spec ops the line. YOU chose to kill people
| not the protag of the film you're watching.
|
| I guess my point is, some games use video game only devices to
| enhance the impact of their story in a way that only games can,
| where the games that try to take on films using the tools of
| films won't be able to.match up with films.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Outer Wilds was what I was thinking of when I read this
| article.
|
| Not because of the article's content, but in contrast of it.
| It was an excellent game that doesn't fit into a lot of the
| authors advice.
|
| It was complex, and you can miss a lot of it, but it nails
| and authentic tone that seems to be available on indie titles
| exclusively.
|
| Top Five of all time for me.
| JauntyHatAngle wrote:
| Absolutely, one of my favourites easily.
|
| I feel it gave me room to think, and spoke to me in areas I
| usually don't engage. Themes of accepting you can't halt
| the end, no matter how hard you try and all the work you
| put in, and ultimately we all end up alone, but with the
| memories of others as parts of ourselves, as we enter the
| unknown.
|
| Just my readings, but the point is it hit me in a way other
| media hasn't. Not better or worse, but unique and different
| because games haven't quite found how best to use the
| medium for the possibilities in storytelling.
| ljm wrote:
| I was thinking of Sunless Seas and Sunless Skies.
|
| It's not so much that they have _a_ story, because there 's
| more to it than that, and the lore seeps through every
| aspect of the games.
|
| I have never played a game that does cosmic horror so damn
| well (because Lovecraftian games are about 99%
| disappointing, or cliche rip offs of like two Lovecraft
| stories).
|
| I prefer Sunless Skies, but both of them look gorgeous,
| have amazing sound design, and while abundant with moments
| of terror they are a real feast for the imagination. It's
| the writing that ties it all together, makes it special.
| taeric wrote:
| I have had a hard time forgetting the scene in Ico where you
| are separated from your companion. Such a simple scripting,
| but completely hooked me.
|
| Which, I think, makes your point. The setting is basically
| drowning you in that game. And you are a bit player that does
| not impact any world, per se. At least, if you did, you
| aren't aware of it.
| everdrive wrote:
| This is something which didn't come through in my original
| post, but I feel one of the major problems here is that
| people are trying to compare video games to other mediums
| such as theatre, movies, and books. In other words, video
| games are an art form which is different enough that direct
| comparisons to other art forms may be misleading. Now I
| realize that we are talking about the general quality of plot
| in games, and not the wider debate regarding whether video
| games constitute art. That said, imagine the complaint that
| music is not art because it lacks a proper plot. Video games
| have aspects of other mediums, but the interactive nature of
| games means that they will never really be directly
| comparable.
|
| For example, in film school you might study aspects of film
| which are somewhat oblique to the quality of the actual
| storytelling in the film. Such as: cinematography, and the
| framing of characters in the shot. Video games have analogous
| things, such as level design, game design, etc. A famous
| example is how the first level of Super Mario Bros. teaches
| you that mushrooms are beneficial, by making the player's
| first interaction with one mostly unavoidable. Modern games
| have more complex game designs, and of course these designs
| represent a complex communication between the game creators
| and the players. A lot of nuance an information is conveyed
| this way, and it can potentially amount to art. Much like the
| art of cinematography cannot exist in books, the art of game
| design cannot exist in other mediums.
|
| Video games can also teach you things which movies and books
| cannot, (at least potentially) and this can be performed via
| game design. For example, when I was a child, people would
| exclaim "life's not a video game!" I heard this quite a bit,
| and I believe most people meant: the things you do have
| consequences, and you won't get very many second chances. Now
| this is frankly not really correct. Yes, the things you do
| have consequences, but almost everyone gets multiple second
| chances throughout their life. For example, if I fail at one
| task in a workplace, I usually get multiple chances to
| improve and correct my error. Even if I fail overall at a
| job, I will likely have future chances to prove myself at
| other jobs. Some mistakes can be fatal, of course, but for
| most of the actions I take, I can plan on success by trial
| and error, repetition, and iteration. In other words, exactly
| like a video game. Interestingly, it was video games which
| first taught me this. I had a friend who by all accounts was
| objectively not as talented at video games than I was. We'd
| play together, and I'd best him at nearly everything we
| touched. However one day he wanted to take on a challenge in
| a game which I felt was above my skill level. I was certain
| he'd never be able to succeed, because I was certain I could
| never succeed. But, he had something I didn't at the time:
| persistence. He kept trying and failing, and trying again. He
| never became discouraged or emotionally frustrated, and
| slowly he iterated on his failure and eventually succeeded.
| (To be clear here, when I say "iterate on failure," I simply
| mean to attempt a task, fail at it, and attempt it slightly
| better the next time.) I learned a very important lesson that
| day, and have been re-learning it ever since: part of success
| is persistence, and things which seem impossible are often
| simply daunting. Later in life, Dark Souls and other From
| Software games reinforced these lessons, and of course much
| more importantly, I applied these lessons to my everyday life
| and learned not to fear failure, and to iterate on failure
| until it became success. I bring this up specifically because
| I remember years ago reading an interview with a celebrity
| who felt that video games could not be art. I believe it was
| Roger Ebert, but I'm not sure. In either case, the argument
| was made that art teaches you something, something about
| human nature, something about being a person. It's possible
| I'm misremembering the argument, (I can't find it online) but
| my point is the same. Video games taught me something about
| being a person which other mediums failed to teach me.
| dartharva wrote:
| >Many video games have very poor or bare plots, but amazing
| settings.
|
| Cyberpunk 2077 is also a great example of this trope. Night
| City itself is magnificent, and the missions aren't half bad
| either, but the main storyline is tiresome and has no
| satisfactory outcome. It feels as if they tried to have a deep
| plot but ended up botching it.
| jltsiren wrote:
| > In fact, I'm not sure that video games are actually good
| vehicles for plots. Video games are interactive, but all good
| plots require careful pacing and timing in order to be
| successful. It's possible to force this in a game, but the more
| you do, the more the game becomes an interactive movie.
|
| I'm in the opposite camp. Movies are not good vehicles for
| plots, because the right pacing and timing is subjective. They
| almost always fail at storytelling, because they proceed at the
| same pace for everyone. The best you can do is to watch the
| movie alone at home. Then you can at least pause the film when
| you need time to think, or jump back to rewatch a section.
|
| Cutscenes between gameplay sequences tend to make the game and
| the story worse. Both because they break the pacing, and
| because they are often used to show things that would not be
| possible in the game itself. The game already tells one story
| through gameplay, dialogue, and player choices. That story
| should take priority. The gameplay should be expressive enough
| that the writers can tell the story they want within the
| framework, instead of resorting to cutscenes that break the
| logic of the game.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > not sure that video games are actually good vehicles for
| plots. Video games are interactive, but all good plots require
| careful pacing and timing in order to be successful.
|
| Video games are a great medium for plots! You just have to
| allow the plot to fail, and let the player take it on tangents.
| Games that go "uhh you died that's not canon let's rewind" are
| just shitty games.
| watwut wrote:
| > Games that go "uhh you died that's not canon let's rewind"
| are just shitty games.
|
| That would be overwhelming majority of them. And overwhelming
| majority of players don't mind this aspect or even actively
| like it.
| dakial1 wrote:
| As I get older (40 y/o) I'm noticing that my video game taste is
| migrating from dont-think-just-shoot FPS towards well written
| RPGs (but still with some action, and not turn based rpg). Might
| be interesting to know i f this happens with everyone...
| dudeman13 wrote:
| I'll get back to turn based RPGs once the industry stops going
| bonkers with random encounter frequency (or ditches random
| encounters altogether).
|
| It's ridiculous how The Last Sovereign, a lewd game made with
| RPG Maker is one of the few turn based games that got story and
| turn-based combat right.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| TLS is just that good. But even it has some problems with
| combat, namely the over-reliance on hard-hitting enemies, so
| by the time you get your own stronghold your fights are all
| about juggling rez and nuke skills, or at least I couldn't
| make a party that could tank or cc well.
| namelosw wrote:
| > When people say a video game has a good story, they mean that
| it has a story.
|
| The standard is so low is not necessarily a bad thing. Most of
| the games are bad, but people will try random things to improve
| storytelling, and we'll see games with great stories like
| _Planescape: Torment_ or _Disco Elysium_ in the future, or even
| better.
|
| Movies, on the other hand, where there are so many established
| patterns - people tend to abuse them because 1) they don't want
| to take the risk to make something subpar 2) it's easier. They
| were so many terrible movies in the last centuries, but there are
| so many great movies as well. The golden era of movies has
| passed, but for games, it's yet to come.
|
| There are in fact patterns that could be found in great games,
| but not as widespread as Hollywood cliches, for example:
|
| 1. _Planescape: Torment_ , _Witcher 1 /2_: Amnesia. It allows no
| assumption of prior knowledge of the protagonist, making the
| player discover the world, the past, and even the protagonist
| himself/herself incrementally with himself/herself. _Witcher 3_
| on the contrary, makes me feel less connected because the
| protagonist knows many characters that I don 't know like
| Dijkstra even though I played through the first two games.
|
| 2. _Baldur 's Gate 2_, _Pillar of Eternity_ : Meet the villain in
| EVERY chapter, and make it feel like watching Steve Jobs at Apple
| launch events. This gives the player a clear goal, and a villain
| that can keep all the game plots together instead of being too
| random and sloppy.
|
| 3. _Original Sin 2_ , _Baldur 's Gate 3_: Lock the protagonist
| with a magical shackle, put a parasite in the protagonist's head,
| this also gives the player a clear goal, but without spoiling who
| the villain is (DoS2 is THAT surprising, I bet it might be the
| same in BG3).
|
| Actually, good games can be established on these patterns, until
| everyone started to abuse them.
| schmorptron wrote:
| I really liked the storytelling in Hypnospace Outlaw, where
| you're just an onlooker to a pseudo-internet and can learn
| details from peoples' pages and mannerisms.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The section about "witty" dialogue, meme humor, and twist endings
| hit home for me. It's also the same reasons I'm not a fan of most
| Marvel movies.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I feel that way about most American blockbuster movies. They
| all seem to plagued by it.
| haunter wrote:
| This is quite an incredibly toxic and negative piece. There are
| countless games with great stories
|
| The whole article feels like OP is upset about something behind
| the scenes and just had to rumble about it
|
| Maybe it's even sarcasm, you never know nowdays
| jsiepkes wrote:
| > This is quite an incredibly toxic and negative piece
|
| The author might have a negative take on things and you might
| not like the article but to brand the article as "incredibly
| toxic" is a bit of a hyperbole.
| rootlocus wrote:
| The title is "Sx truths", meaning there's no room for
| argument, interpretation or nuance. It's not his opinion,
| they're not observations, they are truths. That sets the tone
| for a strongly opinionated point of view, that ultimately
| failed to provide suficient proof for most of its examples,
| making it a rant.
|
| And rants are fine, but trying to present it as the profound
| observations of a veteran with 20 something years of wisdom
| that shits on everyone's favourites without many arguments
| ("The Last of Us [...] having a story as good as a medium-
| quality zombie movie" is not an argument) comes of as toxic.
| haunter wrote:
| Well to me it's toxic when it opens with the achievements
| (being successful in the business for 27 years) then shits on
| the whole industry and their own customers (treat your own
| players as idiots) in a holier than thou attitude. Just very
| bitter.
| chongli wrote:
| It's not bitter at all. It's self-deprecating and funny.
| The author, Jeff, has been making games that I've been
| playing for their story and gameplay alone (the graphics
| are truly terrible) since the 90's.
|
| Jeff is irreverent and highly opinionated but absolutely
| not "holier than thou." He knows his games are ugly and
| played only by a tiny niche. The only thing he can remotely
| claim to be better at than most people is running a video
| game studio that manages to support his small household.
| nottorp wrote:
| So... everyone that disagrees with you is "toxic"?
| haunter wrote:
| No but OP is the one setting up the field in an
| incredibly negative way
|
| Also the title ("truths") implies there is no room for
| negotiation
| thendrill wrote:
| Well I am also from the game industry and that is how we
| actually treat players. Most important players are are
| called "whales". They have money and no self control. The
| industry is always targeting them. We spend sometimes
| months looking at numbers just to increase the spending
| margin of those players, usually 90% of players are
| "idiots" because they don't spent more than necessary.
|
| And we focus on the other 10% that have diminished mental
| capacity for self control or other issues that would hinder
| their self control. If they are not addicted to our
| product, they will get addicted to a competitors product
| anyway.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| Video games with its interactive possibilites possess a unique
| mechanic device which books or movies simply don't have. So, in a
| way stories in a game do not serve the same purpose.
|
| And if you delve deep into literary theory itself; "stories" do
| not exist without its form. This dichotmoy is frankly quite
| misleading.
|
| I personally prefer to use another vantage point for examining
| "video games" borrowed from the strucuralists: What is the
| difference (to other games)?
|
| This quote from Viktor Shklovsky, a Russian Formalist, can be
| easily translated to the art form of "video games":
|
| "And so, in order to return sensation to our limbs, in order to
| make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony, man has been
| given the tool of art. The purpose of art, then, is to lead us to
| a knowledge of a thing through the organ of sight instead of
| recognition. By "enstranging" objects and complicating form, the
| device of art makes perception long and "laborious." The
| perceptual process in art has a purpose all its own and ought to
| be extended to the fullest. Art is a means of experiencing the
| process of creativity. The artifact itself is quite unimportant."
| krisgenre wrote:
| I am not sure if there were any before but Max Payne was the
| first game that I had every played with an intriguing storyline
| and an awesome haunting music. I believe those guys invented
| 'bullet time'.
| aynsof wrote:
| I remember all the press praising the original Half Life for its
| story. I was really surprised - it was the same story as all
| first person shooters going back to Doom:
|
| Bad guys spawn across an inter-dimensional portal and start
| wreaking havoc. Protagonist has to kill them all, crossing the
| portal in the process to go destroy the alien leader.
|
| There were some cool extra details - the G Man, the marines
| entering as a third force, the diversions to do things like
| launch a missile into space - but all of those things were
| additional to that same, basic story.
|
| This author has it spot on: our standards for story telling in
| video games are really low.
| swat535 wrote:
| You can marginalize all stories this way because that's the
| core of story writing.
|
| There is always a villain , a protagonist and he goes through
| challenges to eventually defeat the villain. Finally he is a
| transformed man and returns home with the riches for society.
|
| Sure there are some that deviate from the traditional plot but
| only very few of them succeed because to pull that off you have
| to be a master in story writing.
|
| What makes a story great isn't its uniqueness regarding the
| plot but having great character development, dialogue, depth
| and breadth of the environment, the correct use of things like
| midpoint, flashbacks, rising action and other devices to keep
| the audience engaged.
|
| Making sure secondary characters contribute equally and help
| the protagonist grow is also important.
|
| The truth is that making a great video game is an incredible
| effort as there needs to be a balance of everything such as
| great AI, graphics, etc and as I described above good story
| telling is already a massive undertaking.
|
| Given the above , I'm not surprised many publishers cut corners
| because they are limited by time and budget
| danielvaughn wrote:
| > our standards for story telling in video games are really
| low.
|
| At the same time, the upcoming Uncharted movie is looking to be
| substantially less interesting than Uncharted 4.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I find it interesting that there are a lot of articles
| bashing videogame stories yet nobody is making these points
| about the movie industry.
|
| The fact that the movie studios are now looking at videogames
| for inspiration is very telling IMO.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > I find it interesting that there are a lot of articles
| bashing videogame stories yet nobody is making these points
| about the movie industry.
|
| What do you mean? People complain about movies all the
| time. Even Blockbusters, or especially braindead
| blockbusters, are being trashed everywhere. Marvel-Movies,
| as beloved as they are, are often bashed for how bad and
| generic they are. Hollywood for many people is synonymous
| for bad storytelling.
|
| > The fact that the movie studios are now looking at
| videogames for inspiration is very telling IMO.
|
| Because that's where the customers are. Gaming is primary a
| thing of younger people, and to bait them you need stuff
| that they know and love.
| Zababa wrote:
| I find it really weird to judge a story on what it boils down
| to instead of on how it's delivered. Imagine you have two
| versions of a game. The first delivers its story by long
| cutscenes and a omniscient narrator. The second delivers its
| story with the environement and dialogues with the characters,
| with the playing having to piece everything together. Even if
| the "story" is the same, the second game has a better story.
| Storytelling is a essential part of the quality of a story.
| losvedir wrote:
| What the story is, and how it's told, are both important
| aspects to varying degrees to different people. This is the
| case with novels, too. For example, I love a good mindbending
| plot, and barely care how it's told. I can tolerate / enjoy
| hard scifi or fantasy with detailed magic systems, even if
| the writing is considered not great. To me, the Ciuxin Liu
| Three Body Problem series is one of the greatest of all time
| because it has some absolutely wild ideas, even though it was
| translated from Chinese by different translators, and some
| people say not well.
|
| On the other hand, a lot of people enjoy the art of literary
| composition. Grand scenes with precisely chosen words, "show
| don't tell" (which has little bearing on the underlying plot
| ideas, to me), and lots of rich description. I don't care for
| that sort of stuff, probably because I don't visualize things
| in my head much while reading, but I know a lot of people who
| judge books and authors on it.
| hairofadog wrote:
| Thanks for that perspective! I think about this all the
| time, and though my tastes are different I think you're
| exactly right.
|
| I think of narrative as a combination of several elements:
| character, plot, world-building, execution (word choice,
| visual choices and performance for film or games), concepts
| and ideas. I tend to be drawn to strong characters first,
| but not always. Some examples off the top of my head:
|
| Clerks: strong characters, mediocre almost everything else
|
| Reservoir Dogs: strong characters, strong execution,
| minimal plot and world-building
|
| Portal: strong characters, plot, world building, concepts,
| and execution
|
| Brazil (the Terry Gilliam movie): strong world-building and
| execution, weak characters and plot
|
| Lolita (the book): strong execution and characters
|
| Harry Potter: strong characters, world-building, and
| concepts, goofy plot and execution
|
| Primer: mind-bending concepts, good execution, weak
| characters and plot
|
| Don't know why, but I could go on and on thinking about it.
|
| Edit: this list would imply I have pretty narrow tastes but
| really I like a little bit of everything; these are just
| some notable examples that came to mind as being
| particularly strong or weak in certain areas.
| Zababa wrote:
| I agree with you, what I was opposing was more the
| reductivist view of things like "Half life is just ...".
| You could do the same with the Three Body Problem series
| and it would absolutely fail to explain what's great about
| the series. First book: detective story mixed with
| historical events. Second book: smart guy vs other smart
| guy. Third book: history through the eyes of one person
| that was here at pivotal events.
|
| The comment I replied to mentionned:
|
| > There were some cool extra details - the G Man, the
| marines entering as a third force, the diversions to do
| things like launch a missile into space - but all of those
| things were additional to that same, basic story.
|
| I think it's wrong to separate a story between "a story"
| and "the details", all stories are the same if you boils
| them down enough.
| fullshark wrote:
| Nah it was actually a big deal, Doom was basically: Get to the
| exit, in some illogically defined alien maze designed to
| maximize fun for the player. In Half-Life simply having the
| game take place in a logical location was a big deal even. I
| remember people praising Half-life for stuff as simple as
| weapons drops were in places that made sense, instead of
| floating in the middle of a corridor. The story wasn't the main
| selling point for sure, but the fact that it took place in
| reality, and had some sort of logical progression of events was
| a big deal.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| As opposed to what? The average superhero story that Hollywood
| has been milking for 20 years now? Compare videogames not to
| great literature but to popular culture.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Yep. Just think about all the latest Jurassic Park films.
| They're almost identical to video games in story-telling
| quality.
| stubish wrote:
| We have a new generation of script writers shaped by
| computer games rather than books, radio or cinema. We will
| look back in fondness once we get script writers shaped by
| social media.
| atoav wrote:
| While I think the bassic narrative skeleton of the story is
| important, what is equally important is the world building that
| comes with it.
|
| If your game feels like traveling to an alternate dimension
| with vivid details and differences a lot about the story can be
| excused, because the player will eventually find their own
| story within your game.
|
| If your story is great and the freefloating passages are dull
| and lifeless the story can be great but it will never a good
| game.
|
| Why not both? A great gripping story in a believeable world.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| There are some games with good world building but meh
| stories. Many RPG can be fitted in this category, for example
| The Elder Scrolls series.
| pdpi wrote:
| > While I think the bassic narrative skeleton of the story is
| important, what is equally important is the world building
| that comes with it.
|
| Case in point: Children of Men is basically a two hour-long
| escort quest. It's also an absolutely amazing film with
| amazing storytelling.
| atoav wrote:
| Yeah this is my point, if the _thing_ a part of the game
| conveys is interesting, it doesn 't matter all that mutch
| if is technically very simple in other regards.
|
| What I hate however is when games have the most inspiring
| world and fail to tell unique stories in it. E.g. the game
| plays in South America, yet I learn nothing about the
| reginal culture when I play it, because all Characters are
| very generic.
|
| This is something that made Witcher 3 great: nearly every
| quest managed to convey some feeling about how it must have
| been to live in the medival ages (or some fantasy version
| of it).
|
| I like it when games take their own world seriously and
| root every character, story and object deeply within the
| history of that world. And yes, sometimes that means
| telling the player things they can't understand
| immidiately, because they come from a different culture and
| world.
|
| If you could exchange the world just like that without
| changing a lot about the quests, you are doing it wrong.
| namdnay wrote:
| I think the praise for Half Life was the story telling. The
| story itself is pretty generic scifi action, but the fact that
| you discovered it through the player rather than a paragraph of
| exposition or a cutscene was pretty novel for that genre
| eterm wrote:
| Absolutely this. In half-life you were exposed to a world and
| left to figure out what was going on from that. You were
| rarely directly told to do anything.
|
| For the first hour or two you were implored to, "Get to the
| surface" because it was your and your fellow scientists hope
| of being rescued.
|
| When you run into the marines you aren't told they're bad,
| they just start trying to kill you and you figure out that
| you're not getting a rescue.
|
| World-building wise it was leaps ahead of anything that came
| before it and the in-game (rather than FMV) dialogue was
| fantastic and immersive.
|
| It didn't have "level screens", the level transitions were
| natural rather than forced with loading screen hints and
| title cards.
|
| While that's all completely standard now, the other
| competitor titles at the time were games like Quake 2 and
| half-life's predecessors were games like Duke Nukem 3D and
| Quake, which while both ground-breaking in their own way
| weren't a touch on the visceral world of half-life.
|
| The only other FPS games that came close to lore was rainbow
| six, but that was the "set pieces" style of choosing levels
| and going through rehearsed action rather than what felt like
| an emergent world in half-life.
|
| While replaying half-life now it feels far more linear and
| scripted, that's because we have nearly 15 years of gameplay
| improvements built on top of where it lay the foundations.
|
| For players at the time, going from games like quake to half-
| life it really did feel like it was genre defining.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Half-Life is the "Seinfeld is unfunny" of FPS games.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Half-life opening tram ride and test chamber were
| revolutionary. Nobody else had done something quite like
| that. Other games gave you the backstory in the manual and
| dropped you straight into the action.
| watwut wrote:
| > When you run into the marines you aren't told they're
| bad, they just start trying to kill you and you figure out
| that you're not getting a rescue.
|
| That is not exactly subtle nor needs much figuring. Them
| trying to kill you is game telling you they are bad in very
| straightforward way.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That's the game _showing_ you they're bad with gameplay
| instead of _telling_ you with a cutscene or text.
| watwut wrote:
| Games were showing rather then telling long before half
| life. That was not something special. I don't know
| whether people here did not played games other then half
| life back then or half life is only thing they remember.
|
| And the difference between full cit scene and what
| happened in half life was really really minor.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| You're gonna have to list some pre-Half-Life games that
| did a better job.
| watwut wrote:
| Wolfestein or doom. The thing is, half life allowed
| exactly zero choice. So anything where you can go back or
| have a choice between opening left or right door is
| better in terms of player agency.
|
| In terms of showing rather then telling via text, almost
| anything has that aspect.
|
| Half life had very good graphics for the time. That is
| where it shined.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Half-Life has a _bunch_ of player /story choices. Most of
| them small and inconsequential, I'll grant you, like the
| microwave incident, but Half-Life even _ends_ on a
| meaningul story player choice - whether to accept the job
| proposal.
|
| Wolfenstein and Doom have _literally zero_ story choices
| of any kind. Not even inconsequential ones!
|
| Clearly, Half-Life has superior story telling to
| Wolfenstein or Doom. Not by _much,_ can be argued, but it
| clearly does. And _at the time,_ the little bit felt like
| a whole lot compared to literally nothing.
| watwut wrote:
| Half life is going through exactly determined road with
| no option to turn left or right. There were token
| decisions, but that is it, they were just covers.
|
| In wolfesrwin, you could at least go back and had choice
| between left or right doors. Half life had only way to go
| - forward. It was like sitting on train moving on
| railroad.
| crtasm wrote:
| But not in first person, you-are-present-in-a-3D-world
| games? At least I'm not remembering any that felt like
| Half Life 1 did.
|
| The difference between a cut scene and embodying a
| character while things happen around you isn't a minor
| thing for many of us.
| watwut wrote:
| The castle of wolfestein or doom are both significantly
| older and allow more freedom. System shock was a year
| later and allowed actual tactical choices and somewhat
| strategical o es.
|
| Half life was part of pattern of moving towards extremely
| linear. It had better graphics than normal at the time.
| It had attempt at actual story. It was not move toward
| more agency to the player nor toward subtlety.
|
| It had less choices than normal at the time, not even in
| terms of whether to hide on left or right, less options
| for tactical decisions, less of anything like that.
| mcphage wrote:
| That sounds like it's still a cut-scene, just one done
| in-engine. Does the player have any control over the
| encounter, like shooting the marine or the scientist,
| before the scene begins?
| crtasm wrote:
| Here's the moment, unclear if you have full control but I
| don't think it locked you in to watching..?
| https://youtu.be/nHXtv11ZAH4?t=184
|
| yes here's a clip of someone saving the scientist:
| https://youtu.be/e_l84_7jDoU?t=163
| freeflight wrote:
| Let's be a bit more specific here: The first scene where
| the player encounters the marines is one where a
| scientist runs up to one of them, and gets gunned down by
| the marine.
|
| That kind of scripted event, and environmental story-
| telling, was extremely novel in a FPS game back then.
|
| It's easy to nowadays handwave that away as merely _"
| Marines shoot player, player realizes Marines are enemy"_
| like that kind of heavy scripting is just something
| mundane. But back then it wasn't mundane, it was quite
| revolutionary.
|
| Before that the norm in the genre was mostly maze
| shooters with very limited NPC interactions, like certain
| Doom enemies fighting each other or some wall or another
| blowing up in Quake, Half-Life took all of that and
| brought it to a whole new level.
| watwut wrote:
| To be clear, I did played the game back then. I did not
| perceived it as subtle or indirect or needing to figure
| out. Back then years ago, that in the moment game moment
| was "ah, OK, soldiers are supposed to be bad guys and I
| am supposed to kill them".
|
| Back then, half life was one of the games that made me
| think about how linear games are evolving to be. At one
| place, you could decide to go left or right and it joined
| back together quickly. It was straightforwardly
| prescripted, which is something we discussed with friends
| a lot.
|
| I did not needed hindsight of years and my current
| experience. If anything now I have less experience as I
| spend significantly less time playing games like this.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Games have always been pretty linear, though. The ones
| that had a notable degree of "freedom" found that freedom
| in
|
| a) Choosing which enemies to go and kill with your chosen
| color of pixel burst.
|
| or
|
| b) Choosing which set of text and vaguely
| representational spritework the game would expose to you.
|
| Many "linear" games offer tactical rather than strategic
| freedom. There is a sort of conservation of experiential
| depth, limited by the players' ability/inclination to
| absorb new interaction concepts, and the availability of
| developer resources to build them.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > Many "linear" games offer tactical rather than
| strategic freedom.
|
| This is a good way to put it IMO. Command and Conquer is
| an interesting exception in the action genre because it
| had some meta strategy in branching missions of the over
| world.
| watwut wrote:
| > Many "linear" games offer tactical rather than
| strategic freedom
|
| Half life was not one of them. At the time, they were
| games that allows more strategizing and more tactic and
| more micro choices. Half life was as prescribed as it
| gets.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| Yes but even this was revolutionary at the time - to
| reveal that information through gameplay rather than
| cutscene or text.
| ajuc wrote:
| > our standards for story telling in video games are really
| low.
|
| Nah, the standards are just different because of the medium.
| Just like you wouldn't write a book where people sing for 10
| minutes every time they talk, and you wouldn't write opera that
| lasts for 40 hours and has realistic acting and dialogs - you
| can't compare stories between different media ignoring the
| differences. And the difference that interactivity makes is
| bigger than the different constrains between novels and opera.
|
| The more detailed and intricate a story of a game is - the less
| freedom of choice the player has. In the extreme case you have
| so called "visual novels" which let you make 10-20 choices the
| whole game at predefined places. They barely qualify as games
| and they are very niche genre in gaming because they don't play
| to the strengths of the medium. At that point you might as well
| read a "choose your own adventure" book. The most common
| emotion they cause in players is frustration because they
| wanted the protagonist to do something else, but they can't
| influence the story in any way at the moment.
|
| On another end of the spectrum you have games like minecraft -
| where the story is your struggle vs the mechanics of the game,
| and there's no need for any pre-defined plot because you create
| the plot with every keyboard input you do every second. Freedom
| of choice = 100%, plot = 0%. Most gamers prefer these kinds of
| games because they can only be realized as games.
|
| The plot in minecraft can be "night was coming and I forgot the
| close the doors to the mines, then a creeper came and blew up
| my bed and pushed me into a chasm near a river of lava - I had
| 5% hitpoints left and if I died then I would get respawned in
| random place on the map cause no bed - I would maybe have to
| spend hours trying to find my base again so I had to think hard
| how to get out of there alive". It's a great story that forces
| the player to feel strong emotions. And it won't happen to any
| other player the exact same way which makes it even better. If
| you add traditional plot to Minecraft you make it worse.
|
| No matter if a story in art is detailed and intricate, or
| barely there - what matters is how it makes people feel. Novels
| have 100s of pages, poems might have 4 lines, but you won't say
| "stories in poetry suck".
|
| In Opera the main point is music, so the story is designed
| around that (and the time and place constraints). In games the
| tradeoffs are different, but it doesn't mean that it's somehow
| "low standards".
|
| Most games tend to prefer less plot and more freedom because it
| plays to the strengths of the medium. It's a trade-off.
|
| > it was the same story as all first person shooters going back
| to Doom: Bad guys spawn across an inter-dimensional portal and
| start wreaking havoc
|
| almost every book is Hero's Journey if we look from high
| enough. Details matter. You can take the same central conflict
| and write 1000 books that make you feel 1000 different
| emotions.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I think there's a bit where stories can be extremely complex
| but still have interactivity from the player. Bioware
| produces games like this where decisions made from previous
| games can be inherited to affect future games, and the
| overall storylines are complex and nuanced, albeit mostly in
| what BioWare can control (world building, npcs making
| decisions and having their own agendas, etc.)
| ajuc wrote:
| Yes, that's the hybrid model used by most RPGs:
|
| - visual novel mode for dialogues and plot choices where
| player freedom is very restricted by story can be detailed
|
| - game mode for mechanics and combat that have barely any
| influence on the story (besides "survive this challenge to
| continue") but players have freedom to express themselves
|
| It is very formulaic in structure, I'd argue more formulaic
| than ancient theater, and it limits the possible plots a
| lot (for example you won't find any RPG where the hero gets
| weaker with time). But all these conventions are accepted
| as necessary evil by the intended audience, so that's fine.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > The more detailed and intricate a story of a game is - the
| less freedom of choice the player has.
|
| That's merely an economic decision by the industry. You _can_
| make a game with detailed and intricate stories while
| simultaneously allowing full player freedom. It 's just
| difficult and expensive to do so!
|
| Consider something like Dwarf Fortress. It's detailed down to
| the alcohol content of the dirt under the cat's third left
| front paw nail. And the cat has its own will and you are
| permitted to do pretty much anything to the cat. But it's
| taken two people years to make it without much/any profit.
|
| The state of affairs is simply that we are limited only by
| our imaginations and our economic utilities. We carry
| supercomputers in our pockets. Few have any idea what to do
| with them.
| bujak300 wrote:
| And now that lame video game storytelling style is bleeding
| into cinema
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| I think it's the other way around. Lame cinema bleeding into
| video games. How many games are just glorified movies? With
| more cutscenes than gameplay?
|
| Print bleeds into video games _and_ movies as well. How many
| movies start with a text blurb? How many games literally just
| tell you what happened, instead of showing, instead of
| _doing._
| djmips wrote:
| I feel that's been present in cinema for as long as it's been
| around. B movies, cheap horror, serials for example.
| apownx wrote:
| Its low because MOST the chimp troupe is incapable of doing
| harder cognitive work or for longer periods of time no matter
| what reward is dangled in front of them.
|
| It doesnt matter which writer, author, musician, artist, game
| designer, movie maker you pick they all hit an upper bound of
| how many chimps in the the whole troupe they can connect with.
|
| But if we are targeting specific niches rather than the whole
| population its a great time to be a story teller. The kind of
| engagement you can get is historically of the charts.
| II2II wrote:
| Somewhat related: I remember watching a segment on the Computer
| Chronicles in the mid to late 1990's where a developer was
| boasting about the puzzles in some sort of space themed
| shooter. He then proceeded to show an example. It involved
| toggling a switch in a control room to open a door in an
| adjacent room. Ever since then, I have taken claims about the
| sophistication of video games (may that be in puzzles or story
| telling) with a grain of salt since the standards are
| remarkably low. The only way to assess those claims is to play
| it yourself or, these days, to watch a walk-through.
|
| Even then, I tend to gravitate towards open world games without
| stories since it is easier to imagine your own than dealing
| with expository interjections. The Long Dark is a good example
| of this. The developers are trying to make a narrative driven
| game with their Wintermute story mode, yet the reality is that
| survival mode is far more fun. Rather than dealing with
| criminals in an otherwise inexplicable desolate wasteland[1]
| while trying to find my ex (their story), I am trying to figure
| out what happened to the once sleepy community that I last
| visited in my childhood while trying to survive long enough to
| be rescued (my story).
|
| (1) Technically, there is an explanation, but it is weak and
| not always consistent.
| mkotowski wrote:
| > This author has it spot on: our standards for story telling
| in video games are really low.
|
| Are they? I would say that they are, but not for video games,
| but for all things in general.
|
| Sturgeon's law [0] states that "ninety percent of everything is
| crap." And it was supposedly originally about sci-fi novels!
| "Fifty Shades of Grey" was completely criticized on all fronts
| by reviewers, but still became one of the top bestsellers.
|
| If you look at ancient myths, we have things like a series of
| myths with a central plot resolving around a god raping humans
| of all genders (significant chunk of Zeus-related mythology),
| Loki changing into a mare and getting impregnated, because gods
| wanted to prevent a builder from getting rightfully earned
| reward [1].
|
| Most of the stories created today are low-quality ones. And
| that was always so. Only when we look at the past creations, we
| can only experience those that were good enough to be
| preserved. The same will probably happen with video games if
| various DRMs will not prevent that.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sva%C3%B0ilfari
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > "Fifty Shades of Grey" was completely criticized on all
| fronts by reviewers, but still became one of the top
| bestsellers. > [...] > Most of the stories created today are
| low-quality ones. And that was always so. Only when we look
| at the past creations, we can only experience those that were
| good enough to be preserved.
|
| I'm pretty sure that Fifty Shades of Grey wasn't successful
| for its story, but for discussing sex and specifically BDSM
| in a more open way than what was previously seen in
| "mainstream" movies.
|
| Overall, a lot of works that, on the surface, aren't very
| impressive by current standards, but still managed to stand
| out in a novel way. Fifty shades and Half Life are two
| examples, but you could say exactly the same thing about
| Minecraft, DOOM, most of the classical movies, most of the
| old "legendary" cars and a lot more. Things don't become
| classics by standing the test of time - if you discount
| nostalgia, a lot of "classical" stuff is crap by todays
| standard -, but by founding the genre they're later beaten
| in.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure that Fifty Shades of Grey wasn't
| successful for its story, but for discussing sex and
| specifically BDSM in a more open way than what was
| previously seen in "mainstream" movies.
|
| And because it feeded from the Twilight-Hype, on which it
| was a juicy twist. For itself it probably would never have
| become such a success.
|
| > but you could say exactly the same thing about Minecraft,
| DOOM
|
| Can we? Minecraft feeds mainly on its powerful sandboxing
| and modability, which other games still can't really match
| today, while also still getting regular updates. And doom
| as a franchise continued to move forward and created new
| games. They don't remain successful just because their
| first versions were awesome at the time, but because they
| continued to output awesome successors.
|
| This is very different from classics which are usually
| frozen in time and stay classics despite getting no updates
| at all.
| taeric wrote:
| Mentioning ancient myths, I'm struck by how surprisingly good
| the story telling in the new God of War games is.
| Theodores wrote:
| Parents play video games as well as their kids. This never used
| to happen if we roll back to when Space Invaders was the latest
| and greatest.
|
| Nowadays you can have the 50 year old dad spending his quality
| time in bed next to his wife blasting enemies with the
| teenage/student kids doing the same.
|
| With another generation it will be the folks in retirement homes
| too.
|
| With music you get stuck on the stuff you discovered and made
| your own. Into punk? Probably born way back in the 60s. Techno?
| 70s.
|
| Will it be the same with games? The guy in the retirement home
| still playing World of Warcraft? Or that copy of Diablo that came
| out in 2003?
|
| Story in video games therefore has to be good enough to not just
| last a week or a summer, but a lifetime.
| billyjobob wrote:
| Space Invaders and arcades in general seemed more popular with
| adults than with children in 1980. I'm not sure when or why
| video games came to be regarded as a juvenile pastime. Possibly
| coincided with the kid-friendly characters and home consoles
| promoted by Sega and Nintendo around 1990.
|
| Or maybe games have always appealed to nerds of all ages, but
| what happened in the 90s is they began to appeal to normie
| children too, and as you point out those normie kids continued
| to play them when they became normie adults.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >With music you get stuck on the stuff you discovered and made
| your own. Into punk? Probably born way back in the 60s. Techno?
| 70s.
|
| I don't listen to particular genres of music or music from a
| particular period of time.
|
| As for gaming, I would rather watch a film, read a book, go
| outside, watch a play, meet people, do something else, because
| I don't have much free time and gaming is not a priority.
|
| I would probably play some games if I would have more free
| time.
|
| As a matter of fact I worked for 7 years as a game programmer
| and during that period I never played other games than our own
| stuff and some stuff from the competition where we wanted to
| understand some mechanics.
| davidelettieri wrote:
| 50 years old dad was in his twenties when Doom was out. Older
| people that plays videogames are mostly the ones that played
| videogames at a young age.
| thriftwy wrote:
| People still play HoMM 3 from 1999 - both as a hobby in large
| numbers, and professionally. New content is being created.
|
| Master of Magic gets a new life with bugfix/balance patches and
| addons. It's from 1993.
| watwut wrote:
| It did used to happen. Really. And it does not happen super
| often now.
| [deleted]
| unpopularopp wrote:
| >The Last of Us has decent gameplay but became a phenomenon by
| having a story as good as a medium-quality zombie movie
|
| Seems like the writer is just hating AAA games
|
| But I'm also curious what zombie movies does this guy watch that
| have a so so much better story than TLoU
| nottorp wrote:
| > Seems like the writer is just hating AAA games
|
| He's not alone. But I don't hate them, they bore me to tears.
| Same goes for the current Hollywood blockbusters.
|
| > But I'm also curious what zombie movies does this guy watch
| that have a so so much better story than TLoU
|
| Zombieland :)
| wanda wrote:
| You have to remember that money is the only thing that exists.
|
| Stories do not need to be good for a video game to sell. These
| days, the game doesn't even need to be original, you can just
| sell a remake or a remaster and print more money.
|
| Stories aren't even a substantial factor for _maximising_ sales.
| Paid DLCs are often self-contained and not necessarily even based
| on the story.
|
| There is a reason why every game released now is a "cinematic"
| title with a generic bad story and most likely with online
| multiplayer (co-op and/or PvP) and microtransactions for player
| customisations.
|
| These games have the "breathtaking cutscenes" and "next-gen
| visuals" to give game review websites their headlines (game
| review sites are basically as crooked as financial ratings
| agencies) and then the game prints money with initial cost, cost
| of paid DLC, and the cost to give your character flashier armor
| than the other guy.
|
| In the beginning, people developed games with passion. They
| focused on make the game fun to play, rewarding to play. We
| didn't know the best ways to do things but we tried.
|
| Games were difficult because overcoming a thumb shredding fight
| is satisfying, figuring out an obscure puzzle is satisfying.
|
| But when video game publishers etc got big enough, they were able
| to cherrypick what they published, so naturally they go for
| whatever will generate the most revenue with the least risk.
|
| This means games are easier, so more people will play them and
| fewer people will give up on them.
|
| Games don't have puzzles that aren't solvable in seconds because
| this represents a distraction from the combat which some research
| has likely shown to give the general population more pleasure
| than anything else.
|
| And games don't try very hard at stories because it probably
| costs a lot to come up with a good story and a good story will
| likely involve game segments that are a little harder to put
| together than the generic linear levels the publishers had in
| mind.
|
| Publishers probably also figure it's safer to keep things basic
| in terms of story because they have data to show that people
| bought into and/or enjoyed a story 85% similar in the past.
|
| And they can just add DLC and remake/remaster the game down the
| line and flesh the lore out. Hell, they can just rely on the
| community to maintain the game on a long enough time scale.
|
| Stories in video games are bad for the same reason most movies
| these days are bad and samey. Money dictates everything on a
| large corporate level and video game production has reached that
| scale.
|
| You still get indie devs who can go off the beaten path, but I
| feel like 70% of these indie endeavours result in a 2D
| platforming/metroidvania game because it's easy to make. Which is
| fine but one could argue that this results in some samey stories.
|
| There are obviously other indie games that are good and different
| but it's still rare to see a great story -- the dev may not care
| much about the story, they have less time to write a good or
| original story because the game is likely their side-project, or
| hell maybe they just suck at stories.
|
| ultimately the story isn't super important to whether a game is
| enjoyable to play. it is a factor to whether the game is fondly
| remembered, and to whether it moves/touches people.
|
| what matters is passion, artistry, soul. hard to define, but
| basically if something is made with every effort to be perfect,
| to realise a vision, and to be made enjoyable and fun to play,
| regardless of cost-efficiency to some corporate timeline, it has
| a chance of being a great game. if it has a great story, even
| better, it can have 10/10.
|
| I don't care what the graphics are like, I don't need to see the
| pores on a characters face or their nostril hairs. far too much
| time is put into this aspect of games.
|
| I care about whether the game is fun, whether it's all but
| addictive to play again. is it challenging? do I feel good when I
| become skilful enough to overcome challenges? how the hell do I
| get out of this room? did I seriously just have to read through
| books I luckily coincidentally own to find the solution to this
| problem?
|
| then comes the story -- and to be honest, this is mostly because
| there's par for the course. if it's really bad, like horror
| channel b-movie bad, then there it makes a game struggle to
| stick. but things like good execution and quality voice acting
| can help recover a _mediocre_ or _unoriginal_ story.
|
| I value originality, I think I am just a little bit too jaded to
| expect it from games or indeed any media at this point -- it's
| nice when it happens, but if it doesn't, as long as it's done
| well and there's passion, as long as the game tries and is fun to
| play, well made, I'm not gonna hate on it for having not-
| shakespeare story.
|
| but there's a threshold, like I said. Halo is a good example of a
| shooter with a story that is pretty familiar prima facie, but it
| earned a pass by being fun to play and the story has more
| interesting features than immediately meet the eye.
|
| metal gear solid, the PSX gsme -- a very familiar plot, certainly
| for a while into the game anyway, but the execution and
| storytelling was so good you didn't care.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| There are several games I've played where I remember playing
| racing through the action to get further into the story, or games
| that put storytelling at the center. In no particular order:
|
| - Bastion
|
| - The Stanley Parable
|
| - Bioshock Infinite
|
| - The Elder Scrolls series
|
| - GTA: V
|
| - Control
|
| - Sam and Max
|
| Sure this isn't high art, but often is deeply compelling
| regardless. The possibilities of the medium are still yet to be
| fully explored.
|
| Are there other titles I should look into?
| Sharlin wrote:
| Planescape: Torment, of course, in which combat is rare, often
| optional, and doesn't net you much XP compared to story
| milestones and noncombat quests. Also, probably the only D&D
| based computer game where it's a better idea to max Cha/Int/Wis
| than Str/Con/Dex. (Although unfortunately the third act
| devolves into a much more linear dungeon crawl, probably due to
| the devs running out of time.)
|
| Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines, with its infamously janky
| combat but incredibly memorable characters and some superb
| storytelling moments. Unfortunately, the third-act degeneration
| is very much a thing here as well.
|
| The original Deus Ex, again with rather janky combat and
| emphasis on stealth and nonviolent problem-solving. Exploration
| and finding out more about the world is much more rewarding
| than killing enemies. But the third act... Uh, I think I'm
| starting to repeat myself here :(
| [deleted]
| wirthjason wrote:
| The first game I remember having a story was The Legend of Zelda.
| The competition at the time was Mario, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, and
| all the arcade and Atari games.
| Causality1 wrote:
| _If I was, I 'd be writing books nobody buys because nobody buys
| books anymore_
|
| Sales of printed books have been increasing every year since
| 2012. Last year alone saw a jump of over eight percent.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Overall sales might be up but are those sales making the head
| fatter, the tail fatter, or the tail _longer_? For any
| individual writer without sales in the head, increased sales
| only matter if the tail gets fatter. They don 't individually
| make any more money if it gets longer (more books by more
| writers).
| Causality1 wrote:
| As long as the writers are making enough money to produce
| their best output, the ideal situation is as long a tail as
| possible. The greater the variety of author, the greater the
| variety of books.
| giantrobot wrote:
| But that's the core issue. A long tail is good for Amazon
| and theoretically good for readers. It's not really helpful
| for writers. Any in the long tail are unlikely to ever pay
| back an advance and actually make money off sales let alone
| be making enough to produce their best output.
|
| So total unit sales being up doesn't necessarily counter
| that statement "no one reads books anymore". Unit sales
| being "up" has a lot of qualifiers.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| It looks to me like the author was making a joke.
| Kye wrote:
| Agreed. I read it like the classic "nobody goes there
| anymore, it's too crowded."
| ddingus wrote:
| Same. Text can sometimes be hard. That text is fairly
| lucid. The tone and humor stand out fairly well. Like the
| author said: competent.
|
| ...which means a percentage of us will take it differently
| than intended.
| merciBien wrote:
| I agree, I enjoyed the self-deprecating, comic tone of the
| article. I still appreciate the comment pointing out that
| large numbers of people apparently still read books. I was
| surprised to learn that!
| merciBien wrote:
| Thanks for posting this comment, I searched for sources on this
| topic after reading it and was very surprised to see
| corroboration. Here's a quote and few links for those
| interested:
|
| In the US in 2019, a high % of adults reported reading a book
| recently
|
| https://www.markinblog.com/book-sales-statistics/
|
| ...who is reading in the US?
|
| In October of 2019, over 80% of adults, age 18 to 29, have read
| at least one book in the previous year. Older adults, possibly
| because they are not spending as much time studying and more
| time working, read slightly less.
|
| Lockdowns may have increased reading in the US
|
| https://publishingperspectives.com/2021/02/aap-statshot-sees...
|
| Political polarization in the UK appears to drive book sales
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/datablog/2017/mar/18/the-f...
|
| (edit for formatting)
| [deleted]
| r00f wrote:
| Did they count only paper books? I read on average one book
| each month, but all are digital.
|
| Overall I agree with the idea, people for sure haven't
| stopped reading books. But I'm not that sure about the paper
| ones.
| watwut wrote:
| I don't believe average person actually reads a book a
| month. There might be outliers who read a lot or something.
| It likely counts in bought and never read books. But most
| adults will openly tell you they finished last book five
| years ago and attempted to read one last year.
| yeetaccount wrote:
| Books sales are sales of anything with an ISBN. This includes
| adult colouring books, which I've heard is responsible for
| possibly all the sales increases in the past few years.
| kibwen wrote:
| After a flurry of activity in the last decade, I haven't
| heard anyone mention adult coloring books even once in the
| past two or three years. As long as we're all baselessly
| speculating, I will baselessly speculate that they were
| just an ordinary fad. My own anecdote is that
| disillusionment with internet content and electronic
| consumption in general has caused me to buy and read more
| books recently than at any point in my life.
| watwut wrote:
| They are prominently in bookstores. They did not
| disappeared and people did not stopped buying them.
|
| Just the hand wringing over them stopped.
| nottorp wrote:
| I'm blaming self improvement books.
| gregjw wrote:
| Come on...
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| If you want a good, different, video game story, I can 100%
| recommend "Everybody's Gone To The Rapture".
|
| It's _not_ a bang-bang-shooty game though.
| [deleted]
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| Nothing beats The Last of Us story for me (it's why it became
| PlayStation game of the decade).
|
| The Last of Us Part II spoils you even further, there isn't
| anything else close to the level of detail and story telling that
| Naugthy Dog has done here.
|
| "It's a rollercoaster thrill ride which lasts like 20 hours and
| leaves you scarred for the rest of your days. 10/10"
|
| FYI HBO and creators of Chernobyl have picked up The Last of Us
| and are filming 10 episode series right now with a bigger budget
| than Game of Thrones.
| dgb23 wrote:
| What makes them stand out to me is the emersion. The game and
| rythm let you feel the story on a different level.
| thendrill wrote:
| Yes last of us is amazing to watch.
|
| But the game never starts. Your basically navigating cut scenes
| on rails.
|
| Same can be said for cod campaigns and Titanfall. Hell
| titanfall 1 was multi-player only and it still has a story
| spawning Apex Legends
| Matthias247 wrote:
| I remembered enjoying the first TLOU, but when I played the
| second one last year it didn't click with me. It felt like a
| rather long and brutal rage trip. There was story to it and
| very nicely produced settings, but it all felt like minor
| elements on this rage trip than any big changes and surprises.
| Actually wondering if anyone else felt that way, or whether my
| taste of games just changed over the last years.
| shmde wrote:
| Here are some single player narrative/story driven games which
| are worth your time and money and also has decent to good
| storyline. The author seems way too salty over some games I
| think.
|
| - The Last of Us 1 & 2 ( Must play )
|
| - RDR 1&2. ( 2 is must play )
|
| - GTA IV - Mafia 2
|
| - A Plague Tale: Innocence ( must play )
|
| - Metro series.
|
| - Inside
|
| - Witcher 3
|
| - A Way out ( needs 2 player )
|
| - Night in the woods
|
| - Breath of the Wild ( if you own a switch )
|
| - Undertale
|
| - The whole Walking Dead series by TellTale. ( Similar theme of
| Last of Us )
|
| - Life is strange. ( People say it has a cliched story but I
| loved it )
|
| - Detroit become human.
|
| - Yakuza Series
|
| - Sleeping dogs ( A man who never eats pork buns is never a whole
| man! )
|
| - GoW (2018) ( PlayStation exclusive )
|
| - Uncharted series especially Uncharted 4. ( PS exclusive but its
| coming to PC soon )
|
| - Horizon Zero Dawn
|
| - Nier Automata
|
| - Subnautica
|
| - Firewatch
|
| - Alan Wake.
|
| - Fallout (especially New Vegas)
|
| - Dishonored series
|
| - Pathologic 2.
|
| - Disco Elysium.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| Prey was interesting too, and I also enjoyed Deathloop from the
| same studio (story is mediocre, but the way you discover it
| during the gameplay is very compelling).
|
| From telltale, I enjoyed also tales from the borderland.
|
| I guess the list should also contain a lot of eastern RPGs.
| Final Fantasy (e.g. the FF7 remake) and similar titles have a
| lot of story.
|
| Life is strange part 2 was a huge disappoinment. There is a
| subpar story in the game, and literally zero gameplay (click a
| button every 5 minutes - without exageration). Probably more
| for people who are interested in the atmosphere of the game
| than anything else.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Star Control II and Alpha Centauri are on par with the best SF
| books out there. Vernor Vinge quality, I would say.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Oh yeaah SCII
| mjsir911 wrote:
| It's been mentioned around on other comments but take a look at
| Outer Wilds if you have the time, you and I seem to have very
| overlapping preferences and I was surprised not to see it on
| your list.
|
| Appreciate the suggestions! Will have to take a look at the few
| that I haven't yet.
| NoPicklez wrote:
| Where is World of Warcraft in all of this :(
|
| Arguably one of the largest story worlds of all. Almost endless
| lore and a game which resolves around story telling.
| kyriakos wrote:
| since you mentioned Alan Wake all games by Remedy seem to have
| good stories backing the gameplay. Control would easily make a
| nice twisted TV series.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Another truth is that you don't need a good story to achieve
| success. There are many successful games with no good story or no
| story at all.
| hnick wrote:
| The problem is that "games" is one word, but we really have two
| core types of game.
|
| Some games focus on mechanical skills or rules akin to a sport
| or boardgame, others are an interactive narrative experience.
| This interactive experience can further be broken down into
| games that tell you what is happening (cinema), and games that
| let you make your own story (tabletop RPG).
|
| So while there is a lot of crossover and blurred lines, of
| these types of game, only one type really needs a well written
| or scripted story to achieve its goals. We have many successful
| games with no story due to this, but other games wouldn't have
| succeeded without one.
| qsort wrote:
| This.
|
| Space Invaders, Pacman, Mario, Tetris are games that single-
| handedly _defined_ an entire generation of games. No story to
| be found.
|
| I think the OP is perfectly on point. A good story _demands_ an
| authorial voice, and most games can 't have (or won't bother
| with) that.
| ycombinete wrote:
| I like the John Carmack quote:
|
| "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected
| to be there, but it's not that important."
| freeflight wrote:
| Imho that quote says more about what parts of games John
| Carmack has mostly worked on during his life than it actually
| says anything about storytelling in games.
|
| The guy is so deep in code engineering that sometimes other,
| more nuanced, details can be seemingly totally lost on him.
| nmfisher wrote:
| Yeah, I have a lot of respect for Carmack as a
| developer/engineer but I doubt you'd want him in charge of
| actually designing your game. I'm sure he'd admit as much.
| mkotowski wrote:
| Or, as Nintendo often does, you create a good gameplay first,
| and only then you start creating a plot around it.
|
| Of course, it can fail too, but in my humble opinion it is one
| of the best approach to game design.
| [deleted]
| imbnwa wrote:
| I wanna know what quality of zombie movie this guy is watching
| that The Last of Us is somehow beneath them. The only zombie
| movie worth a damn _this century_ is 28 Days Later. The Last of
| Us Part II was an even more amazing story, I literally was saying
| NO at the penultimate scene on the beach. The franchise is so
| well done HBO is adapting it.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| I'm one of those weirdos who thinks 28 Weeks Later was artistic
| genius, and that's a hill I'm willing to die on - all those
| people dying to save an asymptomatic carrier because he's a
| kid?
|
| Entirely plausible and tragic.
| bananamerica wrote:
| Weeks or days?
| sk0g wrote:
| Weeks, which is the sequel to the original film, Days.
| Weeks revolves around the asymptomatic carriers, while Days
| is mostly about the outbreak developing.
| sien wrote:
| Shaun of the Dead was great. Fido was pretty good too.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Comedies just aren't the same thing though, I mean where do
| you really start comparing Shaun of the Dead, which is
| hilarious don't get me wrong, with The Last Of Us?
| pdpi wrote:
| We've had theatre and literature as narrative art for centuries.
| Film has been around for a tiny bit over 100 years, and it took
| them decades to find their own voices distinct from their
| predecessors.
|
| By comparison, video games are in their infancy. We've been at it
| for only a few short decades, and having the audience directly
| involved with the narrative is a radical shift from what we had
| before. We're looking at a new art form finding its identity.
|
| Right now the industry is drowing in AAA games that stick to the
| cinematic style of storytelling (and "cinematic" is still used as
| praise for storytelling in games), but there's also lots of
| (mostly indie) games out there that are trying to push the
| boundaries. You have games like Braid, Brothers and Hades
| exploring how to strongly bind narrative and game mechanics
| together. You have games like the first Bioshock, which abuse
| your understanding of genre conventions. You have games like
| Return of the Obra Dinn doing amazing work with non-linear
| storytelling.
|
| It's a good time to be into video game storytelling.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I think the medium is still in such infancy that even the
| cinematic style games are still pushing the boundaries. Naughty
| Dog is making incredible experiences in that format.
| speeder wrote:
| I wonder how long it will take for someone to pull off what
| Chris Crawford been trying to do, that is find games own style
| of telling stories.
|
| His own attempt was to make AI that writes the story as it
| interacts with the player, but lastest blog entries of his
| suggest he is unsure if that path that took him many years (he
| started the attempt in 1992 I think?) was the right one.
| periphrasis wrote:
| Video games have existed for over 50 years now. Video games
| have had as much time to mature as film had had by the early
| 1940s. And by the early 1940s film had produced numerous mature
| works of art displaying mastery of the medium that are still
| avidly watched and viewed as masterpieces today. The excuse
| that video games are a young medium may have held 20 years ago
| in the PS2 era, but it does not hold any longer.
| sethammons wrote:
| How many movies does your avg movie goer know or can name
| movies from the 40s? Maybe, maybe half a dozen (it's a
| wonderful life, casablanca, citizen kane, Disney Fantasia and
| Pinocchio, and his girl Friday. I'm pretty sure your average
| person can name an order of magnitude more video games from
| pong to mario to sonic to modern day AAA games. And over
| time, some will have staying power, like I hope Breath of the
| Wild will.
| bombcar wrote:
| Half of those games you listed are actually game _series_.
| Most people can probably name Mickey Mouse, a movie
| character from the 30s.
| periphrasis wrote:
| I'm not sure the recency bias of a contemporary average
| person is a good proxy for the artistic achievement of a
| time now three generations past. If we were to enumerate
| the list of major, artistically significant films released
| in the 30s and 40s, we would produce dozens of titles that
| even the average person has heard of, if perhaps not seen
| themselves. In the same vein, the average person would
| struggle to identify Plato or Cicero, let alone have read
| any of their work, but the names would at least ring a
| bell.
|
| Video games are in a weird place because they arguably
| reached maturity of design with 1985's Super Mario Bros.
| But as wonderful as SMB is, it doesn't mean anything or
| have anything to say: it is just the first game to truly
| nail 2d platformer mechanics to a transcendent degree.
| Indeed, as the OP mentioned, the best video games seem to
| be able to do as of yet with respect to depth of meaning is
| the equivalent of a mid-grade zombie film (The Last of Us),
| and the industry is such a grind that the writers burn out
| before really developing their craft. Maybe video games
| will eventually bring a depth of meaning and insight
| equivalent to their refinement of play mechanics, but
| they're not there yet.
| imbnwa wrote:
| _Journey_ and _Abzu_ are great examples of what video games can
| do with just exploration of the environment telling you a story
| with zero dialogue /exposition that by definition can't be done
| in other mediums
| periphrasis wrote:
| I haven't played either game but any sort of visual medium is
| capable of story telling without dialogue or exposition:
| visuals can tell a story at least as effectively, if not more
| so, than words can. For a somewhat recent, very well regarded
| example, see the opening prologue of Up.
| imbnwa wrote:
| All other visual mediums lack interactivity which changes
| things. I can't press something in a painting and unlock
| another experience, in _Up_ the camera is controlled by the
| creators. You can play the games I mentioned and _miss_
| things by not exploring with your camera and interacting
| with the environment.
| pdpi wrote:
| I would argue that what you're describing is close to an
| interactive version of the sort of storytelling you can
| achieve in a painting (also - you piqued my interest,
| installing Journey!).
| imbnwa wrote:
| It's a really great game and I think by the end you'll be
| awestruck by what it successfully evokes in you, but a
| painting, or a silent movie for that matter, are by
| definition not interactive environments unless using your
| imagination/interpretation is equivalent to a video game.
| In the games I describe you can _miss_ things by not
| exploring. I won 't miss anything in watching a silent
| movie or the opening sequence to _Up_ because there 's a
| definite set of frames and they run one way. A painting is
| even more limited.
| ElonMuskrat wrote:
| It's great the author has found success and carved out a niche.
| However it's quiet a stretch for them to speak as an authority,
| to assert truisms about video games. Several other commentators
| have great counter examples. From memory games like The Last of
| Us, Brothers, Life is Strange and Disco Elysium.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I agree with a lot of his points, and with the general thesis of
| the article. But, I disagree with this:
|
| > The default video game plot is, 'See that guy over there? That
| guy is bad. Kill that guy.' If your plot is anything different,
| you're 99% of the way to having a better story.
|
| I don't think the structure of the story needs to be more complex
| than that to be good. It can be, but neither complexity, nor
| novelty, nor non-linearity are what makes stories good. The stuff
| he dismisses as being of limited value (good dialog and
| interesting worlds) are extremely important. I'd add
| characterization to that. But those things are, to lots of
| people, all equally as important as structure in making a story
| meaningful.
| hereme888 wrote:
| I rarely play video games,but when I do, it's because the ones I
| pick give me a more immersive story than watching a movie. So,
| I'm on the camp that believes in playing for the story, and I
| don't play so much that the amazing stories in most games I've
| played become boring.
| platz wrote:
| When photography was invented, people judged it by how well it
| could compare to a painting, before discovering what made the
| medium unique.
|
| Video games are in a similar position, in which they are
| evaluated on 'story', which is how one evaluates movies.
|
| once we realize video games are not movies in terms of what
| effect they are supposed to produce, we will to be able to
| evaluate them on their own terms
|
| For example, maybe what kind of beauty we should seek to maximize
| in a video game isnt the story, but the act of agency in the
| player as shaped by the game's rules or constraints. With that
| idea, it is the player's performance that is most beautiful, not
| the story.
| smoldesu wrote:
| As John Carmack once said (I'm loosely paraphrasing here)
| "Stories in video games are like stories in porno: they're
| expected to be there, but never any good."
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Well, that's definitely true of John Carmack's games...
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I'm writing a book about Why We Play RuneScape, and this is
| especially true for the MMORPG genre. Great insight.
| ycombinete wrote:
| That sounds like an interesting book. I've never really
| played an MMO and never understood the appeal. I'd log in
| and not quite know what to do. I've just had the same
| experience with New World. Do you have some of your writing
| online somewhere?
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| I'd be in the opposite camp. Video game stories are those things
| I have to quickly click through to get to the next bit of action.
| Ya, ya, ya, bla, bla, bla, click, click click, don't care.
|
| My ideal is to create my own story rather than have it spoon fed
| to me. Let me roll a character then let me do what I want in an
| interactive open world. Sure, some curating and minor direction
| is OK, but the less the better. I don't remember much of the
| story of GTA 3 other than slogging through it to open the city up
| but surfing a car all over town causing mayhem or endlessly
| jumping the ski jump on the third island, those are the memories
| of that game I remember vividly and cherish. To enhance this I
| absolutely love good procedural generation. Finding that one out
| of a thousand planet in No Mans Sky and just exploring it, taking
| screen shots knowing that I'm likely the only person who will
| ever visit it, wonderful.
|
| The other problem with modern video game stories I notice now
| that I have a kid: there are plenty of video games that action
| wise I have no problem letting my kid play but can't due to the
| story and mainly the cut scenes. Seems to be a path to some edgy
| cred when the base action does not really justify it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Never being one to avoid shamelessly plugging my book ("book"
| -- see what I did there?)
|
| We played MazeWar at Xerox in the late 70s. The guy on the
| cover of my book is Jeffrey Smith, the son of Dave Smith, the
| inventor of icons. The story ("story" -- see? I did it there
| again) is that Dave and his wife Janet, 2 weeks overdue with
| Jeffrey, went to PARC to kill some time, she saw the bloody
| eyeball on the screen, and the adrenaline made her go into
| labor and deliver Jeffrey.
|
| I found a working Alto, and shot the photograph in Nov. 2020,
| using the real MazeWar software. He loved reenacting the family
| legend.
|
| [1] https://www.albertcory.io
| crazy_horse wrote:
| I feel like you are providing an example.
|
| I came to this thread to read a thread about videogame
| stories. Imagine my surprise (wait, this is HN), when the
| first thing that I see is your comment about videogames that
| isn't really about videogames it's a way for you to sell your
| book, which you admit you are shameless about.
|
| But I just wanted to reed about videogames. If you were more
| subtle, if you knew how tll me a story without telling me
| that you are telling a story, then it's not wasting my time
| and I can get what I came for as well as what you want me to
| learn.
| humblepie wrote:
| This is what I do since, I don't know, King's Quest series?
| After the death of adventure games I don't care about stories
| anymore. The graphics and the gameplay carry all the weight
| now. The Assassin's Creed series-what is this Animus crap? Just
| make the character be that assassin guy instead of switching to
| some pandering story about a time computer. Seeing what they
| did to ancient settings and bringing these cities to life is
| cool but have no time for little stories.
| ace2358 wrote:
| I can't stand that animus stuff honestly I usually turn it
| off after one of those scenes just to wash it away. Totally
| destroys the game for me (which I only just started with
| origins and odyssey)
| 015a wrote:
| I'd tend to agree.
|
| I think games need to be better about "picking a camp". Many
| games try to force a strong narrative into an open world
| design, and both qualities end up faltering because of it.
| Examples: Mass Effect, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, most
| Ubisoft games.
|
| The best open world games tell very light narrative. They may
| have tons of lore to fall upon and discover, but there's
| otherwise very little arc to the narrative you're progressing
| through during your time in the game. Examples: Dark Souls 1,
| Breath of the Wild.
|
| The best narratively-focused games severely limit players'
| freedoms in how to approach the high-level narrative beats.
| Some great ones do give some freedoms in how to approach
| tactical situations (The Last of Us 2), but this doesn't impact
| the broader arc. Other examples: Bioshock/Infinite, Nier
| Automata, Portal 2.
|
| There are vanishingly few examples of games which actually do
| both with high competence. I'd list: Witcher 3, Red Dead 2,
| Dragon Age Origins as examples. One quality shared among these
| games is how weak their high level narrative is allowed to be,
| in exchange for much stronger shorter side-narratives. When
| people say Witcher 3 has a great story, what they really mean
| is: It tells _tons_ of very high quality short stories.
| Similarly with RDR2, the overarching "end of the cowboy"
| narrative is great, but its the ambient storytelling of the
| world that sells it as having great storytelling chops.
|
| The bigger issue with narratively-focused games is how the game
| needs to convince the player that this was _worth_ being a
| game, and not a TV Show. I feel games like those listed above
| (TLOU2, Bioshock, Nier, Portal) do this very well, because the
| beat-to-beat gameplay is compelling despite the strict world
| architecture. But, many other games which tell strong
| narratives falter too quickly in providing great gameplay
| (Telltale games, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch) to
| justify it being a game. I don 't generally hold this _against_
| the game, because ultimately if you want to tell a great
| narrative, and you know how to build games, you 'll tell that
| narrative through a game, that ain't bad, its just one medium
| among many. But I also fully understand the counter-argument;
| its _sold_ as a game. People have expectations going into a
| game, that it won 't be a movie, yet that's basically all
| Telltale ever made, Bandersnatch-style clickable movies.
|
| Discussions like this are one of the things I love about
| gaming; its such a nascent medium, its still trying to find its
| footing and what makes a game great. Why is Breath of the Wild
| _so much better_ than Immortals: Fenyx Rising? I 've played
| both a ton, I've thought about it a ton, and I still don't feel
| that I have a compelling answer which wouldn't be a 200 page
| essay. BotW copied a ton of gameplay elements from earlier
| Ubisoft games. Ubisoft then copied a ton of gameplay elements
| from BotW for Immortals. Yet, the Ubisoft products are never as
| good. What makes BotW special? Can Nintendo replicate it for
| BotW2? Do they even _want_ to? Probably not; despite developing
| the same franchises for decades, Nintendo rarely retreads
| gameplay ground; so, follow-up question, how the hell is
| Nintendo so good at consistently creating new gameplay
| experiences? Why have so vanishingly few companies replicated
| their production success?
| megameter wrote:
| Nintendo has a different core business model, one which is
| hard to replicate in another public corporation because it
| goes against the norm of making the quarterly results look as
| good as possible: Instead of scoring a hit and immediately
| trying to line up out yearly sequels, or trying to greenlight
| productions based on a marketing pitch alone, Nintendo
| typically rotates out IPs to match with prototypes and
| marketing concepts that have been on the go for a while.
| Likewise, they tend not to go the route of filling the
| shelves with a checklisted set of SKUs(e.g. 1 action, 1 RPG,
| 1 sports game per business quarter) - they will jump on some
| trends and occasionally dabble in clones and sequels, but
| their bread and butter has come from a more gradual approach
| of making each product focused, coherent and unique versus
| making it incrementally better than a competitor.
|
| Ubisoft - and most of the publishers - can't do this because
| they're set up to make games that are large in scope, boast
| technical excellence(an ever-increasing bar) and are destined
| to be yearly franchises: quantities of assets and features
| are given precedence over coherence, which means that you get
| a trail of papercut discontinuities, dropped balls and lack
| of focus throughout the experience. Coherence has a degree of
| power over the game experience that is probably hundreds or
| thousands of times that of scope alone: it means that the
| software, assets and design work well together instead of
| creating "door problems" that dev time is spent solving. This
| means that a game built around a design that coheres well is
| automatically more polished since it never had to compromise
| the experience to solve problems. Nintendo regularly takes
| design shortcuts to this end, omitting entire categories of
| assets.
|
| The true polar opposite to a Nintendo-style approach is
| something more like Bethesda's open world games: the game
| that's launched is a simulation engine with a large sandbox
| scenario. It may work and be playable to completion by
| itself, but the underlying product focus is to use it in a
| way supportive of tinkering, modding and exploitative gaming
| - to let the player bring a complicated system "off the
| rails". This tendency towards simulationism goes all the way
| back to Bethesda's origins in making stat-heavy sports sims.
| It makes for a less immediately digestible product, but one
| that can garner a devoted fanbase because it promises to give
| you most of the scope of a certain kind of role-playing
| fantasy, and then you can mod in the last little bit that
| will make that fantasy complete. So they don't have to worry
| so much about making it cohere, because the player is using
| it as a design tool.
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| It's funny you mention RDR2. For me it's the best example of
| why I hate fixed characters in open world video games. The
| protagonist in RDR2 is a perfect representation of my uncle.
| Looks like him, sounds like him, dresses pretty close. Now I
| like my uncle and all but have no desire to spend 40 hours or
| so playing him in a video game. I did not last long in single
| player. Multiplayer was cool but it turned in to the same as
| the first: a Texas hold-um simulator with a very involved
| character customization mini game...
| jbarrs wrote:
| >People have expectations going into a game, that it won't be
| a movie...
|
| As a counter-example, we have series like Metal Gear Solid,
| which are renowned for the huge use of cutscenes (MGS4 having
| an ending cutscene that's practically feature-length).
| Admittedly, this style of in-depth storytelling is not
| everyone's cup of tea (especially those for whom the second
| point made by the OP applies), but it is a very effective
| storytelling tool that works well in the series. The games
| are predominantly not, however, open-world, unlike the other
| games you mention. The cinematic storytelling would probably
| not translate well. Indeed, MGSV, which was open-world,
| mostly used in-game audio tapes to be played at the player's
| discretion, with any cutscenes being mostly contained to
| specific missions. So I think the exact requirements for good
| storytelling really depend on the style of game and on what
| your players expect from it. But much of what the OP says
| about good writing still stands, such as finding a Whedon-
| esque sweet spot of serious/comedy and using original jokes.
| tormeh wrote:
| For someone like me who doesn't really like the passive
| experience of movies/TV, story-heavy games are a good thing.
| What Remains of Edith Finch is one of my favorite games of
| all time.
| ncphillips wrote:
| I think this is really just a matter of subjective values.
|
| Mass Effect, God of War, and Horizon Zero Dawn are in my list
| of favourite games of all time.
|
| I couldn't stand Red Dead 2 until I stopped doing the open
| world things and started just following the story.
|
| Breath of the Wild is cool, but it definitely hasn't captured
| me like these other games have.
|
| I have never been able to stick with a Souls games, but I
| devoured Detroit: Beyond Human and the Telltale Walking Dead
| games
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong, but when you ask "is it good?"
| You need to consider what people are looking for. Personally,
| I'm looking for something that is technically fun but also
| leans closer to being an interactive movie/book
| 015a wrote:
| I wouldn't begin to assert that those games are bad; just
| that their decision to mesh strong cohesive narrative with
| open world design ends up doing a disservice to both the
| narrative and the open world. That doesn't mean the game as
| a whole is bad.
|
| I can pull Mass Effect (lets say ME2, as its oftentimes
| cited as the strongest entry in the trilogy) as a nearly
| inassailable example of this dichotomy games are faced with
| (and this post does have spoilers for ME2, though not
| horribly big ones)
|
| One of the biggest issues with ME2 narrative structure is a
| direct consequence of the open world design; the
| ludonarrative dissonance of talking with a crew member,
| being told "the ship my dad died on just started
| broadcasting a distress signal, ten years later, Shepherd
| we gotta go check it out right now", then agreeing to check
| it out, then waiting ten quests or 10 real world hours to
| go check it out. The narrative introduces urgency; the open
| world gives the player the agency to ignore that urgency.
| It would be powerful if the game recognized this, and
| tweaked dialog to say something like "well I would have
| liked to check it out sooner, but this will have to do"
| once you finally get around to it, but it does not;
| instead, it leaves us with the ludonarrative dissonance of
| everyone pretending like this is priority #1, has always
| been priority #1, even though I just spent thirty minutes
| in the captain's cabin trying on some new armor.
|
| Same game: You speak with Samara, she says something like
| "its so refreshing to work with a crew of friends again,
| and to help you with your mission." Not once did I take
| Samara on a mission; she says this dialog no matter how
| often you deploy on missions with her.
|
| Same game: Grunt is complaining about having an insatiable
| need to kill stuff, and his loyalty mission is to get him
| checked out by the Krogans. At first, I was like; woah! I
| _also_ never took Grunt on any missions, not even once; is
| this the game reacting to him being locked up in his room
| all day, creating dynamic content in response to my
| gameplay decisions? A true integration of open world and
| narrative, player decisions impacting the way the story
| progresses in a deep and meaningful way? It isn 't. He'll
| do that even if he's by your side for every mission killing
| thousands of mercenaries.
|
| Here's the gist of it: When games try to integrate an open
| world with strong narrative, it is possible to do it in a
| fantastic and meaningful way, where the open world actually
| supports and builds upon the narrative. Imagine if refusing
| to utilize squad mates led to their desertion, which led to
| more missions to win them back, or spending all day side-
| questing leads them to ask questions about what their
| mission really is and why they joined.
|
| By and large, games fail to do this, because its VERY hard.
| Open world games are exponential multivariadic systems; the
| player has a thousand things they can do at any time,
| trying to account for every thousand of those things, write
| dialog lines, record voice-over, in twenty languages... its
| impossibly difficult. Games which go beyond competent in
| this regard (and Mass Effect is FAR BEYOND competent; its
| VERY good) should be held up as paragons of the artform,
| because they attempted to integrate the thing video games
| do best (open-ended interactivity) with a more traditional
| narrative structure. But that doesn't mean sacrifices
| weren't made, and ultimately for me it comes down to: Mass
| Effect is a FANTASTIC game... but its narrative isn't.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Video game stories are those things I have to quickly click
| through to get to the next bit of action.
|
| I don't think you're in the opposite camp as he is. Your point
| above is essentially his Observation 2.
|
| > the vast majority of players just tune out the story. As long
| as you let them skip past it, it's fine.
| teawrecks wrote:
| > there are plenty of video games that action wise I have no
| problem letting my kid play but can't due to the story and
| mainly the cut scenes.
|
| Examples?
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| Endless examples. But currently Diablo 2 Resurrected and
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
| setr wrote:
| Sengoku Rance is my favorite example of this -- a hentai game
| whose game mechanics and plot are so engrossing that no one
| sticks around for the hentai
| martinmakesgame wrote:
| I'm really surprised that out of 276 comments, only one comment
| mentions that this is Jeff Vogel. I have enjoyed playing Jeff's
| games in the past, I think his games are beautiful. He's amazing
| as a game maker with all of his experience.
| woliveirajr wrote:
| I didn't see comments about Under a killing moon or any Monkey's
| Island.
|
| Those games had a different playability, puzzle-solving approach,
| and their plot was thicker.
| oblak wrote:
| "Blah blah blah blah secret base. Blah blah blah blah plan. Blah
| blah blah nuclear missile bomb. Blah blah blah counting on you.
| Utmost importance. Win. Good luck."
|
| Too bad Bulletstorm has no jumping so I did not buy it.
|
| In any case, even that's too much story for me. Look what
| happened with Doom. The 2016 game was pure. It knew what it was
| and ended that nonsense right away. Doom Eternal, on the other
| hand, had to feature a story, a castle, idiotic cut scenes and
| what not. Dear god. Just stop it.
| yobert wrote:
| I feel like the author has missed some important games, like Star
| Control 2 and Final Fantasy 7.
| isoskeles wrote:
| > You can kill the bad jerk, but then his chest opens up and a
| God flies out and the God is the new bad jerk and you beat it
| up too. (Also known as the JRPG option.)
|
| Looks like they covered FF7.
| baq wrote:
| Just listing important games with a sentence of rationale for
| each would take longer than the article.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzqQqTZGYi1b6SBlFWhgr38sP...
|
| I'd like to submit the Marathon series of video games on how to
| integrate story into a game without needing to change virtually
| any gameplay or include cutscenes. That the story is incredibly
| intelligent is just bonus. For those unfamiliar, it includes AI
| mental illness, AIs getting molested, subjugated alien races,
| infinite alternative timelines, and Lovecraftian beings. It might
| have been recognized as a better Doom if it wasn't doomed to be a
| Mac-exclusive game series in the early 90s.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| On one hand, the author is spot on about smug ironic dialogue
| being a plague. Am I too old for this kind of stuff? Nowadays, I
| feel very lucky when I find a game that is not smug and/or
| ironic, even if it's bad. On the other hand, the author is smug
| and ironic in his text. :(
| geogra4 wrote:
| Spiderweb software is really legendary for anyone who was a Mac
| user in the 90s. Really great products.
| nosianu wrote:
| I have not played _any_ computer game in over more than a decade,
| but I played a lot earlier.
|
| Anyway, what I did for a while - not recently due to a lack of
| good targets - is watch Youtube "playthrough no commentary"
| videos (and with story-less gameplay parts heavily cut out).
| That's usually 4-6 hours of _game movie_.
|
| The Last of Us was good, but the very top #1 for me as far as
| story goes - ignoring the game play completely - was Horizon Zero
| Dawn. One of many such game movies for this game:
| https://youtu.be/W6jbYfmQAG4
|
| That story seemed to be good but kind of stupid and the same as
| always, completely predictable, you already know what happened
| when you see the start and it's a bit stupid and too far-fetched
| - that kind. Until it wasn't. Turned out it wasn't just well-
| made, when you find out what was really going on it was THE BEST.
|
| Not only does it have two very different stories layered (three,
| if you count the present time story): One about what happened to
| earth and its people and one layered inside of two people, the MC
| and a woman in the past, with seemingly no connection, until we
| find out the opposite is the case.
|
| Both story-parts actually had me crying. When I found out after
| about four hours what had _actually_ happened on earth, it was a
| great emotional shock. Same with the ending, that used the
| connection between the MC and that person from the past.
|
| Even the machines and their (animal) forms make sense, there is a
| good and IMO satisfying explanation.
|
| The stories in this game and in a handful of others are _much_
| better than most movies.
|
| If you are in the mood for something really dark, watch a game
| movie of "SOMA". Underwater survival. Earth is gone - a giant
| meteor made the surface into a fiery hell, the only survivors are
| some researchers in a deep ocean facility. Best small detail:
| They get the "uploading your brain into a computer simulation"
| right, see the very ending of that game which shows it one last
| time (TL;DW: As someone who knows neuroscience, the idea makes no
| sense anyway, but let's forget that and assume it makes sense.
| What will happen is you still stand there in front of the
| computer, wandering what happened, after the "upload". Because
| you still exist, and the copy is _not you_. It 's a copy. You
| still die, there is no magical connection between you and your
| copy.)
| OldOneEye wrote:
| I couldn't agree more with you! I played through the game and
| Horizon Dawn story was so rewarding! I kept playing for it even
| though the gameplay part had long run its course in keeping my
| interest. The expansion also expanded a little bit on the lore,
| broadening a little bit the world outside of the main arc,
| which was nice.
|
| This game surprised me so much, because I just picked it on a
| whim a short while ago. It is so much more than what the cover
| suggests.
|
| A very emotional and impactful story, really looking forward
| what they do for the next chapter of her story.
| kqr wrote:
| On the one hand, I like that this much story telling effort
| goes into video games. On the other hand, I'm a bit sad that
| from a narrative standpoint, you can generally cut out all the
| actual game-playing parts and get a stronger experience for it.
|
| There are some exceptions to this (Spec Ops: The Line comes to
| mind as a case where the gameplay actually fuels the story, and
| I also think I've heard good things about Two Brothers in this
| respect too) but these are the exception, not the rule.
| jebarker wrote:
| I had no idea that "game movies" existed. I'm going to have to
| watch a few. I was obsessed with playing games as a kid. I'm
| now 40 and every so often get excited about playing a game I
| see (most recently Deathloop) but when I actually play it I am
| underwhelmed by the experience and never play again after the
| first sitting. The only exceptions are arcade games that I
| don't need to invest heavily in and are a mindless escape. On
| the other hand I still enjoy watching the reviews and gameplay
| videos. I think what is lacking for me in the playing
| experience is that the actual gameplay never feels novel or
| interesting to me and usually feels like a huge amount of
| drudgery to extract the core ideas and highlight experiences.
| Open world games are overwhelming to me as I can't stop
| thinking about the real-life opportunity cost of the time I'm
| spending meandering around (strangely I don't worry about the
| opportunity cost when reading books...). What I enjoy from just
| watching is experiencing the ideas and aesthetics in a more
| streamlined fashion. You might say that I should just stick to
| movies and books, but I honestly believe games are a unique art
| form with great promise, so I'll keep revisiting!
| worrycue wrote:
| > top #1 for me as far as story goes - ignoring the game play
| completely - was Horizon Zero Dawn
|
| I watched people play it to the end - mostly. I played it when
| it came out on PC - never completed it; the combat didn't work
| for me.
|
| Personally I think it has a cool sci-fi premise but that's it.
| I found the characters ... stiff, shallow, and pretty cliche.
| Aloy is yet another messianic player character that we have
| seen a billion times. Apart from the enigmatic main villain -
| which is yet another well worn trope - all the side characters
| feel pretty 2 dimensional.
|
| I'm going to get skewered for saying this ... but the story
| feels like it's pandering to current social political trends -
| i.e. the obsession with diversity.
|
| I don't know why exactly the "diversity" in modern stories bug
| me so much but I never had a problem with Star Trek. Maybe it's
| the egalitarian in me, modern stories seem to have an emphasis
| on differentiating people by their ethnicity and background
| while Star Trek promoted the view that all people regardless of
| ethnicity or background be treated as peers - where you stand
| on your own merits as an individual.
| marvinvz wrote:
| While I agree on your general point about "diversity" in
| games I'm pretty sure HZD was before that topic became an
| issue.
| worrycue wrote:
| HZD was released in 2017. I think we were already seeing
| "diversity" in most media then.
| Merad wrote:
| > I'm going to get skewered for saying this ... but the story
| feels like it's pandering to current social political trends
| - i.e. the obsession with diversity.
|
| How do you think HZD pandered to diversity? The main point
| that I have heard brought up is the wide variety of
| ethnicities in secondary/background characters, but IMO that
| is completely consistent with the game's setting and story.
| The game takes place in a world where human society has
| literally been reset and rebuilt from scratch, so you'd need
| to have the full variety of human kind for genetic diversity
| while at the same time all of the racial and ethnic
| prejudices that exist today would cease to exist unless the
| AI was trained to preserve them (it wasn't). Naturally the
| new world would see new prejudices arise (people are still
| people after all), and the game does attempt to portray this.
| pjc50 wrote:
| He means it had female main characters.
| worrycue wrote:
| > is completely consistent with the game's setting and
| story
|
| That's true but I can't help but feel it's deliberately
| written this way to score points.
| dudeman13 wrote:
| >I'm going to get skewered for saying this ... but the story
| feels like it's pandering to current social political trends
| - i.e. the obsession with diversity
|
| How so? I didn't get that feeling at all from Horizon Zero
| Dawn.
|
| If someone told me HZD had an obsession with diversity I'd
| react with a standard "wat?". I do agree that some of the
| forced diversity in modern stories is annoying, mind you. I
| just didn't get that vibe from that one story.
| Tehdasi wrote:
| Should be noted that for Portal it didn't even have a narrative
| really, just a games long monologue. It was closer to Notes from
| the Underground than most game narratives.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Wolfentstein II was a masterclass in story telling and right up
| there with Quentin Tarantino.
| bsd44 wrote:
| That's why I mostly play point&click adventure/rpg games and text
| adventures, because that genre can't really survive without a
| good story. I'm rarely disappointed and the games cost a fraction
| of what you would pay for a AAA title. Not that I don't like AAA,
| but every time I watch a gameplay video I get bored fairly
| quickly because I don't feel drawn to the game, it seems "same
| old, same old". Perhaps it's just me.
|
| I think "Life is strange" is a good example of what can happen
| when the writing is strong combined with a nice, easygoing
| gameplay that takes you through the story. The only AAA game that
| I bought was "The Witcher 3" precisely for the back story, but
| after 5-10h of playing it just felt so repetitive that I gave up
| on it. I am likely in a minority but I'd take strong writing over
| graphics, physics and other elements of a game any day.
| asdf123wtf wrote:
| The Witcher 3 story was one of the best game stories out there
| IMHO, but it gets off to a slow start. That slow start can be
| VERY slow, if you are doing lots of the side quests to start
| with.
|
| If you haven't gotten through the 1st act, I'd recommend giving
| it another try. (After each major act, there's usually a
| narrated story board scene, where you see how some of the
| choices you made effect the outcome, for good or bad.)
|
| I'd also recommend ignoring the side quests initially and just
| progress along the main quest-line. It will move you into the
| meatier part of the story pretty quickly that way.
|
| (Once the story hooked me, then I wanted to spend more time in
| the world doing the side quests.)
| dmos62 wrote:
| You might be in the minority, but not alone. I had same
| experience with Witcher 3 and AAAs in general. I find that
| games with good procedural gameplay and an inherently emerging
| story are the best fit for me. E.g. Kenshi, Dwarf Fortress come
| to mind. Kingdom Come is a counter-example, where it's fairly
| mainstream, but I found writing great and the world procedural
| (alive) enough for me to thoroughly immerse in. Can't wait for
| the sequel. I like a lot of multiplayer games too: sourcing
| randomness and intelligence from actual people works well.
| wildengineer wrote:
| > The only AAA game that I bought was "The Witcher 3" precisely
| for the back story, but after 5-10h of playing it just felt so
| repetitive that I gave up on it.
|
| I went through the same thing with Witcher 3, but I tried again
| and once I got past the initial Baron storyline the game really
| hit its stride. That game has so many mini-stories that you can
| play for 100 hours and still have some interesting stories to
| engage with. I don't think I've played any game before or since
| with that many storylines.
| dartharva wrote:
| The Witcher 3 starts off sluggishly, but it gets significantly
| better after you complete the Velen quests.
| Tarsul wrote:
| I never played the Witcher but if Cyberpunk 2077 is anything to
| go by (same developer) I'm not surprised. At least for
| Cyberpunk the storytelling was not its strong part (neither
| were its bugs etc... but the visuals were, oh my.). I tried out
| Gamedec recently and that's an isometric RPG without fights.
| Which means reading and decisions. And of course great
| storytelling because without it the game would have basically
| nothing.
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| I wouldn't judge Witcher 3 based on Cyberpunk 2077. Very
| different experiences, systems, UI, everything.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I quite enjoyed the story in Cyberpunk 2077. And there was
| quite a lot of lore to go with the story, so it actually felt
| like a lived-in world.
| ajvs wrote:
| If you like Gamedec you'd love Disco Elysium, but you've
| probably already heard of it.
| ycombinete wrote:
| What point and click/text adventures do you play?
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| In addition to the sibling comment, I suggest these as
| personally assessed to be of high quality:
| - The Last Door - Gemini Rue - Resonance
| - Whispers of a Machine
| bsd44 wrote:
| This list is from my Steam library, however I haven't yet
| played all of them: - Deponia - The
| Detail - State of Mind - Black Mirror II
| - The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav - Disturbed -
| Earthshine - Edge of Reality - Edna & Harvey:
| Harvey's New Eyes - Fighting Fantasy Classics -
| The Forest of Doom - Jericho's Prophecies -
| Memoria - Mirt. Tales of the Cold Land -
| Scarlet Hollow - Episode 1 - Agatha Christie - The ABC
| Murders - Life is Strange - Life is Strange:
| Before the Storm - The Lion's Song -
| Misadventures of Laura Silver - Omen Exitio: Plague
| - Syberia - Syberia II - Wonderlust
| baud147258 wrote:
| If the parent want a few more suggestions:
| - Primordia - Strangeland - Machinarium
| bsd44 wrote:
| Excellent, thank you! I've already played Machinarium and
| absolutely loved it but I've wishlisted the other two.
| Great suggestions!
| [deleted]
| Zababa wrote:
| One thing that isn't mentionned is that games makes you engage
| way more with the story than movies because of how they are. In
| most games you can explore areas to discover more things. The
| equivalent doesn't really exist in movies or books. You can maybe
| reread a chapter or a paragraph. Pause a film and look at all the
| details. But that's something people rarely do unless they are
| analyzing the thing. In games, you have a way more "a la carte"
| experience. I know that I and many people have a "main road"
| sense, in which it's easy to see what's the main road that will
| progress the game, and what are optional branches. That means
| that if you want to engage more with the world, you can easily
| choose to.
|
| The main quest of Skyrim takes 30 hours, but I'm sure that most
| people played way more than that. Same thing with games like Far
| Cry, you can rush the main story, or you can take your time and
| do way more things. I think that makes games a media where often
| you don't follow a story but engage with a world. Those are two
| very different things. Even in linear "walking simulators", there
| are usually tons of optional stuff.
|
| The equivalent would be to have a movie or book that dynamically
| react to you, and that doesn't really exists, at least not as
| well as how games do it.
|
| On the other hand, the experience of reading a book and imagining
| all the visual parts, or sitting there watching a movie are also
| very unique, and can't be filled by other medias.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > The equivalent would be to have a movie or book that
| dynamically react to you, and that doesn't really exists, at
| least not as well as how games do it.
|
| This does exist and is called interactive fiction, FWIW. I do
| agree however it isn't as clearly reactive to the consumer as a
| video game (you can turn on a dime in a video game, but in
| interactive fiction you don't get such a granular level of
| control in how you interact).
| Zababa wrote:
| I would personally classify interactive fiction closer to
| games, unless you count gamebooks in that, which I consider
| closer to books. There was also a movie where you get to get
| choices linked to Black Mirror that was popular recently, and
| a few people on youtube explored this by making different
| videos and letting you pick "what happens next".
|
| There's also the whole genre of visual novels, mostly from
| Japan. I'm not sure if they are more games, books or
| interactive fiction.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I would consider interactive fiction I've seen to be more
| like stories than games, mostly because the game mechanics
| part of them are often extremely thin(clicking).
| Zababa wrote:
| Good point, I was perhaps too focused on how the story is
| consumed (a computer vs a book vs a screen) but that may
| not be the most important part.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I would add that there is a trade-off in games between agency
| and a good story.
|
| The more effort you make to integrate player actions, the less
| resources you have to make a compelling story. In the most
| obvious case: story branching, you have double the work for
| each branch, some of them may be hard to make interesting.
|
| Some Japanese visual novels may have great stories, but they
| are games in name only. For example the "when they cry" series
| are literally visual novels (or sound novels as they like to
| call them), there are zero gameplay elements, and no branching,
| you are basically reading a book with a few illustrations and
| (very good) background music.
|
| On the other side, some games focus so much on action that the
| only goal of the story is to tell you who the bad guys are and
| not get in the way of shooting them.
| Zababa wrote:
| > The more effort you make to integrate player actions, the
| less resources you have to make a compelling story. In the
| most obvious case: story branching, you have double the work
| for each branch, some of them may be hard to make
| interesting.
|
| That's very true, you don't have infinite resources.
|
| > Some Japanese visual novels may have great stories, but
| they are games in name only. For example the "when they cry"
| series are literally visual novels (or sound novels as they
| like to call them), there are zero gameplay elements, and no
| branching, you are basically reading a book with a few
| illustrations and (very good) background music.
|
| True, but you also have others like Hollow Ataraxia where you
| have way more gameplay. Still not as much as a "classic"
| game, especially these days, but this wouldn't be possible in
| another format, which I think is key. Same thing with the
| when they cry series, the music is very important and they
| wouldn't work as well as book.
| throwthrow564 wrote:
| I'm surprised this article has no mention of things like visual
| novels which are generally considered video games, but pretty
| much work just like novels.
|
| Also, Trails in the Sky (and the trails series in general) have a
| pretty solid story.
| etiam wrote:
| This seems like a somewhat adequate time to ask for storytelling
| advice. I'm willing to embrace the exhortation to do the
| storytelling right, without reservation, but how do people
| actually develop good, or great, skills at it?
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| I think the author is absolutely right that the standard for
| "good story" in games is incredibly low. Games are an immature
| medium that got catapulted into the mainstream on its other
| strengths (as challenge/sport/attractive gizmo) and not as art.
|
| Unfortunately most of the current audience for games
| (particularly the vocal part) are people that were attracted by
| these aspects. I was definitely attracted by the technical
| feat/ingenious gizmo aspect. If you look at the way games have
| traditionally been reviewed, you can see that this aspect is
| incredibly important. These people tend to get upset at articles
| like this and overreact by claiming that the art aspects of their
| favourite games are better than they actually are.
|
| That said, there are still the green shoots of an incredible
| artistic medium here and there. I am always on the lookout for
| things, however crude/I'm-14-and-this-is-deep they are, if they
| _could only have been done in games_.
|
| Uncharted is a decent action adventure, probably as good as
| something like Jurassic World, but it could have been done in
| film.
|
| Something like Journey, Her Story, Brothers etc, have aspects
| that could only have been done in games. They make (fairly crude)
| artistic points, in an _intrinsically interactive way_.
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