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Truths about video game stories

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Re: Truths about video game stories

#111

Post by Cybiote »

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…

I've played many of the author's games and consider them to have better stories than most. I’d have to reach for the likes of Planescape or Disco Elysium to find something I’d consider more compelling.

As you imply, there are many games whose brief summary might sound weird, cheesy or cliche but are actually very well crafted story experiences when played. For me, some would be: Life is Strange, Soma, Deus Ex, Human Revolution, Alpha Centauri, Alan Wake, Control, Quantum Break and Detroit Become Human.

Then there are the Soul Reaver games with middling stories but whose written dialogue and delivery easily put them at the level of great literature for me.

Storywise, some of the author's games would not be out of place if ranked highly amongst such a list. It's like Berkson's paradox, his studio has had staying power but you certainly couldn't point to graphics or unique game mechanics as explanations for why.

>This article seems like a self-congratulating piece

I'd go as far as to argue the author undersells his abilities. His RPG world building and stories are a great deal more entertaining if compared to many fantasy books.

> That doesn't mean AAA studios can't make a good game story,

They could but rarely do. Meanwhile, the majority of those few attempts get workshopped to death (it's easy to tell when a game with potential got derailed in this way). The author isn't saying good game stories don't exist, only that they're rare and most often from smaller studios.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#112

Post by Merad »

worrycue wrote: post #62
nosianu wrote: post #26

I have not played any computer game in over more than a decade, but I played a lot earlier. Anyway, what I did for a while - not recently due to a lack of good targets - is watch Youtube "playthrough no commentary" videos (and with story-less gameplay parts heavily cut out). That's usually 4-6 hours of game movie . The Last of Us was good, but the very top #1 for me as far as story goes - ignoring the game play compl…

> 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…

> I’m going to get skewered for saying this … but the story feels like it’s pandering to current social political trends - i.e. the obsession with diversity.

How do you think HZD pandered to diversity? The main point that I have heard brought up is the wide variety of ethnicities in secondary/background characters, but IMO that is completely consistent with the game's setting and story. The game takes place in a world where human society has literally been reset and rebuilt from scratch, so you'd need to have the full variety of human kind for genetic diversity while at the same time all of the racial and ethnic prejudices that exist today would cease to exist unless the AI was trained to preserve them (it wasn't). Naturally the new world would see new prejudices arise (people are still people after all), and the game does attempt to portray this.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#113

Post by watwut »

freeflight wrote: post #106
watwut wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you run into the marines you aren't told they're bad, they just start trying to kill you and you figure out that you're not getting a rescue. That is not exactly subtle nor needs much figuring. Them trying to kill you is game telling you they are bad in very straightforward way.

Let's be a bit more specific here: The first scene where the player encounters the marines is one where a scientist runs up to one of them, and gets gunned down by the marine. That kind of scripted event, and environmental story-telling, was extremely novel in a FPS game back then. It's easy to nowadays handwave that away as merely "Marines shoot player, player realizes Marines are enemy" like that kind of heavy scri…

To be clear, I did played the game back then. I did not perceived it as subtle or indirect or needing to figure out. Back then years ago, that in the moment game moment was "ah, OK, soldiers are supposed to be bad guys and I am supposed to kill them".

Back then, half life was one of the games that made me think about how linear games are evolving to be. At one place, you could decide to go left or right and it joined back together quickly. It was straightforwardly prescripted, which is something we discussed with friends a lot.

I did not needed hindsight of years and my current experience. If anything now I have less experience as I spend significantly less time playing games like this.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#114

Post by billyjobob »

Theodores wrote: post #6

Parents play video games as well as their kids. This never used to happen if we roll back to when Space Invaders was the latest and greatest. Nowadays you can have the 50 year old dad spending his quality time in bed next to his wife blasting enemies with the teenage/student kids doing the same. With another generation it will be the folks in retirement homes too. With music you get stuck on the stuff you discovered…

Space Invaders and arcades in general seemed more popular with adults than with children in 1980. I’m not sure when or why video games came to be regarded as a juvenile pastime. Possibly coincided with the kid-friendly characters and home consoles promoted by Sega and Nintendo around 1990.

Or maybe games have always appealed to nerds of all ages, but what happened in the 90s is they began to appeal to normie children too, and as you point out those normie kids continued to play them when they became normie adults.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#116

Post by Zababa »

aynsof wrote: post #5

I remember all the press praising the original Half Life for its story. I was really surprised - it was the same story as all first person shooters going back to Doom: Bad guys spawn across an inter-dimensional portal and start wreaking havoc. Protagonist has to kill them all, crossing the portal in the process to go destroy the alien leader. There were some cool extra details - the G Man, the marines entering as a t…

I find it really weird to judge a story on what it boils down to instead of on how it's delivered. Imagine you have two versions of a game. The first delivers its story by long cutscenes and a omniscient narrator. The second delivers its story with the environement and dialogues with the characters, with the playing having to piece everything together. Even if the "story" is the same, the second game has a better story. Storytelling is a essential part of the quality of a story.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#117

Post by nkrisc »

watwut wrote: post #59
eterm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> When you run into the marines you aren't told they're bad, they just start trying to kill you and you figure out that you're not getting a rescue. That is not exactly subtle nor needs much figuring. Them trying to kill you is game telling you they are bad in very straightforward way.

That’s the game showing you they’re bad with gameplay instead of telling you with a cutscene or text.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#119

Post by nmfisher »

freeflight wrote: post #110
ycombinete wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the John Carmack quote: "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."

Imho that quote says more about what parts of games John Carmack has mostly worked on during his life than it actually says anything about storytelling in games. The guy is so deep in code engineering that sometimes other, more nuanced, details can be seemingly totally lost on him.

Yeah, I have a lot of respect for Carmack as a developer/engineer but I doubt you’d want him in charge of actually designing your game. I’m sure he’d admit as much.
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