Extra Punctuation: Game Stories Demand Focus

[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?

 

[blindthrall]

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.

Same thing I was thinking, I finally figured out why Yahtzee didn't seem impressed by Mass Effect. The things that interest me in Mass Effect are the huge, galaxy spanning events. It's just one of the few games(Chrono Trigger being another) that does it well.

SS2 was complicated. What's wrong with that? Did everybody get used to Dead Space already?

 

[mental_looney]

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.[/quote]

Ah well though he meant the newest one Old one I don't remeber much except for scary shop dummys

 

[blindthrall]

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

Halo wouldn't know an interesting character if one ran up and teabagged its face off.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

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

Halo wouldn't know an interesting character if one ran up and teabagged its face off.

I guess you either never played Halo: Reach, read the books or are just being a hater because you felt that Halo let you down at some point.

Or your possibly a PC elitist and hate all console exclusives.

Never mind it doesn't matter any way.

[sub]PS: I'm not a fanboy, I just enjoyed learning more about every Halo Character I've ever heard of, which makes them interesting in my opinion.[/sub]

 

[chaosyoshimage]

For as cutscene-happy as Square Enix is, I really feel the ending of CRISIS CORE pulled off narrative-through-gameplay well.

Spoiler

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 is what I thought of when he was going on about Bastion's ending. Count me among those that totally cried during Crisis Core's ending. Probably my favorite Final Fantasy game, kind of excited for Type-0 since it's from the same team. Also, I never got past the first disc of Final Fantasy VII, so I didn't know what was going to happen.

 

[Metalrocks]

having interesting characters and a good story is important. i do agree.
hydrophobia surely failed with character and story telling. you hardly know anything about this woman and why she fears water in a way. and the story is also unclear. especially what you are on and what happened before. i had more questions then i got answered when i finished the game. gameplay was also not solid, even when they patched the games 6 times.

shadow harvest is a game with a very good story, which even involves one of the protagonist. sure, the game is not great and has its flaws like the bloom, voice acting etc, but i still had fun playing it. the story was interesting, the ending was surprising. characters were more or less interesting. for me, its a good game, despite what others say how bad it is.

mass effect has definitely a great story and interesting characters. yes, you are saving earth and the universe but at least you can make decisions during the game. thats why mass effect is one of my favorite game, just because of that.
you want to know who your team is and the game delivers. the story is interesting and the game grabs you in takes in to it. not many games today can do that.
even though i think halo was a solid shooter with a interesting story. shame part 3 never came out for the pc. this still makes me mad.

 

[Realitycrash]

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.

It's on Steam now.
My eyes almost teared up when I started playing it. The music is AWESOME, the narration is several worlds of sexy and the gameplay is smooth. It's the best RPG I'v played since fucking Chrono Trigger.

Sorry, does it have advanced graphics, character creator and a whole lot of bullshit you really don't need?
No.

 

[Realitycrash]

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

Halo wouldn't know an interesting character if one ran up and teabagged its face off.

I guess you either never played Halo: Reach, read the books or are just being a hater because you felt that Halo let you down at some point.

Or your possibly a PC elitist and hate all console exclusives.

Never mind it doesn't matter any way.

[sub]PS: I'm not a fanboy, I just enjoyed learning more about every Halo Character I've ever heard of, which makes them interesting in my opinion.[/sub]

Halo had several stock-characters. The brace, faceless Hero that never gives up (Chief), the witty, slender female sidekick (Cortana), the angry, black, shouting drill-sergent (Sgt Johnson or whatever his name is).
True, I never played longer than Halo 2, but up till then, nothing was very inventive.

 

[lord.jeff]

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

Halo wouldn't know an interesting character if one ran up and teabagged its face off.

I guess you either never played Halo: Reach, read the books or are just being a hater because you felt that Halo let you down at some point.

Or your possibly a PC elitist and hate all console exclusives.

Never mind it doesn't matter any way.

[sub]PS: I'm not a fanboy, I just enjoyed learning more about every Halo Character I've ever heard of, which makes them interesting in my opinion.[/sub]

If you have to tell someone to look outside the story they're given then the story in question is crap. Truthfully I think Halo's story is just bland and just lifted out of better sci fis.

OT: I agree no matter what your story is, it will almost always boil down to guy has problem guy most learn lesson/skills to fix problem, guy fixes problem(unless your an art house film then it's guy learns skill, still fails to solve problem, commits suicide). I need to care about a character to want him to overcome his challenges. Also I feel the term a million people dying is a statistic, one person dying is a tragedy.

 

[RA92]

your statement early on that games you consider well written tend to have focused stories is incorrect.

You would be right if he had said always, instead of "Tend to"
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 to" enjoy focused stories.

After playing The Bastion and realizing how much I'd enjoyed the story aspect, it occurred to me that virtually every game I consider well-written demonstrates good focus in the story department.

Your premise is correct but your evidence is wrong, which ironically, invalidates the rest of your message. If you had just shut up after the first sentence you would have gotten away with it. Weeeeeee!

Well, replace 'tend to' with 'virtually'.

I win!

 

[Avaloner]

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

Are you smoking something?

Go play Terranigma or Secret of Mana/Evermore NOW and than come back claiming those games had no story.


For the bastion..yes its an awesome game, that last part even got me a little teary eyed as you are the only one who sacrifices and forgives in the end, I hope we will see much more of those developers in the future.
The interactiv narrative is great and even funny at times "The Kid rages for some time" just after smashing around and destroying scenery, after you got your first weapon and further on in the game, where you get to know more about the characters within "dream" sequences, its just a well made game in the end. Not to forget that the soundtrack is simply beautiful, it enhances the game, something I actually really care for.
A good game with a bad soundtrack can completely destroy the experience for me.

 

[bificommander]

I'm not as alergic to cutscenes as Yahtzee, but I agree that if you can figure out a good way to do it, an in-game story telling method works better. World 0 of Braid comes to mind. I found it a shame that the rest of the story was so utterly incomprehensible without reading in-depth analyses of 100% completionists all over the web, because the impact would have been much greater otherwise.

But I find it funny that Yahtzee underlines the importance of focus in a story (which I agree with), while he still finds Ocarina of Time isn't up to par with Twilight Princess, seeing as my biggest complaint by far of TP is that the story was an unfocussed mess. With the exception of Midna, every character in that game was pretty much superfluous in the grand scheme of things. The kids kick of the plot, then you find them again and they stop mattering untill your sorta-GF spontaneously has a way of recovering her memory when it becomes neccesary for the plot to get you to the sky dungeon. I often had no clue why, storywise, I was fighting in a particular dungeon beyond 'there happens to be a Macguffin in here'. The ice mansion was the worst of the bunch, forcing me to quest through a yeti's house because they forgot where they left the damn mirror piece (which turns out to turn one of them evil which you'd think would be a leadup to something, but it's never mentioned again). The 4 heroes sounded interesting (and I loved the big elf lady that ran their tavern) but in the end all they did was form a living quest marker for your next dungeon. Ocarina of Time had a very simple story, with the dungeons often being temples that wouldn't win any originality rewards, but I always knew why I was going in them. The sages were all well developed (except maybe Impa). And while Zelda wasn't in it much (not in her true shape anyway), it was still much, MUCH more than in Twilight Princess.

 

[Scarblade]

Well great, now I have to buy Bastion.
Nice article I have really hungered for a good gameplay driven story, and it sounds like you are recommending Bastion as such.

 

[YodaUnleashed]

You know everyone does seem to forget that George Lucas did create some of the most beloved characters in modern movie history, namely Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, Darth Vader and several more to boot within the original trilogy. Just because he messed up or failed with the prequel trilogy in your mind, doesn't mean you should erase or forget everything he ever did. Unless of course Yahtzee, your more likely implying you don't think much of these characters, in which case, I simply cannot relate to you as my brain is wired totally differently and you will only ever appear as weird and slightly deprived. Not that you'd ever care, and right on.

 

[Dutch 924]

I was reading the part about the hydrophobic person, and I got reminded of the game Hydrophobia. Before they went and ruined it, the first ideas were that the main character had a fear of water after witnessing her sister drown in a cave. Throughout the story (based inside a slowly sinking ship) you would have to get neck-deep in water. When this happened for too long, the metallic walls slowly turned to stone, and you would hear your sister yelling for help. As this is all happening, your performance would degrade. You would move slowly and sway for a bit until you left the water. I thought it was a great idea. But then they released it on XBLA and I was thoroughly disappointed.