Stories in video games

I agree with ur counselor. Story to me is one of the least important aspect of the game. The most being gameplay and fun factor. That's why I find almost every triple A title to be boring and have no replayability, they invest in the marketable story and forget to make the gameplay solid.

A game with great gameplay but a shitty story will still be amazing, and looking back at all my favourite games last 10 years, I dont see that many with a story that caught my attention.. An exception would be the walking dead season 1.

Gameplay should pretty much never be forced to serve narrative. No fuck you 20min start of Last of us. as much as you people want to defend that shit. its not fun. go watch a movie. if you want to put me into a scene like that, let me go wander off and change the narrative. much like say Stanley parable will adapt the story with your actions, instead of purely railroading you down one path. (of course sometimes the adaptation is literally just putting a lampshade on the fact you don't really have a choice and its forcing you right back into that one path.)

Gameplay and narrative can certainly go hand in hand though. Braid's princess rescue level being mirrored. Narrative is not secondary to gameplay here. they are on equal ground. Not to suggest that is true for the rest of the game. where its gameplay first.

collectable hunting in most games destroys narrative as you note. but that is mostly just laziness. its done randomly, and with no thought of the implication to the plot or the narrative, or pacing.
Batman Arkham city, Assassins creed are really guilty of this. some of the later final fantasy' notable too. OMG the joker has kidnapped vicky vale!. well I best go save h.... oh a riddler trophy. ill get that first..
Conversely, look at some of the classics. super metroid. Castlevania:SOTN, etc. Hunting those missles, secrets, etc is a gameplay element, and fits perfectly within the narrative. you are not taking yourself out of the story to go hunt these items. you dont feel like the bosses are inexplicably waiting around for you, while you do these things.

I think you've got to divide games into game-games (think Chess, fighting games, esports, etc) and story-games (rpgs, Walking Dead, etc). The story-games with the best traditional plotting, development, and so on are a just a step away from movies you click through (Walking Dead). The more game you add, the more the story tends to suck. And even at their best, story games tend to be like those choose your own adventure books from back in the day, which isn't much in grand scheme of great story/art/whatever. The problem is the more game you have, the more control the player gets over the experience, and the more control the players has, the less control you have over the story. I think to make a great story you need complete control.

Game-games don't need story and devoting resources to story for a game-game is probably a waste.

I don't make video games but if I did, one of the first questions I'd ask about my game is whether it is a game-game or a story-game. Then, if it was a story-game, I'd ask why isn't it a movie or a book.

Uh... Depends how you approach it, if you think of the story as something that you shove down the player's throat whether he wants it or not, then of course it's going to be fucking horrible. If you leave some bits in their way and point them where they can find more, you will probably have much more success. The best stories are those that influence the gameplay and vice versa - Mark of the Ninja really stands out here imo, then you of course have your Portals, TF2 is actually one of the funniest games I have ever played, but the "story" is hidden behind the characters' quips and remarks. Valve in general are masters of hiding the story in minor details and remarks in their multiplayer games. Bastion, Deus Ex, Borderlands...

You also can't underestimate the ability of people to tell their own story through the game, looking at success of games like Minecraft and DayZ. Even esports are about telling stories to a certain extent.

So, yeah, you want to cut down forced story to a minimum unless it's necessary for the player to know what to do, good example is Path of Exile, where large number of players are completely oblivious to the story, because you really don't need it. Diablo 2 is also like that, the cutscenes between acts are really the only crucial bits and were also a bit of a reward for finishing each act, it's also why D3 story is hated by so many people, they try to make you watch and listen to every single of those craptastic cutscenes or dialogues.

Zaphid_sl said:

Uh... Depends how you approach it, if you think of the story as something that you shove down the player's throat whether he wants it or not, then of course it's going to be fucking horrible. If you leave some bits in their way and point them where they can find more, you will probably have much more success. The best stories are those that influence the gameplay and vice versa - Mark of the Ninja really stands out here imo, then you of course have your Portals, TF2 is actually one of the funniest games I have ever played, but the "story" is hidden behind the characters' quips and remarks. Valve in general are masters of hiding the story in minor details and remarks in their multiplayer games. Bastion, Deus Ex, Borderlands...

You also can't underestimate the ability of people to tell their own story through the game, looking at success of games like Minecraft and DayZ. Even esports are about telling stories to a certain extent.

So, yeah, you want to cut down forced story to a minimum unless it's necessary for the player to know what to do, good example is Path of Exile, where large number of players are completely oblivious to the story, because you really don't need it. Diablo 2 is also like that, the cutscenes between acts are really the only crucial bits and were also a bit of a reward for finishing each act, it's also why D3 story is hated by so many people, they try to make you watch and listen to every single of those craptastic cutscenes or dialogues.

Click to expand...

huh. this does bring up the question of show don't tell, vs telling in games. you are arguing the story should be simply told. in the background. PoE flavor text. TF2 comics, and dialogue. Metroid prime data logs, etc.
Thats... kindof atypical.

We can look at bioshock for this. Bioshock basically does the same thing I was bitching about last of us doing. Throughout the game really. While I think you have a "bit" more freedom exploring the fair, still its not much. and later elements like the finale. straight up on rails. even letting you have any control over walking is a formality, to disguise the fact you are watching like a 40minute cutscene with no actual gameplay.

Yet in the same game, the world building and narrative behind that story, in creating the world is quite rich. and again we have the collectables/recordings which serve to fill in more of the story. IT probably worked a bit better in RApture, as that was more like a Metroid where you are exploring this dead place, and acting like a sleuth putting together wtf happened in this place. Infinate's push for combat, and the direct narrative that basically doesn't care about whats going on/what went wrong with Columbia is at odds with that background info.

Caliane_sl said:

huh. this does bring up the question of show don't tell, vs telling in games. you are arguing the story should be simply told. in the background. PoE flavor text. TF2 comics, and dialogue. Metroid prime data logs, etc.
Thats... kindof atypical.

We can look at bioshock for this. Bioshock basically does the same thing I was bitching about last of us doing. Throughout the game really. While I think you have a "bit" more freedom exploring the fair, still its not much. and later elements like the finale. straight up on rails. even letting you have any control over walking is a formality, to disguise the fact you are watching like a 40minute cutscene with no actual gameplay.

Yet in the same game, the world building and narrative behind that story, in creating the world is quite rich. and again we have the collectables/recordings which serve to fill in more of the story. IT probably worked a bit better in RApture, as that was more like a Metroid where you are exploring this dead place, and acting like a sleuth putting together wtf happened in this place. Infinate's push for combat, and the direct narrative that basically doesn't care about whats going on/what went wrong with Columbia is at odds with that background info.

Click to expand...

Me and many other people would argue that Infinite would be a better game if they made shooting more sparse, sure, the story kind of enables it by saying that the only Cooper who made it through was the gun toting maniac that killed half of the city, but otherwise it made no sense. Last time I checked, killing everything that moves is also not a good way to win a young woman's trust. Rapture avoided this problem by replacing the population by crazies, Infinite has all the sane people leave the scene the moment you fire a first shot, which is...jarring.

Characters and setting I feel are the most important parts of the story. If you approach a story from plot first it will generally suck.

Kinkle_sl said:

Basically, I want video games to deliver plot, narrative, dialogue, emotional investment, and ideas equal to that of film and novels while maintaining the integrity of the video game medium, and I'd like to get a discussion going on how to do so.

Click to expand...

Xenogears. Most amazing game ever made. Go play it a thousand times.

The rest of you are fags.

Mist_sl said:

'Plot' is actually one of the least important elements in most types of movies and even in novels for that matter, so the fact that it's not very important in video games shouldn't be much of a surprise.

But plot isn't the only element of story. Characters are important in all 3 mediums, so is setting.

Click to expand...

This is patently false as plot provides context for characters.

With a few exceptions, I don't think most games can neglect the story and expect any long-term appeal. Dota is an arena battle game so I'm not sure a story is all that important. I also think stories in MMOs tend to be fairly weak and that developers need to abandon this notion of story as a pillar.