who is better at story telling? Square Enix or CD Projekt RED

[leonhax]

When i was a young boy i got my first taste of the new age of gaming when my mate let me play final fantasy x, i was beside myself with glee and anticipation. the visuals where stunning, the gameplay was amazing and the story had questions that i wanted answers to which was my drving force to play the game.

Sadly however i was only able to play for about 2 hours but then my chance came, three years later i got my hands on a copy of it from video ezy and after an entire long weekend (which was about 30 hours of gameplay) i noticed something. this was not the game i remembered it to be at all, the story really seamed to go nowhere with me wondering where are we going? why are we going there? why should i care.

This was 2008 and since then any more atempts at playing games by square enix have ended in me quite simply putting down the controller and saying no.... no more of this endless padding of story that has so many plot holes for the single reason that a plot hasent really been established at all.

In 2011 however i came across a title that i had seen here and there at game stores but had never had any real exposure to. The Witcher, an action RPG by developers CD projekt RED who are best known for The witcher and the witcher 2.... that haven't really gotten much to their name so i decided to give it a crack... within the first hour i was drawn in, i was completely loving the game world and for the first time actually reading those extra notes in the journal that geralt (the main character) had in his menu just to get more of the story out of what was already there. i finished the game within 4 weeks (about 30 to 40 hours with me still missing a few quests here and there)and it was the most refreshing gameplay experience of storytelling i had ever seen. a choice system that at first looks to be a standard good v evil kinda of setup but later turns out to be a much more difficult choice system with actions constantly having effect on the game world around you.

Although to their advantage the story of geralt was a best selling novel for many years before made into the game, the game used most of the characters of the novel but went into a completely new story.

So i hand it to you with your personal experiences who do you think is the better story teller?

 

[AhumbleKnight]

Thats a tough call. Square has had some very good ones but also some that are no so good. I could give it to CD projekt for not having any main characters that I can't stand but they are yet to release even a quarter the number of games as square.

If forced to decide between the two, I would say "No."
They have different styles and both have given me many hours of enjoyment.

 

[BlueJoneleth]

Blizzard Entertainment.

Not really they just make everyone crazy to kill them off.

 

[Zhukov]

They're both terrible at it.

In particular, both of them rely way too heavily on expositional dialogue, which is made significantly worse by the fact that neither developer can write dialogue to save their lives.

If someone put a gun to my head and made me choose one, I'd have to go with Squeenix. They actually make some effort in the characterization department. While the characters they produce are generally ridiculous, at least they're fairly well defined.

 

[poleboy]

Video game designers are horrible at story-telling. But if I have to pick, I'll go with Square (no soft, so Squeenix), which means the party stops around FF VIII. Their newer games have pathetic stories. I don't know who they are supposed to be designed for, but it feels like whiny tweens.

 

[veloper]

If this is about CRPGs only, then
since Troika and Black Isle are R.I.P., we're stuck with just Obsidian, who are almost competent at writing dialogue and coming up with new ideas.

Bioware and CDPR are worse than Obs when it comes to writing dialogue.
CDPR dispense with the sugary my-little-pony talks Bioware include in their games, but they don't have Bioware's budget for voice actors.
Blizzard (counting diablo as a ARPG) only do quality and polish well. Zero points for writing and originality.

Bethesda are worse than all the western big budget studios when it comes to themes, dialogues, directing voice actors, animation, design etc. etc. etc.

Finally Square Enix are so bad, they come out straight on the other side in the realm of insanity. For sane people, most of their stuff is just terrible, but some stuff has comedy value.

 

[Arina Love]

for me it's Bioware, then SE and in last place is CD Projekt.

 

[Shadowsafter]

Oh my god is this even a question? Obviously Square Enix is worse. It seems like every fucking japanese game developer needs to include at least 19 fucking hours of cutscenes inbetween every TURN BASED battle lest they shame their houses and must commit ritual suicide.

 

[DanielBrown]

Only played The Witcher for a few minutes before I decided to quit, so my experience is only with Square Enix.
I don't think they're especially good with stories though.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Why are people saying Bioware. Mass Effect rocks yeah but everything else I've played by Bioware seems to be so boring and generic that they can't even compete with Nintendo with story telling, let alone a giant like Square Enix.

Square aren't great at telling the story but they are good at creating a story. The only games I've played that are good at telling stories are newer games like Heavy Rain, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, El Shaddai and even Portal.

Let's face it guys, WRPGs just don't hold up to well in the story department, the only way Mass Effect does is because it's more JRPG with Gears of War thrown in for good measure.

Tri-Ace and Atlus are great at telling stories but Tri-Ace's stories tend to be crap and Atlus aren't really popular.

WRPGs are about the way the game plays and JRPGs are about the story and characters and expressing emotion.

There are exceptions to the rule like Mass Effect and Demon's Souls but it's true, western developers but the game first and japanese developers put the story first.

 

[veloper]

Let's face it guys, WRPGs just don't hold up to well in the story department, the only way Mass Effect does is because it's more JRPG with Gears of War thrown in for good measure.

What criteria make a game a "JRPG" in your definition?

 

[Raika]

J-RPGs are almost always pretty poorly written, and when they're not, the fan base tends to hate them, as was the case with the disgustingly underappreciated Final Fantasy X-2, which was much more coherent and fun with its silly, campy girl pop than its predecessor was with its sappy, by-the-numbers melodrama. Storytelling in games has never been great, with very few exceptions. Games like BioShock that present the story through gameplay will always be better than preachy, pretentious tripe with a twenty-minute cutscene for every ten minutes of gameplay.

 

[byterunner]

ehhh, I dunno, currently?

I'd go with CD Projekt RED. But honestly, Square has been pretty bad these past few years. And it doesn't seem to be getting better with XIII-2. (story department)

 

[Robert Ewing]

Oh god, so many people with under three word replies. Moderators are going to have a field day.

And I think overall Square. Not to say that they have come up with a single good story recently, because they haven't.

 

[Weaver]

JRPGs are just so frequently a huge spaghetti mess of afwul character arcs, plot threads that go nowhere or just remain entirely unresolved while exposing us to some of the most painful characters of all time. Often the plot points are well and far beyond ridiculous or non-sensical. Characters just seem to have incredibly short memories. Like in FF X Sin destroyed an entire village and the crew just goes over to the next town and acts like nothing happened. The fact that they just witnessed the genocide of thousands of people just rolls off their shoulders. "Oh, hey! Blitzball!"

CD Projekt is by no means a master of storytelling, but they're better than square-enix.

 

[Woodsey]

They're both terrible at it.

In particular, both of them rely way too heavily on expositional dialogue, which is made significantly worse by the fact that neither developer can write dialogue to save their lives.

If someone put a gun to my head and made me choose one, I'd have to go with Squeenix. They actually make some effort in the characterization department. While the characters they produce are generally ridiculous, at least they're fairly well defined.

The Witcher 2 has some cracking dialogue, although The Witcher suffered from crap voice acting and some very rough translating (even in the Enhanced Edition). There are a few slip-ups in TW2 with rather blunt instances of exposition.

I'm not sure how you could argue Geralt, Roche, Iorveth, Triss, or even Foltest or the other Kings are poorly defined.