Gameplay That Doesn't Match With The Story

[4RM3D]

Writing stories can be difficult, writing stories for games that match the gameplay can be even more difficult. Especially if either the story is being developed seperate from the gameplay or the story writer doesn't know how to handle story telling through gameplay.

There are very few games that handle it well. I can't remember many. Maybe Bastion and Journey.

For now I want to talk about games that don't handle it well. The most well known example is probably Bioshock: Infinite. The Plasmids (that's what they are) don't fit in the world of BS:I. The gameplay itself is okay, but it just doesn't match with the story. Also Elizabeth's powers could have been used better.

The reason I've made this thread is actually because of Farcry 3. Holy damn. Some games just force stories with little consistency. And in the case of Farcry 3 is kinda annoys me. You have been butchering people all over the island. Yet when you have to take an uniform to go undercover, you have to take a specific one which happens to be in the Lion's Den, in the heart of danger. And when you finally get the outfit you can't use it in most areas. Why couldn't I just take the heavy armor of one of the hundreds I have killed? Problem solved, but nooooo, because then the game would have been over in 1 hour. I know it's only a small thing. But there are too many of these small inconsistencies that pile up.

 

[hazabaza1]

The new Tomb Raider is basically the definition of this.

"oh no, I'm a poor lonely archaeologist, I can't do anything, oh killing this deer and this one guy was really hard I'm gonna go cry for a bit, now to go kill 500 men."

 

[Casual Shinji]

The issue with Bioshock: Inifite is that the developers gave it the same type of gameplay as the first Bioshock, yet it's set a perfectly functioning society. In Rapture it made sense that you ate chocolate bars out of trash bins and that audio loges were strewn all over, because the place was a stripped mess. It made sense that you shot everyone you came across, because they were all insane, addicted mutants.

In Columbia this isn't the case at all. I think the only reason the developers made the inhabitants of Columbia racists is so that you as the player feel validated in shooting them all.

 

[Wackymon]

The new Tomb Raider is basically the definition of this.

"oh no, I'm a poor lonely archaeologist, I can't do anything, oh killing this deer and this one guy was really hard I'm gonna go cry for a bit, now to go kill 500 men."

I'd like to think she was mentally unstable from the start, and the first hardship only made it so that she broke, and quickly became a mass-murdering lunatic.

... I think the only reason the developers made the inhabitants of Columbia racists is so that you as the player feel validated in shooting them all.

Nope. People were just that racist back then.

Anyway, Bioshock Infinite is a definite yes to what you say, though LA Noir's shooting sections always felt annoying.

 

[Able Seacat]

GTA IV had this sort of problem. There was that sort of moral choice system, shall I save this guy or spare him. But it was a bit pointless if the very next thing you did was run over a bunch of civilians.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

There was that one scene in Mass Effect 2 where an Asari mercenary shot a Claymore shotgun with ease. A shotgun that would snap the arms of anyone that isn't a burly Krogan. Huh.

Edit: Well, that's more of a story inconsistency. The Story-game inconsistency comes in when she actually uses the shotgun against you.

In Warcraft 3, I thought it was kind of silly that I could organize a mass exodus of a race with three ships.

 

[Legion]

I think the stranger part of Farcry 3 was how he was still grossed out after the hundredth animal he skinned. Especially as by that point he has no problem slitting the wrists of guards or setting them alight with a flame-thrower.

Jason Brody draws the line in the strangest of places.

The issue with Bioshock: Inifite is that the developers gave it the same type of gameplay as the first Bioshock, yet it's set a perfectly functioning society. In Rapture it made sense that you ate chocolate bars out of trash bins and that audio loges were strewn all over, because the place was a stripped mess. It made sense that you shot everyone you came across, because they were all insane, addicted mutants.

In Columbia this isn't the case at all. I think the only reason the developers made the inhabitants of Columbia racists is so that you as the player feel validated in shooting them all.

As much as I liked the game, I felt this was also the case. Vigors were the same, they were never really properly linked with the story. In Bioshock 1 and 2 the enemies were hooked on it and you needed them to level the playing field, but in Bioshock Infinite it felt like they were there "because it's a Bioshock thing".

It did not ruin the game for me, but I think if they'd put a bit more work into that section it'd have been a lot stronger.

 

[Casual Shinji]

... I think the only reason the developers made the inhabitants of Columbia racists is so that you as the player feel validated in shooting them all.

Nope. People were just that racist back then.

Yes, but it's stupid, cartoonishly so.

It's apparently a very racist society, yet you never see black people getting lynched, or slaves getting physically punished or abused. Oddly enough, the black people in Columbia have it way better than the ones back on earth at the time.

 

[Trivun]

A lot of people say that the newer Assassin's Creed games are no good because they make too many changes, or focus too much on the modern-day plot, or whatever. Some grievances are valid, some aren't. Personally, I really enjoyed Revelations and AC3, and I think the series has continually gotten better, but again that's just my opinion. However, I have to say that where they definitely did right by gamers was by adding in the '100% synch' challenges to each mission or sequence from Revelations onwards.

Hear me out. It does tie in to this thread because my point for gameplay not matching story is the first few games of the series. Namely, you're supposed to play as a stealthy assassin who doesn't go around murdering civillians and stays in the shadows all the time until it's the right point to strike. However, it's far easier in the earlier games to just wade in and kill guards left, right and centre to reach your target, then stabbity-stab them in the middle of a crowded place full of people trying to kill you in turn. Some of the stealthy bits are easy I suppose, others are pretty difficult. And the games don't reward you in any way either for using the canon stealth approach. The first game is especially jarring because the combat is just so easy compared to any of the others.

That's where the sequels are better, because although it's more difficult to do the stealth, you're rewarded for effectively following the 'proper' way to do things. Fine, it's not perfect, there are still pelnty of times when fighting instead of sneaking is the apparently correct way to complete the objective, although this seems to be much less so by the time of AC3 (for example, the extensive stealth approach required if you want 100% synch during the Battle of Bunker Hill). That becomes a case where gameplay and story do actually match, thus becoming a stark improvement on the series origins...

 

[King Billi]

A lot of people say that the newer Assassin's Creed games are no good because they make too many changes, or focus too much on the modern-day plot, or whatever. Some grievances are valid, some aren't. Personally, I really enjoyed Revelations and AC3, and I think the series has continually gotten better, but again that's just my opinion. However, I have to say that where they definitely did right by gamers was by adding in the '100% synch' challenges to each mission or sequence from Revelations onwards.

I agree, the entire concept of the animus actually gives Assassin's Creed a very clever way around any accusations of the gameplay not matching with the story, if you screw up a mission and do anything stupid or out of character then you don't get full synch and just didn't reenact the memory correctly.

Other than that I find that alot of games which offer moral choice systems tend to mess up the flow of a story. Red Dead Redemption had a pretty decent story so long as you played through it as an honest and upstanding citizen(who also murders scores of people, okay SHUT UP! it's not perfect) However if you play through the game robbing banks and shooting prostitutes then the whole theme of the reformed outlaw trying to provide an honest life for his family starts to ring a bit false.

 

[klaynexas3]

the rpg hero of virtue and goodness who steals everything no nailed down and who has a higher body count than stalin having an annoyed day.

i have still never learned after decades of gaming where animals keep potion bottles and coins

To be fair, they give you as the player a choice to take everything that isn't nailed down. Whether you take it or not is up to you, as it is role playing, so will you actually be virtuous, or will you rob everyone blind when they aren't looking. And luckily, most modern RPGs offer you the choice to be the asshole that saved the world instead of really a good person. I think bad people are just as capable of saving the world, as it is their world anyway, they'd benefit from it not being destroyed. A safe world is one that they can go looting and murdering their way through, but a destroyed world, well, they're probably dead too. And as for the body count, well, it's self defense. Valor is a virtue also, and running from a fight would simply be cowardice. That's not to say you can't be a murderous lunatic, it'll just affect how people look at you. But as for the animals holding coins and potions, yeah, unless they ate them whole, that one is a little more unexplainable, though story wise it doesn't really affect much, just a little more world breaking than immersing.

Anyway, OT: I would say the majority of the first Half-Life game makes little sense in terms of gameplay. You're a physicist, who would most likely have no prior weapons training, and suddenly aliens attack and you're a master at all of them. Granted, they do work their way up, but it's not like he had weeks with these weapons to learn how to use them, you simply pick them up, and you're capable of mowing down trained soldiers, assassins, and warrior aliens from other planets. The second game I'm going to allow since he did have the first game to thank for his knowledge of weapons, but it doesn't work for the first one.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Yes, but it's stupid, cartoonishly so.

It's apparently a very racist society, yet you never see black people getting lynched, or slaves getting physically punished or abused. Oddly enough, the black people in Columbia have it way better than the ones back on earth at the time.

Meh? I played through it VERY recently, and I can remember at least a couple of incidents of black people being abused, at least one instance of a "black sympathizer" being horribly tortured, and NUMEROUS incidents where there was physical evidence that torture or abuse had taken place.

Given you spend over half the game with Columbia in a state of violent unrest with running gunfights in the streets, and a goodly portion of the rest in racially segregated areas, I'm honestly not certain how this qualifies as problematic.

OT - The better a game gets at storytelling, the more we seem to see these complaints about game play/storytelling disconnect pop up. We saw it over a decade ago with Planescape Torment, and we see it today with titles like The Walking Dead, or To the Moon, or Bioshock Infinite. In order to present a coherent or complex narrative, the game designers are often forced to wrest a lot of control over circumstances from the player, making the more traditionally interactive segments seem a tad perfunctory. Either they appear to be discrete from the narrative itself, ala Infinite, or they appear to have little actual impact on the outcome of the story, ala Walking Dead, or they barely even exist at all (To the Moon).

As these "Story rich, game play light" titles are amongst some of my all time favorites, I find it hard to rattle my saber at them too vigorously, but it is certainly evidence that this is still an art form in its infancy, and that we have a long way to go before a seamless integration of genuine player agency and polished narrative is on offer.

 

[Alcaste]

This is Ludonarrative Dissonance, and it was coined by an article on the original Bioshock. Here it is for those curious:

http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html

This happens in quite a few games, and can feel weird when you're looking for it. GTA 4 is a great example, and I gotta go with that one as well. Red Dead Redemption is another one - Oh I want to redeem myself and be good for my wife and kid! Let me just put six people on this train track first.

 

[Skops]

God of War 1 & Acsension kind of fall into this catagorey at least in my opinion.

Ascension it's not blatant, but as with all GoW combat it's a lot of angry man grunts and roars. Then Cutscene time Kratos is often calm and depressed.

God of War 1 has a few cutscenes just kinda placed in random parts where Kratos reflects on the atrocities he's commited in the past, looks at his hands as says "By the gods what have I become" then not 30 seconds after the cutscene he's ripping things half over head, and kicking demon puppies.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

The only time I remember feeling this way was when I was playing Spec Ops: The Line, and it was because of trophies popping up. The game tells a very serious, very dark, very disturbing story that sucks you in and makes you--Trophy Unlocked! Twenty Head Shots! Good Job!! Yahtzee pointed that out in his review of the game too. Every other game I've played I've never really felt like gameplay and story don't mix well.

Well, I guess that one part in Assassin's Creed III where you go rescue you a certain someone from the bad guys in present times. Desmond goes on a murder rampage, killing guards left and right who most likely aren't even Templars, just people earning a paycheck, and then on his way out he reveals he had a way to completely avoid killing anyone but decided not to use it. Not sure if that counts though.

 

[Casual Shinji]

God of War 1 has a few cutscenes just kinda placed in random parts where Kratos reflects on the atrocities he's commited in the past, looks at his hands as says "By the gods what have I become" then not 30 seconds after the cutscene he's ripping things half over head, and kicking demon puppies.

Well, first of all with GoW1 you're killing demon creatures anyway. Nothing that meets its end by Kratos' hands in that game can be deemed an innocent bystander (except ofcourse for the actual innocent bystanders). And those frikkin demon puppies deserve all the pain they get anyway.

Secondly, the whole point of that game is that Kratos is being used/tricked by the gods to handle their dirty work for the promise of redemption. When he says that line it means he knows he's doing bad things, but that he's come to far to stop now. That subplot about the architect of Pandora's temple isn't just there by coincidence.

 

[Darkslayersparda]

This is obvious but final fantasy , almost all of them and I've played a lot of em . Their is always characters that are meant to be weak and never fought in their life , music starts and boom casting city destroying spells .And its weird how in almost every ff , if magic is explained its suppose to be special and rare but u the player finds it everywhere

 

[Avalanche91]

Mass Effect 3; Kai Leng just escapes and there is no way I could have grabbed my Sniper Rifle and popped him before he got into his comfy chopper.

Devil May Cry: Dante, semi-immortal bad-ass demonhunter with style, can't get past the second level in DMC3.

These seem to have more to do with cutscene em/depowerment though

 

[runic knight]

Any rpg with a revive item and a character death.
Any rpg with a status/recovery item and a sickness.
Any rpg with a turn based battle system in general tends to fall into this trap.

Hell, any game where you are saving the world and the shop keepers wont give freebies or discounts. Pretty sure not every single merchant would be so greedy as to cling every last item like that when the world is about to be destroyed by some demon/angle/monstrosity.

skyrim, where someone with barely any magical ability can become the damn archmage.