Extra Punctuation: Game Stories Demand Focus
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
What a way to diss From Dust, but I agree with the gameplay elements into the story. I think it's been talked forever, but still, no triple A developer had conveyed this properly, I recall little examples of good storytelling through gameplay alone, and the better the graphics looks, the more anxiety developers get to make spectacular cinematics... It's depressing.
Now I'm more interested than ever in playing the Bastion, gotta kidnap someone with a 360 now.
Now I'm more interested than ever in playing the Bastion, gotta kidnap someone with a 360 now.
Is this ACTUALLY true? People have been saying that developers sacrifice story and gameplay for the sake of graphics for years, but I haven't seen any evidence in support of the idea. It just seems to be people going for graphics whores as the easy scapegoat because they happen to be annoying.Experimental said:
For one thing, back in the SNES days games rarely even HAD stories.
It's not what sells games sadly. There really must be some sort of charity dedicated to making good games even if they don't sell.
Also, you mentioned that Borderlands was well written at times but the story could go to pot, so your statement early on that games you consider well written tend to have focused stories is incorrect. Still, all is forgiven because nobody cares about Borderlands anymore.
Also, you mentioned that Borderlands was well written at times but the story could go to pot, so your statement early on that games you consider well written tend to have focused stories is incorrect. Still, all is forgiven because nobody cares about Borderlands anymore.
Thank you Yatzee, just purchased Bastion. I love me a good story and narrative.
Also I never noticed that the baddie in Prince Of Persia coughed up blood, I need to replay that.
Also I never noticed that the baddie in Prince Of Persia coughed up blood, I need to replay that.
It's on steam for prepurchase, it'll be up for download in about an hour.Experimental said:
No no, he didn't say they sacrifice story, he said they sacrifice gameplay for the opportunity of throwing in big flashy cutscenes. Which, in all honesty, is something I will agree with. I'm tired of cutscenes in games. I realize it's the easiest way to convey exposition and whatnot, but it's just tiring. I've recently been going through some Let's Plays on the Metal Gear Solid series, and I have to say MGS2 probably had more cutscene than gameplay. It eventually got to the point where I was actively skipping the cutscenes in the videos. I wasn't even the one playing the game.Gaiacarra said:
Now I realize MGS is an extreme example; After all, I don't know any other game that would have forty-five minutes of exposition and cutscenes in between gameplay sections. But I don't feel that detracts from the point. With the advent of new graphical capabilities, it seems developers are more and more afraid of incorporating story directly into gameplay and instead separate them into two very different sections that really shouldn't be allowed to mix. Everyone in the games industry always cries out for "innovation". Isn't it about time that we "innovated" how story-telling worked in games? Cutscenes have been done to death. Someone needs to try and change it up.
You would be right if he had said always, instead of "Tend to"ShenCS said:
Pay attention. People tend to pick their words carefully, for fear of others misinterpreting what they mean. People tend to draw conclusions like yours, when they don't read carefully. If there are 1 or 2 games where the story is not, "focused" yet Yahtzee still enjoyed the narrative, that would means he "Tend
Let me just give you a good example of this, take the intro of Metroid Other M, and then watch the final battle in Super Metroid against Mother Brain, watch the scene with the Metroid, and see what's looks more engaging, and consider the Super Metroid was playable right before and right after with no break other than the mentioned.Gaiacarra said:
Cinematics are great, I enjoy to see them, but the way they are used since the PSX era tends to alienate gameplay, having a cinematic scene once or twice is great, but the plot shouldn't be limited to cinematics and using gameplay as an alternate dimension with action and no conection whatsoever to the plot.
Hm. Largely agreed.
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I wonder how this would apply to Bioware games. They tend to have the whole save-the-galaxy/world/humanity deal going on, but are also populated by small-to-medium size cast of central characters. Although... come to think of it, I often find myself way more interested in the small-scale personal dealings of said characters than the overarching world-saving business.
Huh. Guess he's right. Good show.
...
I wonder how this would apply to Bioware games. They tend to have the whole save-the-galaxy/world/humanity deal going on, but are also populated by small-to-medium size cast of central characters. Although... come to think of it, I often find myself way more interested in the small-scale personal dealings of said characters than the overarching world-saving business.
Huh. Guess he's right. Good show.
The "Pokemon school" of writing is the cheap-'n-dirty option. If you think of something you want your story to cover, you simply create a new character that embodies that thing. This keeps up variety, and you can simply devote a lot of "story time" to just introducing this new character. Rinse and repeat. The obvious downsides: you get too many characters to keep track of, the majority of them throw-aways, and all of them are one-dimensional nuggets of allegory.Yahtzee Croshaw said:
The other problem a lot of stories run into? Setting = story, or a similarly-flawed belief that the overall concept somehow speaks for itself. We think, "Wouldn't it be cool if such-and-such happened?" And then we think there's suddenly a story. And that story is all about how cool it would be if such-and-such happened.
Take the "end of the world" scenario. A cataclysm nearly destroys the earth. What's the easy story? Getting to the bottom of the cataclysm and reversing it. Just populate with stock characters and a handful of MacGuffins to get the job done (which are the prop equivalent of stock characters, really). Ta-da.
But that doesn't work. The setting doesn't provide a story, it just gives the same old boring story a different wrapping. Unless, of course, you tell a good story within that setting or concept.
In a story like you find in The Bastion, you've got this major global cataclysm as the backdrop... but what's the story? The characters and their interactions. That's it. It's a simple, relatable story featuring a small group of characters with actual dimension. The background adds flavor, and also serves to add gravity to the story -- with all of the world gone to hell around us, the few people left in our lives are all we've got left.
Maybe the story is a boy looking for his dog. Pretty bland stuff. Now let's say the boy is looking for his dog in the aftermath of an alien invasion. Well, that introduces some new obstacles for the boy to overcome, it adds some new flavor, and it raises the stakes from "Found him or didn't" to "Hope rekindled or complete despair, and aliens ate me." But the story? It's still a boy looking for his dog. We haven't said a thing about the aliens, their technology, their motives, nothing. It's all ancillary.
More characters can't carry a story. Fewer characters that have more character can do that. Otherwise, it's like the menu at a Mexican restaurant in the US--there are a hundred different "combinations," but they're all the same four ingredients in slightly different arrangements, so the "variety" is largely an illusion.
A quirky, original concept or setting can't carry a story. It can add some flavor or a different sort of weight to a story, but that's all. Trying to run a whole story on the setting or concept alone is like filling a plate with salt and pepper.
I seem to remember LEGO Indiana Jones implementing the phobia bit. Like obviously snakes would show up a lot or insects or whatever characters you were forced to use were afraid of, and one of the puzzles you'd have to solve involved figuring out a way to disperse the snakes.
Well, back in the SNES days the graphics (and memory) weren't really good enough to convey story and details to the viewer. But we've gone past the point where that was true and now we are just making everything a touch shinier, which is very, very expensive. Graphics mean that games become harder to make, which increases costs and time, and the likelihood of something breaking. Frankly I think we should all go back to, hmm, Half-life 2 era graphics seems a good point. Lets just stop there, and not improve graphics until something genuinally ground-breaking occurs (move from 2-d to 3-d = ground breaking, more pixels = not groundbreaking.)Gaiacarra said:
I'm impressed. You seemed to have a certain game on your mind while you wrote this, yet you never use the words Effect or Mass.
While there is a charm to the tight story line, that shouldn't be the only focus of games. Epic story lines can and have been done very effectively. Trying to say they're best with this tighter type of story foolish. It's all about how the story is executed. Mass Effect pretty much touches every single point you call out as bad, yet it has one of the best stories in gaming.
While there is a charm to the tight story line, that shouldn't be the only focus of games. Epic story lines can and have been done very effectively. Trying to say they're best with this tighter type of story foolish. It's all about how the story is executed. Mass Effect pretty much touches every single point you call out as bad, yet it has one of the best stories in gaming.
For as cutscene-happy as Square Enix is, I really feel the ending of CRISIS CORE pulled off narrative-through-gameplay well.
It was damn BEAUTIFUL, and what really hits it home is that, as the player, it feels like you're in that situation, all because you retain control of your character just as you had in the hours before then, playing through what the game was now forcing on you.
After the confrontation with what amounts to Zack's Sephiroth, he's making the final break to Midgar, to start a new life. However, he's tracked down by his former employer's military force, and starts his impossible showdown with innumerable grunts. What you have to understand is the battle system. Namely, aside from your typical slash things and whatever magics you've got on hand, there's the Digital Mind Wave, a slots in the upper corner representing your mind and the bonds you've made in your adventure. Summons, level-ups and special attacks are handled by this quasi-random reel. And when this final battle starts, everything's fine. You're trucking along, handling bullets and even rockets. But as your health goes down, you start moving more sluggishly. And the D.M.W. starts fritxing out. The slots line up, but instead of the special moves that usually result, scrambled memories of your friends flash before your eyes, and their image on the reels frizzes out. This keeps happening, even as you should have GAME OVER'd, and it all leads to, as the heart-rending music cuts out, the final slots lining up, barely connecting, and the memories of the girl he...you?...promised to come back to, finally, weakly comes forth. Your struggle against the horde ends, as only a few stand against you, and gun you down, even as you're straining against the buttons to move your limp body to stop what you damn well know is coming. They gun you down, you fall, and everything plays out as you knew it would going into this game.
It was damn BEAUTIFUL, and what really hits it home is that, as the player, it feels like you're in that situation, all because you retain control of your character just as you had in the hours before then, playing through what the game was now forcing on you.
This weeks Extra Punctuation was the one I liked most. Rather than a 'Save the world and everyone in it' doesn't work as well as saving ten people you have known for a while.
If you save the world what does that mean? The status quo is preserved and people you have never met and will never know are able to keep going through their daily lives. This is just my opinion but I would rather have a darker ending where a few of the people you meet are saved.
Whats better? Save the world or save a few friends? Personally which would you choose? I'd rather save a few friends because it would be my choice, not everyones. In a videogame I would place my needs above some vaunted ideals of being a saviour. Take a game with party members or companions, I would put mine and their needs above the needs of multiple faceless people.
If you save the world what does that mean? The status quo is preserved and people you have never met and will never know are able to keep going through their daily lives. This is just my opinion but I would rather have a darker ending where a few of the people you meet are saved.
Whats better? Save the world or save a few friends? Personally which would you choose? I'd rather save a few friends because it would be my choice, not everyones. In a videogame I would place my needs above some vaunted ideals of being a saviour. Take a game with party members or companions, I would put mine and their needs above the needs of multiple faceless people.