f13.net

So, I want to talk about story in video games, so I figured I'd just start a thread, say my piece and see where it goes.

This is sparked by the last two years or so of my gaming experience during which I have noticed that I have come to not care about story in video games *almost* universally (almost explained later).   I used to be huge into story, and this is a really big shift for me, and I'm trying to make sense of it.

Things I have noticed:

1) It may be me, but I feel like games (or maybe just the games I am playing) have moved less to showing the story evolving through the game play, and more towards -Gameplay that has nothing to do with anything-cut scene explaining how the plot has moved forward, etc.

I guess to some extent this has always been the case, but it has seemed really acute to me lately. 

2) The emphasis on "choice" has made stories worse, not better.  I've yet to see this done well, and most of the time it just makes feel like the game is made for people who have a sense of morality suitable for a 7 year old.  Before at least I could sort of imagine a justification for my character doing something or another, now I'm told its one of 2 or 3 reasons, each of which is often shit.

3) When it comes to MMOs, you either way quests that have no effect on the world, or you have wow style phasing in which you aren't actually in the same world, both a fairly bad result as far as I am concerned in temrs fo my experience of the story.  This is somewhat unique to MMOs though and may be a separate issue, and isn't really a central part of my problem.

4) I really ENJOY Half Life 2 and Portal, for example.  They story is sort of discovered rather than told, and there are lots of details that are fuzzy or missing, leading you to have to fill in gaps as you go, or simply not know the answer to some things, this is much more entertaining to me.  The story is also rarely told through cut scenes/exposition, and when Valve does choose to do that, its as much for reasons of pacing their game as it is for getting the story out.    Example: The officer at the beginning of Hl2 who forces you to toss out the can on the floor.  It teaches me and mechanic, and establishes to me that the combine has authoritarian control over citizens in city 17.  IN other words, more showing less telling makes me happy.


On the other hand - I have been enjoying games with a focus on mechanics - Torchlight had really sleek APRG mechanics, though I have a love hate relationship with Starcraft 2, I think the multiplayer is really quite good.  World War 2 Online is my favorite MMO in the last few years which I consistently go back to because the mechanics and gameplay are just really to my liking.

Lastly, I still enjoy a good book, and a good movie.  It just seems to be the way story has been in games that really leaves me totally uninterested the vast majority of the time.  Ironically, I think it may because it seems liek the story in games is going MORE towards movie-like telling of their stories, and that I think is a crap way to take advantage of the medium.

Has any one else felt this way either lately or longer term?  Am I just a grumpy old guy who is nitpicking too much?  How do you guys feel about story in general in games?

I guess I expect the story in games to be pretty thin, and I'd prefer a thin story stringing fun gameplay together over overly-involved story making me wait for long periods before I can play again. Of course, sometimes you get something where the story is actually well-written and the cutscenes are actually enjoyable to watch (Uncharted/2) or games where the story is actually so bad it makes the game worse (Wanted: Weapons of Fate).

Mostly, though, a nonsensical or weak story is bearable as long as it's not too grating, such as in games like Dark Void or most shooters. I mean, Gears of War is fun enough (haven't actually finished it yet) but "we're the bro-marines and we need to bro blow up the bad aliens." is pretty standard stuff when it comes down to it. The stories in BF:BC 1 and 2 weren't especially good, but the characters you play alongside made both fun and memorable. I haven''t played MW2, but I thought COD4 actually had a pretty good story for a game, especially a shooter.

I expect more story in RPGs, but with WoW and Lotro on my menu, I play very few SP-RPGs. KOTRO would probably have been the last one, which actually had a derivative-but-fun story to play through. I do know what you mean by HL2 and Portal, and enjoyed them the same way. At the same time for proper RPGs there's a big gap between what (say) EQ1 did - which was throw you into a world that you knoew absolutely nothing about and expect you to figure it all out and something like a JRPG (even down to the recent Zelda games for Wii) where you have to suffer through what can feel like endless exposition befroe you're allowed to do anything.

Just some random thoughts from early in the morning. Not sure if any of that helps to answer anything.

All I can say is that if a developer is going to tell a story in a game, hire a good writer, and don't make the story intrusive to the gameplay.  If I'm setting down the controller, the cutscene is too long (Metal Gear Solid, I'm looking at you).

I agree with the original post almost 100%.

I definitely prefer mechanic-driven games and I feel that games are increasingly moving in the opposite direction into the "cinematic experience" or "roller coaster ride" style of game. It seems a lot of games these days have high production value, "cool" set pieces, "awesome" cinematics and very little actual gameplay. And often you have to suffer through long tutorials and cutscenes to experience the meagre gameplay.

I tried to play Assassin's Creed 1 a while ago...you begin with seemingly unskippable tutorials where your character has to go through a crowd of people without knocking pots off their heads - excitement! After a bunch of boring tutorials unrelated to the game in which you do things not at all badass or assassin-like you make it to the actual game, which consists of you character navigating the environment for you. It's the kind of game where it feels impossible to be good or bad at. Enslaved is a more recent example of this, all the "platforming" bits are basically automated.

I think in general big console games are moving towards something "experiential" and not very game-like in the traditional sense where you have rules and objectives and systems to interact with. It's common to hear people in video games say that features are bad when they're too "gamey." And the experience blockbuster titles foist upon you comes from a very narrow range.

That said, "casual" consumers love gamey games. Simple iPhone games, Wii Sports, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario Kart, Facebook games, Tetris DS - these are all pretty classic games and not at all "interactive experiences." The same can be said of COD multiplayer or SC2 multiplayer.

I find myself retreating into the world of older and niche titles. I honestly don't understand how people get super excited about the usual AAA suspects. But then I don't like summer event movies either, for much the same reasons.

I completely agree. I was disappointed with DragonAge for exactly this reason. I felt that the game flow was all off - basically that the combat bits were interrupting the story. The pacing felt all off. I never finished the game, but have been considering playing again with the difficulty on "easy" so that I can get through the story without the interruption of, you know, actually playing the game.

I've played through Dragon Age twice now and it has really given me a more biased opinion on story in games.  Dragon Age uses the illusion of choice to drive the story.  It does a decent job of masking just how linear the game is.  While that's all fine and good, it has made me realize that I want to be the protagonist in games with story.  I want to make the story, not follow it.  That or, as mentioned above, figure the story out as I play through the game. 

It's the just the standard Bioware formula plugged into a generic fantasy world.  Chaotic beginnings into becoming "special"-> 4 major side tasks -> End game where you choose a side regardless of what you've done up to this point.

Almost all choice in games is merely an illusion.  It's all window dressing.  But when you're supposed to be enjoying the journey (for 40+ hours in some instances), it can make a significant difference in your enjoyment level.

Fake edit:
I'll contribute more when I'm not suffering from a splitting headache and a desire to sleep. I'm guessing one will prevent the the other, but it's still hard to type when it feels like you've got a screwdriver wedged in the back of your brain.

Compared to Bioware's standard formula, Fallout: New Vegas at least offers several different, mutually exclusive paths TO the end.

I'm not against cutscenes, and I enjoyed the stories in ME2, Torchlight and SC2 single player campaign, but those are exceptions. In general, if I want a story, I'm going to seek out a book or a movie. I play videogames to be playing videogames.

I think I've yakked here before about how I think the best way to tell a story with video games is to make the story part of the gameplay somehow.

I have as well, but I agree with you completely.  The cut scenes really kill the flow of game play for me. 

Does anyone else wish that, if playing a druid/shaman they can actually lead their own village/tribe, or when playing a monk/paladin/cleric start their own Order?

This was my big gripe about Everquest back in the day. Paladin, Ranger, Monk, doesn't matter. Everyone did the exact same quests and camping.

We've got limitations on how much content can be crafted in a timely manner, but it would be so neat to have Rangers doing outdoorsy stuff, and Paladins doing crusadey stuff, and so on.

My biggest peeve is with short, 30 second endings. I mean I just played your game for 8 hours, invested in the world and its characters and the game just abruptly ends or ends in a lousy cliffhanger.

I don't think I have played a single game this year that had a satisfying conclusion and it drives me crazy!

Hmmm....I'm almost the complete opposite. I'll forgive bad mechanics if the game has a good story. But a game with good mechanics, with no story or a poor story will bore me quickly and end up getting sold back.

This is a separate issue, but I think related to the mechanics v. story argument.  What keeps me playing most times, even in single player, is improving at some mechanic.  And it can get pretty abstract, like in Diablo you aren't getting drastically better as a player, but I feel like even there understanding builds and loot and how to "play" that meta game properly is really the thing that kept me going in terms of "being good" or at least getting better at it.

I quoted this post actually because you mentioned Assassin's Creed, and after playing Assassin's Creed 2, which my friend absolutely RAVED about, saying that it was one of the best story's he had experienced in a game, I was totally and utterly uninspired.  It found like a thinly veiled attempt to get me from point A to point B and shiv people.  I'm actually alright with that for the most part, as long as the game sort of realizes that.  But between my friend trumping the story up, and the cut scene's that interrupted my gameplay every 10 minutes, it actually ended up just pissing me off.  Not to mention the free running/killing part of the game, which is the game's strength, was generally discouraged by the fact that the game bitched at me for killing innocents.  Of course, the game was also insanely easy, I think I took 10 times as much damage from falling when trying to do goofy shit off of roofs as I did from actual enemies.   I did make it through the whole thing (at least in part because I really wanted to finish it for my friend's benefit), but I couldn't help but think I would've had just as much fun with some kind of massive city and randomized targets or something.  The story hamstrung what were at least decent mechanics in that sense.

Thanks for all the replies so far.  I'm interested that there has been quite a lot of affirmatives on this one, I thought I might be alone in this.

Games are inherently about empowering the consumer to choose the experience they take out of the product. The ideal story is the one the user creates out of the game universe provided. A developer getting involved means a compromise between the interests of the consumer and the interests of the developer. The consumer may want the developer's story, and they may want the developer to piss off. Can't please everyone.

Consumer choice is the bane of a story teller. "Once upon a time in a magic kingdom..." "NO, SCI FI CITY!" "..."

This is probably my only real problem with stories.  I don't mind them in linear games (because you can generally just skip the cutscenes if they're obnoxious enough) or games where the story is the whole point (like Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy), but when they try to sandwich in an epic narrative into something which is otherwise a fairly open sandbox game, it annoys me, especially when it gates content.  Like in GTA, where you can't do X until you've unlocked the mission which allows you to do X (said mission being the middle of the main storyline chain), or Fable, where you can't go to a place until you get the quest directing you there.  If it's a free roaming game, let me roam around, for fuck's sake.

Also, seconding Phire's annoyance with endings.  People who write cliffhanger endings to hype the inevitable sequel need to be fucking dipped in acid.

This is the part where I have to stop you to ask what exactly is the problem there. Oh no, consequences?

I don't even really care about sci fi v. fantasy or anything like that.  The setting is the setting, whatever.   I really hate is when I reach that point in a game (which I inevitably reach in any game that is heavily into its story), where it suddenly hits me that I know exactly where I'm going, what I'm doing, and so forth.   From there on in, its just going through the motions, and unless the mechanics are good enough to stand on their own at that point, I'll put the game away and read a plot summary online.    Sure, sometimes they'll put in an arbitrary twist to keep you on your toes, but whatever, thats just a parlor trick.

This consumer v. developer thing doesnt NEED to be so.  For instance, most of what Bethesda puts out has a solid set of game mechanics, and a world.  You can pretty much enjoy the world and the mechanics while utterly and totally ignoring part or whole of their story.  Its one of the reasons that I love their games.   "Story" based game seems just to be a series of set pieces duct taped together, the kind of thing that you use to sell a concept to executives that don't know any better. But as soon as you try to look behind it, you realize everything is a cardboard cutout.

The problem is they made one of the most fun parts of their games impossible due to an arbitrary restriction put in to protect the integrity of their sacred story that I didn't give a shit about in the first place.

ETA: There already were "consequences" for doing stuff that was 'illegal' - the guards would get pissed at you and eventually you'd be kill on sight.   Thats a consequence that is totally reasonable. 

This is something that SWTOR is theoretically supposed to handle better I think? Where each class has it's own mission/story arcs or whatever?

What exactly are you prevented from doing though? Going on a random murder spree? Why does this specific game need to support that, story or not? It isn't as if there is a shortage of sandbox games where random murder sprees are more possible - isn't a spectrum of games that appeal to more people better than everything being the same?

One area why I think The Witcher has a better game narrative than Mass Effect is that player choice matters a bit more. In The Witcher you can annoy someone with dialogue options that means they won't talk to you anymore, as well as doing a quest that will have the (not completely obvious) result of locking you out from doing quests for other characters, or it has a result later on in-game.

ME relies much more on the illusion of choice - what your character says and does has a lot less impact on your character. You can be the biggest jerk in the galaxy and people will still talk to you. I did my absolute best to create an alien-hating Shepherd (named Arizona) and the only alien that didn't end up on the Normandy was Wrex. And I was forced to put an alien on my active squad due to a forced narrative situation.

ME2 tried to make player choice slightly more important, but lined that up with the end-game so that there is a 'right' choice - get everyone on board (for the ship upgrades) and get them loyal (if you want them to live). There is one choice in The Witcher that ties to the final section of the game, but it isn't that big a thing.

Of course, both ME / ME2 and The Witcher have fixed starting, middle and end bits, but The Witcher gives you more control of the narrative in-between.

Interesting, I personally felt the Witcher was more linear since everything mostly happens in the same order, for example. I never felt like the choices I was making really influenced the story any more than the ME2. I'm not sure I would say they influenced it *less* either, but "help the elves"/"help the knights" was not really appreciably different from, say, "kill the rachni queen/save the rachni queen" to me.

The one exception I would make is the murder mystery stuff in chapter 2, which is the one and only piece of great design in the game IMO, you can be led to the completely wrong conclusion in a sensible way, which I enjoyed.

Neither of them compare to something like New Vegas in terms of non-linearity.

You missed my point. The consumer was changing the story, which wasn't what the developer / story teller intended. Accounting for consumer choice = more work to account for the possibilities. It was an extreme example about that, not about setting.

Also, you don't appear to care for stories in games. That's fine. But we're talking about stories in games so...

You can either make a pure story-driven experience (all cinematics, non-interactive really), a pure game experience (a universe with a system of rules; goals either set by the game or no goal provided at all -- see Sims, any board game ever), or a compromise between the two (any story-driven game, Half-Life 2). It all depends on what the developer wants to do, and what audience they are catering to. But one game cannot cater to EVERY member of the audience.

Well, yeah, thats why I made this thread.  Because I don't care for stories in games.  But I USED TO care a lot for stories in games, and what I'm trying to get at is, why did I used to, why don't I know, is it just personal preferences? Has the way story is presented changed over the last say, 5 years?

Let me try this on for size:

I like discovering a story, or a bit of information, or what have you, about the game world I am in.  I like feeling like, as the player, am part of something bigger than just my story.  Not just part of a larger story, but part of a larger context, in which other separate stories are happening.

Have you played Planescape?  Did you play it through?

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/963220/Mies_van_der_Rohe.jpg)

Sorry, only read the last response of yours which I replied to. Was in a rush, failed to notice you started the thread. x_x

I think because game stories are mostly blatant nowadays to keep people on rails and present a cinematic experience, hitting all the beats regardless of what the player does, and don't take the time to immerse you in the world. Action games in particular have an immediacy to them that forces a certain pacing, thereby making exposition or discovery counter-productive to the point: fast-paced action. Gears of War comes to mind.

Moreover, if the developer / designer fails to draw the eye of the player to a certain piece of content, then that's technically wasted content, because the player will not experience it unless they happen across it. That's something most people on a tight development deadline want to avoid.

Another problem: the world's story can't advance without the player, or the player gets left behind, which is something that should be avoided at all costs.

This is really the fucking truth.  Generally you get two real choices:  1.  saving the kitten or 2.  poking the grandma in the eye with the ice pick.  I think some of the older games, like Shadow Hearts, did the same thing a little better with no actual choices.  

Also, I think a little bit of your problem may be due to the fact that you may have seen many of these same stories before:  there are only so many basic plot lines available.  It's all Star Wars when you get down to it. 

Yeah, I've been on to the idea that its probably more me changing than the games.  I've noticed that I have a really hard time letting myself get immersed regardless of anything else these days.  The Bethesda games I mentioned earlier are about as close as I can get, but no matter what I do I have a really REALLY hard time no "seeing the man behind the curtain" as it were.  No matter what the story is trying to tell me, my brain sees game mechanics and developer intent, not characters or plot.  That would also explain why I prefer a robust set of game mechanics, because thats what I'm seeing anyway, so they may as well be solid.

I'm not sure what Ludwig Mies van der Rohe has to do with anything, but Planescape is a good litmus test for if you're capable of liking story.  It also pretty much telegraphs the way it's going to be as soon as you start playing, it starts telegraphing how it's going end as soon as you hit Ravel halfway through, and focuses the plot on how much of an irredeemable cockfag you are.

There are a lot of plot lines available, games just keep using the same single one over and over.

A lot of games today offer a "cinematic experience" but what cinema? The Bicycle Thief? No, obviously not. Real cinema is composed of comedy, drama, tragedy, horror, action, character pieces, documentary, etc. Blockbuster games are nearly all "play badass white dude who kills other dudes by shooting or stabbing them."

That's one of the things I really appreciated in the Saints Row games - you can pretty much roam anywhere right from the start. Doing missions unlocks stuff (cars, guns, etc) but you can go anywhere right from the get-go. Which is nice.

I can only speak for myself of course, but maybe you're older and a bit more money-rich and time poor. I feel I have less time to fuck around with subpar plots and uncovering every nook of the story, and the awareness of this, along with having a ton more games to play before I die or they get relegated to the "Last-Gen" pile makes you more crotchety and impatient. I really enjoyed KOTOR a few years back - fuck, 5 or 6 years ago. I'd love to play Mass Effect 1, 2, Witcher, Dragon Age, etc but one major thing that puts me off starting is the fact that I'm much more time poor (and sporadic MMO Gaming doesn't help either), so I don't know if I have the time to invest in a long term and deep RPG that can take a normal person 2 weeks, since I tend to play in smaller chunks (unless it's a MMO, for soem reason) and so games take even longer to finish for me than for normal people. - result - less care for and tolerance for shitty story.

I fired up Crysis for the first time earlier this evening. The 2-3 mins of exposition really started to piss me off. Why? Because in the intro to the game it's the same-old, same-old story, and I'm playing Crysis because I want to shoot people in the face. So stop talking and let me do that. Of course I'm also tired and grumpy, but years ago I may have been all excited to watch the non-interactive cutscenes of a plane flying through the night sky?

I dunno. Compare it to the opening of Uncharted 2. That hooked me in.

That's the thing with those kinds of games - Gears, Call of Duty, etc. Linear shooters. I think they should be pretty much on rails and keep non-interactive cutscenes to a minimum. Even the Uncharted series. You play through the story, but you don't make meaningful choices that affect the story. If it's well done, and fits the genre however, this is completely fine.

Some games offer multiple paths through a big area to the next checkpoint, or even a semi-sandbox experience and so it's not so bad - stuff like Far Cry 1/2 (Crisis as well?). Some games try to straddle the line, offering the illusion of choice and a semi-open world, but unless you're following the next objective, you're just wasting time - The Darkness which I had a play around with is an example of that - and one game where the story, despite the WTF elements was more compelling than the actual gameplay.

Out of curiosity, what are some games you thought had good stories, and around when did you start to not care about story in games?  Anything that you recently played that you thought had a good story, or had what you'd consider to be the right ratio of story to gameplay?

I asked specifically about Planescape, and didn't get an answer.

This is probably the crux of the problem in a nutshell.

Also, there is a theory that there are really only seven main plots in all of literature (http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html), just rehashed over and over again.  Obviously, some of these plots may not be acceptable for game fabrication, so you're going to see some rehash, no matter what you do.  I'm going through this right now with Mass Effect.  It's my first time through and I feel like I've played the damned thing a thousand times (then again, maybe it's the Mako).

Been traveling so not much forum time the last couple days.  I liked neverwinter nights back in 2002 or 03 I didn't play planescape but it was during the time I would've probably liked it.  I think the last game I really enjoyed for its story content was portal.  Posting from phone so gonna be done for now.

The original NWN story wasn't very good.  You really should try Planescape.  There's still nothing that touches its quality.

IMO, Story is THE MOST important factor when deciding whether I just passively like or absolutely LOVE a game. For instance, Uncharted 2 is a great game, yet the story is basically cookie cutter with those awful lines of dialogue at the end. Gameplay, atmosphere, graphics, etc were all excellent, but the fact that I knew where I was going, who was going to stab me in the back, and how I would eventually face off against the final boss left it pretty shallow, and after completing on Hard mode the first time through, felt no need to replay the single player, obviously killing replay value for me. So I guess I just liked it.

Yet it's worth pointing out that a story doesn't have to be a brand new Cormac Mccarthy novel to twist a classic storyline into something fresh. Zelda OOT is no pulitzer prize winning story, but it added just the right amount of "what I'm doing has some actual in-game significance" to matter. MGS4 to me is the pinnacle of video-game perfectness, and I still think that even though I'm in the minority. The gameplay mechanics mixed with a narrative I actually cared about immersed me to the point that I spent the time to get the emblems, something I never do.

I mostly ask, because back in the old days, stories in games were fairly rare for the most part.  I'm sure there's probably some early PC stuff I'm forgetting, but the first time I remember a game where the focus was on story as much as gameplay, it was Final Fantasy II (IV) on the SNES back in '92 I think.  Even after that, it was still fairly rare console-wise until the PS1 era at which point it started to become a lot more common.  The transition on the PC probably happened a few years earlier when games started to be released on CD's.  Story went from something that was a bit of a novelty to something that these days just about every non-sports game has to have.  With that in mind, I can see how for some people who have been playing games for a long time, story has gone from being a cool feature in a game to becoming tiresome.

This is interesting to me because I feel like the moment I become good enough at a game to start contemplating a) a meta-game or b) any kind of mastery then it becomes nearly impossible to take any sort of game-integrated narrative seriously.

The best illustration of this I can think of was the first time I played Call of Duty on an Xbox 360. I had never played an FPS with a console controller before, and I had barely played any 360 games -- as a result, I was very bad at the game. Being very bad at shooting and very bad at controlling movement and consequently being often disoriented was a perfect match for the 'story' being told by the first several missions of the game. I felt like I had been thrown into a war with almost no training, where bullets were constantly flying at me from out of nowhere, things exploding, shaking, loud noises...  and this feeling of complete incompetence combined with a fear of immediate death. And when I actually ended up killing some German in a frantic button-mashing frenzy of bayonetting and adrenaline, there was a quality to the silence that followed that was really quite unexpected.

Then after about four missions I figured out the controller and, more importantly, noticed that on the basic settings I was nearly unkillable by anything short of a hand grenade -- and there goes the game. No more immersion in the experience, and whatever passed for the usual top-down storytelling was now undermined, rather than enhanced, by the gameplay.

So maybe I am suggesting, if only to be provocative, that stories in games are better when you are bad at the game -- or, less controversially, that the balance between competence in the gameplay and empowerment in the narrative is pretty crucial.

System Shock 2 delivered something like the Call-of-Duty experience I described above, but actually managed to maintain it over most of the game thanks to some very good writing and actually taking resource-managing mechanics seriously -- but it suffered from the same problem, where mastering the game tended to drain the tension out of the story as well. It's a lot more exciting running one of those awesome ghost-flashback-voiceovers while simultaneously freaking out and hiding in a closet from zombies you cannot afford the ammo to kill than listening to the same thing (same good writing, same good voice acting) while casually toasting enemies with your psi-blast.

I feel like while people look to RPGs for stories, it has generally been FPSes that have delivered the best, I dunno, 'narrative experiences' -- a feeling of immersion in an actual story that seems to proceed outward from your in-game actions; that is assembled out of things that actually happen to you, instead of things that are related to you from the distance of a cutscene or expository 'conversation'.

Edit: Looks like I replied too soon and most of this was already covered, but oh well. Consider this an affirmation. And also, Planescape: Torment was pretty great; it boggles the mind that the same person who headed up that game later made KOTOR, which was a morally juvenile atrocity of storytelling.

Hmm, true.  I recall loving the hell out of Myst (which I associate with the tradition to CD), I liked the kings quest games.  For some reason I associate the early 2000s with the height of my liking story and the post Half Life 2 era with that declining, and probably not realizing fully until Dragon Age (that I couldn't even finish) that I was simply done with it for the most part. 

I think I hate just feeling like a passive recipient of story through the medium of a game at this point.

Story in games.  Less is more.  I was going to go with Browning, but figured that would never fly.  At least you know your architects.

Absolutely. Simplicity is key. When game mechanics match storyline -- when the player and the character are doing the same things for the same reasons -- additional plot is almost completely unnecessary. Words that the player is thinking suddenly come out of the character's mouth. Natural actions take on visceral significance. I understand that such synergy is difficult to maintain, but it's more likely to be killed by too much plotting than by too little. Humans are natural tale spinners. Provided with even the barest of narrative frames, we'll create a story of our own.

On choice, I'd argue that mythic heroes are almost exclusively reactive rather than proactive. They are creatures of destiny and chance rather than plotting and planning. In game terms this should be a good thing. Relying on the player to craft a cunning plot requires exactly the synergy I mentioned before. Besides, villains are the proactive ones, and villains' stories are so vastly different than heroes' that creating a plot that can as satisfactorily handle either is almost impossible. It's not that modern RPGs offer the "illusion" of choice, it's that they offer the choice between hero and anti-hero. The day is still saved in the end. Anti-heroes who want to be genuine villains are left with the illusion that they might be given that opportunity, but fate (a limited dialogue tree, say, or an unkillable NPC) always snatches it away.

So less is more. Less pre-written choice, more personal heroism. Less pre-written plot, more personal stories. Less pre-written action, more personal reaction.

I also have come to appreciated more understated stuff, rather than "judge the story by the thousands of lines of dialogue" rpg style approach.  Two games I feel have some of the best storytelling I've experienced are Portal and Ico -- not necessarily huge and complex and epic, but there's plenty of story going on in both.

The name being in the Dropbox link was a good hint. :oh_i_see:

His buildings look like glass boxes, which tells me fuck all.  He's a modernist, like Wright, which tells me that he believes form follows function.  However, while most people take this as a criticism of earlier architecture, it isn't.  The function of an office building is business, hence simplicity and efficiency.  The function of a Gothic cathedral is religious awe, hence the overbearing and menacing nature of their construction with subtle touches of light and colour.  If you want to get neckbeardy, the cathedral is to the world as the stained glass windows are to heaven, casting beautiful light into the darkness.  Form coincides with function, at least at at primeval level.

The mind that appreciates mechanics does not necessarily appreciate story.  Trying to force story at the mechanical level or vice versa doesn't necessarily work, the mechanics guys will choose easy, and the story guys will choose dramatic, always.  Unless they quicksave, reload, and choose the other because it's more to their liking or ability to accomplish.  Which breaks story anyways.

Video games are much better at creating worlds, environments and atmosphere than conveying a single specific narrative.

The narrative of something like Ico or Portal is not some sort of twisty page-turning potboiler like the typical bestselling dreck paperback.

In a book all you have is words. In a game you have words, mechanics, graphics, level design, etc etc, and out of all of those words are the least important part. Many of the things the words in a novel evoke are the things you actually build (model, draw, whatever) when creating a game.

Well said. Infact, to this day, I think the Britannia of Ultima VII (and Serpent Isle in part 2) is probably still the best "world", at least as far as CRPGs go. Main plot was so and so, but the inter-connections even between mundane NPC is still unbeaten.

Yes, maybe it's also due to a technology factor, but in U7 you really felt you were experiencing a world (from environment to social layers), while in DA:O, for example, you proceed from "block" to "block", like total different modules.

I agree.  I don't really want story in my games.  I want characters and motivations.  Let me generate the story based upon that.  The 'end' is when my character achieves a certain victory condition - something like Alpha Centauri, but modified to fit within an RPG context.

I liked the first two Fallout's.  There were characters and plots to be uncovered in each town/area.  I didn't really need there to be an over-arching plot line, but there was enough stuff that didn't matter to the major plot line that you had the illusion of non-linearity.

Err.  Mies van der Rohe is famous for his belief in the "Less is more."  The function of cathedrals is religious awe, among other things.  The thing that makes them Gothic is flying buttresses which allow them greater height.  Aside from that, I don't know what the fuck a primeval level is.  So if you do want to get all neck-beardy, we can do that.

The point, however, has nothing to do with Planescape or the function of architecture, and everything to do with the philosophy of not fucking up games with story.  They're games.  All you need is a pissed off donkey/gorilla and a princess.  And holy shit presto, more people know that story than there are people who have even heard of Planescape times one hundred.  Less is More.

If I'm being a dick, and you're just ignoring that and talking past it, I apologize in advance.  Kinda.

I like story. The more the better, although long cut scenes are something that should be used only rarely. My tolerance for lack of story varies by genre, I can obviously accept no story at all in a puzzle game but an RPG where the story is lacking, forget it. Especially if a bunch of the dialog consists of "...".

Point being "angry ape + princess" is not nearly sufficient for me to care about a game, quite often. Maybe even most of the time, at least for the types of games I tend to favor.

Dude.  Because there are sooo many RPG's out there with good story, right?  Come on.  The story in 98.5% of games is balls. 

The reason is that for that is manyfold, as evidence - the length of this thread.  For the most part, you don't like story in games, despite what you think.  You might be able to laugh at the angry ape now.  But I can tell you that if you were a 4th grader in 1984, the story of that ape and stupid princess was very serious business.  Things like 'the names of the ghosts' spawned children's cartoons.  Funny thing is that when they tried to add more story to it for something like a serial cartoon, it sucked.  No shit.  Less is more.  Video games are not a platform for Raph Koster's great american novel.  Nobody wants to read it.  Nobody wants it read to them.  Nobody wants to endure its clever turns of phrase and intellectual ending.  Leave the god damn story for story time.

I was 10 years old in 1984, and I thought Ultima III blew away that ape/princess stuff by a mile.

You're mistaking the problems people have with executing stories in video games to be a problem with the medium instead of a problem with the execution. People said the same thing about those new-fangled moving pictures too.

I'm with the person who said they need a good story to launch the game from "likes just fine" to "omg loooooove." The problem is a lot of games don't tell that story well, or have a story pulled completely out of, say, Chris Metzen's ass. Usually a combination of the two.

The difference is that games give control of (usually) the protagonist to the character.  When I have control of a character and I'm forced down a story AND thats the big show stopper for that game, it just makes me feel annoyed that I don't REALLY have control of the character.

The number one difference in games is that a person is IN that world, not just observing it.  To me, thats the strength, and thats when game stories are the best, when things are happening around me, but I'm still in control of my character.  In single player thats often achieved by giving me one path and forcing me down it - but not explicitly.  Think Half Life 2 or Portal.  Fantastic settings and stories, absolutely no character choice, and yet its really something to experience.  So thats one good side of story.

That is entirely separate from the create your own story stuff that I think is perhaps an entirely different discussion now that I think about it more.  Any game where your actions might rightly be considered part of the game world's "history" (emphasizing contingency) instead of a pre-written story is quite different.  I could rightly talk about the "history" of some of my Fallout 3 characters, and they barely ever did any quests.  I could EASILY talk about the history of EVE Online, but thats multiplayer and a different beast all together.   Its those games in which a set of mechanics are in place and allow me to create my own history in that world that are most compelling to me at this point.

The only good side of the story, one could argue.  I mean, if you want to say 99% of all stories in video games are crap, ok, fine, they're not exactly literature or anything.  But to then hold up HL2 as "fantastic" seems to contradict that.  It's the same generic "aliens invade, only one dude with a gun has the quick save/quick load skills to defeat them" scenario that's in every FPS, except rather than having skippable cutscenes, you have to stand around scratching your ass while Barney and Alex trade jibes.  It's not particularly well told ("Hi, Gordon, there's monsters on the other side of this gate, I'll open it now") , the characters are decent but only on-screen for like five minutes, and the actual plot is completely opaque (Where are we, what is going on, who are we fighting?  No idea, never explained.). And the story for Portal is worse: you're stuck in a room controlled by an evil computer, go kill evil computer.  The only thing remotely interesting about it is that some of the monologue is funny, and there are plenty of games with funny dialogue.

I have no problem with saying that stories in Fallout or The Elder Scrolls are radically different from the story in Halo, but saying that the story from HL2 is somehow on a higher plane makes me scratch my head a bit.

Plot is often the least interesting part of a good story.

What's the plot of The Iliad? "People fight each other." Or the plot of your favorite movie? The high-level description probably sounds completely generic and lame.

Way too many people think that plot is the be all and end all of storytelling when it's really a minor component.


Isn't that the plot of 2001, more or less?

Sure, the problem is that most video games don't get more detailed than the high level description because there's maybe ten or twenty minutes of story development mixed in with fifteen or twenty hours of machinegunning aliens. 

Unless you're including the actual running around and shooting as components of the story, in which case things get real muddled up real fast.  Things like pacing and tension are all handled completely differently in video games than in other media, and all bound up in the gameplay, so how do you untangle it to criticise the story by itself?

Come on man.  It's 1984 and we're at Chuck E Cheese.  To your left is a full day's worth of quarters and Donkey Kong.  To your right is a broke ass Apple II and Ultima 3.  If you choose left, you can play with your friends all day, talk shit, and go for high scores.  To your right is Ultima 3.  It's not a hard call.  If you choose Ultima, the kids playing Donkey Kong are going to throw shitty pizza crust at you.

When was the last time YOU killed a hooker in a movie.  When was the last time YOU killed the dragon in a movie?  EVERYONE knows the damn princess needs to be saved.  Nobody but you knows what happened in Ultima 3.  Fuck you dude who's about to chime in that he knows it too.  I'm talking to you too.  There's like a hundred of you people left alive on earth, and guess what?  Nobody cares.  But show them the princess in peril.  We could probably prove scientifically that there's an emotional response in at least 80% of people.  You sure you want to put Garriott's diatribe up against that? 

It is the medium, man.  You can't just wipe that fact away by stating otherwise.  The comparison to movies is misleading.  That medium is designed to tell stories.  This medium is designed to save fucking princesses.  And it shouldn't be surprising that games with figurative princesses to save do demonstrably better in every measurable category when compared with games with forced stories.  Of course there have been games that have gotten off a good story, and you're more than welcome to take them into a dark corner and make love to their faces.  But I'd be willing to bet that even in those cases that story was only part of the reason they succeeded or even that you enjoyed them as much as you did. 

As soon as somebody launches a story driven game franchise wherein the narrative literally impacts our culture on the scale of mother fucking Ms. Pac Man, then we can revisit this discussion.  Until then, I say again, story in video games is overrated.  Less is more.

I ... I don't even know that we played the same game. Did someone spell the game out to you before you played it? Because what made Portal awesome was not just the plot, but the way it was told. GLaDoS did not politely inform you that you were a captive running through tests for her amusement, no one told you that you were going to have to kill her to get out, nearly the entire story is told through manic scribbles on the wall that you might not even see. Yes, you start to suspect shit is weird before it spells out HELLO SHIT IS GETTING REAL NOW, but the whole experience is way more satisfying because of the story. It's a prime example of sending a game from "fun diversion" to "holy shit this game is awesome and everyone should play it" for me.


EDIT: It's entirely possible you were being sarcastic and that was your point, in which case ... uh ...  :why_so_serious:


Yep.

Gothic architecture is often built for psychological impact of the not subtle kind.  That's what I meant by primeval.

Both Morrowind and Diablo II sold four million copies, as far as I can tell.  Obviously Diablo II had too much story.

I couldn't give a shit about those fucking kids in the arcade, not even as a kid. And yes, I preferred Ultima 4 at home to spending my time with dipshits that threw pizza crust at other people.

But maybe thats just little old antisocial me.

I'd almost certainly be spending all my quarters playing skee-ball. I never liked Donkey Kong, no matter how many times you try to tell me I did.  :-P

As for "do demonstrably better in every measurable category" I'm going to have to ask for some Actual Research to be cited there. If you're just saying games like Madden and Mario Party are more popular than games like Mass Effect or the like, while that is absolutely true, it has nothing to do with the idea that having a story is actively bad, which seems to be the argument here. I like the movie comparison, frankly, so I'll go back to it. Would you argue that the fact that Transformers 2 made $400 million while The Hurt Locker made $16 million means that story in movies is a bad thing?

I'm starting to wonder myself.  The Portal I played was a fun puzzle FPS with some dark humor, what you're describing is some kind of psychological horror thing.  I never got this "OMG SHIT IS GETTING REAL" feeling you describe, I was too busy making turrets cry and laughing at the companion cube jokes to really feel any of the urgency that you're describing.

I think maybe I'm getting caught up in differences of definition.  What are you guys thinking of when you say that Portal (or HL2 or whatever) is a good story?  I'm looking at traditional stuff like characters, pacing, tension, and so on, and in those areas, Portal doesn't do well as a narrative.  But I'm starting to think (so maybe I'm a bit slot to catch on, shut up) that people are seeing some games (like Portal, or HL2) as something other than a traditional narrative, but other games (like, say, Halo, maybe) remain narratives.  And so Halo fails as a narrative, while Portal succeeds as a whatever-it-is.  So what is it you guys are seeing in Portal or HL2 or whatever that makes them "good" but which is absent in something like Unreal or Doom?  What are the qualifications for a "good" story in such an environment?  What is it you like about Portal, what does it succeed at that Crysis doesn't?

Popular is not good.

Popular is a story about a boy wizard which rips off every fantasy story imaginable written at a third grade level, or a story about blue felines on a distant planet.  That doesn't mean either are amazing literary works that I should devote my every waking moment to adoring.  No one will remember either a few years out from release.

Those kids that would rather waste money on Donkey Kong?  Yeah, they'll be spending it on hookers and blow in a few years.  They can stick it.

wut 

Is the boy wizard comment pointed at Harry Potter?  Because that's not something that is going away any time soon.  Avatar, sure - already forgotten.  But HP is attacking a whole new generation now. 

Its not the story, its how its told.  If you think most of the HL2 story is told by Alyx and Barney's chats, you aren't paying very close attention.

Edit: nevermind, Sjofn already made this point.

The movies have helped prolong its shelf-life.  It'll be gone soon.  Most of the mania seems to be gone already.

But they really are explained.  Not fully, at least not yet, but "no idea" is going way over board.  These things are never TOLD to you explicitly, but there are hints everywhere if you are observant, some are still explicit like  these newspaper clippings (http://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/assets/archive/evidence/historynewspapers.jpg) and some are gleaned from looking at the state of the game world.

If you need it spelled out for you go here: http://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/index.htm but all of the info on that site is available in game, it just isn't presented in the nice narrative style you seem to associate with "story."   Its one of the oldest tricks in the book, but Valve does it better than most: Show, don't tell.

Alright, man.  Where is Transformers on this list?

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top  *

Now imagine in your head that kind of list for video games.  You're going to have to use your imagination because Metacritic's DB is currently down.  All of the top 50 movies are very story intensive.  Story is the measure by which we judge movies.  I'm not talking about gross.  I imagine that most of the top 50 video games are not very story intensive, or if they are have some other important game-play element that could also just as easily explain their awesomeness.

Okay, I'm going to admit I may have been reaching with 'demonstrably better in every category.'  It was late, and I'm a twat sometimes.  But I'm merely trying to hammer the point home that goddamn Mario is an inter-cultural icon.  If Mario came on your TV and said, "It's a me!  Let's give peace a chance!"  You could conceivably believe that some people's minds would change about war.

It's not that story in games is necessarily actively bad.  It's that in the vast majority of cases it gets far too much attention, while other more important areas of game-making are ignored.  Games are called games because one has fun playing them.  For most people, the mediocre story you get in games isn't what they signed up for.  People who did sign up for it are more than welcome to it.  All I'm trying to say is that both of us are probably better served if less time is spent on story and more time is spent on designing the game to be what it is.  And that of course is a fun experience whose story is mostly ancillary.

* Editor's Note:  I'm aware of the problems with these kinds of lists and do not need to be reminded that The Dark Knight is not the 10th best movie of all time.

I have to admit I also just don't care much for Mario games where he's not driving a little car around, or punching people. Apparently I'm just not a Nintendo guy. That aside, the counterpoint in the "everyone everywhere knows who this character is" set would be the Zelda games, which have added more and more story consistently over the years, and I think you'd have a hard time arguing that that isn't a good thing for that franchise. (The gameplay on the other hand has changed very little other than going 3rd person 3D at some point.) And yes, I realize the story is essentially just a more and more complicated version of 'go get the princess', but there's more to story than just plot. Dialogue, characterization, setting, etc., all that stuff falls under 'story' for me.

I really think the evident greater popularity of the non-story based games out there (Bejeweled ahoy) mostly comes down to accessibility. "That big ape took the princess, now go get her back" requires a lot less backstory or exposition to get you on your path than something like a Dragon Age that has a whole setting it needs you to buy into to work. You flip on the switch and you're jumping over barrels. That's fine if all you want to do is jump over barrels, but games as a whole have a lot more potential than that.

EDIT: Also I don't want to make it sound like wanting to jump over barrels and get on with your life is bad, I play plenty of abstract games myself of course.

Five minutes with Ira Glass (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loxJ3FtCJJA)

Narrative is like a drug. Start a story, raise a few questions, and even if things seem dull or confusing now your audience will stick around just to see how it ends. There is an implicit promise, in telling a story, that it be worth that telling. Otherwise you would have kept your mouth shut.

So we slog through tedious RPG combat to get to the next dialogue tree, we keep playing a mediocre FPS in order to see to the next cutscene, we fight through a repetitive RTS because we want to know what happens to our ragtag band or our tiny nation or our reluctant hero or whatever. There's more story over the wall, and we claw our way over it like a junkie. It's a fundamental human need.

And if the ending is worth it, if the surprises are genuine, a lot of people will forget how crappy and generic the gameplay was.

If video game developers are storytellers, then they are that friend that won't hang up the damned phone and instead wastes 2 hours telling you stupid trivial bullshit.

Yes, what this thread needs is more blanket generalizations.

I should've been more clear because I actually did have a point.  That point is that I've been burned too many times by games trumpeting story that end up being terrible to assume that the stories they are telling are actually worth my time to sit through.  At this point, I play a game because I want to play a game and I'll pick up a book or put in a movie if I want a story.

Oblivion sold 3 million copies, evidently Morrowind left most of them wanting more.  That's pretty much a clear example of selling the world over gameplay.

Malakili, I am confused what the point of this is. You like competitive games. That's not an issue. I'd recommend LoL, TF2, etc. You're a big proponent of a player's story, one of experience and randomness that is different for everyone. OK!

So... you're not going to like a single player, you against the computer, more focus on player empowerment than player equality approach to gaming. Some people do like that.

What's the problem? How is someone who wouldn't like this because of the very nature of the beast in any kind of position to criticize or mock? There are good storytelling games and bad ones. It's an art, not a science like with competitive games or game mechanics. It's one you don't care for. *There's nothing wrong with that.*

Going back to his first post, I think his point is that he didn't always feel this way, and was wondering what's changed and how others feel about the subject.  I just think some people have started arguing their positions a little more aggressively than needed.

Yea, going back to the OP I was focusing more on if story changed, or if I changed, or if some combination of the two changed over the years that can account for what amounts to a pretty radical shift in how I play games and what kinds of games I like.  It has evolved into a more general story discussion there, which is alright at this point.  I think the answer to my OP question is more me-centered than games in the last few years-centered.

Ok. Here's your answer: in a traditional game development studio structure, none of the principals (designer, producer, artist, programmer) are guaranteed to be "strong" in storytelling qualities. That would be a writer  or interactive storyteller's strengths. Moreover, none of the people I've mentioned are in full control of the game. They are individual elements, none of whom's vision has a strong effect on the overall product. It is the game's director or senior leadership team that weaves the story throughout every facet of the game. The games you've quoted (ESPECIALLY Metal Gear, Bioware games, and maybe Valve) have very strong leaders making the designers, artists, programmers and producers bring their efforts together to create the experiences people enjoy. Their background includes the skills and experience to create a compelling, story-driven game.

Most game studios do not either have strong directors (only business types and producers), aren't making story-based games (or it's not the focus), or have a leadership structure that does not understand narrative storytelling in games (business or other background, directing the game without the appropriate skill set.)

Two notes: Obsidian has benefitted and gotten the, as I call it, Bioware-Lite moniker by having Chris Avellone for a founder.

Second: it is very, very hard to make a good game like Bioware, Kojima, Valve and the rest do. Blizzard doesn't even try... that's not the point for them, and they know where their developer's strengths lie. If they do try (as they did in SC2), they will be hampered by their own IP's qualities that do not make for strong stories. Just strong characters / archetypes / designs and settings

For the record, Kojima is absolute shit when it comes to story.

I think one's Portal experience has something to do with their personality, a little, and how easily they can merrily play along with the game in order to see a tale told. I am very quick to immerse myself in a game (unless it keeps insisting on kicking me out of it) if it has any story at all it wants to tell. It's sort of related to suspension of disbelief, I think, but not quite that. So while I will, of course, grin at the black humor in Portal, I will also think, "Jesus Christ, is this entire place completely insane?" There was too much urgency in the wall scribbles, too many little details hinting at what the hell went on there before you woke up, for me to just chuckle and dismiss the entire game's story. It's not a traditional telling, no, and that's why I liked it so much. The characters in Portal are fantastic, especially the unseen ones, the ones who composed sad poems to their companion cube, the ones who scribbled THEY'RE WATCHING YOU and THE CAKE IS A LIE in ever increasing urgency, the one who scribbled hasty directions to get to GLaDoS (who was another fantastic character, in my opinion).

It helped that I knew exactly nothing beyond "there are portal-based puzzles" and "there is a song in the end credits" and "everyone who played it seemed to really love it," I think. It made the story unfold in a much more satisfying way for me.

I never played Crysis or Halo or any of those, so I can't really compare directly for you, though!

He has his strengths and weaknesses. He knows how to use a game to manipulate his audience. The conclusion of MGS4 was a triumph and extremely satisfying to me, right down to *using the credits* to mess with the player. The games he has been the head of are expertly crafted.

I've killed a hooker during a movie. Does that count? :grin:

Portal worked very well because 1) it was short and focused and 2) it was a fantastic play on traditional video game roles, i.e. the player is told to do something, so they do it because that is what the game wants them to do.

I don't quite get the same level of narrative development from HL2, but just accept it is one group of magic aliens versus another with you as some kind of pawn who is used to shoot stuff.

I played Portal in one four/five hour sitting.  I only knew that it was about solving puzzles, so when it became something else entirely, I was sucked in so deeply I didn't come out until I beat the game.  It goes down in my gaming history as some of the best $20 I've spent. 

When I first read this topic, one of the first things that came to my mind was that to me Kojima has always been to me one of the examples of the way to do story in games completely the wrong way.  In fact it was something I ranted about at length in the MGS4 thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13467.0) a couple years back, so I won't rehash all that here, but a lot of it is fairly relevant to this topic.  Suffice it to say that the MGS series is the epitome of story getting in the way of gameplay.

I suppose I'm less interested in story than I am with narrative in the sense that I find games like Civ and Seven Kingdoms far more compelling than most rpgs. I've had 2 bioware chars make babies with npcs, but that was less interesting than having my king assasinated in Seven Kingdoms. What I'd love to see in an rpg is the random nature of Civ (well, really FfH): alliances made and broken, betrayals, espionage, such that there's a potential of the game playing out differently each time. It'll never happen in my lifetime, but a guy can dream.

Late to this, but I grew up with Harry Potter (I'm 20) and it's pretty much the Star Wars of the new generation. It's not going to be forgotten.

a) You just made me feel ancient.
b) I am not really surprised it's your generation's Star Wars. They have some similarities that I think made that pretty likely to happen - it has the same right place/right time/right story elements perfect storm, imo. :P

I too am not prepared to deal with people born in the 90s.

As far as Portal and Ico (to stay at least somewhat on topic) -- one of the things I love about a good book is feeling immersed in the story and I think these are examples of games that pull that off well.   Their worlds are self-consistent and well presented.  It's not just about plot, but about character and setting and feeling.   They both do a decent job of setting/world -- Portal obscures its loading screens with elevators -- Ico just does one seamless level start to finish, which I absolutely loved -- the castle was as much a character as a place and didn't feel like "levels" or "rooms" -- you saw something off in the distance and 45 minutes later there you were and you could look back and see where you came from.

By that you mean awful dreck for stunted manchildren?  :awesome_for_real:

Ditto.   :ye_gods:

But it doesn't have The Force.  You just can't make a good cult classic without The Force. 

You'd be surprised who you can strike up a conversation about Harry Potter with. Less so now, but before the 7th book came out, talking to people about what they thought was going to happen.

I was disappointed by Harry Potter --  The first book was a fun read, but I kept hoping that it'd become more coherent and end up being more than it was.  I found the last book and ending to be highly disappointing.  I feel like JKR's sudden leap into fame and fortune failed to provide her with an opportunity to improve her craft.

But, I suppose I am an old fart these days, having grown up on the original Star Wars and all ^^

I can't wait for the prequels.  :awesome_for_real:

Nor does popular mean bad.

At the time, I would have preferred to play DK with my friends, though I don't see much point in throwing pizza crust at anyone. I don't believe I've spent, oh, anything on hookers or blow in my life, so that's a pretty needlessly stupid example anyway.
Of course, later on if I had some time to myself at home, I'd have given Ultima 3 a spin, but that's neither here nor there.

Oh, and Harry Potter, (which is a series of childrens' books) was exceedingly popular over 10 years ago. Long before any films came along. I'm pretty much completely disinterested in HP, but hating on it seems a bit pointless and out of whack. Unless everything popular is automagically bad? Apparently?

Popular doesn't mean "good" (which is down to personal aesthetics anyway), nor does it mean "bad". It means "popular".


As for the story and half-life/portal discussion, some would argue story, others argue setting. Story can be told through setting in some ways, but it's almost like getting into a distinction between "story" and "narrative".



I only just extracted myself from this exact situation a week or so ago. Very good points (including the ones I trimmed from the quote).



Also true, in general. One reason why fairly generic and trite stories get held up as "great game stories". CoD4 SP is actually a decent example. It got all kinds of accolades, but it's not an especially good story (it's a decent story, for a game). It's not even an especially good game. What it actually is - is an interactive experience. And it's very well done at that.



This.

If I get lucky and the game has what passes for a good story or compelling or interesting characters that's a very welcome bonus, but it's not my reason to play.

Ultima and Donkey Kong are both awesome.

Still, was "story" really what made Ultima? I would say no.

How is that "Show don't tell"?  Serious question.  In traditional media, a headline saying "Aliens invade Earth" is the exact opposite of Show, Don't Tell (I.E. show the invasion happening, don't just tell us it happened, be it from other characters, the narrator, or reading a newspaper headline).  Why is that different in a video game?  This is why I'm having trouble in this thread, in traditional media, these things are defined a certain way, but if you try to apply it to video games, it gets all mucked up.

If the masses act like idiots over it, then this is likely true...  Though that wasn't my point.

A good work can be popular.  A popular work is not necessarily strong in story elements.  Musashi is confusing the two and simply name dropping popular games without any actual technical evaluation of their merits.  He's saying if you don't like the "in" game, you're a nerd and deserve to be ostracized.  That's his argument for what makes a good story.

So as you say, "nor does popular mean bad".  Popular has nothing to do with it at all.

Because the headline is just part of it.  It tells us civilization was still together enough to print newspapers until the end of the 7 hour war at least, it tells us that eli or dr. kliener though they were worth keeping around, the scribbling on one of the pages suggests that perhaps they were trying to make sense of stuff that didn't line up with what they themselves knew from Black Mesa.  We don't now a ton about what happened to the press post-combine take over, but we know that there was at least an attempt to keep it going.    These little artifacts tell you tons about the state of the world, or at least possible state of the world. 

I agree with what pxib said.  But I don't think it precludes anything about the less is more theory of story in games.  I'm not opposed to story helping a shitty game at all.

However I've been giving it some thought, and trying to come up with a better way to get my point across without pissing on the story people.  I don't know if the following accomplishes that for you.  But here it is anyway.  If you can show me a game where you think the story makes the game a classic, I'm willing to bet we can find gameplay elements that make it so as least as much if not more in every case.

Edit:  Inb4 Portal:  Portal gun.

Deus Ex.

- Red Dead Redemption.  The gameplay mechanics are largely ripped from the GTA games.  The setting and the story are what make the game.

- Final Fantasy VI and Planescape: Torment as representatives of Japanese and Western RPG's respectively.  Neither one is considered a classic because of their gameplay.

It came out at a time when first person shooters were relatively in their infancy.  Story didn't sell it even then.  It had above average graphics for the time, and promised what was then sort of new FPS gameplay.  People were buying shooters just to see how awesome the game allowed them to blow shit up.  That's all without even mentioning that this game was one of the first to combine different genres of gameplay in a totally awesome way.  I don't think that can be understated.  And while the story may have been good, the gameplay was classic.


RDR isn't a classic.  And people didn't buy it for the story.  Just like they don't buy GTA for the story.  They bought it to shoot people while running over hookers on a horse and then drag their bodies around.

FF6 is the culmination of several years of progression in the JRPG genre.  People knew they were going to get story, sure. But they also knew they were going to level up, fight monsters, ride a Chocobo, and eventually pilot an airship.  If you take the story out of every JRPG ever made and just put in progressively stripping hentai cut-scenes, well I'm sure you get the point.

Planescape may have a great story, but again that's not the point.  There are are a shitload of RPG staples set in the AD&D rules.

You can't just say that any of these games are classics because of story alone.

Heavy Rain.

Sure I can.  People still talk about FFVI and Torment to this day, and pretty much never in context of mechanics.  If as you say, Torment is just one of a shitload of AD&D based RPG's, and FF6 was just part of the progression of JRPG's, why is it these two games are remembered so fondly?  Because of the fucking story.  Nobody is going to tell you that you should go play FFVI because you can ride a chocobo, fight monsters, and level up, and nobody is going to tell you to play Torment because it's based on AD&D rules.  You asked for games that are considered classics because of their story, and you were going to show us that those games have gameplay elements that have more to do with them being classic than the story.  Unless you're tyring to argue that every single AD&D based game, and every FF is a classic, then you're wrong.

As for RDR, it's showing up as the top pick on a lot of GOTY lists, and a lot of those lists mention the story, setting, and voice acting as some of the main reasons why.  The gameplay is decent, but certainly not anything revolutionary if you've played any of the last few GTA games.  Take out the story of that game, and you have a sandbox without any sort of context that would get old after the third or fourth time you left someone hogtied on the train tracks.

Also, you've gone from "If you can show me a game where you think the story makes the game a classic, I'm willing to bet we can find gameplay elements that make it so as least as much if not more in every case.", to arguing  "people didn't buy it for the story".  Are you interested in what people actually got out of these games, or what their expectations were going in?

That is exactly the point. There are a shitload of RPGs with D&D rules, but which one does everyone remember? Same goes for FFVI; the mechanics, graphics, etc. were virtually identical to FFIV but which one is consistently cited as one of the best RPGs of all time?

We get it, you don't care about story in games. You mash A through the dialog and skip the cutscenes. Not everyone is like you.

Silent Hill 2
Gameplay was terrible. The atmosphere, music, and story are what made it.

I think it counts as "showing" rather than "telling" because you stumble onto a lot of it (or so I assume in HL2, I never played it, but that's mostly how it worked in Portal) rather than have it splash across your screen to spell it out like in a movie.



It's funny, I am actually in the middle of a game where the story is keeping me fighting the good fight against the game trying to ruin all my fun. Mass Effect's PC port is ... not good. The controls are terrible. The Mako is so bad I am actually starting to enjoy it for its sheer shittiness (I'm weird, I know). There is a lot of running with nothing but the sound of my footsteps to keep me company, because my group doesn't banter, so it feels like an even longer jog than it probably would otherwise. The quest directions are a lot vaguer than I can tolerate (and I can actually tolerate a decent amount). The minimap is almost completely useless and the regular map only slightly useful. But I really like the setting, and I want to see where the story is going. So I will trudge through my personal water planet, complaining bitterly that this part is horrible, because that story carrot is RIGHT THERE.

And there are a shitload of other games that use those AD&D rules and aren't classic. You're kind of moving the goalposts here. Planescape is considered a classic where say IWD2 or Secret of the Silver Blades aren't entirely because of the story.

Video games cover too wide a spectrum of products to make sweeping generalizations about how much story a game needs. Does a sound novel game need a good story? Yes, that's the entire point. Does Wii Fit or Tetris need a story? No.

This is straying pretty far from the OP. The point there was not that story is super important or super useless, rather that for the poster story - specifically narrative - often gets in the way of the experience. Something I agree with.

I'm still bumbling my way through RDR. I'm not sure if I'd describe the story as compelling or good, as it's pretty damned thin. The gameplay is also nothing amazing, to be quite honest. I'd say it's standouts are atmosphere, characters and setting.

edit - fixed messed up quotes

People remember stories more than they do a system of game mechanics. If the game is decent enough but has an amazing story, people will play through it. But will they keep playing it over and over after the story is done? A "good game" is fun and memorable for that sake. See: StarCraft or Counter-strike. Good stories you can make through a game experience also help people remember a particular game: Planetside, for example. I feel it's a better idea to argue on the individual merits of one product rather than to compare them to some industry-wide standard which doesn't exist.

Great games from a bygone era are always relative to that era with their mechanics. Good stories are timeless, and your brain is willing to look past the era's game mechanics and graphics and color them in your head because of your extreme positive experience with the story.

Special Mention: Red Dead Redemption: Expertly crafted. I liked the voiceovers, and I liked the scenario. Cinematics and pacing were stand-out, similar to how True Grit by the Coens was stand-out. The story was light... what was important was the exploration of the themes, and the philosophical debates that John often found himself in with the other characters who were of an extreme position. John was a moderate, seeking balance in life, and provided a perfect counter-point for the people he found himself interacting with (who, it should be mentioned, never budged from their passionate position by John's logical arguments). It was an examination of life in the West. I think the only major developments that occurred in the story took place before the game began and after John returned to his family.

Characters and setting are story though. I don't think we're just talking merely about plot are we?

The OP is pretty clearly talking about actual plot and not setting.

I was talking mostly about plot/narrative when I made the OP yes, but the conversation has evolved past that at this point I think.  I've talked a bit in this thread about how I like how Valve tends to tell their stories or let the player discover bits and pieces in putting together a picture of whats happening in their game world.  That kind of story (without analyzing the word story too much) i'm on board with for the most part.   

What I had in mind specifically when I made the OP is stuff like Dragon Age and mostly RPGs in general, but even something like Assassin's creed where you have pretty decent mechanics but the game tries really fucking hard to make me give a crap about its story that is more or less terrible.

Sometimes, even if the story is potentially interesting, the presentation is obnoxious.  The "30 minutes of opening cutscenes before you can do anything" model of story introduction drives me nuts, for example.  I really do want some meaningful story going on for RPGs and whatnot, but I'm also here to play a game.  The two should work together, not fight each other.

Yea I'm pretty much talking specifically about narrative.

Also, all these games that are being pointed out aren't necessarily classic by contemporary measure.  They're classic within our circle, and honestly I'm okay with them being so.  What I'm not okay with is them being compared to games with lasting cultural impact on a much larger scale.  A game like TF2 is accessible precisely because it doesn't shove a whole bunch of pulp dreck up your ass.  Of course accessibility doesn't breed success.  But accessibility combined with pure distilled awesome in every possible way, such as in TF2, does.  The accessibility breeds adoption, and three or four months later you're showing 'Gentlemen' memes to your co-workers. 

Every game pointed out on this page of the thread is a RPG.  So at best you're making the point that narrative is important in RPGs.  I guess I can sort of agree with that.  But I still think that narrative is important only in as far as it smoothly transitions between gameplay types.  And by smoothly, I mean quickly.  And by quickly, I mean less is more.

TF2 doesn't have a serious story; it's entertainment, not art, though it might be classified as artful entertainment? It does a damn good job keeping some consistency and explaining things in an entertaining way while at the same time being completely detached from reality.

Regardless, it is a solid game, in the same category as StarCraft, Modern Warfare, Halo, Civilization, Counter-Strike etc. in that people want to play it over and over and over.

Wait, are you saying TF2 is an example of a game with a lasting cultural impact?

That, and the fact that the Infinity Engine implementation of 2ed AD&D rules is so horrifyingly neckbearded that if you play the game for the system you are officially the most broken motherfucker who could ever conceivably exist.  If you walked into the room at the exact moment Hitler was fucking his niece he'd look over and tell you what a fucking headcase you are, and how he's glad that history will remember him kindly compared to you.

Red Dead Redemption is an RPG? Silent Hill 2? Heavy Rain?  :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr:

I recently had a bad experience like that with Dead Rising 2, which was compounded by frequent loading screens.  It shouldn't take that long to set up a zombie outbreak story, and Dead Rising isn't exactly something people are playing for the narrative.

Arise!

I came across this article today and it made me want to revisit the topic:  http://www.dinofarmgames.com/?p=219

Snippet:


I've still tended to dislike story recently, though I think that something like Deus Ex 3 is the best recent example of a story that was interesting, so I have to temper whatever I'm thinking with the fact that I have at least one recent example that I really enjoyed.   Either way, I think this blog post has an interesting point and in some ways summarizes what I was trying to say back in the OP when I made, but definitely articulates it better.  If anyone is still interested in the topic I'd be interested to know what you think about the argument in the link.

Some amount of story is important to a game.  It draws the player in to the world and creates an investment.  The bigger issue is that it is damn hard to find someone who can both write a damn good story and understand what can/can't be done within the structure of a game.  Those folks are rare. 

Raph made a statement awhile back that said something such as the best designers are those that get a liberal arts four year, for the worldly knowledge, but afterwards go crazy with programming/design.  That way it gets all bases covered. 

Anyways, I'm a big fan of story, it's just that most games have weak story lines these days.  Or, a great story but the game is atrocious. 

Bad Gorilla.  Is Princess.  Get.  End.

Deus Ex: HR seems to be the latest example of great story, as Malakili mentions.

Deus Ex: HR did a good job taking a "theme" and a concept to explore and weaving that throughout the entire game, from the world's style and setup to the individual missions that play out and the characters who feature most prominently. So far it's felt like any activity I'm doing and any line of dialog I hear feeds into the story or is relevant. The writing is top-notch too.

I can't speak for the overall main path narrative (still playing), but all the characters seem very three-dimensional (lol), and the interactions feel real.

What really gets me is when the different ways I can phrase dialog choices in mini-game segments reinforces the same core of who Adam Jensen's character is. For instance, I can empathize, placate, defend myself, etc, and I still believe all those interactions in normal conversation are the character that I'm playing rather than picking a choice in the moment that makes it obvious that Adam is either a goodie two-shoes or an asshole (something that could conflict with the core of his character or the character I'm playing).

Overall, I'm really enjoying the exploration that Deus Ex is offering. Gameplay? Standard.  :why_so_serious:

I recently had an argument with someone on whether or not Deus Ex 3 and Mass Effect 2 were essentially the same type of game or not. I argued that there was a pretty significant difference, even if both qualify as story based RPGs.

There were two big things about Deus EX that made it different for me: one, that so much of the story and background elements were just out there in the world and it was up to you whether or not you hunted them down, and two - how I actually played the game affected the story. By that, I mean who I killed or only knocked out, alarms I did or did not set off, places I chose to explore on my own, things like that. It wasn't just limited to dialog wheel choices. People playing through Deus Ex without killing a single person are going to have played/told a significantly different story than those who went through it Gears of War style. The over arching narative may have remained the same, but my "role" in the story changed significantly. At least thats how it came across to me.

Story matters in a huge way to me, but it can be presented in many ways. My top three recent games are DE3, Portal 2, and ME2. Each told a story in a different manner, but the story was a huge part of what made the game great. Oblivion was great to me because the openness of the world design let me adapt a story to my  character as I saw fit. The actual "story" in Oblivion was pure ass, and if anything was a detriment to the game.

To me the simple truth is story only works if it's essential to advancing the gameplay.  DE3 does this best, but only in the eyes of a Sandbox - you can still PLAY the game and not worry much about failing if you dont pay attention to story.  ME2 is great with story, but in this sense it's still "on rails" regardless of the story-wheel...  you could close your eyes, choose whatever, and you'll still make it to the end.

Lost in today's games are what was so great during the emergent phases of digital gaming, that is, w/o paying attention to the story, you failed.  Games like Zork, Starflight, and pretty much every Sierra game are good examples.

However, when the solution is brought up in the MMO forums, people scoff.  No one wants to have to draw a map, learn where something is or what to do through context, etc.  Which basically means, they dont want story.  Or at least, they dont THINK they want story.

I'm of the belief if you went back to hardcore story-gaming that people would really enjoy it.  No maps, no "!",no quest log, just you and the game as it's written.

Nobody wants to draw a map, because having to map manually sucks. It has nothing to do with wanting or not wanting story.

It's pretty annoying nowadays when something doesn't have a minimap (where applicable).  It's almost a non-starter for me. Same with a quest log.  

It's fucking annoying not knowing where you're going or having to read the dev's mind as to what the hell you're supposed to be doing next. Also, god forbid you have to put the game down for a while and pick it back up.  

A good portion of my youth was spent trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing in a game and where in the hell I have to do it.  These were not quality gaming moments, these were nearly controller chucking moments. Thank god for Gamefaqs.  

Don't confuse "story" or "world" with quality of life improvements.  We're not fucking psychic and some of us don't have hours to wander around a game like a punch drunk goon.

Only have time to skim it, but even in doing that I noticed a few things I disagree with:


A good story can be enjoyed over and over again.  In many of the best ones you pick up on new things each time you read/watch it.



No, a lot of developers make their games look and play out like movies, because as I once heard Ken Levine put it, people already know how to leverage emotion through movies and animation.  People are still learning how to do it in games through other means.


And I strongly disagree with this one.  I think Planescape: Torment would have been shit as a novel since it would lack the same kind of personal investment, if you stripped out the story and just left the gameplay, you wouldn't really be left with a game worth playing.

Yeah he's completely wrong about Torment.

Because it fucks his argument so badly he has had to rewrite it about 4 times now.

Most people don't make it to the end of most games a single time. The average game is experienced something like 0.7 times.

This piece commits the sin that most of these pieces do, which is to be stupidly narrow minded. I REALLY wish people who fancy themselves video game intellectuals would allow for the completely obvious reality that there are different types of games. To me this is not a difficult concept but there are a sadly high number of people who can't wrap their heads around it. Yes, there are games like Chess or Tetris that are about challenge, win conditions and clear rules that you can play hundreds of times, but there are also experiential games like Uncharted that are more about enjoying the ride than the specifics of the mechanics.

If someone wrote a blog about how every good TV show needs a hot wife, a fat husband and a laugh track we'd think they were crazy and stupid, but that level of analysis is pretty routine in gaming blogs from people who fancy themselves serious thinkers. It's the type of analysis that springs from at most 10 seconds of thought.

Even his opening is a bit crap:


I've never really heard Ocarina of Time held up as having a great story.  I played all the way through it and I couldn't for the life of me tell you one think about the story except for Link fighting Gannondorf at the end.  Most Metal Gear games, and pretty much all FF games from VII onward have fairly horrible and convoluted stories.  Saying FFVII and MGS set the standard for story in modern games because they're popular with a segment of the gaming population that grew up with them is like saying the Twilight books set the standard for modern literature.  Also, no mention of Half Life 2 or Portal, Bioshock, Red Dead Redemption, Vampire: Bloodlines, Grim Fandango, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, or any other number of other examples? 

"Serious" video game writing is almost universally terrible. I really want to know what so many people are thinking (and drinking!) when they produce piece after piece about the one right way to do things that flies in the face of all logic and history.

Saying that games are games and not movies and thus shouldn't have plots is kind of like saying that movies are movies and not books and thus shouldn't have plots. And you know what, you can probably argue that if you compare books to movies purely on the merits of plot and characterization books win. But of course that doesn't mean movies should abandon narrative and become long music videos.

I recently played 999 for DS and liked it a lot. If the plot was a book would it be a great book? Maybe with some serious rewriting, probably not without. But as a game with a plot it totally worked for me and removing the plot would totally break the game. A million essays about how plot doesn't work in games won't change the fact that for many people and many games it does work. It's kind of like telling someone who is enjoying a delicious steak that meat tastes terrible.

I think a lot of people have a fundamental problem with the fact that a "video game" covers a wide range of entertainment on an electronic device, from recreations of physical games to near movie experiences to simple reflex tests you play for 30 seconds at a time. It doesn't make a ton of sense to compare video games to movies as movies are so much narrower in scope. When people write about video games they tend to immediately exclude a vast swath of games to make it easier on their small brains.

I concur with these points. When we were younger and didn't have jobs/families and had far fewer games, that stuff got by. Now? I just don't have the time.

As for story, I dunno. Most games don't really have a "story" as such - more a theme or a really paper thin story to hang a game off. Just finished the last bit of DLC for FEAR2 (Reborn) and started FEAR3. What's the story? Alma had a kid. Stop her (stop her what?) Also, creepy stuff and flashes of creepy will happen. Lots of games have a setting which may have a decent amount of detail, but little in terms of actual story that's interesting (Prototype)

The last best game I can think of offhand that I've played through to completion with a decent story was Mafia 2, which had a really good story for a game, but wasn't all that good at being a game.

Because he's a fucking idiot.  Literally almost every declarative statement he makes is wrong.

A huge issue with trying to talk about video games at the high level is that there are very few official 'cornerstones' that the majority of gamers have played. So he mentions the top stories that come to his mind, but others are raised that are equally worthy of discussion (or equally, of being discounted).

Portal had a great story? It had a good framing mechanism for a puzzle game and a great character in GLADoS. (One thing a lot of people do is confuse 'narrative' and 'character', but they are different things.)

BioShock had a great meta-narrative, but the in-game narrative's impact was heavily reduced after the twist. Oh goody, now a fetch quest, an escort quest and a boss fight against pretty much the same enemies I've left in piles behind me.

... and so on. And we haven't even mentioned (Grim Fandango aside) the type of game that married up story, character and gameplay very early on - the adventure game. Quest for Glory (and a lot of Sierra's line up) chased interesting stories that were sometimes enhanced (and sometimes reduced) by the game mechanics.

But that goes back to my first point - no cornerstones. I'd wager quite a few people here know what I mean when I say "Sierra adventure game", but the vast bulk of gamers wouldn't. So we can't talk about them. Instead, we get a mention of Metal Gear Solid, which in itself is a title fading from memory (and a game that suffered deeply from, "so you want a story? Here, have 10 minutes of dialogue over a rambling plot involving nuclear bombs and giant robots"). 

Where Portal 1 and Bioshock both succeeded (and where Bioshock failed after the twist, and where I felt Portal 2 suffered) was in the unity of experience between player and protagonist. Their silent, mostly amnesiac, disoriented but dedicated heroes of have almost exactly the same desires that the people playing do: SURVIVE. GET TO THE NEXT AREA. DEFEAT THAT OBNOXIOUS, MOCKING ENEMY. There are in-game, story reasons for the character to do so and those reasons reinforce the players' own desires and provide momentum to drive them forward.

When the storyline changes direction in Portal 1 it's a delight and a relief. The dark forces that have been railroading the player are defeated piece by piece (even as the game itself remains entirely on rails) and Chell stops being a pawn and becomes a person. You. It's still a puzzle game, but it's not just a puzzle game.

Neither the game nor the story truly come off the rails in Bioshock, and the twist specifically puts that into focus and makes the player rethink everything they've done up until then. Very clever. At which point the game screws up by letting players use this new knowledge for... nothing. They can't defy anybody, and they're just stuck running errands for a different set of egotistical asshats. If anything the story strength of the twist is directly opposed by the remainder of the game.

Portal 2, classy and well-written as it is, also never reaches a point where it hides the rails. Chell's always obviously doing favors and following orders for one robot or another. The player never really gets a chance to feel like she's stretching her own legs.

I'd say starcontrol 2 is one of the best blends of story and characters. It also had amazingly fun gameplay. Otherwise people would still talk about star contol 1, which really had no story or characters.