Million Dollar Actor, Five Dollar Writer

[Georgeman]

I'd just like to stand in defense of Devil May Cry 4 and state that the point of the cutscenes wasn't to tell a story (it's fairly simple), but rather to show off cool stuff. And in that regard, the game does it quite well. Also, this is one case where a deep and complex story might actually be harmful to the game...

The problem with Devil May Cry 4 is: Why not let us (the goddamn players) do all this cool stuff? It's really annoying at times.

Let me guess, you got that from the ZP review of the game, right?

I'd love to hear how you would include all the stuff that's done in the cutscenes into the control scheme without having to add half a dozen extra buttons and even more otherwise useless combinations.

That, or quick time events, which would likely annoy you even more...

Don't jump into conclusions. I have played the game before I even knew of the Escapist's existence.

The point is that without a meaningful reason for the cutscenes' existence, it stops being relevant and therefore necessary. Ok, you might not be able to do all this "cool stuff" in game but at least it's YOU who will be doing all this less cool stuff, not the fucking game.
You start feeling cheated and asking: "Why the hell do the developers not include all this in the game itself rather than contain it on cutscenes?"

And quick-time events aren't so bad... as long as they are not one-hit kills if you miss.

 

[KazNecro]

The Longest Journey you mentioned!

This makes you cool.

The fact that you mentioned this game makes you one the coolest people on the planet. One of the best written and enjoyable games I've ever played. The only taint in that game was that it had to be followed by a terribly written sequel (IMHO), Dreamfall. It almost brings tears to my eyes to consider that such a high point in gaming be connected to such a low one.

 

[Dhatz]

mass effect. the texts were unnatural and the expressions, intonation and motion in cutscenes plainly sucked. so did side missions. they just didn't try(I'm saying if something will be in there it has to be awesome in all ways,BTW same counts for the shadows), maybe only Ash's performance was interesting and quite believable.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Resident Evil comes to mind immediately. its not the worst or best however you would rate it but it is the most mainstream. Next in line would be Bayonetta XD

 

[LiquidGrape]

The Longest Journey you mentioned!

This makes you cool.

The fact that you mentioned this game makes you one the coolest people on the planet. One of the best written and enjoyable games I've ever played. The only taint in that game was that it had to be followed by a terribly written sequel (IMHO), Dreamfall. It almost brings tears to my eyes to consider that such a high point in gaming be connected to such a low one.

It seems The Longest Journey is experiencing some kind of renaissance.
I approve.
But I enjoyed Dreamfall for all its flaws.
Though I do not count the writing as one of them.
In many ways, what Tørnquist did in Dreamfall was more daring than what the aforementioned (and brilliant) original set out to do.
The way I see it; if the fundamental theme of The Longest Journey was growth and the search for ones function, then Dreamfall concerns itself with the loss of purpose.
April Ryan has undergone an obvious and severe change between the two incarnations, and I myself think the transition is perfectly fleshed-out.
Zoë Castillo‎ was also likeable, and served as a more than passable reintroduction to the world of Arcadia.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Alone in the Dark was horrid on many levels. Also Fallout 3 and Oblivion were poorly written.

I agree on Oblivion. I think it's a terrible game overall. Also DragonQuest: COTHC had such a forgettable and clichéd storyline; the bad guy wants to destroy the world because humans made his girlfriend cry. Srsly, WTF?

Painkiller was also quite badly written, but the story in that otherwise great game had so little part that it didn't bother.

Otherwise, I can't think of many games I've played that woulda had terrible writing.

 

[Virulain]

I remember the first time I played an FF game--it was FF7, in fact. I was completely entranced up until the whole lifestream thing, wherein Cloud's story was revealed, and then I put down the game in complete disgust at the cop-out. Of course, that was over 7 years ago now, I guess, so I no longer remember what point of the (not very original) story put me off. As for other games with terrible writing? The Bouncer is one. I'll not mention gameplay. The Last Remnant could have been muuuuch better--the story's intriguing, but never feels very fleshed out, and the dialogue (and the MC's... characterization) leave much to be desired.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Final Fantasy games have writing that makes me want to rage. All of the ones I played anyway.

Are you High? Final Fantasy games are the Epitome of good writing. It's the only thing it has going for it, considering it's gameplay is a turn based system of copious level grinding (FF 11 and 12 not withstanding). Have you actually played the games or are you just going by what every one else said?

Back on topic, I don't agree with what you said about unskipable being a collection of bad game stories, because there are quite a number of them whose plots get better as you progress further into the game.

Good writing by game standards, sure. But good writing overall? FFXII is the first game in the series that has a plot which could stand on its own and its one of the most reviled games in the series.

Ok FF4 and 6 I will give you FF7 is a bit messy.... in script/dialog it gets the job done and I suppose if you compare it to the low standards of hollywood of gaming its good.

FFX had a bad protagonist. Really, I can forgive its other flaws because they were testing the waters on a new console, but if I don't like the character I'm playing the rest of the story can be pure gold and it's not going to engage me. With that said, I'd begrudgingly concede that it's a decent story if they hadn't followed it up with X-2 and pissed all over their characters. (Yuna is NOT slutty pop-star material, dammit.)

FFX to me is half a game it has a good plot some ok dialog/script but it wonders off and suffers from modern half a game syndrome. The only thing that was worth remembering was the shpere grid system and the ability to customize weapons(that came in to late in the game....) else but the Zombies ruling the world of the fish...

FFIX was the amalgamation of all the classic stories polished to a mirror shine. It still has flaws, but if taken as a homage to old school gaming they're forgivable.

FF9 was the last true FF even with the weak story its more like FF4 with the akward writing and what not but the game play(equipment,skills,ect) is the best the series has to offer.
And the characters are still rememberable, I think it and FF7 have the same issues crappy strung along plot with some good writing inbetween.

FFVIII was an abomination; none of it made any damn sense. FFVII was good but highly overrated; the story is very simple, and the writers (maybe the localizers?) mistook swear words for personality with two of the characters.

I would not call it a abomination if you pay attention to the story and characters and forget everything else its a nice romance story but the gameplay was horrible. Once I got use to it I liked begin able to control who gets what at lvl up with the but otherwise they should leave the gamepaly experiments to the side games and leave the main game alone.

FFVI was... excellent. The story was simplistic, it couldn't stand on its own without being fleshed out, but for the time the game was released it was as close to perfect as an RPG storyline could get.

6 has a simplistic story? out of all the FFs its the damn best story wise.

FFV was utterly forgettable, and while FFIV was good for its time it's laughable now. FFIII has a bare-bones story, as do FFII and FFI.

Looking at how bad things are FF4(even bits of 2 and 3) has a better plot,script and dialog than most games....

But ya 1 has no story,2 and 3 try to do something more but really go no where, 5 is pretty much the same

As far as JRPGS go, the FF series tells the best stories out of any of them. Within the wider scope of gaming, other games have told far superior stories.

I dunno FF12 was weak story wise,so so character wise gameplay was crap....bland equipment and broken skill system do not make a FF... and I dread FF13 because its everything bad about FF design......
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Oh and let me rip on FF7 some more, I liked the metria system but didn't care for everyone learning everything it made it a bit...generic but since everyone had unique limit breaks it pretty much made up for it, I didn't care for the one weapon one armor setup.... FF6 is the pinnacle of equipment and unique skills minus the whole magic for everyone crap.

Anyway FF7 characters were ok I did not mind clouds issues, the story/dailog was B anime stuff all in all ok for me its a bit of a down step from FF4/6 FF9 was god send then things got worse with FFX FF12 fixed the level design issues but raped skills and equipment the live action combat is a not a issue to me, story was ok characters were good to bland...I kept having wet dreams of Balthier having Edgers tool skills.....*sigh* .
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back on topic

Its typical modern media design emphasis a story/dialog even plot is fodder the only thing that matters is the "pretty" that puts asses in seats. And pretty is either the pretty drug addicts of hollywood(or hot 3d people) or explosions....... the shiny makes them forget how bad it is....

 

[Halbert]

Re: Final Fantasy games

I love me some Final Fantasy, I really do. Because I grew up on it, it'll always hold a special place in my gamer's heart. That being said, Square pulled some really crappy story-telling moves out of their bags.

Take Final Fantasy 2 (or 4 if you're a purist). You spend the entire game chasing the bad guy. You finally catch him and . . . wait, what's this? He was just being mind-controlled? By the real bad guy? Oh, well let's go get him!

And why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah, because it was the same thing that they did in FF8! They even did a lesser version of this in FF9. "Yay, we beat the bad guy! Oh, wait, there's another bad guy? Who is this fellow? Oh well, I guess we have to destroy him, too."

I never played past FFX (and the writing in that one is up for debate as well), but as much as I loved the series, it had some serious writing problems.

 

[JMeganSnow]

I find it interesting that people aren't making any distinction between a bad plot and bad WRITING. While the two sometimes go hand-in-hand (and bad writing can make even a decent plot stink to high heaven), you can tell the difference. Bioware, for instance, generally has good writing--which they need, because even their good plots are un-original to the nth degree. Bethesda sometimes pulls out a good plot, but their writing is usually poor. Obsidian does some SPECTACULAR writing, but their games are generally buggy and unfinished.

Writing for games is a lot harder than just about any other type of writing because there are some very harsh limits on the delivery of the writing. It's not like a book where someone is predictably going to start at the beginning and finish at the end, so you can put in lots of well-placed and -timed foreshadowing, alternate scenes, etc. etc. etc. Even the most railroady games are going to have delivery issues due to the perceptual switching from action-sequence to cut-scene/dialog sequence.

One thing that may help is to come up with novel ways to avoid the whole "cut scene" and "locked-eye-contact" dialog that Yahtzee was complaining about with standard RPG's. Valve did this with Half-Life 2, after all.

Most games are still chasing the blockbuster model, though, so there's not a lot of innovation in the front-end stuff.

 

[Brotherofwill]

Your argument kind of went down the drain for me when you mentioned Max Payne in the games with good story bit.

Really? NY cop on a revenge trip is a good story that engages the player to care for the hero and look forward for twists? C'mon.

A guy named Max Payne, with 1 grim and 1 normal facial expression, that goes around killing people... Am I missing something? The dream level was awesome though.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Alpha Prime. Clear winner for stupid dialogues.
"The shot my leg dead. Bam! Leg dead."

 

[Taninger]

Games with bad writing? Where to begin... Chrono Cross. It's a fantastic story, really, but the pacing and sudden dump of exposition at the end means it's difficult as all hell to follow or understand.

Games with good writing? Earthbound/Mother 3. I haven't played the first in the series, but if it's anything like the other two, I'd better get onto it. The stories are good enough, but the writing sells the games. In no other series of games have I gone out of my way to talk with every single NPC at least once simply because I was INTERESTED in what they had to say, regardless of plot-relevance.

 

[qbanknight]

you make a hard to refute argument, particularly that stories in games don't have to suck. some people blow off stories so much that they don't think it's important. and you're right, not all games need stories, but those that do should at least try to make something that isn't terrible

 

[Senrab]

Answer: Nearly every Final Fantasy game. Ever.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I really don't have anything to add to this. I really don't think that many game developers are putting a lot of time into thinking what could be done with games as a storytelling medium. There's a lot of things you can do in games that you can't in a movie or a book. For example, as an interactive medium, games can involve the audience directly, where other forms of story will always be indirect.
Even a company that produces really fun games like Valve isn't really doing anything with their medium that can't be done just as well in a book or movie (and I say that being a huge lover of the Half Life series). Still, what can you do? As yet, the world has yet to recognize my genius (ego-laugh), so it's not like I can really change the way games are made at the moment. All you can really do is go on (at great length and in great detail) about complaints, which will be ignored.

 

[The Last Parade]

Final Fantasy games have writing that makes me want to rage. All of the ones I played anyway.

Are you High? Final Fantasy games are the Epitome of good writing. It's the only thing it has going for it, considering it's gameplay is a turn based system of copious level grinding (FF 11 and 12 not withstanding). Have you actually played the games or are you just going by what every one else said?

Back on topic, I don't agree with what you said about unskipable being a collection of bad game stories, because there are quite a number of them whose plots get better as you progress further into the game.

hahaha, you had me goin' there for a second, nice one

 

[sunpop]

Gears of war 2 and actually I think it was the guy in that picture who during the whole game cries about his wife being taken or killed by the locust. The minute I heard him say that I paused the game looked at my friend and said "What the hell is wrong with this douche!?" The whole time I played he keeps going on about his wife when everyone in this damn game has lost most if not all of there family the same way and we are supposed to feel bad for this generic jackass?

Then there's the list of games who pass off their villain as evil because they use the tired old formula of this guy is bad because he wants to enslave or destroy the world. We need more games to be written like black company where it's actually good story and the bad guys aren't so clear and the people you follow work for the bad guys who are only kind of evil if you go against them. Then you end up liking some of the "Bad guys" because you realize they are actually pretty nice if you look past some things about them.

 

[xqxm]

I know i might be shot for this, but a game where the storytelling and weak cinematics actually compelled me to turn off the game and uninstall it straight away, was none other than Silent Hill 2.

Maybe it's the translation from Japanese to English. Maybe it's the fact that the voice actors seem to have as much humanity and emotion as a block of ice. Maybe i just loathe hyped up japanese games with pretentions, and i subconciously put it in the same category of hate as the Final Fantasy and Metal Gear series in my head.

Maybe if i had no prior expectations and hopes, i would have recieved it more favourably, but as it stands, i can't stand it.

 

[Aedwynn]

The writing in Oblivion earns my ire, and the fact that Patrick Stewart doesn't make it past the tutorial... bah.