Sorry but I am completely against anyone making the argument that "AAA games need better writing." Why? Because we've DONE the experiment, over and over again, blown billions in development costs on games made by idiots who think polygons == emotions. And what did it get us? Three or four mildly quirky third person adventure games in the Unreal Engine with all the terrible writing, terrible acting, and terrible gameplay AAA is known for. And a little bullet point in the advertisements and on the back of the box that says "- GOOD STORY!"
AAA GAME DEVS CAN'T WRITE A GOOD STORY. EVER. It just can't be done. You can have a bad story that's executed well, sure. Or you can have a boring story that's innoffensive and safe and makes sense but we all saw it coming. But you absolutely cannot have a good story that is also surprising and also allows for good gameplay. AAA developers just can't fucking do it. I don't know whether it's Word of God from the publishers or what, but it just can't be done. Not in America. You might get something with a halfway decent story from an Indie developer, or something out of Japan from like Suda51 or whatever, and if you're very lucky it'll even be localized during the post-holiday doldrums, recieve no advertisement or support, get good reviews, and then wither on the vine. But AAA just can't do it. You're asking a souless moneymaking machine with more heads than a hydra that doesn't play games to approve putting a good story in a game. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN. You can't make it happen. And MOST INSULTINGLY OF ALL, every single fucking E3, we get another batch of games promising good story this time! It's like "enemies that know how to use grenades properly," or "treating a long-running franchise with respect and dignity." They keep promising it to us over and over again because they know it's what we want to hear. But they'll never deliver. They will never fucking deliver! It just won't happen!
Absolute best possible outcome, we'll get something like another Alan Wake. And the people who buy it will go "ehhhh.... it's okay. Yeah, I'm glad I played this once." Which on Metacritic is a DEATH SENTENCE.
Yeah, you're right. A couple developers made a couple games that sacrificed gameplay for story and then had a lackluster story. Yeah, good story can't be done. It's not as if any games with good stories exist (such as Portal, Half-Life, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, any Sierra game, the previously mentioned Alan Wake, Skyrim, Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Bioshock; all games that even if you don't like, a lot of people really like the stories of those games; and that's just from my comparatively small Steam library). Kind of like how good movies ceased to exist because Michael Bay sacrificed story for action and then gave us bad action in Transformers. All the previously made good movies erupted in flames, and no good movies have been made since. /sarcasm
I presume you are invoking Jim Sterling a bit here. And while he'd be the first to criticize the AAA industry, I think the last thing he wants us to do is give up, and say that devs should simply stop trying to write good stories at all. Should they stop using story as an excuse for poor gameplay? Sure. But to tell an artist he's not allowed to create art because of who signs his paycheck is pretty arrogant, IMHO. Who cares what is promised but not delivered on? Fool me twice--it's not the publisher's fault if you get hyped up over something and they don't deliver. Of course someone whose entire livelihood is based on marketing a game is going to promote the game. You as the discerning consumer have the duty of choosing what to believe. But overeager marketing is not a reason to throw in the towel and insist that the only games allowed to try for good stories are those with minuscule budgets and 8-bit graphics (plenty of which also advertise great stories and don't deliver, and plenty of which give great stories--just like AAA games).
The player manages to infiltrate an enemy base during the first mission and then uses a ground to air rocket system to take out the inbound enemy transport plane carrying the suspected enemy leader.
CUTSCENE: We watch as the smoke trail from the rocket flies up into the sky.
Overheard Radio chatter: "confirmed missile launch", "tracking looks good..."
Smash cut to a little boy playing with yellow and green army men who looks out the window next to him just in time to see the rocket impact and explode within the right wing of the prob-driven commuter plane he's riding in.
Overheard Radio chatter: "New aircraft, same altitude and heading. Maintain current target. He's not getting away again."
Crossfade over the little boy staring uncomprehendingly out the window as increasingly bright yellow-orange light illuminates his face with the player character in dress uniform receiving a medal in front of the press. The Secretary of Defense pins the medal on the player's chest and poses for the photo op. After a bunch of flashes the player salutes and turns away from the cameras.
Overheard Radio chatter: "Target is confirmed hit. Second aircraft... has reduced speed. Are they... landing...?"
Close up shot of the player character's face contorting into a disgusted scowl.
Title
The game's main story takes place during a covert American intervention into the civil war caused by the downing of the commuter plane and incidental assassination of the nation's head of state being misinterpreted as the start of a military coup attempt. The Head of State was traveling without security under an assumed name while a double traveled with the bodyguards. As a result of the unrest a number of Western hostages have been taken, a number of foreign embassies have been attacked by armed mobs and rouge rebel militia and military units doing everything from fighting each-other to looting to "ethnic cleansing".
The story will include a side narrative between the Player character and the other characters where many characters will allude to but never directly speak about the "negative outcome". Some characters will be subtly or overtly less confident in the Character's competence, others will be curious or betray knowledge about suspicious orders and the like during the past mission, while still others will offer empty blanket statements and unsolicited condolences (i.e. "I need a man like you. You follow orders. You get the job done", "you did your duty", "What were those Intel bastards thinking?")
Note to any and all game companies looking for writers:
One of the things that I always liked about Final Fantasy games was the fantasy creep going from start to finish every time in a single game. It always starts off saving this, or stealing that, and ends with you fighting something at least a story tall (probably several) and saving everything.
@RatherDashing89
Okay I was being a LITTLE bit hyperbolic. Obviously, it's not IMPOSSIBLE for a AAA game to have a good story. It's just extremely unlikely, to the point that actively rooting for it is a fool's errand. All you're doing is giving them suggestions what to lie about during the next game's pre-launch press embargo.
Portal, Half-Life, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, any Sierra game, Alan Wake, Skyrim, Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Bioshock.
All of the games you listed were made by big game companies and enjoyed some hype leading up to their release, but only Bioshock, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Skyrim could really be called AAA games in the modern sense. I don't think the phrase "AAA game" had even been coined yet when most of the Sierra stuff came out. Half-Life? No. It was too early. I guess Half-Life 2 and Portal could go either way. They're like the "barely this-gen" AAA games. I love Psychonauts dearly and I wouldn't disparage it, but it's not a AAA game now, it's an XBLA or GOG throwback, and it was an obscure niche title even when it was first released.
If you define "AAA" to mean "any game released by a big company," then sure. It's very likely that we'll see 2 or 3 AAA games in the next year that don't entirely suck in the story department.
If, on the other hand, you define "AAA" to mean blockbuster games with cutting-edge graphics, extravagant development budgets, nothing that would scare away a non-hardcore gamer, and lots of publisher control? Then no. It will never happen, or if it does it'll be a rare fluke where the system failed long enough to let a single glimpse of genius shine through somehow. The CEOs of EA and Activision don't want you playing good games. They want you playing THEIR games, and they would sooner eat a multi-billion dollar loss than admit that they might be wrong about what you, the gamer, want.
These companies are run by friggin' idiots. Stop giving them excuses. Don't demand "better writing." That's an insane request. Demand "good games." There's at least a LITTLE evidence that they can occasionally pull that one off. When the one or two people at those AAA studios who can write finally get fed up, they'll branch off and form indie studios and launch kickstarters and that will be that.
Spectacle creep is not present in many of the franchises I play, which have much longer breaks between them. the ones that o have it....it's barely noticeable. All the examples you used were FPS games, so maybe it's just a problem of that genre.
I have to notice that this happened in one of my favourite game series of all time Pokemon.
Started as, Team Rocket trying to steal pokemon and become rich
Team Rocket trying to take over the region.
Team Aqua/Magma trying to create global floods/droughts
Team Galactic trying to... DESTROY THE EARTH!
Team Plasma trying to take over the world/liberate slavery (down a notch there, 5th gen is my favourite plotline)
Team Flare trying to cause mass genocide to all life forms except themselves....
The new Star Wars movies also had a funny spectable creep.
Original Star Wars: one Lasersword
Episode 1: Laserstaff (Darth Maul)
Episode 2: Two laserswords (Anakin Skywalker)
Episode 3: Four laserswords (General Grieviou... whatever)
Posts
Yeah, you're right. A couple developers made a couple games that sacrificed gameplay for story and then had a lackluster story. Yeah, good story can't be done. It's not as if any games with good stories exist (such as Portal, Half-Life, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, any Sierra game, the previously mentioned Alan Wake, Skyrim, Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Bioshock; all games that even if you don't like, a lot of people really like the stories of those games; and that's just from my comparatively small Steam library). Kind of like how good movies ceased to exist because Michael Bay sacrificed story for action and then gave us bad action in Transformers. All the previously made good movies erupted in flames, and no good movies have been made since. /sarcasm
I presume you are invoking Jim Sterling a bit here. And while he'd be the first to criticize the AAA industry, I think the last thing he wants us to do is give up, and say that devs should simply stop trying to write good stories at all. Should they stop using story as an excuse for poor gameplay? Sure. But to tell an artist he's not allowed to create art because of who signs his paycheck is pretty arrogant, IMHO. Who cares what is promised but not delivered on? Fool me twice--it's not the publisher's fault if you get hyped up over something and they don't deliver. Of course someone whose entire livelihood is based on marketing a game is going to promote the game. You as the discerning consumer have the duty of choosing what to believe. But overeager marketing is not a reason to throw in the towel and insist that the only games allowed to try for good stories are those with minuscule budgets and 8-bit graphics (plenty of which also advertise great stories and don't deliver, and plenty of which give great stories--just like AAA games).
The player manages to infiltrate an enemy base during the first mission and then uses a ground to air rocket system to take out the inbound enemy transport plane carrying the suspected enemy leader.
CUTSCENE: We watch as the smoke trail from the rocket flies up into the sky.
Overheard Radio chatter: "confirmed missile launch", "tracking looks good..."
Smash cut to a little boy playing with yellow and green army men who looks out the window next to him just in time to see the rocket impact and explode within the right wing of the prob-driven commuter plane he's riding in.
Overheard Radio chatter: "New aircraft, same altitude and heading. Maintain current target. He's not getting away again."
Crossfade over the little boy staring uncomprehendingly out the window as increasingly bright yellow-orange light illuminates his face with the player character in dress uniform receiving a medal in front of the press. The Secretary of Defense pins the medal on the player's chest and poses for the photo op. After a bunch of flashes the player salutes and turns away from the cameras.
Overheard Radio chatter: "Target is confirmed hit. Second aircraft... has reduced speed. Are they... landing...?"
Close up shot of the player character's face contorting into a disgusted scowl.
Title
The game's main story takes place during a covert American intervention into the civil war caused by the downing of the commuter plane and incidental assassination of the nation's head of state being misinterpreted as the start of a military coup attempt. The Head of State was traveling without security under an assumed name while a double traveled with the bodyguards. As a result of the unrest a number of Western hostages have been taken, a number of foreign embassies have been attacked by armed mobs and rouge rebel militia and military units doing everything from fighting each-other to looting to "ethnic cleansing".
The story will include a side narrative between the Player character and the other characters where many characters will allude to but never directly speak about the "negative outcome". Some characters will be subtly or overtly less confident in the Character's competence, others will be curious or betray knowledge about suspicious orders and the like during the past mission, while still others will offer empty blanket statements and unsolicited condolences (i.e. "I need a man like you. You follow orders. You get the job done", "you did your duty", "What were those Intel bastards thinking?")
Note to any and all game companies looking for writers:
I WILL WORK FOR CREDIT IN THE TITLES!
It was a reboot every time and I loved it.
Yeah. Then in the sequel, they blow up TWO transports and nuke the kid.
Okay I was being a LITTLE bit hyperbolic. Obviously, it's not IMPOSSIBLE for a AAA game to have a good story. It's just extremely unlikely, to the point that actively rooting for it is a fool's errand. All you're doing is giving them suggestions what to lie about during the next game's pre-launch press embargo.
Portal, Half-Life, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, any Sierra game, Alan Wake, Skyrim, Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Bioshock.
All of the games you listed were made by big game companies and enjoyed some hype leading up to their release, but only Bioshock, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Skyrim could really be called AAA games in the modern sense. I don't think the phrase "AAA game" had even been coined yet when most of the Sierra stuff came out. Half-Life? No. It was too early. I guess Half-Life 2 and Portal could go either way. They're like the "barely this-gen" AAA games. I love Psychonauts dearly and I wouldn't disparage it, but it's not a AAA game now, it's an XBLA or GOG throwback, and it was an obscure niche title even when it was first released.
If you define "AAA" to mean "any game released by a big company," then sure. It's very likely that we'll see 2 or 3 AAA games in the next year that don't entirely suck in the story department.
If, on the other hand, you define "AAA" to mean blockbuster games with cutting-edge graphics, extravagant development budgets, nothing that would scare away a non-hardcore gamer, and lots of publisher control? Then no. It will never happen, or if it does it'll be a rare fluke where the system failed long enough to let a single glimpse of genius shine through somehow. The CEOs of EA and Activision don't want you playing good games. They want you playing THEIR games, and they would sooner eat a multi-billion dollar loss than admit that they might be wrong about what you, the gamer, want.
These companies are run by friggin' idiots. Stop giving them excuses. Don't demand "better writing." That's an insane request. Demand "good games." There's at least a LITTLE evidence that they can occasionally pull that one off. When the one or two people at those AAA studios who can write finally get fed up, they'll branch off and form indie studios and launch kickstarters and that will be that.
Started as, Team Rocket trying to steal pokemon and become rich
Team Rocket trying to take over the region.
Team Aqua/Magma trying to create global floods/droughts
Team Galactic trying to... DESTROY THE EARTH!
Team Plasma trying to take over the world/liberate slavery (down a notch there, 5th gen is my favourite plotline)
Team Flare trying to cause mass genocide to all life forms except themselves....
Original Star Wars: one Lasersword
Episode 1: Laserstaff (Darth Maul)
Episode 2: Two laserswords (Anakin Skywalker)
Episode 3: Four laserswords (General Grieviou... whatever)