A Storytelling Crysis

Yahtzee Croshaw

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A Storytelling Crysis

Action games like Crysis 3 are relying too much on badly-delivered exposition to tell their stories.

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bandit0802

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Dec 24, 2008
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Crysis 2 came out two years ago. April 2011.

Why couldn't we keep the protagonist Alcatraz? It would've made Prophet's death noble, and now I'm playing it while actually kind of pissed at him for basically stealing Alcatraz's body.
 

bandit0802

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Dec 24, 2008
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Speaking to action without context, it's very hard to enjoy a fight when you don't know who to root for. The good guy losing doesn't have the same weight if you don't realize he's the good guy (or girl, or whatever).

It's the same reason I don't watch hockey, basketball, or football (American or otherwise) unless I actively care about one of the teams. Even if I'm hoping that that one team loses.
 

MegaManOfNumbers

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I think it would be interesting if Alcatraz can speak in the third game but in Prophet's voice. So while everyone else thinks its Prophet, it would actually be Alcatraz derping about, pretending he knows what he's doing.
 

MichaelMaverick

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As soon as I read the word "epic" once, I had a hunch. When I read it twice, I expected it to lead up to the joke at the end, since Yahtzee is supposed to hate that word so much. Needless to say, I was disappointed. 3/10
 

Mahoshonen

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Jul 28, 2008
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I already know that some smart-ass is going to smugly ask "what about Portal? That hardly had any dialogue in it to explain what's going on?" And then soak in the glory of having bested someone in an argument over the internet.

So I'm going to pre-emptively rebute this admitted straw-man (but come one you know one's out there!) by saying that Portal had it's exposition buried just beneath the surface. You start out in test rooms but you soon notice that no one else is in the laboratory, even though the environment suggests there should be. There ae empty conference rooms with flickering slides, one beguilingly informing you that this is the same game-universe as the Half-Life Series. And while GLADoS rarely gives you any actual background (at least nothing reliable), her flakey detatchment and soundbyte glitches and passive-agressive hostility towards you gives you a pretty good picture of what happened, without once having to spell out what happened (save the bit about the neuro-toxins, but that was setting up the final challenge so I'll let it pass).
 

Jhooud

Someone's Dad
Nov 29, 2011
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So do you see this problem as being symptomatic of some in the industry's feelings towards story in general? Story is "irksome"? [http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/02/masahiro_sakurai_stories_in_video_games_can_be_irksome] In other words, a story is just a side-show to the gameplay which will hopefully catch on as the next multiplayer phenomenon and catapult our game to CoD like status?
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Welcome to the world of the politically correct, a world which incidently people like Yahtzee for all of their caustic venom helped to create with all of their ranting about the choices of video game villains being bigoted and such. Things get increasingly generic because of a concern that they are going to offend anyone, and that even aliens and zombies will be taken as some kind of politically offensive metaphor. Things increasingly need to be kept bland and uninspired and that means tacking on what little exposition there is and hoping it gets lost behind the flash. To avoid complaints increasing numbers of game designers want to gloss over why the characters are fighting, especially in the context of real world or near-future settings.... there are still exceptions, but the trend has become kind of obvious.

Let me put it to you this way, just today I was reading an article about how a certain Muslim leader from a nation with nuclear ambitions was getting in trouble for his people because he dared to hug a grieving widow at a funeral. This was at Victor Chavez's funeral incidently, who was himself a crazy despot who liked to rant about things like American earthquake machines and managed to get himself on our "people we'd really like to see die" list for decades. The whole thing being kind of like Ras Al Ghul comforting Mercy Graves at a funeral for Lex Luthor when you get down to it.

The point being that we in the first world tend not to look at how messed up the rest of the world is. South of the US Border is full of tyrants, despots, death cults, and battles between third world gueriellas and warlords. There are some nations doing okay, but even some of the big ones like Mexico are barely holding on. Africa is full of warlords, drug kinpins, human traffickers, and constant revolutions with maniacs attempting to overthrow other maniacs, when even the "heroes" of the region like Nelson Mandela get in trouble for running death squads (well allegedly he claims they belong to his wife if I remember). In The Middle East, we not only have hardcore bans against showing affection or comfort to half of the population (women, and guess how much of a psychological benefit that has) but women being killed for not marrying their rapists, factional religious and political warfare with Muslims doing things like attacking embassies and burning down areas of cities where non-Muslims live, racism against westerners and Jews, and oh yes... increasing nuclear ambitions. In the far east we have Korea periodically threatening to attack the US and it's neighbors, while also threatening to nuke everyone, and slowly building up the technology to do so, and don't even get me started on China which is pretty much the "Evil Empire" for the new generation.

In a world like this wouldn't it be nice if there was hope, a culture that at least held ideas of peace, democracy, and co-existance, criticized what was going on through it's media to spread ideas, and occasionally stepped in to at least try and do the right thing and curtail some of this? Maybe more than one would be ideal something like oh... the US and UK, wait they exist.

The problem here is that for all of this ranting, you start doing video games either based directly on what's going on, or using analogies to them, and people freak out. Yahtzee for example loves to crack jokes about how we have some straight laced American or European fighting a bunch of people who represent a minority prescence IN the US or Europe (which is ironic given that globally whites are perhaps the smallest minority there is). While Yahtzee doesn't go off about indirect analogies, a lot of people DO and it gets attention. There are only so many times someone can do a game based around misguided liberal hang wringing, and trying to be inwardly focused rather that criticizing the crap a lot of these cultures do that generated the anger that lead to things like "The War On Terror". I mean it's nice to be critical of "Dubbya" but at the same time it's hard to really be sympathetic of a culture that freaks out over a hug
at a funeral, or stones women to death for refusing to marry those that rape them.


Now, a lot of people are going to freak out about my political statements, but understand that really understanding the motives of people involved in an acrobatic sword fight to care involves in either constructing a very detailed unreality, like we've seen with say "Final Fantasy XIII" or using a certain degree of grounding based on reality, which of course means being judgemental of someone, and really, it's kind of hard to cheer for some guy whose central motivations are based on a culture that wants to punish people for drawing pictures of their central religius icon, or say not being properly worshipful of Kim Jong Un and accepting North Korea's rightful place as global leader. It doesn't matter if you really agree with my analysis of the globe in general, actually part of the point is that so many people are going to disagree with me that it generates a lot of attention and havoc to even bring these things up, and businesses just don't have the guts to go there anymore.

I'll also say that one of the problems with building unrealities is that the modern "FPS" reared gamer doesn't have the patience for it. The casual market just isn't able to handle very complicated buildings of alternate realities which is why they tend to fail when they occur. A lot of the biggest examples of world building for computer games happend for the "real" gamers who were around decades ago, the gradual definition of the world of "Planescape" in the video game (which was done successfully even for those that didn't play the PnP version), the depth (especially for the time) of Lord British's "Ultima" series which was build gradually through books and dialogue with scores of NPCs, as well as sitting down and translating runes in certain places, etc...

The problem is that people used to complain about the MTV generation, and it's "buzz clips" and "factoids", today the mainstream, which is what the gaming industry caters to far more than it used to with the so called "core", "real", or genuine "hardcore" gamer being a minority "side audience" that is gradually turning away from gaming due to neglect (even companies seem to be noticing the falloff of core gamers), comes accross as a group of comparitive ADHD cases with no patience to read anything, and frustration in many cases over things as simple as NPC dialogue or exposition through expensive multi-million dollar cinematics. This is also a problem with storytelling. To be honest Yahtzee has been very intolerant of exposition and world building unless it happens gradually enough as part of gameplay to barely be noticed (or so it seems), having hated on things like say "The Witcher" pretty hardcore, but to be honest I think part of the problem was that for the modern audience he's actually become kind of "deep" and characters like Alcatraz didn't seem to go over well with the new mainstream. "Crysis 3" and other games of their ilk, setting out to cater to the mainstream, and that means things like "spoiling" their own plot twist early, in order to have it covered multiple times, so your typical mainstream gamer is likely to get it, since a lot of these guys are liable to space out during the actual plot events, abort the cinematcs, etc... and they sort of still want these guys to know what they are doing. Especially seeing as these plots are partially what justies video game shooters and their ilk to media critics.... the gamer himself just wants to shoot stuff and watch pretty enviromental destruction.

Apologies for length, unknown if anyone will read or appreciate this, but these are my thoughts.
 

RobfromtheGulag

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May 18, 2010
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Maybe it's a byproduct of the increasingly ADD online lifestyle, but I just can't handle story in games anymore unless they bludgeon me with it like Bioshock did. I have read from start to finish maybe 1 book in Skyrim, and 1 digital journal from Deus Ex HR. I just want to get in there and tear things up. Crysis is for me just an extension of Far Cry (which fits because Far Cry sure as hell isn't an extension of Far Cry, at least as far as the story goes). Far Cry 1's story was some dude doing the typical evil mastermind plan of creating super soldiers that nobody could control. Simple story, epic environment, good gameplay.

That's really all I want out of Crysis. 1 fit the bill nicely. 2 bogged it down with added gizmos and 'realism'. Word is 3 is the same gameplay, so no purchase. I'm quite sick of this new school of shooter games that have all this fluff like taking 2 seconds to put your visor on to scout enemies. In Far Cry and Crysis 1 that was instant. I didn't have to wait for my damn HUD to configure itself each time.
 

bandit0802

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Dec 24, 2008
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Therumancer said:
Apologies for length, unknown if anyone will read or appreciate this, but these are my thoughts.
I read it, and I appreciated it. All of it. Thank you.
 

kailus13

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Mar 3, 2013
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Would anyone notice the spoiler if they're too busy staring at tits?

Another thing that needs to be avoided is the Exposition Dump, which will make people not care about the world you're describing.
 

NinjaDeathSlap

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Feb 20, 2011
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I actually like bits of background information being revealed though collectible documents and audio-logs and such. I'm not saying that it's a perfect solution, or that it can't be done badly, but it does add another level of engagement in the story when I'm essentially building the story for myself, and it certainly beats a 15 minute cut-scene, where you're yanked out of the fun you may have been having so you can have every single plot point blabbed at you in excruciating detail, with no way for you to respond to the information you're getting, just so the writers can show off what a deep lore they've written (when usually they've written anything but).
 

mjc0961

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Nov 30, 2009
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Now I come to think about it, it's amazing how many recent video games have used the plot device pretentiously known as "In medias res"
I'm also a bit sick of the games that start at a bit in the middle and then completely flash back everything and make you play every single thing that lead up to what you saw at the beginning. A lot of games seem to be pulling that one too. Most offensive* one in recent memory for me was Uncharted: Golden Abyss, which opens with a brief tutorial and then a cutscene where
Drake gets knocked off a ledge he's trying to climb by the blast of a rocket propelled grenade blowing up near him. Then the game cuts back to a few days before this scene. This scene might have actually worked to create some tension as to whether or not Drake is actually okay if we didn't already know going into the game that it's a fucking prequel so of course Drake survives to move on to his PS3 adventures.

Not that anyone should have ever seriously thought they'd kill Drake off in the first place, but pulling the "OMG IS HE OKAY YOU HAVE TO WAIT TO FIND OUT HAHA" card when we already know with 100% certainty that he lives is beyond stupidity. Simple writing technique: if your game is a prequel, don't open with a cliff hanger regarding if the protagonist lives or not because we fucking know he does you idiots.

Not exactly sure if that's actually an example of in medias res or it counts as something else entirely, but still, it's getting old.

*In light of Adam Sessler and other reviewer's recent God of War stupidity, I would like to point out that I use the word as in it commits the offense in question, not that it has actually offended me and outraged me and I'm taking an entire point off my review score because they used a common pop-culture phrase in the trophy title of a game that was already rated M for insane violence.
 

StashAugustine

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Jan 21, 2012
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I actually liked Crysis 2's plot- servicable B-movie stuff with a decent protagonist, a couple interesting ideas and characters, managed to be honestly patriotic without being stupidly jingoistic, nice pacing and art. Crysis 3 just looks disappointing, especially since they're not really advancing the series much. Could it have been better if the player was still Alcatraz, and Prophet was just a guide?
 

RTK1576

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Aug 4, 2009
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All I want to say is this: where was this analysis when Crysis 2 pulled the same thing?

I may be the only person out there who cares that Crysis ended with the alien-invasion plot ball still being juggled and our heroes heading back into the thick of it when the sequel abruptly jumps us to New York City. Seriously, THERE IS NO RESOLUTION. There is a comic that supplies the link between games (and does it badly, in my opinion)... and you know what? THAT'S NOT OKAY. I shouldn't have to buy alternative media just to get a frickin' complete story.

So, again, Yahtzee, why did you give Crysis 2 a pass on this, but decide to press the issue on Crysis 3 when they're guilty of the same sin?
 

FallenMessiah88

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Jan 8, 2010
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When I think of how storytelling in games used to be, I usually think of the old Resident Evil games. I'll never forget how awesome it was to play the first game and gradually unravel the mystery behind Spencer Mansion.