Internet Kraken said:
Half-Life 2 is one of the few games I believe would have a substantially worse story if it was not a video game.
Agreed entirely with that post but especially that line.
Anyways, thoughts on some other dev's already mentioned.
Bioware
Bioware essentially tells the same story over and over again but in a different setting.
This story that they repeatedly use is quite compelling though, but more could be done with it.
Currently they are undoubtedly one of the best dev's story-wise at the moment, they could be even better if they tryed something new.
Bungie
(Note that this is
heavily influenced by personal opinion) Personally, I found Halo CE to be a masterpiece. Just running around the ringworld uncovering it's secrets with a feeling of a sort of freedom you don't often get in a shooter was great. I did find the ending to be a little lackluster, but that was my only, and quite minor complaint story wise.
Halo 2 however turned into what could be best described as throwing a whole bunch of crappy ideas at a wall and hoping some of them hit the mark. It was incoherant, it was jumpy, it was all over the place and just downright irritating, but despite all that was going on it was still so very boring. I did get a bit into it when the Flood invaded that space city thing though, probably because in that segment you're pretty much just told to run from point A to point B killing everything in your way, like the game has given up on trying to tell a story for the moment.
'Course that personal moment of awesome was ended by the laughable ending.
Halo 3 was basically the same thing but the Flood were even more of a joke than before.
By Halo Reach I just didn't care. I didn't care that the characters are dumb and boring, I didn't care that your doing the same missions that you've done in the previous installments over and over again, I didn't care that your allies were as stupid as before, I didn't care that the game was the exact same thing as before with a new coat of paint.
Although I did care that the game tries so very, very hard to
make you care.
However it did eventually deliver a pretty cool final mission, though once the ending cutscene itself started up with that annoying science-y lady going on and on about your sacrifice or some such thing attempting to sound all deep and meaningful when she is really speaking a bunch of incoherant bullshit that makes no damn sense I immediately skipped the thing and went straight into multiplayer. (which was thankfully for the most part pretty cool, a big team deathmatch on Blood Gulch is a lot more immersive than Halo's campaign past CE anyway.)
I probably would loved Halo is it just stopped trying to tell a story past the 1st one, if it was multiplayer only or if it took 'the Gordon Freeman approach.' No objectives, no annoying CO's or hologram people screaming inside your dudes head, just you and your rifle on a long journey from here to there where you're free to make up your own story, or just not give a shit.
(Well that turned out to be much bigger than I anticipated.)
Rockstar
Max Payne.
Let's just say that by the end of Max's long and bloody journey I was more attached to his sad tale than anything else in any form of media.
Think I'll replay it now...
