endtherapture said:
EDIT: Yeah he has no idea what he is going on about, saying by interacting with a medium, the story is of a worse quality than if you'd read it in a book/seen it in a film? Yeah. He is completely wrong.
He's right on that. Stories in games are generally shit because that's the most exciting kind of story, B-grade shit wherein you kill armies of people in between brief exposition points. I believe Yahtzee touched on this at some point. Let's break down some of the best stories in games, or at least what people usually say are the best:
HALO- One man must stop an army of aliens (by himself) from destroying Earth/the Universe.
Elder Scrolls- One person is chosen by destiny to stop an army from destroying the land (technically by themselves).
Mass Effect- One person must stop an army of aliens (with a small group of people) from destroying Earth/the Galaxy.
Uncharted- One man must stop someone from possessing the power to destroy/take over Earth.
Diablo- One person (or a few, if it's multiplayer) must stop evil from taking over the land.
Max Payne- One man must avenge the death of his family by killing everyone involved.
FFVII- One man (along with the help of a few others) must stop one man (in possession of an army) from destroying the world.
Beyond Good and Evil- One woman must uncover a conspiracy and stop aliens from taking over the world.
What I'm getting at is that game stories are either A: One person against (insert large group of enemies here) to save the world/universe/family or B: One person against (insert large group of enemies here) to avenge their family. And there's two ways of delivering this story. One is the linear model and the other is the open world/make your own adventure model. The former makes for better stories than the latter, because having people write their own stories makes for shitty stories, stories where the hero missed the opportunity to corner the bad guy because he left to go get drunk, play poker, and shoot random people.
Games haven't really gotten to the point where they have GOOD stories that reveal something of the human condition and make people talk about them in classrooms for centuries to come because, as so many people on these forums point out, most people want their games to be FUN first and foremost. There's very few people in this world that can do both FUN and SMART (which is a generally accepted characteristic for a great story), and there's even fewer people who can do it while letting the player take over the pen.
The only game I can think of that presented a story on par with many films or books is Heavy Rain.
TL;DR: Game's can't have great stories like books or movies because they have to be fun first. And fun usually means lots and lots of violence to the gaming community.