wgreer25 said:
Will try to keep everything spoiler free since I will be talking about my recent experience with a game...
So I recently finished Enslaved: and I have to say that it had a wonderful story, excelent voice acting, great character development and development of character relationships without getting sappy, and some of the best facial animations I have seen in any game... but the gameplay is a resounding meh (not bad by any means, just meh)... but I found myself wanting to keep playing to see how the story and how the characters develope. Not GOTY material, but considering that most games now-a-days don't even know what a story is or how to develope a charater, I was pleasantly surprised by Enslaved.
So, to discuss, have you had this experience? Where a great story/character has made you want to finish a game dispite it's gameplay flaws. What was the game, and what about it made you forget it's shortcomings.
Enslaved was interesting because it's gameplay is pretty much just an unfinished version of Uncharted 2, even down to the physics, except sometimes you can jump around and under corners like physics just died in a fire or they've mapped your jumping position to part of gollum. For that reason, playing the game immediately after Uncharted 2 is a pretty bad idea because it feels really bad.
Anyway, games have relied on stories to make up for gameplay. inb4 flame suit...
Fallout 3. This managed to be both a very very broken FPS/TPS and a completely useless RPG game AT THE SAME TIME, and there is no aspect of combat throughout the game that changes that in the slightest. The FPS option is a horrid, uselessly bad experience and a massive 110% of the statistics and numbers that Bethesda uses to make the 'RPG' element of the game are so arbitrary a small child could build you a character and it would make bugger-all difference.
BUT, it had a nice delicious world to explore (and it looked good with the visual overhaul mods available), and what little story there was (Dad's gone, go find him, he was building a water purification system, and that's about it, apart from the side missions) were just one big invitation to explore the world.
Mass Effect and Bioshock. These two both had beautifully realised worlds, some nice characterization and great dialogue. They were a joy to behold. Unfortunately, that's where the good bit ends, because then you have to play the games. The sequels didn't have the impact of the originals because they were so damn close, everyone who loved the originals loved it for the world, not the gameplay, and the sequels didn't change the world enough for players to give anywhere near as much of a damn. Sure the gameplay was tweaked and improved, but that's not of any importance when the great bits have gone stale.
Basically, nobody really cares as much about the story or the gameplay as you'd think. In fact, it's the world that the game is set in that's the most important, and those three massive hits prove that.
