If you think EA's a fucking PITA, wait until their newest idea goes through.

[Merusk]

Depending on how much fan-boy nerd ire the FF Franchise evokes in your very soul, neither one is especially bad game-play wise.  It's just that they're not especially good either.

That depends entirely on your age.  While I've seen disappointment at the ending of FFX I've also seen lots of love for the game.

Not that they haven't shit all over it with 12 and 13 in general.  FF10 was the last "good" FF game for a number of mid 20-somethings.  (Which I now see Rend also said)

[Logain]

Did you ever play final fantasy 12? I've long since felt many of the same issues with the FF series but I found 12 to be refreshingly open ended compared to other titles. Most areas were large "zones" and there was quite a bit to explore and find.

[Rendakor]

At the risk of turning this into a FF thread...

FF12 was weird. They did fix a lot of the issues raised in 10 (bigger zones, more sidequests, greater freedom to explore), but the combat system sort of screwed it all up. Once I got a lot of options for customizing the party's Gambits (somewhere around the 10-15 hour mark), I had my party running fully automated. All I had to do was walk my party from battle to battle, and the only times I needed to actually push buttons were the boss fights which simply required firing off limit breaks until they died. As a result I got bored of the game about halfway through since I wasn't playing so much as walking my characters between fights and cutscenes, and ended up dropping it. If they had made the same game with the traditional, turn based battle system I'm sure I would have loved it and, more importantly, if they had continued in FF12's direction with the series instead of going back to FFX's more directed approach I'd still be buying them.

[Furiously]

What makes me sad is when I used to see that square, triangle and circle I knew I was getting something good. Now I know exaclty what I'm getting too of course.

[UnSub]

Well I think a lot of what we have to ask ourselves in these AAA games is where the majority of the time for development goes.

Does it end up in graphics?
Does it end up in gameplay?
Does it end up in testing?
Does it end up in a game engine?

I'm not really sure, but for some reason I'm guessing it's not in gameplay, controls, or user interface.

The money in AAA development goes into studios of 50, 100, 200 people or more all working on one title for 2 to 5 years. It's very expensive to do, but has helped turn out the cornerstones of modern gaming. Gameplay, controls, UI - they all come at the end of the cycle. Even companies like Valve don't get the fun into a game until right towards the end (which is their story of TF2).

I know a lot of people will laugh a lot if EA (or any other big publisher) collapses but I'm not looking forward to the resulting future that ends up with hundreds of struggling indies delivering yet another platformer with delusions of grandeur. I want my VO'd cutscene playing over a shiny 3D graphics engine, thanks. I played 8-bit games when they were state-of-the-art; I'm not going to enjoy going back there.

[Musashi]

I differ with that bigtime.  VO'd cutscenes?  GTFO with that crap.  Story driven replacement for television and movies?  It was a horrible idea in the first place.  I don't know why we've been clinging to it for 20 years.  The only, and I mean the very single, game that has had an even remotely compelling story in the history of games was Portal.  I have been moved more by finding another princess in another castle than I have literally anything that has come out since.  And graphics?  It's just a cycle that never ends.  We just keep figuring out ways to shove more pixels in the pipeline.  I just don't care.  I'll sift through a hundred freebie tower defenses before I get burned for 60$ by the EA's of the world ever again.

You can say that you don't get the fun in the game until the end all you want, but to me that just sounds like a culture built to fail.  And in reality, that repeated failure is what I see happening from my perspective, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that at all.

EA has been fucking up our passtime for as long as I can remember.  It's time for them to die.  Had they stuck to shitting out Maddens every year, they'd probably still be in decent shape.  But instead they've been destroying all that's right in the game world, and it just has to stop.  To defend what they have turned AAA gaming into is just a little bit intellectually dishonest.  And I, quite frankly, expect more from a poster on the internet with your normally high integrity.

I guess until that culture fails completely, I'll be over here killin' centipedes.

[SurfD]

I differ with that bigtime.  VO'd cutscenes?  GTFO with that crap.  Story driven replacement for television and movies?  It was a horrible idea in the first place.  I don't know why we've been clinging to it for 20 years.  The only, and I mean the very single, game that has had an even remotely compelling story in the history of games was Portal.  I have been moved more by finding another princess in another castle than I have literally anything that has come out since.

I have a rather huge library of RPGs of multiple assorted types that would very much like to disagree with you on this point.

[Musashi]

Just because we buy them doesn't mean the story in them was good.

[Ingmar]

Just because we buy them doesn't mean the story in them was good.

We're way, way deep into the realm of subjectivity here.

[Kageru]

I'm fine with star VO work on extended cinematic cut scenes as long as it took no money away from the game-play.

[Rendakor]

It's possible to have a good story in a modern game without heavy use of extended cutscenes. Fallout: New Vegas comes to mind as an example.

[lamaros]

It's possible to have a good story in a modern game without heavy use of extended cutscenes. Fallout: New Vegas comes to mind as an example.

Does it really have a good story? Great game, but the story is pretty much generic in my view.

[Ingmar]

It definitely doesn't have a particularly tight narrative; whether or not you prefer that your story in a game come in one form or the other is mostly a matter of, well, preference. I enjoy games like Skyrim and NV a lot, but more for the world-building than the narrative or characterization (Skyrim in particular has very weak characters). All of those things could reasonably be put under the heading of "story" though.

[lamaros]

It definitely doesn't have a particularly tight narrative; whether or not you prefer that your story in a game come in one form or the other is mostly a matter of, well, preference. I enjoy games like Skyrim and NV a lot, but more for the world-building than the narrative or characterization (Skyrim in particular has very weak characters). All of those things could reasonably be put under the heading of "story" though.

In a sense, yeah. I would have thought 'story' for a game would generally be used to apply to the central shared narrative elements that most players engage with in the same way (ie the plot and writing of the main quest). In general these types of games can have different levels of quality in the various 'side' areas, which can be interesting stories in their own right, and form an interesting imagined narrative for the player character, but they are not constructed in the same way.

In a sense the power of these stories is reliant on the world building and the imagination of the person playing the game - being able to turn skill choices into a personal narrative is both a product of game mechanics that allow it and a player who is willing to give it meaning.

Quality of writing on the other hand is easier to assess, which is why I would say that when people generally assess 'story' they are assessing the quality of writing (and voice acting) and plotting of the more central and/or linear parts of a game.

/blather.

For me FO:NV has some good writing, some good side stories, and some good voice acting. The wrold building and the player mechanics are very well constructed for the most part. However I find the main plot to be rather generic (which is in turn a product of the game type, I guess it has to allow everything at once) though and wouldn't say it has a great story, insofar as story is the narrative of the courier becoming involved with and resolving the major conflict between new vegas, the ncr and the legion.

[Rendakor]

Well this is all highly subjective, but the reason I cited NV is that it's the best recent example of a player-choice-driven story; the quests in the game all have branching possibilities and outcomes including (and this is the big thing) the main story. Player choice is the thing I most care about in a game's story, because that's the point of an interactive narrative; the ability to create your own story. It's the draw of everything from "choose your own adventure" books to traditional PnP RPGs, yet it's something that 90% of games shy away from. In games where the story is just presented via cutscene with no input from the player beyond them reaching the next story bit, I very rarely stay interested (in the story; if the gameplay is good I'll keep playing of course). If I wanted to just experience a story, I feel that reading books or watching TV/movies is a better avenue. It's the same problem I had in TSW compared to SWTOR; the writing might've been better in TSW but I had no patience to sit through it.

[Merusk]

Did you ever play final fantasy 12? I've long since felt many of the same issues with the FF series but I found 12 to be refreshingly open ended compared to other titles. Most areas were large "zones" and there was quite a bit to explore and find.

I played it right up until the game played itself, at which point I lost interest and stopped.  (Much like Rednacor says) The story wasn't compelling enough to finish and the mechanics, frankly, sucked.  I never discovered how much there was to explore or find because I realized it was pointless.

These aren't uncommon complaints about the game.  It's rated lower (by users) than 10 by a fair margin, and 13 is slightly above it.

On the current topic.. games and story are one of the bigger fights of the last few years.  (Hello, Mr. Ebert)   None of them are novelization-level and I think we all accept that.  Great writers aren't getting in to games right now, they're writing novels.  That doesn't mean that story doesn't draw you in.  Just because its pulpy doesn't mean it's not compelling and nothing has to be high art just to have value.  We read and watch plenty of drek as a culture so why should games be any different.

I've completed games where the mechanics weren't great, just to see the ending of the story.  Just about every RTS I've ever completed spring immediately to mind. No input from me could have affected those outcomes, but I still wanted to play to see them. (More than the game play since I've never legitimately completed an RTS.. cheatcodes ahoy!) 

God of War was another that, even though it was punishing, I pushed through to the end because I wanted to see Kratos' story conclude.  The gameplay was good but far beyond my normal abilities.  I spent far, far longer than I should have taken trying to complete that one because I really suck at platformers.

In the end it comes down to the individual user how much they matter.  It's in trying to be all things to all gamers that most games fail.  It's the rare gem that will accomplish store, gameplay, sound, polish and graphics in a way that will make it a classic.  The problem is publishers like EA are trying to always make that classic.  Every single game has to reach that pinnacle to "justify the cost." The cost that's driven ever-upward because they think that tossing money at development is the answer.   It's a vicious cycle.

[amiable]

Honestly if the gaming industry devolved into hundreds of independent studios putting out stuff similar in quality to spiderweb softwares titles, I would be god-damn ecstatic.

[cmlancas]

Honestly if the gaming industry devolved into hundreds of independent studios putting out stuff similar in quality to spiderweb softwares titles, I would be god-damn ecstatic.

EXILE I LOVE YOU FOREVER AND ALWAYS.  The death shriek for the win!  

Also, FFX was my mother (who's 56 now) gateway drug.  She'd never have played any Elder Scrolls, Mass Effects, or Dragon Ages if it weren't for the movie you played along with (which is how I used to describe FFX).

[Margalis]

Anyone who liked FF12 should try Xenoblade.

[Amaron]

It's possible to have a good story in a modern game without heavy use of extended cutscenes. Fallout: New Vegas comes to mind as an example.

F:NV doesn't really have a good story.  It has an interesting setting and presents itself as a breathing world you can create good stories in.  That's fun but it's apples and oranges.

[Kageru]

On the current topic.. games and story are one of the bigger fights of the last few years.  (Hello, Mr. Ebert)   None of them are novelization-level and I think we all accept that.  Great writers aren't getting in to games right now, they're writing novels. 

I think you also need to consider audience and cost. If you are spending 100 million to make a blockbuster game / movie you need material that panders to the broadest possible audience. And that means it has to be loud, spectacular, have memorable quotes and set-pieces and be fast paced so no one gets bored.

So they don't necessarily want a great writer, they want a profitable one.

[Lantyssa]

Vampire: Bloodlines.

[Merusk]

On the current topic.. games and story are one of the bigger fights of the last few years.  (Hello, Mr. Ebert)   None of them are novelization-level and I think we all accept that.  Great writers aren't getting in to games right now, they're writing novels. 

I think you also need to consider audience and cost. If you are spending 100 million to make a blockbuster game / movie you need material that panders to the broadest possible audience. And that means it has to be loud, spectacular, have memorable quotes and set-pieces and be fast paced so no one gets bored.

So they don't necessarily want a great writer, they want a profitable one.

True. Though that brings up the question of why people like Ebert, who point out the writing in games sucks, will hold up equally braindead movies as fun or entertaining.   I'm not sure they'd call them great writers but there's more forgiveness given there than to games.

[amiable]

It's possible to have a good story in a modern game without heavy use of extended cutscenes. Fallout: New Vegas comes to mind as an example.

F:NV doesn't really have a good story.  It has an interesting setting and presents itself as a breathing world you can create good stories in.  That's fun but it's apples and oranges.

Honestly I think F:NV story was pretty awesome, it was loads better than Skyrims.

[Musashi]

Just because we buy them doesn't mean the story in them was good.

We're way, way deep into the realm of subjectivity here.

I know it looks that way.  But it's really not so.  We've been trying to turn games into gametainment, where we use what could be generously described as an industry full of troglodytes with holo deck pipe dreams to code games into their favorite pulp genre.  It just doesn't work.  For one thing, it's a pulp genre in the first place.  For another thing, the guy who's writing it isn't a writer.  These things are objective.  It's crap in the abstract.

There is more fun in Rock 'n' Roll Racing than any Blizzard game that has come out since WoW - including WoW expansions.  And that's a fact, Jack.  It did not really surprise me to find out that Vivendi is looking to shop the whole shebang. 

And EA is orders of magnitude worse than Blizzard.  Die, I say.  I haven't felt like AAA gaming was worth the price of admission for ten years, with the notable exception of Orange Box.

Small games are kicking their asses, bigtime.  And it's fine by me.  Everybody wins, except... you know, shareholders.  You can have your shitty pulp genre games, because let's face it, the writing isn't going to get any worse.  You'll just have to suffer without your precious voice overs.  And I can continue to sample games crafted by people who craft games without the interference of corporate twats.

Speaking of which, maybe whoever ends up with EA can merge it with Blacktivision and we can literally watch the sun explode before our very eyes.  Delicious.

And Lantyssa...  To suggest that I would engage in anything with a vampire in it that isn't Gary Oldman...  You know me better than that.

[cmlancas]

There is more fun in Rock 'n' Roll Racing than any Blizzard game that has come out since WoW - including WoW expansions.  And that's a fact, Jack.  It did not really surprise me to find out that Vivendi is looking to shop the whole shebang.  

And EA is orders of magnitude worse than Blizzard.  Die, I say.  I haven't felt like AAA gaming was worth the price of admission for ten years, with the notable exception of Orange Box.

 

I rather thought Starcraft II was worth the price of admission.  Also, Cataclysm wasn't awful and there sure are quite a few mouthbreathing forum types who'd love to sink a month of their time into explaining how The Burning Crusade was the best MMO gaming has ever been.

Also, EA has put out some excellent games.  NHL and FIFA franchises have been worthwhile games too.

Also, I like that you say "but it's really not so," and then "you felt like AAA games haven't been worth the price of admission in years."

When did that start?  Did you really feel like Assassin's Creed, Halo, Fallout, Mass Effect, Oblivion/Skyrim, Gears of War, Battlefield, Arkham Asylum, and Modern Warfare weren't solid?  I wonder how high your bar is set.

Edit:  I cheated Bethesda in my original post.

[Merusk]

While I agree with you cmlancas, the WOW expansions were good for MMO-players.  MMO-Players are not wholly traditional gamers.

[Musashi]

Yes.  It's set higher than that.  90% of that list is exactly the shit I'm talking about.

Also, have you played Rock 'n' Roll racing?

[Paelos]

I know a lot of people will laugh a lot if EA (or any other big publisher) collapses but I'm not looking forward to the resulting future that ends up with hundreds of struggling indies delivering yet another platformer with delusions of grandeur. I want my VO'd cutscene playing over a shiny 3D graphics engine, thanks. I played 8-bit games when they were state-of-the-art; I'm not going to enjoy going back there.

I want a strategy game that doesn't get buried under the weight of a poor engine that struggles to load. I want an RPG that's open ended with lots of ancillary options to the main story, and a combat system that's easy to use and tough to master. It's not even about graphics for me, as I continually load up Rome:TW to fill that strategy need. Mount&Blade also continues to be one of the most played games in my library on Steam because the controls are sharp.

The thing those games have in common are finely tuned controls, combat, and gameplay. They are what you make them, and they provide endless hours of play. Minecraft does this. Dragon Age did this pretty well. Skyrim certainly has the unique combo of gameplay and graphics where both got it "right."

[Amaron]

I know it looks that way.  But it's really not so.  We've been trying to turn games into gametainment

This is just semantics.  You seem to have a particular taste not met by the market.  I get that.  What I don't get is why you act like someone should make a AAA big budget MMO based on the particular niche you seem to enjoy?  You can't possibly think an action MMO is going to fly with the sort of casual/non/whatever-gamers WoW has nurtured.

[Phred]

Just because we buy them doesn't mean the story in them was good.

We're way, way deep into the realm of subjectivity here.

I know it looks that way.  But it's really not so.  We've been trying to turn games into gametainment, where we use what could be generously described as an industry full of troglodytes with holo deck pipe dreams to code games into their favorite pulp genre.  It just doesn't work.  For one thing, it's a pulp genre in the first place.  For another thing, the guy who's writing it isn't a writer.  These things are objective.  It's crap in the abstract.

There is more fun in Rock 'n' Roll Racing than any Blizzard game that has come out since WoW - including WoW expansions.  And that's a fact, Jack.  It did not really surprise me to find out that Vivendi is looking to shop the whole shebang. 

And EA is orders of magnitude worse than Blizzard.  Die, I say.  I haven't felt like AAA gaming was worth the price of admission for ten years, with the notable exception of Orange Box.

Small games are kicking their asses, bigtime.  And it's fine by me. 

And Lantyssa...  To suggest that I would engage in anything with a vampire in it that isn't Gary Oldman...  You know me better than that.

Ya no subjectivity here. None at all.

[HaemishM]

Anyone who liked FF12 should try Xenoblade.

Then you should start hitting yourself in the face because you'll get done quicker and it'll accomplish the same goal.

[Musashi]

I know it looks that way.  But it's really not so.  We've been trying to turn games into gametainment

This is just semantics.  You seem to have a particular taste not met by the market.  I get that.  What I don't get is why you act like someone should make a AAA big budget MMO based on the particular niche you seem to enjoy?  You can't possibly think an action MMO is going to fly with the sort of casual/non/whatever-gamers WoW has nurtured.

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I think nobody should make AAA games, MMO or otherwise, based on anyone's niche tastes.  I think my particular taste is satiated a billion times for far more value on Kongregate or Armor Games.  And then there's Steam whose sales allow pretty much any budget more games than there is time in the day.  AAA games are probably going to die as we know them.  And I'm pretty okay with that.  It took me a long time to cope with that.  So I understand if you (plural) aren't there yet.

The idea of AAA games was based on a false premise.  That being that they could meet the demand of a segment of the entertainment business.  I don't mean to suggest that games aren't entertainment.  Simply that they don't belong in the 'entertainment business' where the more dollars are involved the more the game has to pander to the least common denominator to minimize the risk involved in larger investments.  Games inherently live in niches.  A good game REQUIRES innovation.  And that sort of thing is stifled by big budgets - every goddamn time.

In short if I have a choice between two games, and all I know about them before I pay is that one is 60$ and made by 600 people while the other is 6$ and made by 6 people, I'm buying the 6$ game every time.

[Ingmar]

Which would be great for you. I would be less happy.

My favorite games are the big AAA western RPGs, with voice acting, visuals, etc. I'm not going to be happy with a diet of just indie games with no budget.

I think you could not be more wrong about games requiring innovation. As long as a few games innovate, that's enough.

[pxib]

I agree with Musashi, but understand it's probably a minority viewpoint.

What the story in Portal had that so many other stories lack is a strong sense of what I'm going to call irony and foreshadowing. Irony in the sense that expectations are toys to be played with, and foreshadowing as a matter of subtly setting up pins to be knocked down later. That the player's goals and their character's arc spent most of the game overlapping was just icing on the cake. Even Portal II didn't do nearly so well, as I think I described elsewhere.

Yeah, I like some of the stories in RPGs but most of the time I'd rather read them than have them shoved awkwardly down my throat in textdumps and cutscenes. Put them in the game. Let me discover them. Let me play them. If poor quality of interface means certain stories are hard to tell, then don't tell those stories yet.

Big budgets mean no risks. Blockbusters only.