Story in games

[Velorath]

Even his opening is a bit crap:

Since digital game technology has allowed for games to include stories, more and more of them have chosen to do so.  Some of the “greatest video games of all time” not only include story, but are even based on story.  Games like The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy VII, and Metal Gear Solid set the standard for the modern video game. 

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? 

[Margalis]

"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.

[Azazel]

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.  
(snip)
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.

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.

[Sheepherder]

Yeah he's completely wrong about Torment everything.

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

[UnSub]

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"). 

[pxib]

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.

[Furiously]

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.