The Big Picture: Off the Charts

[RowdyRodimus]

When I go to watch the HQ version it just says stream not found.

That's because there is no quality, low or high, involved in anything Bob does.

Also, fuck Three Kings. Seriously, go watch the original when it was called Kelly's Heroes.

 

[Zhukov]

I'm not even gonna touch that. Because if I did it would just consist of me yelling, "Bioshock!" over and over.

I was going to yell that too. Then I thought about it a bit. The average western video game story isn't that great.

Bioshock is just one tremendous exception.

But that's just it.

All good game stories are tremendous exceptions. In both east and west.

They have Resident Evil 5. We have Homefront.

They have Shadow of the Colossus. We have Bioshock.

 

[mysecondlife]

So Baz Luhrmann is making a movie based on The Great Gatsby


thats bad how?

in deliciously gimmicky 3D. sounds pretty bad to me.

 

[Casual Shinji]

When I go to watch the HQ version it just says stream not found.

That's because there is no quality, low or high, involved in anything Bob does.

I hope you don't get a probation for this, because that was an awesome burn.

 

[Axelhander]

Most games have a pretty weak story. Western games in particular often focus on action over any story at all.

Note that while I only quoted the last line of your post, I read the whole thing.

"Weak story" is not the same as "minimal story." Portal has minimal story, and that story, combined with its integration into gameplay, forms a far better whole than any game, Japanese or otherwise, I've ever played. And I've play a lot of games, of varying qualities from both sides of the pond.

Hell, even though I feel Braid is wildly overrated, its narrative does the whole "ambiguous and interpretive" thing better than 99% of Japanese games that try to do the same thing. Seriously, Japanese storytelling (including games) tends to rely on one of two things: ambiguity without a strong narrative basis from which thoughtful speculation can spring (e.g., Masato Kato storylines, Neon Genesis Evangelion) and fanservice (e.g., too many to count, and not every example involves sex).

There are exceptions (e.g., some of the Zeldas, Final Fantasy 6). But nobody tell MovieBob that, as he's busy praising Other M for making Samus three dimensional as though being three dimensional makes a character automatically compelling and well-crafted. Damn those Western games and their not having good storylines. My kingdom for a "rolling eyes" smiley.

 

[malestrithe]

"For a western developer"...
BioShock, Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Halo, Assassin's Creed, mother. [i/]fucking.[/i] HALF-LIFE!
I could go on, but really, what's the point? I knew this would fall on deaf ears when I saw the characters on the "potentially good movies" slide (Hint: 2 Nintendo franchises, 1 Konami, and I didn't recognize the other).

Why only the 6? There have been thousands of Western developed video games since the beginning of this medium, so the you can choose from a wide canyon. But your side keep going for the same 6? Are you guys really that lazy and cannot come up with more choices?

Off the top of my head, I can pad out that list to even bigger:

God of War, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tenatacle, Maniac Mansion, Tales of Monkey Island, Plants Vs Zombies, Amnesia: the Dark Descent, Limbo, Flower, A Boy and His Blob, Beyond Good and Evil, and Portal.

For the record, not all games made in the East with good story lines are RPGs:

Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, Clock Tower, Harvest Moon, Fatal Frame, Okami, Legacy of Kain, Devil May Cry, and Castlevania in general, but Lords of Shadow in particular.

If you want to include RPGs, then the list expands exponentially. I am not going to, but I will remind you that the better JRPG stories come from Atlus, Namco Bandai, Natsume and not Square Enix. Square Enix is not the direction the medium is developing into.

 

[Dice Warwick]

I like how the .Hack story transfers beetween book, anime, and game. and that is because they rarly try to transfer the story of one to another medium, instead they just continue the story.

EX: Book > anime > book > four part games (and an anime that game with the games) > books > manga (forget the anime adaptation of book) > book > anime > three part games (continuing strate from the story of the anime)> books > and the current anime!

.Hack dose a good job of going from one medium to the next by just doing the next story, insted of remaking the last story. They did try that one with their manga, but that ended up with fail. it's like if the first RE movie was consiter cannon for the RE games, as it didn't change the overall story of the the first three games, just added a prequel for the first game.

 

[Gunnyboy]

The Transformers movies are everything you can ask for really. Yeah they focus on a human, but so what? The Transformers are involved all the time and there's tons of action. I do think it comes from people romanticizing the cartoon. Like Bay is the devil for having the twins, but they were LESS offensive than an Arab country named CARBOMBYA in the cartoon. (And I say this as someone who hated the 2nd.)


Bay > Russell.

And I'm out

 

[Supp]

Something good to remember is that Francis Ford Coppola didn't respect The Godfather the book at all. And look how that turned out.

 

[Zhukov]

Funny thing is, Bioshock and Mass Effect are both games he's praised in the past.

He's said they should make a Mass Effect movie. And if memory serves he once declared, quote, "...and I fucking loved Bioshock!"

So yeah. I dunno. Maybe he's just trolling for traffic. Given the previous topic, that wouldn't surprise me.

It's not trolling to point out that western-developed games, on the whole, have incredibly simplistic and generally shallow stories.

[Epic snip]

tl;dr - Most games have a pretty weak story. Western games in particular often focus on action over any story at all.

(Don't worry, I read the whole thing.)

My point is that the majority of all games are horribly weak on story. It's not just a western thing.

Don't get me wrong, I would never say the Japs can't do a good game story. After all, they made Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. They made Silent Hill 2. Those were good stories. But they also made Resident Evil 5. And FFXIII.

Oh, and Street Fighter. If there is any game that has its "focus on action over any story at all" then that would be it.

And it cuts both way of course. Bioshock was made by a western company. So was System Shock 2. So was Portal. But on the other hand so was Killzone 3. And Halo. And Turok. And Just Cause 2. The list goes on.

I don't mind him pointing out that most games have shitty stories. I agree. They do.

It's the specific jibe as western games that gets under my skin.

EDIT: Wait a sec... did you mean to quote kael013 instead of me? Because your post seems more like a response to his then mine. Now I feel silly.

 

[The Apothecarry]

Anybody other than me read about Mark Wahlberg being potentially shelved for his role as Nathan Drake? Possibly in favor of this guy?

 

[Valkaris]

Wait, so what he is saying is that Western video games writing is bad, compared to...? Has he ever played Final Fantasy X? Thats go to be the worst written game I have ever played.

 

[RowdyRodimus]

When I go to watch the HQ version it just says stream not found.

That's because there is no quality, low or high, involved in anything Bob does.

I hope you don't get a probation for this, because that was an awesome burn.

He trolls and gets paid for it. I should be able to display my thoughts on his work (as it is). I didn't say anything about the man himself, just that his output on the site is severely lacking in quality based solely on what he himself says. I shouldn't get in any trouble for it, and THAT is the big picture lol

 

[Shjade]

"Weak story" is not the same as "minimal story." Portal has minimal story, and that story, combined with its integration into gameplay, forms a far better whole than any game, Japanese or otherwise, I've ever played. And I've play a lot of games, of varying qualities from both sides of the pond.

I'm aware. That's why I noted I think Half-Life's story is great: there's barely any broadcast at you, most of it is given through the gameplay itself. Portal's the same way. Of course, that's assuming the gameplay is, itself, story, which is true for both games, which means neither is an example of "minimal story;" they're "minimal exposition." Though that's debatable in the later bits of the Half-life series where it starts turning into action-cinematics galore. I digress.

"Minimal story" does tend to lead to "weak story," partly because it's hard to do a minimalist story that grabs and holds attention, partly because it tends to mean the story got the least amount of focus during development. Not that that means the alternative assures high-quality story - Borderlands comes to mind as a game with an unexpected volume of story that accomplishes very little.