Gaming, a medium told entirely in second person?

At the start? I still see reviews that consider even the most rudimentary morality metre as a plus. Or, more often, the lack of one as a minus.

edited 23rd Sep '11 7:40:23 PM by BadWolf21

The issue is just that people are so infatuated with the idea of games being a series of interesting choices when for the most part they are not.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

Relevant.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

I'm so glad Extra Credits found a new home.

Umbran Climax◊

That video is indeed relevant in a good way. I wish I could say the same for the article.

The fact is, it's always been found that the very best storytelling comes from taking advantage of a medium's strengths, something I've come to agree with. That view has been proven time and again in everything from ancient plays to classic novels to epic films.

Yet it still eludes most of the video game industry, and I find this baffling. Why would you even make your story into a video game if you aren't going to try to use the distinctive aspects of the medium?

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

They are using the unique aspects of the medium. That's what's called gameplay. However, sometimes, to tell your story, you need the character to sit still, and listen to someone like a human being. Allowing the player free reign, all of the time, is not usually a good way to tell a story.

I think some really good video game storytelling doesn't really have anything to do with its interactive elements. Ace Combat 4's story, for example, is told almost entirely via cutscenes between missions, but I think it still manages to tell an interesting story.

The game that I think has the best story, Dragon Quest V, only really has a single "choice" that relates to it, but I don't really think it's that choice that makes the story good.

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

This is the part where I plug Immortal Defense.

Seriously guys. Go play it. Incredible story.

Also, another game that in my opinion has an incredible story is Atom Zombie Smasher, but that has a story in the same sense Dwarf Fortress has a story, really.

"Delenda est." "Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed." -Common Roman saying at the end of speeches.

I guess Totemic hasn't been around in the threads I've dropped this in, so I'll just go ahead and say my little bit:

Games aren't good at storytelling in the traditional way. They are first and foremost about play, and if it just so happens that the play conveys some kind of story, then so be it. A story can greatly enhance the experience, but it is not the selling point of the medium. Otherwise poker, chess, and minecraft wouldn't be such popular things, and text adventures wouldn't be a minor niche.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

There's also an Extra Credits video about cutscenes in particular: [1]

x6 Because a lot of videogame writers wanted to write movies and tv shows.

Not to mention this gen's strange infatuation with making game stories like blockbuster movies. Something that really just confuses me, because blockbuster movies generally aren't known for good stories.

edited 23rd Sep '11 8:46:16 PM by JotunofBoredom

Umbran Climax◊

it's because blockbuster movies are known for visceral satisfaction, which games generally excel at.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

That's a point.

I just get peeved when stuff like God Of War 2 gets put forward as having one of the best game stories of all time.

Or maybe I just read/watch the wrong reviews.

Umbran Climax◊

Wait, God of War II? Seriously?

God of War? Yeah... you're probably using the wrong reviews.

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

"Videogame stories simply don't get much better than this."

Edit: The first God Of War's story, while still not all that great to me, did have its own merits writing wise. All of those died with the other games in the series.

Yet when GOW 2 game out some people were saying it was an even better story.

edited 23rd Sep '11 9:11:27 PM by JotunofBoredom

Umbran Climax◊

You're confusing conventional storytelling with what video games do. All video games tell stories, expressed via gameplay. A lot don't look like stories...because many are handled in the second person. Which brings us back to the origin of this thread.

Any time a game tells you to "do X to complete objective Y", that's your story, your plot. Will you succeed? Will you fail? You will decide.

Since every video game ever made (that I know of) involves some form of that, every video game has a story. It may amount to the video game equivalent of Beige Prose, but it still exists.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Yeah, that part in Tetris, where the L-block made up with the S-block and completed the line just gets me every time. I cry. I'm not afraid to admit it.

Although some versions of Tetris have sequences of events attached to progress.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

Some. Not all.

Actually I am not confusing conventional storytelling because I used the modifier "traditional"*

in my sentence!

Also, you can definitely define stories as "will you succeed or fail." That also means that everything is a story, and therefore the idea of something being a story is not terribly unique.

But a story is completely different from storytelling*

. Storytelling is where you get the special from. I agree with you; games should be telling their stories through play if they want to be more than movies with playable bits. What I don't agree with is the idea that a game is fundamentally about storytelling. They're about providing a framework through which an agent can act.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

I...what...face...desk...

How can you logically claim something has a story without having storytelling? I don't know what definition of storytelling you have, but it sure isn't the normal one.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I think he means a story in its basic form(example: "the king died, then the queen died") can be told without the use of any interesting storytelling techniques.

edited 24th Sep '11 12:52:06 PM by JotunofBoredom

Umbran Climax◊

^yeah that. I can logically claim that in the same way that you can logically claim that tetris, poker, football, farmville, and monopoly are about telling compelling stories.

Hint: they are not. They are about giving you a compelling experience (or harnessing addiction, but that's a completely different discussion)

And no, those are not exceptions to the rule*

. Almost every game in the history of mankind up til the proliferation of the personal PC has been a multiplayer framework for agents to act in, not a tool to convey a story to a singular player. They may have the "story" of "will I win?" but telling that story is not their focus; it's providing a way for the player(s) to do that experience.

Am I saying that games shouldn't tell stories? No. I'm just saying that they will not provide anything of interest until they stop trying to be movies because that's not their true forte. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love it when a game has well-written stories, but I have yet to find a game that is objectively better at telling a story than a film, tv series, or book, nor do I think they can be objectively better at telling a story than those forms of media, but they can be better at giving an experience.

Actually that's a lie. Photopia was a pretty ballin' text adventure that might've made for a better story than a book (might've been due to the hollistic experience, though), but then again, my point stands that interactive fiction is a super niche genre.

edited 24th Sep '11 12:41:32 PM by ch00beh

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

My turn to pull the qualifier card. At no point did I use the word compelling. Like I said, it's the video game equivalent of Beige Prose. Just because it isn't a good story doesn't make it stop being a story.

Also, compelling is a subjective concept; what is compelling to you is not compelling to others.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)