Poll: Do you really care?

[Johny64]

I was just replaying through God of War and I thought, do I really care about Kratos' goals or am I just playing without really thinking about the story. So fellow Escapists, do you really care about the protagonists goals while you play games?

 

[OpticalJunction]

Sometimes I do. Depends on how well the story is written. Video games are no different to novels in that respect.

 

[Iwata]

Story is always important to me. And I quite like the one presented as Kratos' roaring rampage of revenge.

 

[Yossarian1507]

In Heavy Rain, KotOR I & II, Planescape: Torment, Mass Effect etc. I care. In games like Call of Duty - not so much. Plus it's impossible for me to care, if I'm kicked out of immersion by things bugging me. That's the very main reason I didn't care for Gordon Freeman and entire City 17 in HL2.

 

[Zac Smith]

Depends on how good the story itself is. Right now I'm playing Crysis 2 and Alcatraz is completely voiceless and emotionless, who just kills aliens and does what he's told. So in that case I don't care, I just like blowing up stuff and killing aliens

 

[AngelicSven]

I definitely do.

To be fair, GoW has a really bad story and the character is blindly stupid and unrelateable.
Try something with a good story.

 

[FPSMadPaul]

Sometimes I do. Depends on how well the story is written. Video games are no different to novels in that respect.

This ^

 

[Vrach]

If the game's story is good, then yes, definitely.

 

[Darth_pipsqueak]

I really liked GOW2 because of it's history refferences.. Nearly every level had something to do with the character as well as a (very loose) plot hole from greek mythology. Though of course you don't play GOW to hear about Greek mythology, you play it because of it's simply awesome gameplay. I can't really decide in this one.. GOW is very, very good, and all of the games (at least the first two) has a good amount of story as well as gameplay.. Though the series isn't very good at tangling them together.. I guess you can say that you can do both, though i do listen to the story because of the (again VERY loose) history refferences

 

[lobster1077]

If the story is compelling then sure. For instance Mass Effect's gameplay isn't all that terrific, but its story, characters and dialogue are all brilliantly done.