Poll Do you like the stories and dialogue in games?

  • Guest, it's time once again for the hotly contested and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and fill out your bracket!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Once again, only you can decide!

Do you like the stories and dialogue in games?

  • Yes I read everything and love it, and I like it when there are voice overs too.

    Votes: 35 31.0%
  • Yes but I prefer it when everything is voice acted.

    Votes: 25 22.1%
  • No I don't like reading or voice acting because it is always really terrible.

    Votes: 53 46.9%

  • Total voters
    113
1,678
149
A lot are for sure. But look at the likes of Skyrim, Witcher, Dragon Age Inquisition etc, they spend millions of dollars creating all that story, dialogue, lore, and hiring those Hollywood voice actors to read it all. If the majority of people just wanted to get down to action, they would save their money, or spend it on other stuff. If I want a game that is all about gameplay, I have to buy indie games now. Although even those sometimes get carried away with their own loregasms. Pillars of Eternity was a joke.

As for MMOs, I think most people don't care about the stories, yet they have millions of quests. EQ had like 5. Games today are made using player feedback from 2001 when people said they loved EQ but didn't like the grind. So WoW hid the grind behind millions of quests, and now every new game just copies that. For me, as soon as I get to a town in an MMO, I just want to uninstall. The thought of having to run around and click through the crappy dialogue of 20 NPC's before I can go out and nuke some snakes is enough to make not want to bother.
 

etchazz

Trakanon Raider
2,707
1,056
I have played some great games the past several years, but story wise, there haven't been too many that have stuck out. Pillars of Eternity was a lot of fun, but the story was literally porno/soap opera bad. Diablo 3 sucked all around, but was made infinitely worse by the horribly cheesy story.

Of course there is also the opposite. I played a game called "That Dragon: Cancer" which was just an incredible story, but the gameplay was fucking horrible. I guess it's hard to do both well together. As far as MMO's are concerned, I'd say spend less money on writing a story (which will more than likely suck anyway) and instead focus those resources elsewhere, like content, and making sure the game runs smoothly.
 

Rime

<Donor>
2,638
1,613
It depends on the game. Fallout: New Vegas? I loved every minute of the story, but Fallout: 4 was a shit-show due to how forced everything was and how it shoe-horned you into either being a Super-Good Guy, an Average Good-Guy, or a Sort-of-Jerk Good-Guy.

I tend to get invested in story when it has some outcome on the future of the game - So it is pointless in MMOs (I learned everything I could about EverQuest, as it was my first - though in WoW, I read up on the lore of raids/expansions), but can be worth it in single player games.
 

DickTrickle

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
12,758
14,598
I will almost never buy a game based on people saying it has a great story but gameplay is mediocre or it has some other serious problem. The reality I've found is that a lot of the people saying that never read a book, watch comic shows and movies, and don't really have awareness of great storytelling (in general, of course). So that great dialogue and story is, to me, often pretty meh. There are some games that I think have a worthy story but they're usually such high quality that their gameplay is pretty enjoyable as well.

I tend to appreciate humor more in video games just because it seems to be done a little better, though again there's often too much reliance on allusion and reference instead of genuinely funny work.
 

localhost

Golden Knight of the Realm
193
68
I try to read it usually, but often fail.
But what i really liked was vampire bloodline malkavian. Not for what people said, but what you could answer. In some games you could answer as a unfun boring evil character, or be the good guy, but which one let you play a totally crazy with insight you can't even understand (the first play through)?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Elminage

N00b
55
21
I thought the lore of EQ1 - the gods like Bristlebane and the Planes and all of that - was pretty cool. And how was that all introduced through the game? NEVER through voice overs, NEVER through huge paragraphs of text. That lore was introduced through the gameplay itself.
 
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 1 user
1,678
149
I try to read it usually, but often fail.
But what i really liked was vampire bloodline malkavian. Not for what people said, but what you could answer. In some games you could answer as a unfun boring evil character, or be the good guy, but which one let you play a totally crazy with insight you can't even understand (the first play through)?

*brofist*
 

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
I try to read it usually, but often fail.
But what i really liked was vampire bloodline malkavian. Not for what people said, but what you could answer. In some games you could answer as a unfun boring evil character, or be the good guy, but which one let you play a totally crazy with insight you can't even understand (the first play through)?

Yeah, Vampire was stupid good. Even better because I figgured it was going to be just so awful, and then it turns out it was omg.
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
16,316
7,317
Vampire with giant titties is best vampire.
ml2hrd.jpg
Same shit that made Skyrim great.