Story and gameplay don't mix? What do you prefer?

[leodetroit]

First read this before going to write your comment.

As I have grown up, I realise that I have started to play more games that have good stories instead of good gameplay. Or what I mean is that I can't play a game with a horrible story.

I really liked Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us. I thought other people liked them too, but when I saw an article about the rising numbers of story-based games I saw from the comments that a lot of people feel that these games threaten the "game side of games".

Many said that The Last of Us was nothing more than an interactive movie and that the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite was horrible and people only liked it for the story. But I thought that TLoU had excellent and greatly balanced gameplay and I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite's vigors and gunplay.

I think that some of these gamers who complain of these story-based games feel like games should just be that, games with only the gameplay mattering, nothing else. But I can't just play a game; I can't play a mindless fps-multiplayer or some retro-game with an extremely bad plot. I need a good story with my gameplay.

And before somebody says something like "then watch a f*****g movie, you elitist f*g!", I DON'T LIKE MOVIES! I think that games are more immersive than movies and that games have much bigger story-potential than something you just observe. Always when I watch a movie, I always think "man, if I could just play this instead of watching". Movies aren't as good as games, that's my opinion.

And it's not like I don't play anything else than story-based games. I've put more that 200 hours into Empire Total War, Civ 5 and Crusader Kings 2. I just prefer a game with a good story.

What do you think? Can story and gameplay mix? Do you think that story-based games (Walking Dead, Gone Home) are nothing more than wannabe-movies?

 

[Zhukov]

Short version:

Fuck yo "game-y" games, gimme dat narrative goodness.

Long version:

The two aren't mutually exclusive. We can have both. I can get all teary eyed over the ending of The Walking Dead while someone else shoots his millionth Russian.

Ideally I would like to see story driven games where the gameplay and narrative are seamlessly joined at the hip. But that's a hope for the future. There are technical hurdles, gaming is a young medium etc etc, they're just not there yet.

Incidentally, I thoroughly enjoyed both the story and gameplay of Infinite, but I do agree that there was a definite disconnect between the two.

 

[LAGG]

No they're NOT mutually exclusive.

Story: your fate written by the go... ahem... writers.
Gameplay: you're the master of your own destiny.

Have your choice, mine is: No gods or kings, only Man.

That been said, the game that got me closer to ever crying was XCOM:EN, I miss my lost soldiers You know, they didn't die because the writer said so, or because the designer created a bullshit "choose who lives and who dies" situation. They died because I fucked up and shit happened, and nothing can beat that.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. We can have both. I can get all teary eyed over the ending of The Walking Dead while someone else shoots his millionth Russian.

"Russian"? You mean polygons? GLHF

 

[leodetroit]

No they're NOT mutually exclusive.

Story: your fate written by the go... ahem... writers.
Gameplay: you're the master of your own destiny.

Have your choice, mine is: No gods or kings, only Man.

You know that it's pretty funny to say that and have a line from the original Bioshock, a story-based game.

 

[LAGG]

"your choice" is a quote from the writers of Bioshock dude...

What??!! Nooooooooo!!!1!!one!1 :O

You know that it's pretty funny to say that and have a line from the original Bioshock, a story-based game.

Bioshock (the first one) has good gameplay and good story (backstory). I said it's not mutually exclusive.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Well, when it comes down to it, gameplay is what make video games unique and offers something the other major mediums do not. Mixing gameplay and a good story is awesome, but if I can only have one and not the other, I'll take good gameplay any day. I can always read a book for a good story. I can't revert to books for good gameplay.

 

[gargantual]

First read this before going to write your comment.

As I have grown up, I realise that I have started to play more games that have good stories instead of good gameplay. Or what I mean is that I can't play a game with a horrible story.

I really liked Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us. I thought other people liked them too, but when I saw an article about the rising numbers of story-based games I saw from the comments that a lot of people feel that these games threaten the "game side of games".

Many said that The Last of Us was nothing more than an interactive movie and that the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite was horrible and people only liked it for the story. But I thought that TLoU had excellent and greatly balanced gameplay and I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite's vigors and gunplay.

I think that some of these gamers who complain of these story-based games feel like games should just be that, games with only the gameplay mattering, nothing else. But I can't just play a game; I can't play a mindless fps-multiplayer or some retro-game with an extremely bad plot. I need a good story with my gameplay.

And before somebody says something like "then watch a f*****g movie, you elitist f*g!", I DON'T LIKE MOVIES! I think that games are more immersive than movies and that games have much bigger story-potential than something you just observe. Always when I watch a movie, I always think "man, if I could just play this instead of watching". Movies aren't as good as games, that's my opinion.

And it's not like I don't play anything else than story-based games. I've put more that 200 hours into Empire Total War, Civ 5 and Crusader Kings 2. I just prefer a game with a good story.

What do you think? Can story and gameplay mix? Do you think that story-based games (Walking Dead, Gone Home) are nothing more than wannabe-movies?

I think the problem is bigger than games. We have a fiction crisis where mediums that display imagery are concerned. There are bad books but its usually pulp or authors that fall off. Everything else is waay too commercialized.

Some games that try to blend consequence from gameplay and story actually do better than some movies do at communicating story. Back in the days films 'action, thriller whatever used to be paced. and games were too. Look at how many shooters and rpgs were grounded in exploration, puzzelry, development, resource scavenging and conservation.

You found out who characters were through their circumstances, that opened their layers (the way it's supposed to be). Everything was contained to the situation that they were in, not thrown in for ratings.

Now exposition and talking head is all lazy, with tired dry wit and pretense attitudes, or stereotypes put up in poor attempts to make scene 'not boring' and punctuated with action that has no point. or starts off early out of fear that the viewer will turn off if not constantly titillated. It's like tasking an ad-agency dude with making a game or a movie.

Them folk just need to let programmers and artists do their thing, instead of trying to milk whatever gets players attention.

 

[Racecarlock]

Katamari actually mixes gameplay and story perfectly. Everything you do contributes to the narrative of getting the stars back. It's not a deep story, but whatever.

I'm just glad story people are getting their games too. I just don't want every game to be story focused.

 

[gargantual]

Back in the days films 'action, thriller whatever used to be paced.

You know, I dislike almost every single on "golden days" comment, since they're in almost every case wrong, and this is another example. That you're saying this shows you basically haven't watched any actually old movies. Old movies's (and I'm talking movies that are more than 40 years old) pacing is fucking wretched. No really, the reason most people don't watch old movies is simply because the pacing is so fucking atrocious they're almost not possible to actually sit through, despite all the interesting philosophical dilemmas some of them had.

Watch the Godfather, that's probably one of the absolutely best movies released in the 70's. watch it, and you'll remember how fucking slow that movie is in the middle when al Pacino is in Sicilly, and this was, mid you, the best of the best. The elite high class of movies back then, and the pacing is soooooo fucking terrible, it's almost impossible to enjoy it.

The rest of your post is mostly nostalgic nonsence, taking the best examples from old things, glorifying them, and then comparing it to the worst of the worst released today. But the part that I quoted is so wrong, that I just had to comment.

Have a nice day .

Yeah and consider why people are willing to enjoy it regardless of whether it's slow in some areas or not. Its the artists intentions, and audiences were conditioned to taking in the environment because it was part of the story. Means there's an actual reason for it. Maybe it turned YOU off, but maybe the film's success should be a testament that it didn't derail the whole movie.

When something is engaging enough people stay in regardless of it's length (only ex would be LOTR ROTK's ending but that's because viewers already felt the needed resolution after mt doom). Believe it or not 'setting' actually has the proven capability of doing that to viewers, just as scavenging for health packs causes people to explore vast vg levels where they would have otherwise ignored stuff looking for the nearest exit.

I'm not hating on all means of entertainment today. I'm just saying that pacing whether at breakneck pace, or slow to establish 'passage over time' should be in service of what the creators were trying to communicate. But pacing is not as common as it used to be.

And before you blow a blood vessel, yes among all the good works in game tv and film, theres a lot of poorly established, harried contrived ish out there, that fails to establish itself.. So...failing to see your point bub.

 

[TehCookie]

They can mix, but I have no problems if they want to focus on one or the other since I enjoy both. I enjoy Disgaea which is horrible segregated story and gameplay, and DMC which pretty much lacks a story but has awesome gameplay.

However I do dislike cinematic games that try to make you play a movie. There are multiple ways to tell a story, VNs would be closer to novels than movies even though they're story heavy. I like story based games to be told in the style of a game, not a movie. As for an example I'd say Persona 3/4, and you can see they didn't transfer to animation as well. Still enjoyed the series for fan pandering, but on it's own it doesn't hold up to the greatness of the game.

 

[Delerien]

I really liked Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us. I thought other people liked them too, but when I saw an article about the rising numbers of story-based games I saw from the comments that a lot of people feel that these games threaten the "game side of games".

Many said that The Last of Us was nothing more than an interactive movie and that the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite was horrible and people only liked it for the story. But I thought that TLoU had excellent and greatly balanced gameplay and I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite's vigors and gunplay.

I think that some of these gamers who complain of these story-based games feel like games should just be that, games with only the gameplay mattering, nothing else. But I can't just play a game; I can't play a mindless fps-multiplayer or some retro-game with an extremely bad plot. I need a good story with my gameplay.

I guess everyone sets priorities differently. You like more emphasize on a good story, many others prefer an emphasize on fun gameplay and we all preferred if we had both.

I have no problem with really dull/dumb stories if the rest of the game is fun, ie Serious Sam. The other way round it just doesn't work as good for me. If the combat is incredible tedious I can't really enjoy a good story because I'm constantly getting annoyed or bored. To tell a good Story you need good pacing and bad gameplay is a pretty easy way to destroy that in my opinion.
The reason people fear this is because in the past no one really tried to make the story as much the main point as they did with TLoU, Gone Home, or whatever. Now this suddenly comes up and most people assume that developers are going to switch over to that formula because of how well it seems to sell. Probably this is not really a threat though, since developers tend to stick with what they know. So best case is we see a new bunch of developers emerge who focus on "interactive movies".

 

[Hero of Lime]

Gameplay is the reason I play games! Story is nice of course, but I find for me personally that once I play a game that focuses more on story, I won't replay that game as much as a game that is all about polished mechanics and made for me to have fun.

Two examples from just the last few months, for story and gameplay I will use Last of Us and Pikmin 3 respectively.

Last of Us was made in part for the player to feel something, to make the player want to find out what happens next to Joel, Ellie, and whoever they may be dealing with. For me, now that I know what happens from beginning to end, I have little desire to go back to the game for a long time. I enjoyed it a whole lot, but the gameplay as great as it was, felt like it took a back seat to the narrative.

Pikmin 3 had little story and character interaction and growth. It was basically the same story as the first Pikmin with minor differences. However, it was made for the player to have fun first and foremost, everything else came second. Instead of looking forward to the next cutscene, you would look forward to exploring the new area and finding all the new enemy types and interesting scenery. Instead of getting a grim glimpse at the horrible side of human nature and seeing what monsters we can become in the Last of Us, in Pikmin you just build up your army of cute Pikmin and collect fruit and battle enemies in fun ways.

I'm not asserting one is better or that we can't have both, but I just prefer a game made around having great mechanics, fun gameplay and a sense of gameyness over heavy story that naturally takes away from the game itself.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Well I really dislike films in general, no matter how good the concept is you have about 2/2.5 hours to mash all it in. Character development, plot pacing, good scenes etc etc can't be done well in that time frame in the vast majority of cases.

Anyway OT: I can play games with at least an ok story but I haven't played anything without a good story for ages. It's like I have spider senses for good and bad writing. The only things i've played recently are Saints Row 4, Vampire: The Masquerade and League of Legends. Two really well written games and one rage simulator.

However considering how many Visual Novel type games I like, Katawa Shoujo, Persona 4, the story mode of BlazBlue etc etc I vastly prefer story over gameplay as long as the gameplay isn't absolute wank.

 

[gargantual]

Well I really dislike films in general, no matter how good the concept is you have about 2/2.5 hours to mash all it in. Character development, plot pacing, good scenes etc etc can't be done well in that time frame in the vast majority of cases.

Anyway OT: I can play games with at least an ok story but I haven't played anything without a good story for ages. It's like I have spider senses for good and bad writing. The only things i've played recently are Saints Row 4, Vampire: The Masquerade and League of Legends. Two really well written games and one rage simulator.

However considering how many Visual Novel type games I like, Katawa Shoujo, Persona 4, the story mode of BlazBlue etc etc I vastly prefer story over gameplay as long as the gameplay isn't absolute wank.

Yeah. not if the story is too big to fit in a movie. There are a lot of film concepts would be better off as TV mini series's. Unless the film is simple and cohesive 'The Raid: Redemption" or something.

And that's what all works games or film that show stories or suggest stories gotta do. Is show the natural laws of cause and effect. Consequences, buildup, suspense. Games may have a different way of doing it but it's not unattainable.

 

[thefascistpig]

Bastion combined both pretty seamlessly if I remember correctly. And showed that both can go together with great effect

 

[Evonisia]

I like to have a story with my gameplay, especially if the gameplay is lacking. A good example would be one a game I can plow through it without paying much attention to the story, but the story and characters are still pretty compelling or at least interesting in their own way. Portal is possibly the best example, you can ignore the plot entirely and it'd still be as fun. Portal 2 is the antithesis of that, as there are several moments where control is taken away from the player to show off a story section which would have easily have happened during gameplay. Though I'm not surprised that an accusation against TLoU is that it's trying to be a film, as it's predecessor Uncharted spent a large portion of it's lifetime trying to be Indiana Jones with Tomb Raider esque gameplay (a.k.a "An Interactive Movie").