"Western games don't have good storys"

[2xDouble]

Yes, that is true.

However, my point is that games are not as good at telling stories in a game-like manner as movies are at telling stories in a movie-like manner. Err... that was a really awkward sentence. But I think you see what I am trying to say.

The problem stems, ironically enough, from the nature of gameplay. All games end up having to pause the story to let the player shoot some people in the face (western games) or line up opposite some people and politely take turns smacking each other (eastern games).

Once they can make games that tell a good story, one with characters and plot twists and all that, entirely through gameplay then we will really be getting somewhere.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy game stories. All those games I listed in my first post? I loved every single one of them. But when I compare their stories to, say, the Discworld novels or Tolstoy's War and Peace... well, they come up lacking.

PS. The "kidding yourself" remark was not aimed at you specifically.

Oh, really? [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2545-Narrative-Mechanics]

Actually, I think I understand what you're aiming at. Games up until this point (with many notable exceptions, such as the one in the above video), have separated "story" elements from "gameplay" elements to the point where they feel like they conflict with each other [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1887-Video-Games-Bad-Writing]. *cough cough*Xenosaga*cough*

Fortunately, there are some developers out there (like James) who get that a game is neither a book [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/18-Mass-Effect] nor a movie [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/99-Metal-Gear-Solid-4]. As our medium continues to evolve, it will get better and better at telling stories without "telling" stories. It will instead let us experience a story in ways that books and movies never could. Many can see that horizon from here, but we're not quite there yet.

 

[Xaositect]

If someone had said that to me ten years ago I would have hit them in the face with a spade, but now I honestly agree.

The last good story I experienced was ME1. It wasnt soul moving or anything. Just a really good solid story about a mystery of galactic importance unfolding. Dragon Age: Origins... That was totally functional. Good fun experiencing the adventure, but never once stopped to appreciate what was going on. So that was so so. Other than those two, nothing else comes to mind. Well maybe apart from New Vegas had a great world about it with all the factions and locations and whatnot, but like every Fallout game Ive played the overall story is just fucking awful. "GET TEH WATER CHIP!/GECK" Thats about 80% of all the storyline in the Fallout games covered already.

Other than that, things are pretty dire I would say.

Mass Effect 2 squatted over the story of the first game and just took a big shit on it, screamed "LOOK AT THE NEW SHOOTER COMBAT" and then just ended of the same note as the first game, just vastly inferior this time in terms of execution. By and large the first game spents all its time setting up the "reapers are coming" end not. Mass Effect 2 shits on that, resets it, wastes your time the whole game and then repeats at the end "the reapers are coming", this time with a flashy cutscene so all the easily impressed people can mess their pants.

You know what the real problem I find is though?

Eastern, Northern and Southern games dont tell good stories either. In fact people in general dont tell goood stories. Most of them are shit, and you just have to treasure the few exceptions in whatever medium they are in.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Bioware.

Wups there goes everything Bob claimed right out the window.

Bob even liked Avatar so it's not as if he's got much credibility anyway

What a sick fuck liking a popular and successful film, his opinion is clearly not worth anything.

OT: I respectfully disagree with the guy. In fact, I have never played any JRPG other than Pokemon and I have found many games that I enjoy the story of.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

EVERYONES OPINION IS CORRECT.

No, no it is not. If every opinion was always correct then we would live in such a dull world that I would sooner commit suicide than talk about something.

Correct is objective, opinion is subjective. How can something that is subjective be objective too?

 

[Okysho]

It's not on this site.
Why don't you link to it if it's not on this site?
I'd like to make my own picture instead of relying on your 1-sentence "synopsis".

it's moviebobs most recent "The big picture" about the uncharted movie

 

[Vault101]

It's not on this site.
Why don't you link to it if it's not on this site?
I'd like to make my own picture instead of relying on your 1-sentence "synopsis".

that wasnt a synopsis of the whole video, it was just somthing he said no explanation or anything

I get the feeling hes just being provocative

 

[Pyro Paul]

Bioware.

Wups there goes everything Bob claimed right out the window.

Mass Effect 1- An Ancient Evil wants to destroy all life... why? Because.
Mass Effect 2- An Ancient Evil wants to destroy all life... again.
Dragons Age: Orgins- An ancient Evil wants to destroy all life.
Dragons Age 2- Play from a diffrent perspective, as an Ancient evil wants to destroy all life.
Neverwinter Nights- An ancient evil wants to destroy all life via plauge. Find a Cure!
Neverwinter Nights 2- An Ancient evil rises again to destroy all life... Stop him! or join him...

the stories always are bland and one demensional...

look at eastern stories though...

Resident Evil 1-3 - A large Biomedical company facility succeed in making the perfect bio-weapon. Greedy, Power-hungry people attempt to exploit the situation and raise themselves to god-like status yet only succeed to release the virus into the woods and nearby city. When the infection runs out of control, the company decides to bury its secrets and Nukes the place. The Main charcters must make sense of it all, fight against the hordes of undead, possibly find a cure, and escape with their Lives!


Resident Evil is a much more fleshed out and well written story then Mass Effect... but Mass Effect' Story is so well told that inspite of it being a single one demensional 'save the universe' story, by comparison it seems so much better then the laughably poor lines, gapping plot holes, and poor development provided by the Resident Evil saga...

 

[Vault101]

If someone had said that to me ten years ago I would have hit them in the face with a spade, but now I honestly agree.

The last good story I experienced was ME1. It wasnt soul moving or anything. Just a really good solid story about a mystery of galactic importance unfolding. Dragon Age: Origins... That was totally functional. Good fun experiencing the adventure, but never once stopped to appreciate what was going on. So that was so so. Other than those two, nothing else comes to mind. Well maybe apart from New Vegas had a great world about it with all the factions and locations and whatnot, but like every Fallout game Ive played the overall story is just fucking awful. "GET TEH WATER CHIP!/GECK" Thats about 80% of all the storyline in the Fallout games covered already.

Other than that, things are pretty dire I would say.

Mass Effect 2 squatted over the story of the first game and just took a big shit on it, screamed "LOOK AT THE NEW SHOOTER COMBAT" and then just ended of the same note as the first game, just vastly inferior this time in terms of execution. By and large the first game spents all its time setting up the "reapers are coming" end not. Mass Effect 2 shits on that, resets it, wastes your time the whole game and then repeats at the end "the reapers are coming", this time with a flashy cutscene so all the easily impressed people can mess their pants.

You know what the real problem I find is though?

Eastern, Northern and Southern games dont tell good stories either. In fact people in general dont tell goood stories. Most of them are shit, and you just have to treasure the few exceptions in whatever medium they are in.

Im sure quite a few people would disagree

anyway I think its unfair to compare game storys to other mediums

I usually dont expect too much but if I care about whats going on, or it gets a reaction out of me then its done its job

 

[viranimus]

Am I the only one who saw this thread title and immediately thought it would be about Red Dead Revolver/Redemption, Gun, etc?

After reading all these posts that point out that the west has Execution over imagination vs the east that has imagination over execution, I cant help but to compare it to a book. Seriously, if you read a book and were left to say something akin to "The book had great words in it, but the words were arranged so that nothing made sense." then does that automatically make it a bad book? And what I find almost offensive is the notion of Eastern games being filled with more imagination. Seriously, this is a land where media boils down to taking the same 4 ideas and rehashing it to the point it looks like a burnt wafflehouse hashbrown. (god Im hungry) I think people end up giving Japans media all too much credit because people dont realize that Exotic does not equal originality. Its just different than what your used to.

 

[LogicNProportion]

>storys

: I

ANYWAY! I've learned that Bob is actually a lot less intelligent than I think he thinks he is. This comes from following the guy sicne he was on YouTube with Game Overthinker 1. He's getting worse and worse with his analysis', in my opinion.

Bottom line: BioWare, Fable: TLC, CONKER!!!!!, and many, many more.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Bioware.

Wups there goes everything Bob claimed right out the window.

Bob even liked Avatar so it's not as if he's got much credibility anyway

If you watch the Review of it, he said the story is tired and cliche, so he didnt like it for the story. Good try though.

OT: He has a point. Western games' stories are all really bland when you look at it on paper, but the immersion into them is stunningly good it makes you look past it.

meanwhile (and contrary to what most people would say), in Eastern games, the stories can be varied and complex after working from the basic level, but the way its told and immersion into it seems bland and hard to find after its saturated in angst, pointy hair, and melodrama.

 

[bmart008]

There are some amazing stories from Western Developers, like Tim Schafer games, awesome stories, and excellent dialogue. Considering that he considered Mario and Zelda as good game franchises to make movies for really made my opinion of him drop, I mean if he thinks those would be good, what about his movie reviews...

Just my opinion of course.

 

[Vault101]

Bioware.

Wups there goes everything Bob claimed right out the window.

Mass Effect 1- An Ancient Evil wants to destroy all life... why? Because.
Mass Effect 2- An Ancient Evil wants to destroy all life... again.
Dragons Age: Orgins- An ancient Evil wants to destroy all life.
Dragons Age 2- Play from a diffrent perspective, as an Ancient evil wants to destroy all life.
Neverwinter Nights- An ancient evil wants to destroy all life via plauge. Find a Cure!
Neverwinter Nights 2- An Ancient evil rises again to destroy all life... Stop him! or join him...

the stories always are bland and one demensional...

look at eastern stories though...

Resident Evil 1-3 - A large Biomedical company facility succeed in making the perfect bio-weapon. Greedy, Power-hungry people attempt to exploit the situation and raise themselves to god-like status yet only succeed to release the virus into the woods and nearby city. When the infection runs out of control, the company decides to bury its secrets and Nukes the place. The Main charcters must make sense of it all, fight against the hordes of undead, possibly find a cure, and escape with their Lives!


Resident Evil is a much more fleshed out and well written story then Mass Effect... but Mass Effect' Story is so well told that inspite of it being a single one demensional 'save the universe' story, by comparison it seems so much better then the laughably poor lines, gapping plot holes, and poor development provided by the Resident Evil saga...

theres no real original stories anyway

the basic premise of Bioware stories may be balnd and one dimentional but the charachters, the choices you make and the ways its told are certainly not

In general Bioware storys are cliche'd but they are done do well that they have their reputation for good story telling

 

[veloper]

neither do eastern games.

No game *ever* has a good story period. PS:T was only a decent enough; the rest is mediocre or worse.
Watch a movie or read a book instead, especially if your game is linear as fuck aswell.

 

[Gigano]

Well, western games can have good stories, and "good" depends on what they're trying to acheive. Something like Uncharted had an excellent story in regard to what is was going after: Light-hearted adventure.

There just doesn't seem to be as much variety to them, especially not the American ones - where the vast majority of western games are produced - with all the politically correct moral panic stuff going on there coupled with harsh requirements of broad commercial appeal.

So good enough, but giving more thematics and subjects the gaming treatment would be nice.

 

[Tomo Stryker]

Meh.

All games have bad stories. Regardless of whether they come from east or west.

Zhukov, I'm going to agree with you on this. But I would like to pause the bashing from both sides to ask, "What would be an example of a good story?". Also since were bashing bad plot, (and I totally regret doing this) does the Half Life and other Valve created games also count as part of the, "Bad Story" genre?

 

[GiantRaven]

Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet and I feel like throwing it out there; the first Stalker game had a great story.

 

[Dyme]

Who needs story when you can have Blizzard. They make good games.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Meh.

All games have bad stories. Regardless of whether they come from east or west.

Zhukov, I'm going to agree with you on this. But I would like to pause the bashing from both sides to ask, "What would be an example of a good story?". Also since were bashing bad plot, (and I totally regret doing this) does the Half Life and other Valve created games also count as part of the, "Bad Story" genre?

The first Half Life is pretty much "You're a scientist, aliens have invaded your lab, here's a gun, go get them"

It's a really fun game (in fact more fun than the second in my opinion) but the story is kinda stupid.