This Game sucks because the Story is bad.

[darlarosa]

In short people play games for different reasons. I am a narrative driven gamer which makes sense because I love to read and write. For me part of the enjoyment is going into a new world(or a new aspect of our world) and getting to experience something different with characters the interest me.
I can play tetris to kill time, or Diner Dash and be mildly entertained. However, I quickly grow bored of those games over time. However I can play Mass Effect 2, or a modded version of Baldur's gate for years again and again because I love the story.

Ya know what I started playing Arcanum and it is HORRIBLY clunky to the point of being painful, BUT I keep playing because I enjoy the setting, when things go well the gameplay is fun, and I want to see where the story is going. For me there is satisfaction in playing out the story, possibly making choices, and putting the pieces together.


Also it is about perspective and how the game is set up.If the goal of the game is story driven such as solving a mystery or a huge element of the game is a theme or story, if it is poorly executed it can take a person out of the game and completely turn them off the game. Video games are a combination of elements that form a cohesive form of entertainment. No element can be ignored or accepted in a general sense because all games function differently. These elements work together in a given game to a given extent to form the game as a whole. Story can be as important as mechanics and vice versa. Irisu Syndrome is an indie Japanese game that is just one big puzzle game that would be forgettable if not for the intense story it weaves into the gameplay. Without the story many games become odd or unforgettable. If you had never played a Zelda game and knew nothing of the story that can impact how you interpret whats happening. "Why should I save that chick?""Why is this happening?" "What are these creatures I am fighting". Heck for all any of us could know Ganon could be Zelda's dad if things weren't laid out. OF course there are games that do not necessarily need story such as Pac-Man. However, stories and tales are a way to enrich an experience and have become integral to different kinds of video games.

 

[CityofTreez]

I value a good story over good gameplay.

Why? Because if a game has shoddy gameplay but has an amazing package/story, then I'll fight through it as long as the gameplay isn't broken and unplayable. Having good gameplay but terrible story then I'm just playing it, but not enjoying it. I can only enjoy good game mechanics for so long if the story is shit.

 

[Baldr]

Great story creation for video games is one of the toughest things to do in the world. There are a number of factors that can derail it at anytime.

I have background in screenwriting and commercial writing, and always wanted to do video game writing, that how I got started in the industry. I've moved on to art and development side because I love it better, but here are just some of my observations and advise to the industry:

* Game Developers are not storytellers specifically. Let your writer/story guy/gal develop the story and have the developers craft the game around that story. Don't let developers dictate what they want in the story to the writers and then have them create a story to meet the developers purposes/creations.

* Too many cooks in the kitchen. Most good stories are written by one person usually. You can look at studio teams that have 4-5 writers maybe more. Games are long and I know it faster development time if you have more than one writer. It works fine in quest based games like Skyrim and MMOs where there are all individual stories, but if you have one main story, then more writers doesn't help. Most people have play that game where you get in circle and one person starts the story and the next person adds to it and so on. Those stories usually suck.

* Breaking the formula. There are some different formulas to story telling, I know my favorite is Monomyth. Writers often are unaware or break formula because they don't want their story to be called "formulaic". There are reasons the formulas exist is because they work. A "formulaic" story is not a bad story at all. Most of the really bad stories occur when they break with the formula. The best screenwriters I know, use the formula, but find out where to bend it just a little to tell a more interesting story.

*Fantastic story, but robotic dialogue. I know Gary the intern has a great idea for a story and will work for peanuts, but please at least hire a writer who know how to write good dialogue.

There probably more problems I can ramble on about, but these are just the main concerns I see in the industry.

 

[Sunrider]

When a game is not fun to play, and has a good story. (Final Fantasy, Earthbound.)

HOW DARE YOU?!

....calm down, calm down. There. I'm calm.

Honestly though, I actually think many of the Final Fantasy games have really fun gameplay too. Not all of them, but I like the bosses and such, especially the ones that aren't straight-forward "SPAM X TO WIN" fights that actually require at least a teeny bit of thought.

OT: Opinions will be opinions. Story > Gameplay is mine, most of the time.
That doesn't mean I will play a game with completely broken mechanics either.

 

[Lord Quirk]

I think Yahtzee said something similar in one of his columns, but basically a good game has context, challenge and gratification. Context is the story (or setting), and without context, the game can become quite boring (in my opinion.). Story basically gives you a motivation to play. In Assassin's Creed II, if Ezio wasn't out to avenge his family, I don't think the game would have been half as interesting. Hell, I half-play the AC games just t see what happens next (this is just me, but I find them a bit repetative gameplay-wise). And think of how much better Dragon's Dogma might have been if, you know, they've given it an actual storyline? That's basically the reason I stopped playing, Skyrim too, because I didn't feel I was conrtibuting to anything; they was no plot to drag me forward.
So basically, games without story can still be good, but games with some kind of story are usually better.

 

[2733]

may I rant for a moment?
when this discussion comes I can't help but see a major flaw in it, we seem to have no real definition of gameplay and story. let me explain, gameplay is composed of numerous components lined up to create an experience of let's say combat. controls, AI, level up systems, level design, hit detection, even lighting, all come into play in creating excellent combat, the problem with this is that story is also composed of many parts, and some are the same parts. perhaps an example will help.

To me kingdom hearts is the best example of this, taken apart and looked at individually, both the plot and the combat are pretty awful. the combat is a simple affair of lock on to foe, hit x until dead, rinse, repeat. Whilst the plot (in this case defined as the events of the game not any characterization or such) reads like something posted on a fanfiction site by a 12 year old, the newer games have not helped this but that is a topic for another day. Yet, despite this, the game is still one of my favorites. why? Because the little things carry the big problems, the visual design, characterization, music, and voice work could make a bazooka joe comic engrossing. The combat uses interesting foes, exciting character animation, and good sound to make what is actually simple button mash combat look and feel like something out of an episode of dragon ball Z. You may not like KH but I bet you can think of at least one game you dig that fits this description. the combined works of suda 51 come to mind.

what I'm saying is using terms like "good gameplay, bad story" does an injustice to the sheer complexity of what makes a game entertaining.

 

[Skullpanda]

The only time I will ever truly complain about a story is when any chance of one is ignored because "that's not why people play the game anyway". Battlefield 3 is a huge example for me on this one. I know most people play Battlefield and other games like it for the multiplayer, but I really haven't been a fan of multiplayer shooters, especially on consoles. PC is a different story, but anyhow...

I rented Bf3 to check it out and see if I should buy it. 8 hours later, I was entirely done with the story, confused by it, and bored out of my mind. All I wanted to do is use a small chunk of story to see if the game was actually worth owning. As it stands, I will probably never pick up Bf3 again...for any reason.

I don't think games should get a free ride if mechanically they're terrible, but the story is amazing. On the same lines, though, I don't think games with lackluster stories should be completely shunned either, because sometimes great mechanics come out of these games. I'm kind of in the middle ground on this one.

Oh, and Hello again Deviate. Fancy seeing you here.

 

[TIMESWORDSMAN]

In my mind, a poor story in video games is becoming less and less excusable. If a game takes uses more than 10 mega bytes of memory and has a story at all, there is no excuse for the story being poor. This isn't 1992.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Admittedly, story does matter more to me than gameplay. While some people might be gamers for the gameplay alone, I'm in it for the interactive storytelling. I'll trudge through a game with sub-par gameplay if I feel like I'm experiencing a phenomenal story.

That said, I'm not going to just abandon a game with great gameplay because I find the story lacking. It just likely won't end up on any of my favorite games lists. An example for me would be Borderlands. I had a whole lot of fun playing that game, but its story was practically non-existent. According to Steam I've put close to 300 hours into it, and yet, it's unlikely I'd ever put it on one of my all-time favorite games lists because it was lacking the one key element that matters most to me.

Now, I'll never call Borderlands a bad game, because in my opinion it isn't, and I'd happily recommend it to my friends. But I'll always make a point to mention that it's not a game to play for its story, and I've had a number of like-minded gamers thank me for my honesty toward it.

 

[orangeban]

Shrug, that's your opinion basically.

I hated Call of Duty: Black Ops, Fallout 3 and Borderlands because they had terrible/awfully written stories. The story is what pulls me along in a game, it's what motivates me to keep playing, and if it's not there I have no motivation.

 

[Mark Hardigan]

Saying a video game is bad for its story is the equivalent of saying that a film is bad because it has no action scenes. The film in question is only bad if it's supposed to be an action film. The video game being criticized for its story is only bad if it's supposed to be a story driven game. I've played many games that are not story driven games that are still superb games. yes, their story sometimes plays like they hired the story out to a team of random five-year-olds, all of whom weren't able to read what the others were writing, but they are still solid games.

 

[Savryc]

I love a good story of course, but then I'm the guy that plays CoD for the campaign and fucks off the multiplayer unless it's with friends (I said good story and CoD in the same sentence, come at me bro). So take from that what you will

A good story can pull you through a shitty game for a short while but a good game can make you shrug off a shitty story entirely.

 

[Savo]

Gameplay is important, but the best games are the ones that can combine quality storytelling with good gameplay mechanics. For me, I love video-games as a storytelling medium because of the immersion factor, so I'd rather have a quality story over good gameplay a lot of the time.

As a side note, to be honest I think plenty of games have had way too much praise put on them for being good stories. I'm not saying these games are bad, or even that the stories are necessarily bad, but when they're compared against stories in other mediums, they don't stand up at all. If you took away everything except the story from a game like Bioshock, all you would have is some radio voice overs and a few fleeting glimpses of characters, who usually get killed within minutes of being introduced. The pacing would be terrible outside of a video game too, as would many other games which are supposed to have good stories. If these are the best our medium can muster, then we've got a long way to go. We should still be criticizing these stories a lot. I'm not saying they need to be more like stories in other mediums, but if you take away other aspects of a game that might skew your perception of how good the story is then how good would it really be? I'm sure there are plenty of games out there with stories that are more fondly remembered because the mechanics of the game were also good, as was the graphics and atmosphere. Again, perspective.

I hear people say this a lot, but I rarely agree. The overall quality of the core writing in video-games has a way to go before it reaches the level of other mediums, but I think we're doing just fine everything considered.

To me, I rarely see value in comparing different mediums to each other, because it so often ignores the uniqueness of each one. To discuss Bioshock for a second, the only reason it is so effective at what it does is because it takes place from a first-person player controlled perspective. It'd suck if you stripped out the story and made a horrible novel adaptation or something, but within the confines of a video-game it becomes quite excellent.

Take for example, Dead Space 2. I love horror and science fiction, so I can recognize that it's a serviceable but not that spectacular piece of writing. However, the story, technical aspects, and gameplay have been wrapped so tightly together that I was gripped by Issac Clarke's story from beginning to end. In other words, a story that would only have been an alright film became a great story due to being meshed with quality game aspects.

I mean, you can say the pacing in many games like Bioshock would be terrible outside a video-game, but that's the way any medium works. You could almost never apply the pacing of a quality film to a television show or vice versa, as they are different mediums with different demands.

I may have rambled a bit, so basically my point is that even if the writing may not be at the same technical level of other mediums, the experience when taken as a whole can oftentimes deliver impacting narratives on the level of other mediums. At the end of the day, it just comes back to "did I enjoy this story or not". To me, even if the gameplay and other aspects distorted the actual quality of the writing, if I enjoyed it, the developer has succeeded and I'm happy.

 

[CityofTreez]

I value a good story over good gameplay.

Why? Because if a game has shoddy gameplay but has an amazing package/story, then I'll fight through it as long as the gameplay isn't broken and unplayable. Having good gameplay but terrible story then I'm just playing it, but not enjoying it. I can only enjoy good game mechanics for so long if the story is shit.

So you'd never play a game older than...just throwing a date out there....1992?

I wouldn't judge a game made in 1990 the same way I would judge a new game made in 2012.

And yes I have played game before 1992.

 

[John Farrell]

When it comes to using story in a review score, I think there should be different weights for different genres. RPG's for example, the story has more weight and is the driving factor in gameplay. As you advance in the story, more of the gameworld opens up and becomes available. Take Resonance of Fate, for instance. It is impossible to go anywhere before the story says you should go there.

On the other hand are action games. A story in a shooter may be nice, but is no way required (Spec ops 2 is the best example of a good combo). I've been playing Gotham City Imposters lately, and the reason I like it is that it abandons that war is hell message modern shooters seem to have. The whole scenario is as psychotic as your characters (or possibly the players) are, and the game knows that. It's not preachy or trying to be deep is what I'm saying. You just pick up, play and have fun. But the driving force is the gameplay.

Granted, my whole views on how reviews should work is kinda messy. I'd have two scores. First would be the general review. This is meant for the everyman. Just the game on it's own merits and how it would appeal to a new gamer. The other would be the gamer/genre review, where it is compared to other games in the genre. This is the more hardcore stuff, like complaining about cutscene length or how gameplay hasn't changed since the last game. More for fans.

 

[Mirroga]

It's purely subjective. A bad story can really ruin an otherwise good game. A minor example of that for my case is God of War 3. The story is almost non-existent and Kratos is so unlikeable. But the gameplay is polished and fun enough for me to enjoy it.

For example, a bad ending can really ruin all the hardwork and fun you've gained. But I doubt Mass Effect 3's gameplay is that fun.

If some people still don't get it, another good example is that it works vise versa. A great story and setting can really make mediocre gameplay memorable and a classic. I've never played Silent Hill 2 but surely I don't think people play that game because of the gameplay.