Lets talk about games and the lack of good stories

[WorldCritic]

I feel like it's hard to comment on stories in games. One reason is that I'm one of the few people (apparently) who criticised Mass Effect's story. I guess there are ways people prefer to learn more of a gamews story. I don't know why, but the Myst games come to mind when I think about games with good stories.

 

[Battleaxx90]

I loves me a good story in a video game. Hell, I've played a few bad games because they had a good story attatched to them, and put down some good games because the story blew chunks. I'd give some examples, but I just got back from work and my brain hasn't switched on yet >_<.

If you're looking for some games with good story in them, I reccommend the following:

Super Paper Mario
Dragon Quest VIII, and possibly IX
.Hack//G.U (1-3, watch the anime .Hack//ROOTS first)
Xenoblade Chronicles (The Eternal God-King of the plot twist)
Kingdom Hearts series (Even if it is one big jigsaw puzzle of a plot)
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness (Highest reccomendation on here. No, really.)
The World Ends With You
Pretty much any Zelda game (except, of course, a certain few spinoffs that shall remain nameless)

I'd list more, but like I said, me brain no work right now >_<

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Mass Effect and Witcher's stories were great because they made the story itself interactive. As in YOU had a say in the story. The vast majority of games don't even try to do that and many that do, fail. I get what you're saying with Bioshock, but I count it as a failure nonetheless. You didn't interact with the story. Yeah it was integrated well into the game, but you had no say. Of course you could argue for that being an intentional design decision and I wouldn't be able to refute you considering Bioshock was a game entirely about the existence of free will. And odn't get me wrong, it was a great story, but it wasn't revolutionary.

You want a game that does a "video game story" well? Fallout: New Vegas. It's not a mind bender, and it never could have been because it's not linear AT ALL. You are in charge of writing your own story, from scratch. YOU pick which faction to help. YOU pick where to go. YOU decide how much you actually even care about the world. It's a COMPLETELY interactive story, and a marvel of video game design. But of course it was an abysmal failure of a game because it had some glitches herpy derpity DEEERP! -_-

And if you want an even purer "video game story", look waaay out there at a little game (that many of you have heard of) called Mount and Blade (Warband/Fire and Sword). In that game, the entire world goes on without you. You can either wiggle your way to the very top of the global political climate, commanding entire nations to War on a whim....or just raid towns all day for a living. It just drops you in the world, gives not two shits about HOW you interact with it and says "have fun!" Is that not the ultimate vision of interactivity? It's not a perfect execution, but its vision is mind-shattering.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

I just wrote a long ass comment, pressed post.....and nothing....wtf is wrong with the escapist!

EDIT: aaaand now its showing. Seriously why is the site acting up so bad?

 

[KILRbuny]

a lot of people here are complaining about how video game writing isn't on par with other media out there. the closest comparison is to film. as similar as they are, games and film have one VERY big difference: interaction. you can't choose to make a character not go in the dark basement of a horror movie, or tell them that you noticed a clue in the mystery that would solve everything.
these medium's need to be judged independently. film succeeds because of good film-making, i.e. cinematography, editing, acting, mise-en-scene (setting, costuming, props, etc.) and the like. a film can have great writing and terrible editing and be awful because of that. film needs to be judged based on how well all of the elements are incorporated.
likewise, video games need to be judged based on the integration of the elements of video games, i.e. gameplay, (i'm using this for a lack of better word) mise-en-scene, writing, pacing, etc. etc. if games are being compared to other media, then nobody will ever see how truly good the medium is. it is the integration of all the elements that must be the point of judging, with all things considered. the whole will (almost) always be greater than the sum of the parts.

 

[Ragnarok185]

I found The Witcher 2 story to be well... meh really. It was interesting enough for me to finish the game but I don't feel like I will be playing it again anytime soon.

Final Fantasy XIII had a really great and complex story. I honestly think it should have been a 3 part movie series.

The Tekken storyline is very interesting to me since I cannot see a happy ending to that story.
If you want a story heavy shooter than go play Deus Ex Human Revolution.

 

[Snotnarok]

I'm not sure story telling is a definite thing in games, there's many ways and I can't say one is better than the other. Hell some games pull off crappy stories well with entertaining gameplay and what not (earth defense force).

 

[Feylynn]

Also, that brings up another problem in games with the story. The games are not time driven but event driven. You trigger an event to move to the next set. If you don't trigger the event, then you could spent the rest of your live running around in the same time period. Although, having event driven games is a more practical decision, than one that holds the story back. But you could create an interesting game mechanic where the game itself isn't very long, but the world around you keeps moving. Then you have to replay the game to see all possibilities. To put it extremely simple: Groundhog Day. Oh, that sounds awesome.

This right here is why I think Majora's Mask is the best Zelda game.
Time driven game. Sure it has the Song of Time so you have an infinite resource but the fact is you are racing a very real three days for everything you need done. It also gets that time traveler vibe by giving you times and places to be and making you fix everyone's problems by intervening almost simultaneously for everyone in specific orders.
[hr]
I actually liked Bioshock 2 more then 1. The only reason 2 was ever considered bad is because 1 happened first. As someone else mentioned Bioshock 1's protagonist is completely terrible until the bad twist and this ruined the game for me ultimately. I did not care what happened to him one way or the other and felt like the end was forced because my interpretation of the character felt that he had no grudge to the villain.
Bioshock 1 was bad story telling because they defined linear story in the game world and then ignored it. The only reason you played up to that point was against your will and after they explained this it became a plot-hole that the second half of the game offered no choice.

Bioshock 2 however used a simple but very motivating fatherhood story. Much more motivation, much better use of the saviour/survivor mechanic that replaced the good/evil bullshit.
It helps that 2 also was mechanically more fun in combat as well but that's not the focus of this conversation.

I suspect this is largely a subjective comparison, its purposed isn't to prove 1 is worse but to highlight that 2 wasn't bad in any definable way but preference and maybe lacking ambition.

 

[4RM3D]

-snip-

You mention Bioshock and other games as good examples of excellent story told through gaming, but Mass Effect is not because it could be, as you said, translated onto the big screen relatively easily. But could this type of thing not be done with most games?

In the end you can turn every game into a movie. They even made a movie of battleship!

But what I wanted to point out where two things:
1) By Hollywood standards the story is mediocre.
2) You can translate the story 1-on-1 into a movie script (that wouldn't be possible with The Witcher 2, for example)

What is so wrong with static stories? Some of the best stories in games have been told through static stories. Half Life 2 has a static story, Red Dead Redemption has a static story, Starcraft has a static story, etc...

There isn't anything inherently wrong with static stories. And for some games it works better. The example I mentioned about JRPGs, where you are almost watching an interactive movie rather than playing a game. I like JRPGs, but I also want to see something differently. We had have these static stories since day 1.

I love the gameplay of Soul Calibur, but the stories are always so inconclusive and predictable it's almost an insult whenever you get to the end. But to imagine finding a way to make the game work without a story is a bit daunting, and the games still sell like hotcakes, so Capcom won't be changing their formula anytime soon.

For some game genres it is more difficult to tell a proper story. Sport and simulation games don't even have a story most of the time. Do they really need a story? Probably not. But it would still be nice to see an actually football (soccer) RPG where you start out as a lone manager and climb your way to the top. Where the 'battles' are football matches. You could even throw in the movie Shoalin Soccer. Oh yeah, give it to me now!

Ahem, I digress. I can't remember any fighting game with a good story. I have seen a few try, but it is quite difficult, because of how fighting games work. Still, I have to applaud BlazBlue for its story. They used the gimmick of alternative universe to weave all mini-stories together. Creating quite a complex story for a fighting game about what happened on a certain day.

these medium's need to be judged independently. film succeeds because of good film-making, i.e. cinematography, editing, acting, mise-en-scene (setting, costuming, props, etc.) and the like. a film can have great writing and terrible editing and be awful because of that. film needs to be judged based on how well all of the elements are incorporated.
likewise, video games need to be judged based on the integration of the elements of video games, i.e. gameplay, (i'm using this for a lack of better word) mise-en-scene, writing, pacing, etc. etc. if games are being compared to other media, then nobody will ever see how truly good the medium is. it is the integration of all the elements that must be the point of judging, with all things considered. the whole will (almost) always be greater than the sum of the parts.

An interesting theory. But does that mean you actually changed the definition of the word 'story' because in its current form (movies) it can not be applied to games?

You want a game that does a "video game story" well? Fallout: New Vegas. It's not a mind bender, and it never could have been because it's not linear AT ALL. You are in charge of writing your own story, from scratch. YOU pick which faction to help. YOU pick where to go. YOU decide how much you actually even care about the world. It's a COMPLETELY interactive story, and a marvel of video game design.

While typing a response, it made me think of another issue with stories in games. And for this I am going to use TV series for comparison.

There are two kinds of TV series (and combinations thereof): one with a continuous story and one where the episodes stand alone. With the latter you can watch the episodes in any random order. This has its advantages of being flexible. The game Fallout: New Vegas works with this principle.

A continuous story requires more writing and it requires a good flow to move the series forward, which is very expensive and because of that many TV series don't use it. JRPGs (like Final Fantasy) mostly fit this description. But if you want to make a game using a continuous story but still have a dynamic story telling, well then that is going to be a challenge. I still think The Witcher 2 did it pretty well.

As for Fallout: New Vegas there are three issues.
1) The main story is too simple and straight forward and lacks an 'epic' build up.
2) Also your actions don't reflect much on the main story. You have two sides to choose from, but that's about it.
3) The world doesn't really evolve with you.

EDIT: I still like the game and I still like the game world. But as far as the story goes, it's too basic and straightforward.

 

[Vault101]

Mass Effect and Witcher's stories were great because they made the story itself interactive. As in YOU had a say in the story. The vast majority of games don't even try to do that and many that do, fail. I get what you're saying with Bioshock, but I count it as a failure nonetheless. You didn't interact with the story. Yeah it was integrated well into the game, but you had no say. Of course you could argue for that being an intentional design decision and I wouldn't be able to refute you considering Bioshock was a game entirely about the existence of free will. And odn't get me wrong, it was a great story, but it wasn't revolutionary.

You want a game that does a "video game story" well? Fallout: New Vegas. It's not a mind bender, and it never could have been because it's not linear AT ALL. You are in charge of writing your own story, from scratch. YOU pick which faction to help. YOU pick where to go. YOU decide how much you actually even care about the world. It's a COMPLETELY interactive story, and a marvel of video game design. But of course it was an abysmal failure of a game because it had some glitches herpy derpity DEEERP! -_-

And if you want an even purer "video game story", look waaay out there at a little game (that many of you have heard of) called Mount and Blade (Warband/Fire and Sword). In that game, the entire world goes on without you. You can either wiggle your way to the very top of the global political climate, commanding entire nations to War on a whim....or just raid towns all day for a living. It just drops you in the world, gives not two shits about HOW you interact with it and says "have fun!" Is that not the ultimate vision of interactivity? It's not a perfect execution, but its vision is mind-shattering.

oh yay site isnt glitching out now

anyway I disagree, I dont think theres a "right or worng" way to present a story in a game

like Red Deads aproach compared to Skyrim...some people love freedom or the ability to choose..some dont mind more restrictions/guidence to tell a specific story...

personally I prefer somthing with more restrictions/focus, let the developers tell the story they want to tell, provivded its actually done well...which is exactally what Bioshock/assasins creed/Half life/portal do....and like portal and bioshock when the gameplay [i/]serves[/i] the story it creates somthign very awsome

my point is you'd be writing off ALOT of games has having sub-par storys because they dont offer you choice (thats what Im reading it as anyway)


anway that isnt to say I enjoy choice now and again, I do, but that just me...generally Ill choose one way and stick with it, because (again if its a good/bad thing) Like I've barely deveated from doing the same thing in Mass effect...I couldnt play a renegade shepard being shepard ISNT renegade in my eyes, or in a agem in Fallout 3 where it makes NO bloody sense to be evil, Infamous it probably being evil makes sense...but I probably couldnt do it

but then you get games with fallout NV, which is good because it actually offers a variety of interesting paths to take...but anyway Im going off topic there

 

[Vault101]

-snip-

You mention Bioshock and other games as good examples of excellent story told through gaming, but Mass Effect is not because it could be, as you said, translated onto the big screen relatively easily. But could this type of thing not be done with most games?

In the end you can turn every game into a movie. They even made a movie of battleship!

But what I wanted to point out where two things:
1) By Hollywood standards the story is mediocre.
2) You can translate the story 1-on-1 into a movie script (that wouldn't be possible with The Witcher 2, for example)

.

your talking about the same hollywood that put out AVATAR

personally, for a big action sci fi movie Mass effect's story I think is pretty good, good charachters..room for lots of action a fantastic world really good climax...mabye its just me but I really dont see the issue (oh and IMO ME's story is better than AVARTAR's)

BUT that said I dont think mass effect translates perfectly to the big screen

that said making it into a movie would be taking away some of its stronger points..main one being a decent female lead, and also making choices , persoanlly Id be fine with a movie for say..assasins creed (well as find as you can be with thease things) but I wouls never touch a mass effect movie with a ten foot pole...it would be mass effect as I know it

 

[4RM3D]

your talking about the same hollywood that put out AVATAR

Hey, Avatar is an awesome movie. The story just wasn't as good as the rest of the movie. Nonetheless Avatar was a milestone in movie making.

(Avatar, not to be confused with Avatar: The Last Airbender).

 

[Lilani]

I love the gameplay of Soul Calibur, but the stories are always so inconclusive and predictable it's almost an insult whenever you get to the end. But to imagine finding a way to make the game work without a story is a bit daunting, and the games still sell like hotcakes, so Capcom won't be changing their formula anytime soon.

For some game genres it is more difficult to tell a proper story. Sport and simulation games don't even have a story most of the time. Do they really need a story? Probably not. But it would still be nice to see an actually football (soccer) RPG where you start out as a lone manager and climb your way to the top. Where the 'battles' are football matches. You could even throw in the movie Shoalin Soccer. Oh yeah, give it to me now!

Ahem, I digress. I can't remember any fighting game with a good story. I have seen a few try, but it is quite difficult, because of how fighting games work. Still, I have to applaud BlazBlue for its story. They used the gimmick of alternative universe to weave all mini-stories together. Creating quite a complex story for a fighting game about what happened on a certain day.

I think the reason fighting games have such awful stories shoehorned into them is because when human characters are involved, we've just come to expect some sort of character and dramatic development to happen. Pac Man and Sonic and whatnot got away with not having elaborate stories because they're not human, and their situations don't lend themselves to needing any further motivation to do what they do.

But when you're fighting with human characters, it can be scary as a developer to try and sell the idea of they're fighting "just because." If they're all silent, faceless characters it works (or if all of their situations are the same, like they're all in some sort of tournament), but if you're going to give them identities and personalities you also have to include histories and motivations. It's hard to pull off giving them just a few human features but then ignore the rest. It's not impossible, TF2 springs to my mind. The characters are very colorful, and have various stories and origins, but their reason for being there is all the same--they're mercenaries on that team, hired to fight. Short, simple, and doesn't lend itself to asking any more questions.

So I guess to summarize, the keys for fighting game stories are to either do it right, do it simple, or don't do it at all.

In other news, I see you like Avatar up there in your original post. Do you know how long it took a single frame of that film to render, in the elaborate CGI shots? 47 hours. That's almost two straight days to generate one frame of film (and it's 24 frames in a second of film). They must have reserved half the world's server farms to get that thing fully rendered.

 

[4RM3D]

*snip*

Interesting explanation. I haven't looked at it that way yet.

In other news, I see you like Avatar up there in your original post. Do you know how long it took a single frame of that film to render, in the elaborate CGI shots? 47 hours. That's almost two straight days to generate one frame of film (and it's 24 frames in a second of film). They must have reserved half the world's server farms to get that thing fully rendered.

Yes, I have read that before. It's insane. But the end result was awesome. Definitely worth it.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

I don't like how people bring up JRPGs and cutscene heavy games and say these games have bad stories.

I can think of two huge japanese franchises this gen that feature a ridiculous amount of cutscenes.

Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4.

Both of these games are constantly called out for their poor stories but I completely disagree. I think the storylines in both of these games are incredible. The problem with them wasn't the stories themselves but how the stories were told.

Both used an incredible amount of cutscenes that lasted a very long time and we hear the complaints "But if I wanted to watch a film I would".

So Final Fantasy XIII's story is about a group of people brought together out of pure coincidence, who become cursed and are then exiled by the community and slowly killed by their own bodies. It's an emotional tale of 4 everyday people's lives being torn apart by an unknown entity...and Fang and Vanille...doing...something.

Metal Gear Solid 4's story is about a retired veteran spy being called back to work to deal with a personal enemy and then...crazy shit happens that I really can't even talk about without spoiling every other Metal Gear in history.

The problem here wasn't the story, the canon, the setting or the characters. The problem was that to tell the story Square Enix and Konami made you read and watch instead of play. In emotional dramas like these it is very difficult to stray from that formula without using the dreaded quick time events.

The problem with these games narrative (and many other games) is that we are sticking to old school game design yet trying to make big emotional stories.

A perfect example of this is another of my favourite games this generation, Tales of Vesperia

There is a huge part of this game that becomes redundant because of old school games design.

Spoiler: spoilers ho so be careful folks

The main character, Yuri Lowell, murders two men for the good of the masses

OUTSIDE OF THE SEPERATE BATTLE DIMENSION!

This is a big deal people.

What lessens the impact of this huge turning point of character is combat. Without the tradtion of combat in our video games Yuri's actions would have meant so much more to the player.

Spoiler: because this gives away the spoiler

Yuri and pals have killed so many random no-name knights or thieves that by the time the murders happen so that, even outside of battle, the death of even these "evil" characters with names and back stories just doesn't mean anything anymore.

So I thought about fixing this. Well removing combat completely wouldn't work, that would just render the game part a bit useless.

How about removing human characters from battle...nope that wouldn't work either, not really as some pieces of character development in this game are dependent on human vs human battles.

Ok so...how about a cutscene just after a fight with human enemies showing them getting back up and running away or maybe human characters don't disappear on the map.

I'm not too sure what I proposed right there would make all that much difference but it's a start I guess.

Another thing is, you don't have any control over Yuri's actions and while I don't think in this situation that giving you the choice in what he does is a good idea, I do however think that forcing you to input Yuri's actions would add weight to a complicated twist of personality.

Argh I dunno.

In conclusion I geniunely think that for games to tackle stories and narrative we need to sort out the play aspect. Sure Mass Effect does it fine but it kinda only really gives the illusion of freedom and yeah maybe something like Skyrim doesn't need to have an emotionally affecting story and I certainly don't want to make every game like Heavy Rain but I think developers, especially of the traditional kind of story based game, should start to re-think game mechanics and tie them further to the story.

 

[Tupolev]

In other news, I see you like Avatar up there in your original post. Do you know how long it took a single frame of that film to render, in the elaborate CGI shots? 47 hours. That's almost two straight days to generate one frame of film (and it's 24 frames in a second of film). They must have reserved half the world's server farms to get that thing fully rendered.

Couldn't have been a typical CGI frame render duration, or at least not for their computer network as a whole; a single minute of CGI would take almost 8 years at that rate.

//=====================

OT:

I think the single biggest issue is that notions like "gameplay harming the story" and "story getting in the way of gameplay" even exist. I don't think that there's a certain gameplay-to-story ratio that games need, but I expect that gameplay and story should work together rather than feel like they're obstructing each other. When they fight each other, rather than simply argue that gameplay and story are separable, the industry needs to realize that something has gone wrong.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

As for Bioshock... I couldn't find a better shooter that incorporates a good story. But I actually just remembered one: Deus Ex. Although that is more about story than story mechanics.

I thought the twist was great for about 10 seconds and then I'm realized that the plot doesn't make any sense.

Spoiler

It made no sense to send in an assassin to kill Ryan using physical attacks because he would be revived in a vita-chamber. Fontaine should've got to his food supply or water supply to poison him as the vita-chamber wouldn't work against that. There was no way for Fontaine to know Ryan disabled his vita-chamber. Plus, Ryan knew about the mind control so he could've commanded Jack to not kill him if he so pleased. The assassination plan was a horrible plan and only worked because Ryan killed himself. Jack was a great candidate to actually get to Ryan because he was unkillable and was mind controlled, but Ryan was unkillable as well. I actually thought there was going to be a twist at the end where Ryan was still alive (I also re-enabled his vita-chamber, I was just exploring the room, before he killed himself as you actually could do that).

 

[Lilani]

In other news, I see you like Avatar up there in your original post. Do you know how long it took a single frame of that film to render, in the elaborate CGI shots? 47 hours. That's almost two straight days to generate one frame of film (and it's 24 frames in a second of film). They must have reserved half the world's server farms to get that thing fully rendered.

Couldn't have been a typical CGI frame render duration, or at least not for their computer network as a whole; a single minute of CGI would take almost 8 years at that rate.

I'm sure they rented out server farms to render it. 47 hours was probably just the render time on their local machines. For the rest of them, they likely sent them out to server farms across the world to get rendered--rooms and buildings just full of servers and processors made and hooked together for that sort of heavy-duty processing.

 

[4RM3D]

I don't like how people bring up JRPGs and cutscene heavy games and say these games have bad stories.

I am not sure if you are suggesting I have said that or that you are talking about people in general. I haven't said JRPGs have bad stories. I only said the story mechanic is static and in need of an overhaul. I still enjoy most JRPGs.

Final Fantasy XIII *snip*

Final Fantasy XIII is only a Final Fantasy game in name, but not in spirit. Personally, I feel that Final Fantasy has died after FFX. The only reason the Final Fantasy franchise exists is because the name sells well. That is not to say the games after FFX are bad. Its just lost the spark of the Final Fantasy series. Now we are heading to a new generation of Final Fantasy. As for FFXIII that really was an interactive movie. Still a somewhat interesting movie though.

A perfect example of this is another of my favourite games this generation, Tales of Vesperia

Tales of Vesperia is my favorite JRPG game of this generation. It doesn't try anything new. Instead it tries to perfect the old school JRPG feeling. And it has succeeded. The issue you described in the spoiler still holds true. That is one of the limitation of incorporating story into a game. Most games suffer from this. Heck, even Hollywood movies and series have this issue. It all comes down to putting more drama into a scene. But it usually feels out of place with the rest of the movie.

 

[4RM3D]

I thought the twist was great for about 10 seconds and then I'm realized that the plot doesn't make any sense.

Maybe. I can't remember the details. It has been a while since I've played the game. Regardless, it was still something different from the usual storyless shooter. A breath of fresh air, even if it didn't succeed.