wAriot said:
Honestly, until we get actually good writers in the industry, devs should just make games with good gameplay, and leave the story in a secondary plane. Most games (specially recent games) that have been praised for their story, I've personally found them at the level of fanfics, or worse.
This post will be a bit of a derail, but I feel it's an important one; namely, to point out the difference between
story and story
telling.
A mediocre or even outright bad story can sometimes be saved if it's presented in a fresh or engaging way. I think this is where video games really have a chance to shine, as they can involve the player in the story in ways that a book, movie or tv show simply can't.
A good example of this would be
Bastion. The plot is very simple: an undisclosed disaster hits a nation, killing nearly everyone, and the player character must hack and slash his way through what's left of the world so he and the other survivors can find a better life. Hardly Pulitzer material, obviously, but it's the
way the story is presented, through constant narration of the player's actions and surroundings, that make it memorable. Another good example is
Shadow of the Colossus' minimalistic style of exposition, where it simply shows a brief cutscene at the beginning of the game explaining what the protagonist's motivation is, and leaves the rest for the player to deduce or imagine on his own.
To bring this back on topic, Cage's works are a prime example of games which fail to provide either new or refreshing stories, or engaging storytelling. His writing style could best be described as "David Cage goes through his DVD collection and picks a few to be derivative of", and the presentation is essentially just a long cutscene that the player occasionally has to press buttons in.
So, while I feel that Cage's goals and hopes for the videogame industry are noble, he's done more to set the industry back than move it forward. Couple that with his arrogance and he becomes pretty much anathema to games in my eyes.
