Tell Me a Story

[Andy Chalk]

I read the timeline on the Half-Life story guide site and while it certainly does a nice job of summarizing the events, it doesn't do anything to change my opinion about Half-Life's (lack of) story. I could just as easily say that the G-Man went from a shady X-Files-esque government agent to some kind of interdimensional mercenary CEO not because the story demanded it but because the environment into which Half-Life and Half-Life 2 were released were so completely different. Suggesting that the lack of explanation for what happened between the first and second games is due to the fact that everyone just assumes Gordon knows what went down is weak at best; more likely Valve came up with a cool setting it wanted to use, shoehorned in the minimum number of details to pass it off and left the rest "open to interpretation," which is a nice way of saying that it doesn't want to commit itself any more than absolutely necessary.

The "episodes" Valve has released since then have done absolutely nothing to move things forward. Let's face it, they've been stalling since 2004.

And while I have doubts that anyone actually cried at the end of Ep. 2, I'm not denying that the characters in the game are very well realized and easy to get attached to. The characters in Half-Life 2 are some of the best ever seen in a videogame. But sinking huge amounts of effort and resources into creating an awesome supporting cast has nothing to do with whether or not there's a decent story being told.

For the record, I love HL2. Bought the collector's edition, played it front to back more than twice. Ep. 2 was a bit tiresome because it was basically a do-over of HL2 and Ep. 1, but it was still fun for the most part. All in all, it's a great shooter. But great story? No.

 

[Ben66]

It seems to me people have more problems with cutscenes than the actual plot.

Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry, and various other series have awesome spectacular fights...in the non-interactive cutscenes. Once it switches to in-game gameplay, everything just disappoints in comparison. The best games are usually those that give you more interactivity than that. Shadow of the Colossus, for example, lets you directly engage in fights previously only dreamed up in flashy CGI opening movies. Meanwhile the cutscenes are usually there to establish the non-action parts I.E. the "boring" (though SotC is anything but) stuff that supposedly wouldn't be very fun to play through.

When people say games shouldn't have plots, that's belittling the industry as a whole. A medium with near limitless opportunities for creative ideas and unique worlds is suddenly severely limited because "no one cares about plot." To be honest, if games couldn't have plots, the industry would actually stagnate FASTER. I love games like Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog that concentrate solely on gameplay, but if that was all there was, I'd get bored pretty quickly. The plots and the characters add to the immersion and give a further unique edge to games over others.