So...now that Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm is coming out, I was thinking...IMO, I'm not the only one that notices that compared to SC and BW, Starcraft 2's story is really...lacking (despite not being all that *bad* when compared to most video games). And when pressed on things, it seems that the answer Blizz falls back on nowadays is "we put gameplay above all else".
However, when blizzard was first starting out, it seems that their stories were much better than they are now, because back then, as a small studio, they couldn't create the best graphics (though SC1's graphics aged much better than most), they didn't have access to the best composers (yet you can probably remember some memorable SC1 melodies, like the original terran themes), and the only thing they could fall back upon was A) good game design (which didn't change at all) and B) telling a good story.
And IMO, the Starcraft characters (at least in their original forms) stand out to me much better than so many others from so many videogames I've played.
But this isn't a Starcraft thread...what I'm wondering is this:
IMO one of the reasons that people don't take games seriously is that the stories simply lack compared to those in other media. After all, the point of a movie, or a TV series, or a novel (or five of them like George RR Martin has coming out...though by my own admission I couldn't get past page 269 of Game of Thrones because it was so much low fantasy junk and I wanted people to throw fireballs) is that since there is no interaction with the audience, they must tell a good story (or at least have a ton of epic explosions so the audience doesn't notice the lack thereof...here's looking at you, Michael Bay).
IMO games generally fail to do this. In RPGs, it's always "the hero's journey". Big Bad ransacks the Doomed Hometown, then The Hero goes through a journey which may include a Heroic BSOD, confront the villain in The Most Definitely Final Dungeon, and have an epic climactic fight which may include him performing a Heroic Sacrifice via Heroic RROD.
Just about every shooter has some sort of plot which can only be classified as lacking compared to stories in other media at best (Halo) or an excuse plot at worst (Gears of War...lulz aliens are invading earth, shoot 'em!).
Flying games? Soap Opera in the skies with the main character being an AFGNCAAP.
And so many Japanese games are so many variations of a theme of interdimensional demons/aliens/fantastic creatures of other sorts, wacky high school students, and other teen-saves-X (X being a setting) bad anime ripoffs.
I'm wondering...what exactly is keeping videogame studios from A) first having a writer WRITE a damn good story, and then build a game around that? I mean so much of the stuff in bestselling novels serves merely to create an atmosphere through words, describe characters, or otherwise do something to establish that the characters aren't just having a dialog on a white canvas.
This is where all of the graphics and music and everything else comes in. I mean if writers could have the power of visuals and music that video games do, wouldn't they be able to create even better experiences, by leaps and bounds?
I mean Japanese visual novel games are more or less text-based adventures, but what if you could replace so much of those walls of texts with more interaction?
Now, I realize that at some point, the player has to actually play the game, but why exactly must an RPG have massive amounts of "take 2 steps, fight random giant level 5 onyx"? Why must Ace Combat games throw endless amounts of aerial mooks at you, and so many games just create what I more or less dub "empty gameplay"? What exactly is such a mortal sin about having all of the gameplay have meaning towards a well-developed plot, rather than "oh hey we want to create this cool gameplay system and have these cool missions. WHY are the missions happening? Oh...right...quick, someone slap together an excuse plot."
Wouldn't games be far more enriching experiences if the gameplay revolved around the story, not vice versa?
I mean shouldn't this be the case especially with multiplayer games? I mean someone takes 20 hours to play through a campaign, then spends hundreds of hours just playing the core game with others online. What exactly is keeping game developers from creating an out-of-this-world story for the 30 hours or so we spend playing the game for its story, and leave the rest of the multiplayer stuff for actually continuing to deliver on the gameplay?
Long story short, for all of the TL;DRers:
Write good story. Weave gameplay around the fantastic plot. Don't slap story as an excuse for why the game is happening.
LOL one of my captcha words was literature
However, when blizzard was first starting out, it seems that their stories were much better than they are now, because back then, as a small studio, they couldn't create the best graphics (though SC1's graphics aged much better than most), they didn't have access to the best composers (yet you can probably remember some memorable SC1 melodies, like the original terran themes), and the only thing they could fall back upon was A) good game design (which didn't change at all) and B) telling a good story.
And IMO, the Starcraft characters (at least in their original forms) stand out to me much better than so many others from so many videogames I've played.
But this isn't a Starcraft thread...what I'm wondering is this:
IMO one of the reasons that people don't take games seriously is that the stories simply lack compared to those in other media. After all, the point of a movie, or a TV series, or a novel (or five of them like George RR Martin has coming out...though by my own admission I couldn't get past page 269 of Game of Thrones because it was so much low fantasy junk and I wanted people to throw fireballs) is that since there is no interaction with the audience, they must tell a good story (or at least have a ton of epic explosions so the audience doesn't notice the lack thereof...here's looking at you, Michael Bay).
IMO games generally fail to do this. In RPGs, it's always "the hero's journey". Big Bad ransacks the Doomed Hometown, then The Hero goes through a journey which may include a Heroic BSOD, confront the villain in The Most Definitely Final Dungeon, and have an epic climactic fight which may include him performing a Heroic Sacrifice via Heroic RROD.
Just about every shooter has some sort of plot which can only be classified as lacking compared to stories in other media at best (Halo) or an excuse plot at worst (Gears of War...lulz aliens are invading earth, shoot 'em!).
Flying games? Soap Opera in the skies with the main character being an AFGNCAAP.
And so many Japanese games are so many variations of a theme of interdimensional demons/aliens/fantastic creatures of other sorts, wacky high school students, and other teen-saves-X (X being a setting) bad anime ripoffs.
I'm wondering...what exactly is keeping videogame studios from A) first having a writer WRITE a damn good story, and then build a game around that? I mean so much of the stuff in bestselling novels serves merely to create an atmosphere through words, describe characters, or otherwise do something to establish that the characters aren't just having a dialog on a white canvas.
This is where all of the graphics and music and everything else comes in. I mean if writers could have the power of visuals and music that video games do, wouldn't they be able to create even better experiences, by leaps and bounds?
I mean Japanese visual novel games are more or less text-based adventures, but what if you could replace so much of those walls of texts with more interaction?
Now, I realize that at some point, the player has to actually play the game, but why exactly must an RPG have massive amounts of "take 2 steps, fight random giant level 5 onyx"? Why must Ace Combat games throw endless amounts of aerial mooks at you, and so many games just create what I more or less dub "empty gameplay"? What exactly is such a mortal sin about having all of the gameplay have meaning towards a well-developed plot, rather than "oh hey we want to create this cool gameplay system and have these cool missions. WHY are the missions happening? Oh...right...quick, someone slap together an excuse plot."
Wouldn't games be far more enriching experiences if the gameplay revolved around the story, not vice versa?
I mean shouldn't this be the case especially with multiplayer games? I mean someone takes 20 hours to play through a campaign, then spends hundreds of hours just playing the core game with others online. What exactly is keeping game developers from creating an out-of-this-world story for the 30 hours or so we spend playing the game for its story, and leave the rest of the multiplayer stuff for actually continuing to deliver on the gameplay?
Long story short, for all of the TL;DRers:
Write good story. Weave gameplay around the fantastic plot. Don't slap story as an excuse for why the game is happening.
LOL one of my captcha words was literature
