8 Shooters with Great Stories
- Thread starter ffronw
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I second the motion of invalidating this list. Spec Ops The Line is deserving of a place as well, or did we forget that third person shooters are also shooters?
Bioshock? The game had an amazing atmosphere and
but I don't think that it had a great story. The appeal of the Bioshock games was always that you have some cool weapons and interesting powers that interact with the environment and enemies in various ways, leading to interesting gameplay. There was almost no story in it besides the backstory and the audio diaries that you can find lying around.
had a twist at the end that many, including myself didn't see coming
I thought the story of Wolfenstein New Order sucked, because the secret to all the Nazi supertech in it is "Jews are actually smarter than everyone else, so the Nazis killed them and took their secret inventions". Instead of saying "The Nazis are wrong because nobody is superior" the game basically goes "The Nazis are wrong because someone else is superior". The game also includes a lady in a wheelchair and a mentally handicapped person who the Nazis would have put to death, and in order to redeem these characters the wheelchair lady gets power armor and the slow guy turns out to be the hulk. So again the same crap, instead of making a point that killing the weak is wrong the game instead just goes "Haha, they weren't weak at all, stupid Nazis!". The game just misses the damn point, it acts like caring for the handicapped is just something you do because they can be cashed in for a convenient reversal of fortunes when their hidden superpower shows itself.
How freaking dumb is it to make an entire game about shooting Nazis that doesn't denounce supremacist ideas, but embraces them from the other side?
All the other new Wolfenstein titles had way better stories, because there the super-tech came from depraved experiments and black magic and such. In those games the reason why the Nazis had powerful superweapons wasn't because anyone was shown as being smarter, they had them because they were ruthless and willing to bargain with dark powers. That made an effective point: The reason why the allies don't have super soldiers and zombies and tesla weapons is because they don't kill thousands of people to get them. That's a much more interesting story, because it embraces the idea that sometimes in order to retain your humanity you have to pass up power, and be at a disadvantage, and make personal sacrifices.
How freaking dumb is it to make an entire game about shooting Nazis that doesn't denounce supremacist ideas, but embraces them from the other side?
All the other new Wolfenstein titles had way better stories, because there the super-tech came from depraved experiments and black magic and such. In those games the reason why the Nazis had powerful superweapons wasn't because anyone was shown as being smarter, they had them because they were ruthless and willing to bargain with dark powers. That made an effective point: The reason why the allies don't have super soldiers and zombies and tesla weapons is because they don't kill thousands of people to get them. That's a much more interesting story, because it embraces the idea that sometimes in order to retain your humanity you have to pass up power, and be at a disadvantage, and make personal sacrifices.
I'd have added Spec Ops: The Line for obvious reasons, but also Crysis. Mostly Crysis 2 and 3, where they really delve down into the implications of the suit's symbiosis, rather than just treating it as standard powered armour.
Still, list is good - I like that someone else remembers Brothers in Arms!
Still, list is good - I like that someone else remembers Brothers in Arms!
I know this is going to sound heretical, but Infinite did absolutely nothing for me. The story was bland, the twists were telegraphed a mile away, and the combat was even kind of meh.Alma Mare said:
Spec Ops: The Line was much the same. I remember seeing it PAX East before it came out, and the devs were talking about how it was this deep story, and how they'd been inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and then I played it, and it was just a semi-generic shooter with some moral themes thinly painted on and lots of sand. It could have been so much more, but it was really self-defeating. It keeps chastising you for shooting all these people, and then encouraging you to shoot more to progress. It was a pretty big letdown for me.
Luckily, we call all disagree, and it's OK. I'm not one to try and drag you around to my point of view - I just like to share my thinking.
Well this list wasn't particularly flawless: The original Half Life had a MUCH better story than 2 and it was told with literally no tools. Also, I'd argue that System Shock > Bioshock but come to think of it, while Sys was a far better game, I think that it holds that Bio had a better story although it was overall worse than Sys.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Armed&Dangerous also did quite well, but again, it may not have been the story per se, but rather the way it was told.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Armed&Dangerous also did quite well, but again, it may not have been the story per se, but rather the way it was told.
I am a really big Half Life fan boy, but I don't think, that Half Life had that much of a great story. A great setting maybe and really cool ideas overall, a great big deal in the subtext, but the main story was rather thin.
