Noticed a Problem with Storytelling.

[Austin Howe]

For note, I am thinking of a good story in a more literary sense. More focused on character exploration and expressing theme than crafting a story which gets you end to end.

Now in a game where story is clearly not the focus, like say, a Call of Duty game, you can compliment a story for doing simple things like "successfully delivering the player from one exciting locale to the next", but I don't use that for games that obviously have put a lot of work into how they're going to tell the story without having much of a story.

For example, I'm reading interviews about Borderlands 2, and I remember someone at Gearbox saying they wanted more focus on the story without having any cutscenes. I thought, "Well that's great, but I highly doubt you have a writer of any caliber who can really make that all worthwhile." (Meanwhile, the original didn't need to have a "good plot" to do what it wanted to do, but it did have oodles of humor and a surprisingly cohesive setting, so I think they might be missing the point on what made the first game good from a narrative perspective.)

Now that I'm thinking about it in the morning, Bastion will probably be pretty good, it's just that my previous run-ins with uniquely told stories lead me to believe this might not add up to much.

 

[Woodsey]

The problem with saying HL doesn't have a good story, and then praising its story-telling, is that the story is, by the nature of the story-telling, at the sidelines. It's inferred and mostly background noise. There is almost zero exposition, so what's left if you take everything at face value is "aliens invading, shoot aliens", but then if you're taking it at face value you're not engaging with the story-telling.

 

[SajuukKhar]

2. Nonlinear sandbox games with no story other than what actions and choices the player makes (i.e. Animal Crossing, LittleBig Planet, and the Elder Scrolls series). These games just let players make their own stories, despite the fact that so few of them have almost none of the emotional impact as your typical novel.

Saying Elder Scrolls doesn't have a story beyond the actions the player makes shows how little you know of the overarching lore.

 

[Otaku World Order]

And based on that: The worst game I ever played was FF X. Unskipable cutscenes full of unlikeable characters and a stupid, stupid, stupid story. But on the other hand, I have yet to find a jRPG / some more RPGs where I find the story even somewhat interesting.

While I didn't hate Final Fantasy X, to me it represented a lot of bad ideas Square has latched onto with it's storytelling. Every Final Fantasy seesm to be desperate to Wow us with it's locations and history and how complex it all is when it just makes things confusing. Hell, I liked FF XII too, but the first hour and a half of that game is 95% cutscenes, expository narration and other background information. To contrast with another JRPG, let's look at Persona 4, my definition of an awesome game. The first couple of hours of that game are build up too, but you're still making decisions and the time is spent building up the characters rather then giving us infodumps.

Speaking of Final Fantasy and contrast, let's go to Final Fantasy XIII. And yeah, I liked it well enough, but right off the bat we have a weirdly jarring contrast with the characters. We start out with Lightning, serious, self contained and cold. Who is she teamed with? Sazh, a wacky black dude who has a baby chocobo living in his afro. Right off the bat, I was confused and it made getting into the story awkward.

Captcha: nest-egg. I guess they knew I was talking about Sazh.

 

[RA92]

Captcha: nest-egg. I guess they knew I was talking about Sazh.

I swear man, the captchas are turning sentient! O_O

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I think the problem is expecting a great story from a videogame. As a medium, it's not well suited to it. It's suited to gameplay. This is why games that borrow techniques from other media have better stories: they're kind of a hybrid between an actual game, and a book or a movie, two mediums that are excellent at telling stories.

 

[Terramax]

For the majority of games, story is 2nd to gameplay, as opposed to most films, shows, books, etc where it's the whole point.

 

[Condiments]

The problem lies in the thought that these elements such as story, gameplay, art direction, music, etc. are disparate elements existing in some tenuous union that creates the sum of all parts or the game experience. This by itself, is a flawed mentality that will produce mediocre products. For a game to be perfect in my eyes, every piece presented in the game must be harmonious union with the next, either expanding upon or reinforcing the rest. I won't join the chorus of 'ONRY GAMEPLAY MATTERZ', as many of my experiences playing videogames have elevated beyond the simple interaction with the game by use of various other elements(music, atmosphere, art direction, etc.) This is experienced most notably in the horror genre, where interaction is often basic, or deliberately limited to enhance emotion or feeling.

A game's embrace of narrative should directly correlated with its ambitions in terms of how it wants to be perceived/interacted with. There seems to be this failed notion that all games like shooters and whatnot, must tell these stories to be taken seriously. I think minimal or limited story is often better in a lot of situations where the intent isn't show story. Diablo 3 is a pretty recent example of a game has a terrible story to its detriment. It clearly doesn't care about the story it wants to tell through its overall writing quality, but its constant INSISTENCE of obstructing you with blurbs of dialogue and cutscenes is beyond annoying.

 

[Lilani]

Video games are meant to be the virtual equivalents of choose-your-own-adventure books, where the various choices you make can alter the story and lead to various outcomes.

Says who? Portal and Half-Life would like to have a word with you. Those are incredible games that have linear storylines, but seamlessly blend gameplay and narrative. Video games can tell MANY different kinds of stories, both linear and nonlinear.

 

[ElPatron]

This is one reason why CoD: Black Ops story sucks, the pacing and presentation make it hard to understand what is going on in a very simple story, albeit one with a shitty twist.

To me it was the opposite. It pissed me off that the story seemed like it was hiding details away from me but I was able to see trough the plot at all times. They didn't bother to hide the twist at all.

That or it was my a boner for Cold War sleeper-agent/brainwash stories. Yeah, a mysterious string of numbers? What could that be?

 

[Ragsnstitches]

The problem is there is "Story" and then there is "Gameplay" and it's apparent the Two are not aiming for the same result.

2 forces, pulling in different directions. Even in the best made games of our time, this problem can be seen.

Games like Half-Life manage to cut closer to a better process, by inferring story trough environments and interaction, making the simple act of progressing or curiosity become the tools for the story. However, this isn't exactly collusive to a good narrative, which is what Half Life wants, so they end up creating these dialogue dumps to get us up to speed.

Half Lifes simple story makes this moments of exposition less jarring, but they are still there. Yet at the same time they are effectively telling a grander tale through gameplay.

Bastion on the other hand does something pretty unique. It funnels gameplay and story down the same identical paths, but parallel to each other rather then being on the same track. This means the story and the gameplay don't conflict. As long as you move forward, the plot moves forward.

Unfortunately, that's a rather limited way of conveying a story (and developing a game) and it only works for this piece.

There are other games that do story telling better, or have better story premises... but rarely are the 2 working together with gameplay.

 

[malestrithe]

Unfortunately for the medium, the better told stories look and feel like comic book and or manga series. inFAMOUs 1, 2 and Festival of Blood feel like separate graphic novels series. FF13 feels like a 6 volume manga series.

Also, Joss Whedon write Alien Versus Predator. Just wanted to throw that out there.

 

[II2]

Complicated topic. I think that games are a bit like musicals - stories can be told conventionally in brief intros, interludes and breaks in the action, but otherwise the story has to be told through whatever genre of musical number or 'dance' the game does (FPS, strategy, puzzle, etc).

Imagine for instance, you have a great story, but you have to filter it through a FPS or RTS. Whatever story you had just suddenly got a lot more gunfights, reloading, and cover or base building, resource management and zerg rushes, respectively. Having the story plausibly support that really limits what you can do with the narrative.

Similarly, there's the toss up between scripted and significant, or sandbox and 'sidequest'...

I think RPGs have a bit of an easier time telling good stories than other genres since usually there's more adventuring in a space that can be used to help flesh out the universe and exploration of places and artifacts that patch together a semi-linear narrative. Also, a lot of the gameplay is more intrinsically tied and explained as part of the setting, instead of simply presented as 'these exist - use them'.

Just my $0.02

 

[Sixcess]

Personally I'm starting to think of Valve'smuch vaunted storytelling as highly overrated. You are essentially walking along a straight corridor with no side passages and every so often you reach the next story moment. It's very entertaining when done well, as it usually is by Valve, but it's extremely forced.

Games should stop trying to imitate books and movies and instead make greater use of their advantages over those mediums - like the ability to put you quite literally into the middle of the action and tell the story through your surroundings - sights, sounds, interactivity.

But, I hear you cry, that's what Valve does. Yes, but their dedication to linearity leaves most of the environments feeling very artificial, which takes me out of the atmosphere they build - e.g. City 17 doesn't feel remotely like a city, it feels like an obstacle course.

All in all though most game writing, regardless of how its put across, is pretty bad. With the exception of a few scenes even the likes of Mass Effect never really rises above the level of pulp sci-fi, but that's okay, seeing as it has much better gameplay interactivity than a novel or film.

 

[Lethal Music]

I don't know why, but besides RPGs, horror games seem to have the best storytelling and sometimes are even able to combine it well with the gameplay. Prime example for me is Condemned where you got cutscenes, linear environments and forced scripted sections BUT they fit well into the game, don't break the flow too much and actually help to advance the story - even if you'll be too tense to notice those things most of the time.

 

[Terminate421]

I don't think there was anything wrong with half life 2's story

EDIT: personally I find the RPG approach to story telling is the best (Mass effect, Fallout NV) its like several doorstoppers worth of story

like walking around and talking to my crew in ME in-between missions, thats somthing you don;t get into a movie

I agree with him.

Though I also like the Fallout 3/Skyrim method were you learn of the story as you go along. The Halo method is also great, you are given the mission parameters but if you stray off from the path, you can find hidden terminals or data things that give insight as to what is happening around you.