Poll: Is It Fair to Comment on a Game's Story Without Having Played It?

[Dalisclock]

I'd agree that Lets Plays gives you a good idea of what happened. But there is a proviso. The lets player could influence your opinion.

When I played The Witcher 3, I was utterly repulsed by Yennefer. She is a Supervilllan and her actions disgust me. And this is a game with the Bloody Baron and Whorseon Junior.

I was suprised to find out that I seem to be the only one so annoyed by her. If I did a lets play, I could imagine having a negative impact on someone's impression of the game. I could imagine many streamers affecting opinions like this

If it makes you feel any better, I had much the same feeling about her. She comes across as utterly selfish and is more then happy to dick anyone else over if it gets her what she wants at the moment.

So yeah, I went with Triss. That and the fact there's this whole "But we used to be together" stick Yenn pulls, except I(not having read the books) and Geralt(having amnesia) don;t remember much of that and her character was more or less persona non grata for the first two games. Triss, for all of her faults, at least was a part of the previous 2 games.

As for the OP, I'm gonna go with sometimes. In some games the story needs player interaction to really feel a part of it and just reading about it doesn't really have the same impact. Final Fantasy games have silly plots most of the time, but combined with gameplay somehow feel compelling. OTOH, some games the story is so isolated from the gameplay that it really doesn't matter. Painkiller's story was entirely relegated to the 4 or 5 cutscenes in the entire game and had almost nothing to do with gameplay. A lot of early video games(especially the ones where the entire plot is in the manual or relegated to the beginning and ending text crawls) can also be judged without having to play them.

The original Metal Gear(from 1987 or so), has a plot that can fit on a postcard and the only real point of interest in the whole thing comes pretty much at the very end(Big Boss, your CO, was actually the bad guy the whole time and betrays you). Playing it doesn't actually make this plot any more interesting(because there isn't really any plot beyond that).

 

[Drathnoxis]

I say nay. Even in games that are linear and isolate gameplay from story, what you miss out on is some of the context (in the form of difficulty and how it feels to navigate levels) and a lot of the pacing. It's like reading only the cliff notes to a novella. Will it get you through an eighth grade reading essay? Maybe. But ten minutes into a book club discussion and people will start giving you funny looks.

No, your analogy is wrong. It's more like listening to the audiobook. You don't get certain aspects of the medium, like intentional typos, italics, paragraph layout, font sizes, or what-have-you, and you get some inflection from the reader that may not be part of the actual book. Are you going to say that people who listen to audiobooks can't comment on the story?

 

[Auron225]

Only in a very general sense, and your opinion should be served with a pinch of salt.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'd agree that Lets Plays gives you a good idea of what happened. But there is a proviso. The lets player could influence your opinion.

When I played The Witcher 3, I was utterly repulsed by Yennefer. She is a Supervilllan and her actions disgust me. And this is a game with the Bloody Baron and Whorseon Junior.

I was suprised to find out that I seem to be the only one so annoyed by her. If I did a lets play, I could imagine having a negative impact on someone's impression of the game. I could imagine many streamers affecting opinions like this

If it makes you feel any better, I had much the same feeling about her. She comes across as utterly selfish and is more then happy to dick anyone else over if it gets her what she wants at the moment.

I actually like that she's a couple of steps short of being a powerful villain, and that Geralt is sorta doomed to love her. The game in general makes Geralt come across as being powerless to make any sort of change in this world, dispite being a badass, so I enjoy extending this to his love life. And you can tell Yennefer truly does love Geralt, but that she also finds her own ambitions more important than that.

 

[Myria]

[...]It's more like listening to the audiobook. You don't get certain aspects of the medium, like intentional typos, italics, paragraph layout, font sizes, or what-have-you, and you get some inflection from the reader that may not be part of the actual book. [...]

Pretty much this.

In many instances someone watching a gameplay is going to 'get' more of the story than the player, who often has other concerns as gameplay elements, sadly, often get in the way of (poorly timed) story elements. You don't have to watch very many Youtube vids or Twitch streams to see a player miss major story elements entirely -- oftentimes to their, or their viewers, great frustration -- because they were too busy with whatever the game had them doing at the time.

I honestly can't think of any instances where the reverse would be apt to happen to any meaningful degree -- I don't consider multiple playthroughs relevant as you can also watch multiple playthroughs -- so I'm not sure it couldn't be successfully argued that a person watching a playthrough will often be in a better position to comment on the story than the actual player.

Although, to be honest, I think this says more about the sorry state of storytelling in games than it does about anything else.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Hmm....

It really depends.

Sometimes a story thing can be so bad that you can instantly form a judgement on it because it's something that completely butchers the experience (*coughOtherMcough*), but as a general rule, you should play a thing before judging the story. Games are, after all, an interactive medium, and the gameplay often served to reinforce the story.

That said, I would agree with whoever you disagreed with about Starcraft 2, although maybe not about the same things (I dunno what your conversation was about). As someone who spent a lot of my teen years in love with the lore of the original games, the new trilogy gets so, so, SO much wrong with the Zerg and Protoss that unless I get Legacy of the Void for free like I got Heart of the Swarm for free (or I get it for like 5 bucks), I don't think I want to finish the new trilogy.

 

[Chewster]

I think it's conceivable that there are games where the story is so intertwined with the gameplay aspect that simply watching it cannot do it justice. The StarCraft series are definitely not among them, however.

There are however missions where you have to make a choice.

For example Safe Haven, where a bunch of colonists have been infected with a zerg virus and the Protoss come to exterminate them. Dr Ariel Hanson convinces Raynor to stop the Protoss, which allows her time to develop a cure. Or you can do the Haven's Fall mission and side with the Protoss, and if you do this you'll find that Dr Hanson was infested all along.

So your choice is justified either way, and you only see this if you follow both missions. This is quite likely if you are actually playing the game, as it is easy to play the other mission through the mission archives. But if you are watching a Let's Play, the streamer will probably only play one and not the other.

Sure, but do those choices have a massive effect on the story? I admit it has been a while since I played Wings of Liberty but I don't recall the decisions drastically changing the story in any way. It wouldn't even really be that hard to find someone who had played both and see what happens anyhow. And if all the game does is find a way to justify both decisions, what difference is there, really? There is zero consequence to choosing either one.

And this is the fundamental problem with moral choices in games. It's too difficult to actually alter the game in a radical way based on a decision made by the player so unless it's just one of several different endings or whatever, the choice usually only has minimal effects on the rest of the game as the game twists to accommodate whatever decision is made. Mass Effect sort of tried with the Alenko vs. Williams decision but all that really decided was who was going to pop up in your squad in the third game.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

From my perspective, certainly not. Without spending time with characters and immersing myself in the world, I find it really hard to care about what's going on in a cut scene.

As a kid I can remember watching the final cutscene for MGS3: Snake Eater when my cousin completed it. I'd spent the last half an hour sitting through dialogue, a small boss battle and yet more dialogue and there was still no end in sight for it. I was thoroughly bored. That same cutscene two weeks later, after I'd played the game through, had a massive impact on me.

I could say the same about the "Succeeding You" cinematic from Frozen Throne. Having not played through Arthas' descent, with only other disjointed cinematics to go on, that scene, whilst still awesome to a younger me, just didn't have any weight to it until I'd played through the game. Because even though Warcraft and Starcraft are linear experiences, there's unit chatter and story elements in stages that help string the narrative together.

You won't even get that watching a Let's Play, because you've removed the interactive aspect from the medium.

 

[TheFinish]

I think it depends a lot on the game, but for the most part, yes, you can comment on the story without having played the game. I'm trying to think of games where playing it was integral for me to enjoy the story, and the only ones that comes to mind are Life is Strange and oddly, Dishonored. The first because it's about your choices and I think watching someone play it is not the same as doing it yourself; Dishonored because it was the world building and design and the lore that made me fall in love with it, not the mostly cookie cutter story and somewhat forgettable characters.

 

[Hawki]

I think the big question is "how you define a story?". You can go with the clinical description, ie based solely on the script and how well it is written. Or you can go with the emotional connection with the story as how well you felt connected to it.

I've got two types of definition:

1) Story, as in, being the same as the plot. So, for instance, a piece of fiction could have a good plot that's told terribly, and therefore still have a good story.

2) Story, as in, the culmination of numerous aspects of a work of fiction (plot, characters, worldbuilding, themes, character development, storytelling, etc.)

Usually it doesn't matter too much, but it can be helpful to make the distinction at times.

In many instances someone watching a gameplay is going to 'get' more of the story than the player, who often has other concerns as gameplay elements, sadly, often get in the way of (poorly timed) story elements. You don't have to watch very many Youtube vids or Twitch streams to see a player miss major story elements entirely -- oftentimes to their, or their viewers, great frustration -- because they were too busy with whatever the game had them doing at the time.

I've seen players miss gameplay elements, but not story elements. Or at least, not miss them in the sense you're referring to them as, more just going by them. Off the top of my head, Doom 2016, where players would never bother with the lore logs. Course, then I got the game and discovered I wasn't missing out on much, so there is that.

Hmm....

It really depends.

Sometimes a story thing can be so bad that you can instantly form a judgement on it because it's something that completely butchers the experience (*coughOtherMcough*), but as a general rule, you should play a thing before judging the story. Games are, after all, an interactive medium, and the gameplay often served to reinforce the story.

I'll be frank, while I can't call Other M an example of stellar storytelling, its control scheme is the biggest nail in the coffin for me. I can play and enjoy Metroid games with barebones stories (e.g. Super Metroid and Zero Mission), because as sparse as their stories are, they're at least fun to play. I'd maintain that a good story can salvage poor gameplay and vice versa. However, Other M (and Hunters) lack in both these areas, while something like Fusion excels in both of them.

That said, I would agree with whoever you disagreed with about Starcraft 2, although maybe not about the same things (I dunno what your conversation was about). As someone who spent a lot of my teen years in love with the lore of the original games, the new trilogy gets so, so, SO much wrong with the Zerg and Protoss that unless I get Legacy of the Void for free like I got Heart of the Swarm for free (or I get it for like 5 bucks), I don't think I want to finish the new trilogy.

No one particular issue, just...well, I guess everything. Took at least three years for the bombshell to be dropped. I suppose I can trust her that she (and others) played SC1 like I did (would have been 9 when it came out), but often times it felt like we played completely different games.

Per the above statement of yours, I'd rather agree to disagree. Best thing I can say about spending time debating SC1/2 is that it gave me the heads up not to enter The Last Jedi debates/shitstorms.

 

[Avnger]

I feel like the story is entirely fair game as long as you've done something like watch a full length let's play. Someone else brought up audiobooks above, maybe you'll miss out on some of the minute details, but you definitely understand the story itself.

 

[Hawki]

I voted ?yes?, but only because it?s just comenting. If I were going to review or place judgement on it expecting people to listen to me, then I?d have better played through it at least to know what the hell I?m judging.

 

[Silvanus]

Voted yes. I've not played The Last of Us, but I've watched an old flatmate of mine play through it from start to finish, seen the whole thing.

You can't get a full sense of the gameplay, but you can still get a general idea of it.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm gonna throw out that I've watched the film version of FFXIII(all the cutscenes and some of the important dialouges), which comes out to about 10 hours of "Story" and "Character Development". Despite not having played it, I think I can safely say that the story isn't good and the characters are mostly flat and annoying. There are some really cool and interesting concepts in there, but very little of it translates to actual interesting story and characters. Don't ask me why I did it because I honestly don't know at this point.

One could make an argument that the gameplay recontextualizes it, but from what I've heard there isn't any to speak of.

 

[Buffoon1980]

It's fair to comment on it, sure. It's not fair to assume you know everything about it. It's probably particularly unwise to comment on stuff like pacing or character development, as these can rely heavily on the gameplay. And of course some games have a story that is far more intrinsically linked to the gameplay.

 

[Erttheking]

Nine times out of ten I'd say yes. Most games are very straight forward in their story telling and you can easily get the full experience via a playthrough. There's the occasional odd ball like Dark Souls, but they're the exception to the rule.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I think it's the equivalent of having a book read to you vs reading it yourself. You're still experiencing the story so you can have an opinion on it. Since we're talking about the game's story then I don't think not having played the game and just having watched a Let's Play doesn't invalidate her opinion although she probably shouldn't have just casually admitted that as if it didn't matter. Now if you're talking about the gameplay then yeah, not having played the game yourself invalidates your opinion.

 

[Pyrian]

It's not fair to assume you know everything about it.

Well, that's true even if you have played it.