Extra Punctuation: Game Stories Demand Focus

[Woodsey]

the better the graphics looks, the more anxiety developers get to make spectacular cinematics...

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.

For one thing, back in the SNES days games rarely even HAD stories.

I would agree. For all the faults in games' storytelling and writing, there has been a general progression towards the recognition that it helps make them more interesting. Even the CoD writers play with their alphabety-spaghetti until they get some key words for a plot and dialogue.

There's certainly the argument to say that for RPGs, a focus on graphics (and voice acting) a lot of the complexity has been lost (although some developers are going to lengths to correct that; CD Projekt, Eidos Montreal), but for a lot of games I don't think graphics have particularly had an impact.

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.

That's not a particularly good argument; you're trying to undermine his points on an entirely subjective issue ("you say these things are bad yet my favourite story does all of them and is still great").

 

[Callate]

I actually had an idea a while ago for handling character flaws in a role-playing game. And since I don't know if I'm likely to ever go about implementing it, here it is:

I envision the protagonist having a major character flaw: say, lust for power, or a tendency to knuckle under to authority, or sadism. The character has opportunities to exercise that flaw- to go with the examples, say, to steal a powerful magic item from an ally who probably needs it more than the protagonist, or obey a questionable order from a superior, or belittle someone in front of an audience they want to respect them. The player can forgo the option to give in to their flaw, but only to a point. There's a meter- possibly hidden- for the pressure the character is under, and that pressure rises each time they don't give in. Eventually, they will give in, possibly at the worst possible time, without it being in the player's control.

However, the longer the player lets the character go without giving in, the more "space" in the meter when it returns to "zero", so the longer they can go without involuntarily breaking in the future (and possibly conversely, if the player "gives in" every chance they get, the meter gets shorter until the flaw becomes an out-and-out addiction.) Eventually, the character might be able to escape their flaw altogether.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Omg stop, you win already, I'm buying it when I get home.

 

[Rakor]

I do indeed agree that the giant epic shenanigans going on can just kind of detract from the adventure your character(s) are going on.

I remember in FFXII, they pretty commonly cut away to important people talking about war stuff and just in general making the main characters seem less and less important. Granted the main characters weren't too great themselves, unless you're into rabbit chicks (and you know you are).

I also agree with another comment I saw that characters are a bit more important than the story sometimes. There could be the most generic, overblown story going on, but the main characters being enjoyable can just make the experience good anyway. I've watched some shows recently that pretty directly correlate with this. One show was pretty much a detective mystery type show, except all the culprits are obvious and the solutions were usually found by magic powers, but the characters were so enjoyable that I kept watching it. This applies a bit more heavily in a game where you are essentially hanging out with these characters the whole time.

With main characters being so important, it becomes even more useful to keep up that focus. You are there to go on an adventure with these people, not constantly cut away for exposition.

Wow I hit some rambling tangents, anywho. Yes focus, yes characters, yes flaws(because complicated characters are more interesting).

 

[ImBigBob]

I definitely agree with you about the new Doctor Who. I like the series, but it DOES rely on "save the world" storylines way too much. My favorite stories are the ones operating more on a small scale (such as the first episode with the Dalek, the Weeping Angels episode, etc). Yeah, there's danger involved, but it's not going to immediately impact the entire human race.

 

[Brainst0rm]

I pre-ordered Bastion on Sunday - so there.

And I agree with you on every point, Yahtzee. That...is really unusual.

 

[Advancedcaveman]

The biggest problem with game stories is they are currently all telling the same exact story with the same exact character: Large bald military/ex military dudebro everyman must shoot machine guns at aliens/terrorists/orcs in a dark industrial/urban/postapocalyptic area for a few hours until a cliff-hanger occurs. That's the only fucking story games are telling. There are no other characters other than the "male grunt man who's the man for the job," and there are no settings other than "war never changes and you've got to get the job done."

 

[Tarkand]

Bastion deserves all the love it can get, the game is awesome. Gameplay is actually kinda okay, it's a 3/4 view action rpg, nothing that fancy really... but the aesthetic and storytelling are simply top notch.

 

[ImprovizoR]

Finally someone else who thinks Doctor Who is shit.

Bastion does look like a cool game. I'll probably get on Steam one of these days. I must have a game made by a developer ironically named Supergiant Games. It's like naming a small dog Goliath.

I would really like to see Yahtzee actually review old titles. For example, I'd like to see his review of Sands of Time, Mafia 1, Morrowind etc.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

...okay. Y'know what? I think I'm going to be buying Bastion on Steam tonight, or at least sometime this week. Why? For the simple reason that a scene as powerful as the one Yahtzee describes at the end of this EP is something I want to see for myself.

 

[robert01]

the better the graphics looks, the more anxiety developers get to make spectacular cinematics...

...
For one thing, back in the SNES days games rarely even HAD stories.

That is a very very very false, a lot of the games had stories, it was just because of limited space on the cartridge the story wasn't relayed through game play but had to be told through other materials, like the manual, comics, etc. Some of the SNES era games were rich in stories, you just had to dig really deep to get it sometimes.

 

[Diegolomac]

Damn it, I can't buy Bastion in the foreseeable future, but I want to see that scene to see if it's as good as he said. Anyone knows where to find it? I've been looking on Youtube for half an hour and didn't get anything yet.

 

[Zamn]

I'm afraid I could only focus on one thing on this article.

Halo has simple gameplay mechanics and a big massive epic story that I could give a shit about

Couldn't care less. I really want to believe that this most-awful-of-all-Americanisms was inserted by some Escapist sub-editor and not Mr Croshaw. Please God let that be true.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

You mentioned Halo in there, that is a great example of amazing epic spectacle plus interesting character(s).

nobody cares about Borderlands anymore.

You probably knew this was coming but...

I DO! They have finally announced BL2

 

[carpathic]

Apropos of nothing, but the soundtrack for Bastion was solid enough that I actually bought it through the website.

I really enjoyed Build that Wall...and the Pantheon..

Pretty fabulous new blues as it were....

 

[ms_sunlight]

This is bang on. We're human, and we care about human stories. Even games that do have quite complex storylines and settings (like SW:KotOR2) work best with a tight, personal core running through the story (in that case a war veteran revisiting her past and confronting her own choices and how they changed her).

 

[Hosker]

I didn't like Bastion's story much at all. There was just ... nothing there, really. Go here, get a shard; go there, get a shard. I still liked it, though, but the story just felt flat to me.

I still don't think there is anything wrong with cutscenes, as long as they're done well.

 

[mental_looney]

I agree with this, that part in bastion was epic the first time around and the ending was good played it twice to see both, if you do the trips to "Who Knows Where." it adds loads on the characters from naration alone and I felt it showed the characters motives and was a big infulence in the ending I picked.

New doctor who is not awesome as matt smith isn't as great as david tennant and they really haven't given muchexpanded character to that version of the doctor in my opinion anyway.

 

[Hosker]

I'm afraid I could only focus on one thing on this article.

Halo has simple gameplay mechanics and a big massive epic story that I could give a shit about

Couldn't care less. I really want to believe that this most-awful-of-all-Americanisms was inserted by some Escapist sub-editor and not Mr Croshaw. Please God let that be true.

I noticed that as well. It caused much confusion on my behalf as I knew an Englishman would not write that.

 

[octafish]

I agree with this, that part in bastion was epic the first time around and the ending was good played it twice to see both, if you do the trips to "Who Knows Where." it adds loads on the characters from naration alone and I felt it showed the characters motives and was a big infulence in the ending I picked.

New doctor who is not awesome as matt smith isn't as great as david tennant and they really haven't given muchexpanded character to that version of the doctor in my opinion anyway.

Umm David Tennant is new Doctor Who. Doctor Who rarely ever saved Earth, sometimes he saved London, maybe occasionally England, very rarely Earth. He saved a hell of a lot of other planets though.

EDIT: Whoops forgot OT. I'm torn, I guess most of the games I love and admire have a strong story, however how do I reconcile that with X-Com, Tetris and the Civ series? I guess you make your own stories in games like X-Com, (I certainly do, I get attached to those little sprites if they manage to survive Terror Mission massacres). Then again there are a lot of cutscenes in a game like Planescape: Torment, but the gameplay doesn't flow in game such as that. But cutscenes in an action game suck, in fact anything that stops you playing the game in an action game sucks. Why else did Medal of Honor bomb if not for the fact that the game was over in the blink of an eye and you had very little control over the action?