Games That Are Loved For Their Story... Have Terrible Stories?
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Except from DA:Origins, where you could choose from several backstories. Peasants or nobles, dwarves or elves, it's up to you and the vast majority of them didn't have a destroyed home town.Pearwood said:
Or DA2, where you were a previously unknown peasant with no interest in revenge for a doomed home town, just in building a new life somewhere else.
Or Mass Effect, where you can pick from several backgrounds, only one of which (as far as I can recall) was a doomed home town/colony story and revenge was never really a factor.
Or KoTOR, where you were a brainwashed Sith lord gradually regaining your memories, which is about as far from "previously unknown peasant" as they come.
Now, I admit to not having played much of their early stuff, but those are BW's biggest and most recognisable games or franchises, and none of them match up to what you've said there.
The whole kingdom hearts series is one big cluster fuck and they should've ended it after the first one.
"So with that said what is it that makes a game story good if it isn't originality?"
I feel that question has a fairly obvious answer.
A story is good due to it's fleshed out (and thus unusually good [unique]) aspects. Just like having a story with a ridiculous premise won't make for a good story, neither will an overused premise make for a bad one.
I'd also like to mention that playing a bloody book makes for a horrible game. Books have thick stories, and need very little immersion. Films can't be books, and need to rely more heavily on immersion. Finally, modern games are meant to be immersive, and can thus hardly rely on rigid storytelling at all. Yes, there are a few games which were playable books and did great. But remember to look at the pile of games who tried to be books and utterly failed at being good games.
I feel that question has a fairly obvious answer.
A story is good due to it's fleshed out (and thus unusually good [unique]) aspects. Just like having a story with a ridiculous premise won't make for a good story, neither will an overused premise make for a bad one.
I'd also like to mention that playing a bloody book makes for a horrible game. Books have thick stories, and need very little immersion. Films can't be books, and need to rely more heavily on immersion. Finally, modern games are meant to be immersive, and can thus hardly rely on rigid storytelling at all. Yes, there are a few games which were playable books and did great. But remember to look at the pile of games who tried to be books and utterly failed at being good games.
Since always.thaluikhain said:
On a related note, Star Wars (Original Trilogy) sucks because it's just a bunch of traditional elements, western clichés, and Japanese film homages!
That's such a cop-out. It's also particularly bad in a genre where most games lauded as having good storytelling are such as to make B-movie action flicks blush.steevee said:
It's all about how you spin the story. Let's be honest, there isn't much variation in the most basic elements in most stories. There's a protagonist, an antagonist, and a maguffin and the story is told through how they are related to each other. What makes the story good comes from how the story itself is presented, how the author of the story imparts it to the audience and sets it up. Innovation is important, but you can't demand complete breaks from previous story structure for every new work.
Originality is overrated.
Tolkien wrote about a world with elves, dwarves, dragons, orcs, and magical artifacts.
Half a century later we are still enjoying ourselves.
Tolkien wrote about a world with elves, dwarves, dragons, orcs, and magical artifacts.
Half a century later we are still enjoying ourselves.
Curiously enough, one time BioWare did venture away from the traditional, heroic fantasy arc, they were bashed for it (admittedly, this was also because the rest of the game was sub-standard for BioWare).Pearwood said:
The framed narrative, the focus on an individual and his/her problems and how he/she made the connections in their new home was generally regarded as being boring.
Can't blame people for sticking to the tried and true formula I guess.
Ever seen Scarface or Citizen Kane? Ever read Paradise Lost or Frankenstein?? Ever read a Shakespearean tragedy (noteworthy for being one of two flavors of story Shakespeare wrote: tragedy and comedy)? Ever read The Watchmen or The Sandman?Zachary Amaranth said:
All of these movies, pieces of literature, and graphic novels share one thing in common: they're all basically Greek tragedies, or possess heavy elements of Greek tragedy/tragic heroes.
So why are we so compelled by them?
If you had told me before I partook in these pieces that they were going to be modeled on the tragedy or tragic hero, I would know how each tale is going to end, but it's still compelling to see how each tale plays out. Each story is essentially the same: boiled down, a character or a people lose everything due to their own choices and hubris. They are typically well-off beforehand, often thanks to their own labors bringing them to the top, but something they do or something that changes about them topples them.
In fact, the different ways and contexts in which the same essential story plays out over generations says something rather magnificent about our own human condition. If the same tale that works for a Miami drug lord (Scarface) works for an early 20th-century media mogul (Citizen Kane) works for God's most magnificent angel (Paradise Lost) works for a 1980s vigilante (The Watchmen) works for the Thane of Glamis (Macbeth) works for a 19th century natural philosopher (Frankenstein) works for the brooding Lord of Dreams (The Sandman) works for an ancient Greek Theban king (the Oedipus plays), then there's something rather important to that story about what it means to be man, no?
Outside of the realm of Greek tragedy, I suggest going to watch Memento or any Quentin Tarantino movie. They're all simplistic plots, truth be told; they are made interesting through how the story is told and how chronology is played with to tell the story.
My point here is that, yes, video games as a narrative form, like the medium's more established older brothers, will have only so many stories (save the princess, find the Magical MacGuffin, fight off the broadly-defined generic-brand evil to save the world, etc.). But that's alright - figuring out how that story is to be told given the unique constraints of the medium and what stories are worth telling given the same restriction is the challenge video games face.
Story and plot are not the same thing. I think the reason you get these kinds of stories is because video games in their current state lend themselves to this kind of storytelling.
But can you name one story in history, outside of poetry or allegory, that can't be descried as "A bunch of people do shit"?. Some might say that it isn't the plot that makes these stories great, but I think trying to separate plot and characters is pointless.
When a character has a personal revelation it's a plot point. When a relationship begins or ends, it's a plot point. When a character is given the opportunity for revenge, it's a plot point.
What you're describing isn't simplicity of story, it's simplicity of structure. It dictates less than half of a story, there's still context, theme, tone, setting, and all the character interaction.
As long as they are, it's just easier to develop games this way. You use a familiar archetype and write a meaningful story around it, so events that would normally seem by the numbers have emotional and thematic weight. The most original plot in the world won't save story from a generic uni-dimensional cast, or a flat uninspired tone, or a fractured sense of pacing, or a lack of thematic depth.
Assassin's Creed(IMO) has these problems, the later one's in particular. Sure, the plot is relatively novel, but it doesn't feel any different because that's all it is. It's new, but it doesn't MEAN anything.
The characters are generic, uni-dimensional and morally black and white(Despite being in reverse, which I think is kind of ironic), so it's impossible to get emotionally involved because you don't care what happens to them or why.
The first game kind of had a nice Orwellian feel to it, but later installments dropped all the bleakness and felt like The Da Vinci code populated by the cast of Scooby Doo.
The series has always felt thematically dead to me. The struggle is black and white, the Templars are evil because they just are, the Assassins are good because they just are, and we're fighting to save the world because we couldn't think of anything human to motivate us. Neither of the binary sides of this equation represent any kind of complex ideal, nor does the struggle itself have any dramatic weight. Why?, because one side is trying to save the world, and the other side is fighting because they're greedy, or aren't given any reason at all(Presumably because they're going to try and paint them sympathetic later). These are things that almost anyone would fight for, so they're things we've already figured out and they don't tell us shit about ourselves or anything else.
WHAT happens might be interesting, but we don't care about how or why because those parts of the story are so binary.
Mass Effect's SUMMERY is pretty paint by numbers, but we care about what happens because the conclusion has consequences we can relate to and invest in. A single aspect of a story can be forgiven if what surrounds it is exceptional, but a mediocre story cannot be forgiven based on a single novel idea.
But can you name one story in history, outside of poetry or allegory, that can't be descried as "A bunch of people do shit"?. Some might say that it isn't the plot that makes these stories great, but I think trying to separate plot and characters is pointless.
When a character has a personal revelation it's a plot point. When a relationship begins or ends, it's a plot point. When a character is given the opportunity for revenge, it's a plot point.
What you're describing isn't simplicity of story, it's simplicity of structure. It dictates less than half of a story, there's still context, theme, tone, setting, and all the character interaction.
As long as they are, it's just easier to develop games this way. You use a familiar archetype and write a meaningful story around it, so events that would normally seem by the numbers have emotional and thematic weight. The most original plot in the world won't save story from a generic uni-dimensional cast, or a flat uninspired tone, or a fractured sense of pacing, or a lack of thematic depth.
Assassin's Creed(IMO) has these problems, the later one's in particular. Sure, the plot is relatively novel, but it doesn't feel any different because that's all it is. It's new, but it doesn't MEAN anything.
The characters are generic, uni-dimensional and morally black and white(Despite being in reverse, which I think is kind of ironic), so it's impossible to get emotionally involved because you don't care what happens to them or why.
The first game kind of had a nice Orwellian feel to it, but later installments dropped all the bleakness and felt like The Da Vinci code populated by the cast of Scooby Doo.
The series has always felt thematically dead to me. The struggle is black and white, the Templars are evil because they just are, the Assassins are good because they just are, and we're fighting to save the world because we couldn't think of anything human to motivate us. Neither of the binary sides of this equation represent any kind of complex ideal, nor does the struggle itself have any dramatic weight. Why?, because one side is trying to save the world, and the other side is fighting because they're greedy, or aren't given any reason at all(Presumably because they're going to try and paint them sympathetic later). These are things that almost anyone would fight for, so they're things we've already figured out and they don't tell us shit about ourselves or anything else.
WHAT happens might be interesting, but we don't care about how or why because those parts of the story are so binary.
Mass Effect's SUMMERY is pretty paint by numbers, but we care about what happens because the conclusion has consequences we can relate to and invest in. A single aspect of a story can be forgiven if what surrounds it is exceptional, but a mediocre story cannot be forgiven based on a single novel idea.
I don't think that such a distinction is valid.Davroth said:
I may not be well-versed in narrative theory, but I can map out a plot or understand what storytelling elements or traditions a tale borrows from, and there's a particular pleasure to be derived from such understanding in addition to the tale itself.
i think story is an opinion thing, where as story telling is how the story is presented. And i think this would change the whole argument
My point was that this type of tale is often redone, but the re-telling of the story itself is less important than the manner in which it is told. These were just the stories modeled on Greek tragedy I could identify immediately.Zachary Amaranth said:
I'm afraid that I don't otherwise understand your comment, but if you'd like, here's a TVTropes article detailing the six other basic plots: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSevenBasicPlots
You'd be hard-pressed to find a story in any medium that doesn't fit into this framework.
It's been awhile since I've played it, but wasn't it something about the bad guy stealing my sister (or was it best friend? the annoying girl with the pink hair, anyway), and then he ran off with her soul, but it eventually led to us saving the elves or some such?Satsuki666 said:Umm sorry to dissapoint you but BG2 was never about saving the world. It was more about revenge, and retrieving that which was stolen from you. You could probably get away with saying that a lot of BG1 was a save the world plotline but there was also a large revenge element to it and you are not a random smuck.dyre said:Storytelling, bro. Main plotline isn't quite as important as how you tell/execute it. Just compare BG2 to Oblivion. Same "random peasant saves the world" thing, but Oblivion does a fuck-all job of telling it, while BG2 really makes you feel like you're a part of that world, doing something important alongside characters you like and care about. Bioware's been dropping the ball lately, but they were at the top of their game when they made BG2. Btw, I think the old school WRPG most praised for its story is Planescape Torment. I guess you think that's generic too?
And I don't really see how you can come up with such a tiny handful of examples and then declare that games loved for their stories have terrible stories, as if people have some kind of obsession with bad stories.