Truths about video game stories • Hacker News Board

Re: Truths about video game stories

#121

Post by Causality1 » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #40

I think the author is right that games generally have poor, or poorly executed stories, and even great stories need to be squeezed into the game play box (e.g. his "ends with bang"-trope.) But I also feel like the author misunderstands how the medium can elevate a story: "Old mans Journey" was critized for having too simple puzzles, but it is not a puzzle game. It's a story, where a few simple puzzles gives you time…

Exactly. Sure, Last of Us has the story of a generic zombie movie. But in a way, that was my twelve year old daughter I watched die. I don't think it's fair to criticize games for not having as good a story as a novel when you'd never imagine criticizing a music album for not having as good a story as a novel.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#122

Post by Zababa » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

One thing that isn't mentionned is that games makes you engage way more with the story than movies because of how they are. In most games you can explore areas to discover more things. The equivalent doesn't really exist in movies or books. You can maybe reread a chapter or a paragraph. Pause a film and look at all the details. But that's something people rarely do unless they are analyzing the thing. In games, you have a way more "a la carte" experience. I know that I and many people have a "main road" sense, in which it's easy to see what's the main road that will progress the game, and what are optional branches. That means that if you want to engage more with the world, you can easily choose to.

The main quest of Skyrim takes 30 hours, but I'm sure that most people played way more than that. Same thing with games like Far Cry, you can rush the main story, or you can take your time and do way more things. I think that makes games a media where often you don't follow a story but engage with a world. Those are two very different things. Even in linear "walking simulators", there are usually tons of optional stuff.

The equivalent would be to have a movie or book that dynamically react to you, and that doesn't really exists, at least not as well as how games do it.

On the other hand, the experience of reading a book and imagining all the visual parts, or sitting there watching a movie are also very unique, and can't be filled by other medias.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#123

Post by SamoyedFurFluff » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:21 PM UTC

Zababa wrote: post #122

One thing that isn't mentionned is that games makes you engage way more with the story than movies because of how they are. In most games you can explore areas to discover more things. The equivalent doesn't really exist in movies or books. You can maybe reread a chapter or a paragraph. Pause a film and look at all the details. But that's something people rarely do unless they are analyzing the thing. In games, you h…

> The equivalent would be to have a movie or book that dynamically react to you, and that doesn't really exists, at least not as well as how games do it.

This does exist and is called interactive fiction, FWIW. I do agree however it isn’t as clearly reactive to the consumer as a video game (you can turn on a dime in a video game, but in interactive fiction you don’t get such a granular level of control in how you interact).

Re: Truths about video game stories

#124

Post by danielvaughn » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

pdpi wrote: post #18

We've had theatre and literature as narrative art for centuries. Film has been around for a tiny bit over 100 years, and it took them decades to find their own voices distinct from their predecessors. By comparison, video games are in their infancy. We've been at it for only a few short decades, and having the audience directly involved with the narrative is a radical shift from what we had before. We're looking at a…

I think the medium is still in such infancy that even the cinematic style games are still pushing the boundaries. Naughty Dog is making incredible experiences in that format.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#125

Post by danielvaughn » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

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…

> our standards for story telling in video games are really low.

At the same time, the upcoming Uncharted movie is looking to be substantially less interesting than Uncharted 4.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#126

Post by bsanr2 » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #113

freeflight wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Games have always been pretty linear, though. The ones that had a notable degree of "freedom" found that freedom in

a) Choosing which enemies to go and kill with your chosen color of pixel burst.

or

b) Choosing which set of text and vaguely representational spritework the game would expose to you.

Many "linear" games offer tactical rather than strategic freedom. There is a sort of conservation of experiential depth, limited by the players' ability/inclination to absorb new interaction concepts, and the availability of developer resources to build them.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#127

Post by SamoyedFurFluff » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #58

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…

> our standards for story telling in video games are really low. Nah, the standards are just different because of the medium. Just like you wouldn't write a book where people sing for 10 minutes every time they talk, and you wouldn't write opera that lasts for 40 hours and has realistic acting and dialogs - you can't compare stories between different media ignoring the differences. And the difference that interactivi…

I think there’s a bit where stories can be extremely complex but still have interactivity from the player. Bioware produces games like this where decisions made from previous games can be inherited to affect future games, and the overall storylines are complex and nuanced, albeit mostly in what BioWare can control (world building, npcs making decisions and having their own agendas, etc.)

Re: Truths about video game stories

#128

Post by pjc50 » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

Merad wrote: post #112

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…

> 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 worl…

He means it had female main characters.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#129

Post by Zababa » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #123

Zababa wrote: post #122

One thing that isn't mentionned is that games makes you engage way more with the story than movies because of how they are. In most games you can explore areas to discover more things. The equivalent doesn't really exist in movies or books. You can maybe reread a chapter or a paragraph. Pause a film and look at all the details. But that's something people rarely do unless they are analyzing the thing. In games, you h…

> The equivalent would be to have a movie or book that dynamically react to you, and that doesn't really exists, at least not as well as how games do it. This does exist and is called interactive fiction, FWIW. I do agree however it isn’t as clearly reactive to the consumer as a video game (you can turn on a dime in a video game, but in interactive fiction you don’t get such a granular level of control in how you int…

I would personally classify interactive fiction closer to games, unless you count gamebooks in that, which I consider closer to books. There was also a movie where you get to get choices linked to Black Mirror that was popular recently, and a few people on youtube explored this by making different videos and letting you pick "what happens next".

There's also the whole genre of visual novels, mostly from Japan. I'm not sure if they are more games, books or interactive fiction.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#130

Post by danielvaughn » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #98

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…

As opposed to what? The average superhero story that Hollywood has been milking for 20 years now? Compare videogames not to great literature but to popular culture.

Yep. Just think about all the latest Jurassic Park films. They're almost identical to video games in story-telling quality.