Video game story problems

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Officer Crayon

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Mar 12, 2010
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In these threads about video game stories people always only point out 1 or 2 things bad about them. This could be said about literally every single book. Harry potter: a kid wizard fights lizard guy with magic. If you only include that, then it seems pretty damn pathetic. Assassin?s creed: some guy dicks around in the next Nintendo console. If people only include certain very broad aspects of something, then everything sounds bad.
Video game people (I don't know what to call us) always seem to be way over judging and critical. i understand that without criticism you can't progress, but if the only thing that you are saying is ''the story sucks'' then what can anybody learn?
Video games aren?t created on the idea of a good story. If you think of a great epic, you write a book, or maybe even the script for a movie. Stories for games are generally worked in around the game. This is for the simple reason of gameplay>story. If a game isn?t fun to play, then why wouldn?t you just write for a non-interactive medium? While games with great stories have been accomplished, they are very sparse, as you probably know.
Lastly video games haven't been around very long. Only a quarter of a century. Books have taken hundreds of years to perfect. Video games are very limited on how they deliver the story. You have to come up with a story that?s good but also has to include things that would be fun to do in it. Example: pride and prejudice could not be a game. Not simply because there isn't and guns, it's that the story doesn't lend itself to gemeplay. Video games just haven't had long enough to develop ways to tell stories yet. In time I?m sure we will.
 

mik hardcore

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Feb 11, 2010
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It's been said before, but I think this is where Indie developers can really shine. Without having to worry about the glitz and glamour of being big and mainstream, Indies have the chance to experiment both with gameplay and story.
IMO,though, you will very rarely get a game that incorporates a story that everyone loves. Dragon Age: Origins, for example, was built around a rich and complex story arc - and I was bored shiteless by it. Meanwhile, Shadow of the Colossus was very sparse in story, yet I found it an engaging and very emotional journey.
It's like arguing Hemingway vs. J.K. Rowling. You're never going to get a firm consensus about who is better. The best we can hope for, in literature and gaming, is to have open ended and mature discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of all, instead of just heaping scorn on what we don't personally enjoy.