Truths about video game stories

I'd tend to agree.

I think games need to be better about "picking a camp". Many games try to force a strong narrative into an open world design, and both qualities end up faltering because of it. Examples: Mass Effect, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, most Ubisoft games.

The best open world games tell very light narrative. They may have tons of lore to fall upon and discover, but there's otherwise very little arc to the narrative you're progressing through during your time in the game. Examples: Dark Souls 1, Breath of the Wild.

The best narratively-focused games severely limit players' freedoms in how to approach the high-level narrative beats. Some great ones do give some freedoms in how to approach tactical situations (The Last of Us 2), but this doesn't impact the broader arc. Other examples: Bioshock/Infinite, Nier Automata, Portal 2.

There are vanishingly few examples of games which actually do both with high competence. I'd list: Witcher 3, Red Dead 2, Dragon Age Origins as examples. One quality shared among these games is how weak their high level narrative is allowed to be, in exchange for much stronger shorter side-narratives. When people say Witcher 3 has a great story, what they really mean is: It tells tons of very high quality short stories. Similarly with RDR2, the overarching "end of the cowboy" narrative is great, but its the ambient storytelling of the world that sells it as having great storytelling chops.

The bigger issue with narratively-focused games is how the game needs to convince the player that this was worth being a game, and not a TV Show. I feel games like those listed above (TLOU2, Bioshock, Nier, Portal) do this very well, because the beat-to-beat gameplay is compelling despite the strict world architecture. But, many other games which tell strong narratives falter too quickly in providing great gameplay (Telltale games, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch) to justify it being a game. I don't generally hold this against the game, because ultimately if you want to tell a great narrative, and you know how to build games, you'll tell that narrative through a game, that ain't bad, its just one medium among many. But I also fully understand the counter-argument; its sold as a game. People have expectations going into a game, that it won't be a movie, yet that's basically all Telltale ever made, Bandersnatch-style clickable movies.

Discussions like this are one of the things I love about gaming; its such a nascent medium, its still trying to find its footing and what makes a game great. Why is Breath of the Wild so much better than Immortals: Fenyx Rising? I've played both a ton, I've thought about it a ton, and I still don't feel that I have a compelling answer which wouldn't be a 200 page essay. BotW copied a ton of gameplay elements from earlier Ubisoft games. Ubisoft then copied a ton of gameplay elements from BotW for Immortals. Yet, the Ubisoft products are never as good. What makes BotW special? Can Nintendo replicate it for BotW2? Do they even want to? Probably not; despite developing the same franchises for decades, Nintendo rarely retreads gameplay ground; so, follow-up question, how the hell is Nintendo so good at consistently creating new gameplay experiences? Why have so vanishingly few companies replicated their production success?

I agree with a lot of his points, and with the general thesis of the article. But, I disagree with this:

> The default video game plot is, 'See that guy over there? That guy is bad. Kill that guy.' If your plot is anything different, you're 99% of the way to having a better story.

I don't think the structure of the story needs to be more complex than that to be good. It can be, but neither complexity, nor novelty, nor non-linearity are what makes stories good. The stuff he dismisses as being of limited value (good dialog and interesting worlds) are extremely important. I'd add characterization to that. But those things are, to lots of people, all equally as important as structure in making a story meaningful.

> I'm pretty sure that Fifty Shades of Grey wasn't successful for its story, but for discussing sex and specifically BDSM in a more open way than what was previously seen in "mainstream" movies.

And because it feeded from the Twilight-Hype, on which it was a juicy twist. For itself it probably would never have become such a success.

> but you could say exactly the same thing about Minecraft, DOOM

Can we? Minecraft feeds mainly on its powerful sandboxing and modability, which other games still can't really match today, while also still getting regular updates. And doom as a franchise continued to move forward and created new games. They don't remain successful just because their first versions were awesome at the time, but because they continued to output awesome successors.

This is very different from classics which are usually frozen in time and stay classics despite getting no updates at all.

> not sure that video games are actually good vehicles for plots. Video games are interactive, but all good plots require careful pacing and timing in order to be successful.

Video games are a great medium for plots! You just have to allow the plot to fail, and let the player take it on tangents. Games that go "uhh you died that's not canon let's rewind" are just shitty games.

It's funny you mention RDR2. For me it's the best example of why I hate fixed characters in open world video games. The protagonist in RDR2 is a perfect representation of my uncle. Looks like him, sounds like him, dresses pretty close. Now I like my uncle and all but have no desire to spend 40 hours or so playing him in a video game. I did not last long in single player. Multiplayer was cool but it turned in to the same as the first: a Texas hold-um simulator with a very involved character customization mini game...