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Truths about video game stories

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Re: Truths about video game stories

#71

Post by worrycue »

marvinvz wrote: post #68
worrycue wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> top #1 for me as far as story goes - ignoring the game play completely - was Horizon Zero Dawn I watched people play it to the end - mostly. I played it when it came out on PC - never completed it; the combat didn’t work for me. Personally I think it has a cool sci-fi premise but that’s it. I found the characters … stiff, shallow, and pretty cliché. Aloy is yet another messianic player character that we have seen a…

While I agree on your general point about "diversity" in games I'm pretty sure HZD was before that topic became an issue.

HZD was released in 2017. I think we were already seeing "diversity" in most media then.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#72

Post by atoav »

pdpi wrote: post #21
atoav wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think the bassic narrative skeleton of the story is important, what is equally important is the world building that comes with it. If your game feels like traveling to an alternate dimension with vivid details and differences a lot about the story can be excused, because the player will eventually find their own story within your game. If your story is great and the freefloating passages are dull and lifeless…

> While I think the bassic narrative skeleton of the story is important, what is equally important is the world building that comes with it. Case in point: Children of Men is basically a two hour-long escort quest. It's also an absolutely amazing film with amazing storytelling.

Yeah this is my point, if the thing a part of the game conveys is interesting, it doesn't matter all that mutch if is technically very simple in other regards.

What I hate however is when games have the most inspiring world and fail to tell unique stories in it. E.g. the game plays in South America, yet I learn nothing about the reginal culture when I play it, because all Characters are very generic.

This is something that made Witcher 3 great: nearly every quest managed to convey some feeling about how it must have been to live in the medival ages (or some fantasy version of it).

I like it when games take their own world seriously and root every character, story and object deeply within the history of that world. And yes, sometimes that means telling the player things they can't understand immidiately, because they come from a different culture and world.

If you could exchange the world just like that without changing a lot about the quests, you are doing it wrong.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#73

Post by gary_0 »

eterm wrote: post #52
namdnay wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the praise for Half Life was the story telling. The story itself is pretty generic scifi action, but the fact that you discovered it through the player rather than a paragraph of exposition or a cutscene was pretty novel for that genre

Absolutely this. In half-life you were exposed to a world and left to figure out what was going on from that. You were rarely directly told to do anything. For the first hour or two you were implored to, "Get to the surface" because it was your and your fellow scientists hope of being rescued. When you run into the marines you aren't told they're bad, they just start trying to kill you and you figure out that you're…

Half-Life is the "Seinfeld is unfunny" of FPS games.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#74

Post by TeMPOraL »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #60
vjancik wrote: post #34

This author seems to have never played a game with an actual good story. You can tell from his comparison of game stories to movies. How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour narrative? This article grossly overgeneralizes stories in games and ignores the unique storytelling device that is a "game". A good book doesn't necessarily make for a good movie and a good movie doesn't necessarily make for a g…

> (…) his comparison of game stories to movies. > How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour narrative? Not only the length makes video game stories different. Another huge difference is that in video games you actually get to be the character(s). You don’t just passively experience the story like in a movie or a book, you’re an active part of it. Even better: you can have the player make meaningful ch…

Exactly. And even if you don't have any real choices to make, you still get to experience the story as your story, not a tale.

The author would probably think I'm a lunatic for it, but I consider the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare trilogy to have a good story. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and unlike with other shooters, and even though it followed multiple characters simultaneously, I was able to suspend disbelief enough to experience it as if it was my story, my world.

The writing of CoD: MW 1-3 would probably be considered a passable military fiction by most critic, if even that. But I bring this particular example up, instead of say Mass Effect trilogy, to highlight the unique aspect of videogames: it can make you live through a story, which neither books nor movies can. It's a distinct kind of experience.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#75

Post by thom »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #65
Toutouxc wrote: post #47

How exactly are Raiders of the Lost Ark or Breaking Bad storylines better than those of the first Mafia, The Witcher 3, Uncharted 4, Metro Exodus, Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Half-Life 2 + episodes? And I'm not even mentioning artistic pieces like What Remains of Edith Finch or Life is Strange. There are quests in The Witcher 3 you could make a movie from (Bloody Baron).

There was a story to Kingdom Come: Deliverance that went beyond "my parents were killed by baddies, and luckily I was recognised as a badass because of the plot, now I'm going to become more of a badass, and kill all the Cumans?"

With the caveat that I very much enjoyed Kingdom Come, it’s bog-standard story didn’t even _end_ in the game.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#76

Post by Toutouxc »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #65
Toutouxc wrote: post #47

How exactly are Raiders of the Lost Ark or Breaking Bad storylines better than those of the first Mafia, The Witcher 3, Uncharted 4, Metro Exodus, Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Half-Life 2 + episodes? And I'm not even mentioning artistic pieces like What Remains of Edith Finch or Life is Strange. There are quests in The Witcher 3 you could make a movie from (Bloody Baron).

There was a story to Kingdom Come: Deliverance that went beyond "my parents were killed by baddies, and luckily I was recognised as a badass because of the plot, now I'm going to become more of a badass, and kill all the Cumans?"

Yes. My parents (and almost everyone in our village) were killed by baddies hired by someone for some political reason, I was recognized as a lame illiterate nobody and was only reluctantly accepted to serve under a master of regional importance, who is pursuing his own political goals (and has a special connection to me through something) and making the most of the difficult situation of the kingdom. I was sent on several wildly different missions to investigate, bribe or fight my way through several interesting events and situations, all totally believable and anchored in the context of the story and actual history, meeting dozens of different characters, some of them real historical figures, each with their own carefully written backstory.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#77

Post by baq »

npinsker wrote: post #41

I guess 'The Lord of the Rings' is a bad story then? After all it is exactly the kind of story this person is complaining about...

It was a good story at the time; it created a genre and is indirectly responsible for many, many great works.

If it was created today, it’d be a generic high fantasy work.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#79

Post by yunusabd »

t-3 wrote: post #38
yunusabd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got some examples for good games from China? As a counterexample to the first part, check out Nier Automata. One of the most original and compelling games I've played in recent years.

I own Nier, but never beat it. I enjoyed the aesthetic and gameplay, but often end up going back to old favorites when I sit down to relax. I should take a weekend or two and get back into it. Bright Memory Infinite is a new game from China that's coming out in November, the demo is incredible and I'm excited. Gujian3 is an open-world action rpg, similar to Nier but with a xianxia theme, it's pretty good. Amazing Cul…

That's really interesting, I remember trying to get my hands on Gujian 2 when it first came out, which was impossible at that time. Glad to see it's now on Steam!

I think at first I played Nier Automata mainly for the mechanics. The worldbuilding and backstory take a while to pick up steam. But once it gets going, it has some unique and interesting ideas. I still feel they could have gone a lot deeper with a lot of things though. For example, the idea that robots would start their own religion seemed intriguing, but in the end they didn't really do much with it. Still very enjoyable and surprisingly a lot of food for thought.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check them out!

Re: Truths about video game stories

#80

Post by PicassoCTs »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #60
vjancik wrote: post #34

This author seems to have never played a game with an actual good story. You can tell from his comparison of game stories to movies. How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour narrative? This article grossly overgeneralizes stories in games and ignores the unique storytelling device that is a "game". A good book doesn't necessarily make for a good movie and a good movie doesn't necessarily make for a g…

> (…) his comparison of game stories to movies. > How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour narrative? Not only the length makes video game stories different. Another huge difference is that in video games you actually get to be the character(s). You don’t just passively experience the story like in a movie or a book, you’re an active part of it. Even better: you can have the player make meaningful ch…

Its show dont tell in movies.

Its act dont show in games.

Alot of the traditional writers never grasp, that the game mechanics are the plot and story.

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