[strike]Ironic[/strike] Coincidental that I was thinking of making a thread called "Games suck" in which we vent our frustrations about the gaming industry and how stagnant it is. One of my complaints was going to be about how disinteresting video game plots [strike]have become[/strike] are. It's not much different from books or movies, but I can name a lot more books with unique premises than games.
To be fair, writing a book is significantly easier, and a much smaller investment.
I mean, writing a good book is obviously hard, but it's way easier to get hundreds of millions of interesting premises when any asshole with a piece of charcoal is in the business.
I liked MGS2. All the way to the end. Fuck you guys.
Also, Half-Life is always a point of contention in threads like this, but I'm surprised no one's even mentioned it yet.
The thing about the Half-life series is that it's the presentation which makes it work more than the story itself, but there is more to the story if you go looking and fill in the blanks yourself.
I agree it has a great story compared to most games, insofar as the "you playing it out" sense is concerned, but given what he listed as likes/dislikes in the OP, I doubt it'd be his cup of tea.
[strike]Ironic[/strike] Coincidental that I was thinking of making a thread called "Games suck" in which we vent our frustrations about the gaming industry and how stagnant it is. One of my complaints was going to be about how disinteresting video game plots [strike]have become[/strike] are. It's not much different from books or movies, but I can name a lot more books with unique premises than games.
To be fair, writing a book is significantly easier, and a much smaller investment.
I mean, writing a good book is obviously hard, but it's way easier to get hundreds of millions of interesting premises when any asshole with a piece of charcoal is in the business.
I don't think so. A plot is a plot, quality doesn't come from price. A good plot may be harder to implement into a game, but it's not more difficult to write. Game companies aren't investing a ton of money into writing the plot to begin with.
[strike]Ironic[/strike] Coincidental that I was thinking of making a thread called "Games suck" in which we vent our frustrations about the gaming industry and how stagnant it is. One of my complaints was going to be about how disinteresting video game plots [strike]have become[/strike] are. It's not much different from books or movies, but I can name a lot more books with unique premises than games.
To be fair, writing a book is significantly easier, and a much smaller investment.
I mean, writing a good book is obviously hard, but it's way easier to get hundreds of millions of interesting premises when any asshole with a piece of charcoal is in the business.
I don't think so. A plot is a plot, quality doesn't come from price. A good plot may be harder to implement into a game, but it's not more difficult to write. Game companies aren't investing a ton of money into writing the plot to begin with.
Lemme try again:
Tomorrow, I'd like two things from you
1.) A 1000-word short story with an interesting premise.
2.) An 8-hour game designed for the 360 with an interesting premise.
[strike]Ironic[/strike] Coincidental that I was thinking of making a thread called "Games suck" in which we vent our frustrations about the gaming industry and how stagnant it is. One of my complaints was going to be about how disinteresting video game plots [strike]have become[/strike] are. It's not much different from books or movies, but I can name a lot more books with unique premises than games.
To be fair, writing a book is significantly easier, and a much smaller investment.
I mean, writing a good book is obviously hard, but it's way easier to get hundreds of millions of interesting premises when any asshole with a piece of charcoal is in the business.
I don't think so. A plot is a plot, quality doesn't come from price. A good plot may be harder to implement into a game, but it's not more difficult to write. Game companies aren't investing a ton of money into writing the plot to begin with.
Lemme try again:
Tomorrow, I'd like two things from you
1.) A 1000-word short story with an interesting premise.
2.) An 8-hour game designed for the 360 with an interesting premise.
Let's do this realistically, now:
1) A 1000-word short story with an interesting premise.
2) A 1000-word premise for a videogame plot.
The two are not that different. What you're doing is lumping all of the other game elements in with the plot when that's not handled by the writer, it's handled by the programmers.
I really don't think you get what he's saying here.
Writing an interesting book that will take you eight hours to read is a project undertaken by one person. It might take him a year to write it, but all he needs is a word processor or a pen.
Creating an interesting game that will take you eight hours to play is a project undertaken by at least a dozen people and often hundreds. It will probably take at least a year to create it, and the development costs will be measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.
So if you follow this logic to conclusion, it's kind of obvious that, even if the same fraction of books and fraction of games are "interesting" we're just statistically going to have a zillion more interesting books.
I really don't think you get what he's saying here.
Writing an interesting book that will take you eight hours to read is a project undertaken by one person. It might take him a year to write it, but all he needs is a word processor or a pen.
Creating an interesting game that will take you eight hours to play is a project undertaken by at least a dozen people and often hundreds. It will probably take at least a year to create it, and the development costs will be measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.
So if you follow this logic to conclusion, it's kind of obvious that, even if the same fraction of books and fraction of games are "interesting" we're just statistically going to have a zillion more interesting books.
Get it?
I get it, but I'm not going to excuse it. Game plots are mostly horrendous and can be summarized in a paragraph and often are presented in a paragraph.
1) A 1000-word short story with an interesting premise.
2) A 1000-word premise for a videogame plot.
The two are not that different. What you're doing is lumping all of the other game elements in with the plot when that's not handled by the writer, it's handled by the programmers.
Right, my point is that while once you finish with a short story it is dooone and out the door and part of the billion-fold and growing body of written works, premises for videogames don't count until they get made. Which involve a lot more time and effort. Which means that investment in original plots is less prized than investment in plots which promise a return on that time and effort. It's why every successful game gets a sequel, and it's why Braid was made for XBLA and still was almost not profitable enough. It's just not something you can whip up as quickly or as completely as a story.
Edit: I would say the reason that most video game plots really do suck (though lots of interesting plot alone doesn't make a good story: Portal is a good example) is because it's far far easier to get funding when you say "this is Halo... 2" than it is when you have to actually explain something reasonably interesting.
I think there's too much emphasis based on plot in this thread. There are very few interesting plots in any medium. But the story as a whole is much more than that: the plot is just its vehicle. I don't think plots in games are what needs attention, but rather the worlds and characters and details need much more fleshing out. Sitting down to play a game that focuses on story should give the same aesthetic and emotional rewards as sitting down in a theater to watch a play.
I don't mean cutscenes or cinematography or any of that, just a rich world with memorable settings and character interaction, and some internal laws that make it all cohere. The last part is important, because many so-called story intensive games feature completely unnecessary segments that lengthen the play time but do little to serve the development of the story.
I think there's too much emphasis based on plot in this thread. There are very few interesting plots in any medium. But the story as a whole is much more than that: the plot is just its vehicle. I don't think plots in games are what needs attention, but rather the worlds and characters and details need much more fleshing out. Sitting down to play a game that focuses on story should give the same aesthetic and emotional rewards as sitting down in a theater to watch a play.
I don't mean cutscenes or cinematography or any of that, just a rich world with memorable settings and character interaction, and some internal laws that make it all cohere. The last part is important, because many so-called story intensive games feature completely unnecessary segments that lengthen the play time but do little to serve the development of the story.
Sorry, when I refer to plot I mean all of it - the characters, the setting, the interactions. I think gaming in general severely lacks characters with more than one dimension and worlds that really feel alive.
But what I'd really like to see is more games based in a modern, realistic setting that aren't war games.
For PC games with a decent story see mass effect, psychonauts, call of duty 4, half-life2, starcraft, Deus Ex, or Baldur's Gate II: shadows of amn. MOST importantly fucking Dark ForcesII: Jedi knight. The characters are interesting and the story really conveys a sense of urgency that if you don't return things to the status quo shit gets messed up.
For the PS2 Devil May Cry 3 is a ripping good yarn and so is Silent Hill 2. If you can, try and track down clock tower as well for the atmosphere.
And uhh you know, jedi knight.
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
edited February 2009
The old 2D Oddworld games tend to have good to great stories too. Quirky, fun and a bit depraved. Really creative, whacky and dark stuff. I think you can get em cheap on Steam too. The gameplay is fun too, if you don't mind farting as a game mechanic.
The logic about effort as comparing books and games doesn't really work when you look at how much behind films games are as well, from a narrative perspective.
Yeah, but with film you still only need a camera and some dudes to start filming. Add in lighting, makeup and other production equipment, and it can become costly. However, it's still entirely doable, and most of the problem lies in getting the funding and backup from a studio, unless you're talking about CG-explosion fests.
With games you need to build the entire world from the ground up every time; coding, level design, interface, modeling, an animation system, balancing, debugging. And you need to account for these things on two levels; both in terms of gameplay and narrative. Which is why indie developers usually go for either a two dimensional perspective, or a relatively simplistic 3D engine. And at this point your ambition is still bound by other limitations, such as the tools used to develop games, and getting people to even play the thing in the first place.
I think a more apt comparison is to the animation industry, which gaming is probably closer to in terms of narrative quality, but that still doesn't account for the presence of gameplay.
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All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
The Thief series is another great example of subtlety in storytelling. You see hints here and there of a greater purpose throughout the series, and everything comes together in a miasma of fantastic cutscenes and some of the best voice acting in the industry. Lots of personality and creativity has been poured into the overarching storyline and the world lore is very deliberately constructed. As far as I'm concerned, it's probably the only videogame franchise to ever pull off the whole "trilogy" concept correctly. Each game builds off the previous one, and it's all tied together extremely well. They look a bit dated, but the gameplay and level design hold up extremely well in all three games.
Jesus, yes.
Also, Max Payne and Max Payne 2. A very intriguing mystery/noir story in each, as well as an overarching romance connecting the two.
edit: and oh lord, how could I forget Legacy of Kain games? Seriously, this is the single best story in a game (well, series) I've ever encountered. It actually manages to even handle time travel without being horrendously confusing or incomprehensible. And the voice acting is quite simply top notch. I would pay money for a movie release of the LoK series.
Well, give games a mature technology that no longer requires you to re-write your graphic engine every game, and 70 years of developing the craft.
Actually, I think Portal is the best example of this. Oh, and maybe Zeno Clash depending on whether it's good or not. The Source engine allows people to say "fine we're done with the graphics engine, let's decide what to model and why, and what story we're gonna tell." The reduced investment of time and money allows for more interesting artistic designs and storytelling conventions.
I mean, why does most exposition in Gears come in the form of "finger in ear slowly walking radio"? Because it hides a loading screen.
Edit: Also, I nominate Gears for some of the worst storytelling in the history of the medium.
Now, individual scenes are good fun, well-presented, and action-movie style badass. But each plot development has made me less certain that I'm playing an actual sequence of connected events. I mean, 2/3 of the way through the sequel I became convinced for the first time that we weren't on Earth. I have no idea why the main antagonist is a British lady. Most scenes are completely absent a transition. You're in tunnels, now you're not, now you're a thousand miles away! It's just really really poor. Like they got a bunch of guys together the first day, said "each of you design one level" and then locked them all in different rooms until they finished.
Max Payne is one of a few games whose plot twist made me say "Holy shit" out loud. I think the 3rd person shooter gameplay might not be what the op is looking for, though.
I think there's too much emphasis based on plot in this thread. There are very few interesting plots in any medium. But the story as a whole is much more than that: the plot is just its vehicle. I don't think plots in games are what needs attention, but rather the worlds and characters and details need much more fleshing out. Sitting down to play a game that focuses on story should give the same aesthetic and emotional rewards as sitting down in a theater to watch a play.
I don't mean cutscenes or cinematography or any of that, just a rich world with memorable settings and character interaction, and some internal laws that make it all cohere. The last part is important, because many so-called story intensive games feature completely unnecessary segments that lengthen the play time but do little to serve the development of the story.
Sorry, when I refer to plot I mean all of it - the characters, the setting, the interactions. I think gaming in general severely lacks characters with more than one dimension and worlds that really feel alive.
But what I'd really like to see is more games based in a modern, realistic setting that aren't war games.
The major problems with making a fully fleshed out game story, like a book, since that's what we're arguing over, is that you're also giving the player control over the character(s). By creating a story based game, you have to let the player wrestle some control over how it gets told, lest you cut the middleman and sit them in a chair and throw text at them. It's much, much, much easier to create a believable world in a book, simply because the reader is just in a rail car, following along.
The whole "interactivity" bit staples the story's wings to the ground, really. It's a battle of manpower and money. Anachronox proved that it doesn't matter how great your story is, if the game is no fun to play, then no one's gonna play it. The world that is being portrayed has to be realized enough that it can be created by the developers, but if you leave room for the player to imagine some of his own stuff about this world, it comes off as shallow. It comes off as shallow if only because it's been used as a cost cutting measure.
There's a really fine line, I feel, between story:gameplay. You throw in too much story and the gameplay is bitter, you put all the effort into the gameplay and come out with an undercooked story. The pinnacle, so far, I feel is Planescape, simply because it was an incredibly well written story with pretty all right gameplay. It felt right, let's say. Mass Effect almost had it, but it's a prime example of tagging on an attempt at a more fleshed out world with the side-planets, only to have it half-assed or overlooked simply because it wasn't important to the meat of the game. (Just so I'm not throwing mud, I don't know why the side planets and quests in ME were so shallow and repetitive. Just speculating.)
The bottom line is that gameplay is far more important in a game than story, because if the game is still fun to play, it's going to get played. You can make sacrifices to the story to make the game more playable. Doesn't work out the other way around simply because it's a game.
I'm going to throw out recommendations for the following:
Company of Heroes - the campaign is one of the best I've played in an RTS. If you're not too tired of the whole WWII fad, I'd put this one on your list. It's obviously not an original story, but it definitely makes an attempt to remind you that real people did this kind of shit.
Clive Barker's Undying and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth - it's been a bit since I've played through either of them, but I recall the stories being pretty good, if a little poorly written at times and fluttering out at the ends. They're interesting, at least.
and I really like American Mcgee's Alice. It's a peculiar retelling of a favorite story of mine, and while a bit contrived and edgy for the sake of edgy, I liked what was done with it.
I'd also throw in Republic Commando, but I've got a somewhat sick obsession with that game. One of the few singleplayer Star Wars games that doesn't focus at all on jedi, and I love it for that.
A note on Zombiemambo's quoted post. Being a game master for a pen and paper roleplaying game gives you a pretty good insight into this. Players, some more than others, have a great ability to fuck up all your plans. Giving intuitive clues and hinting at restrictions ("ok, you know that guy is evil but if you murder him here in the street the guards are going to go for you, and sure you have a mass flying spell ready to help you flee but then what am I going to do with this three session campaign I planned with this guy as the villain") is often a full time job.
As a game master you have the ability to improvise on the spot and even lead the characters by the nose if you have to. Game developers do not have this luxury, and this means making games that are not linear very hard. This is by no means an excuse for the poor stories in games, but it is a limitation that the often not very talented writers of game plots have to deal with.
A note on Zombiemambo's quoted post. Being a game master for a pen and paper roleplaying game gives you a pretty good insight into this. Players, some more than others, have a great ability to fuck up all your plans. Giving intuitive clues and hinting at restrictions ("ok, you know that guy is evil but if you murder him here in the street the guards are going to go for you, and sure you have a mass flying spell ready to help you flee but then what am I going to do with this three session campaign I planned with this guy as the villain") is often a full time job.
As a game master, you have the ability to improvise on the spot, and even lead the characters by the nose if you have to. Game developers do not have this luxury, and this making games that are not linear very hard. This is by no means an excuse for the poor stories in games, but it is a limitation that the often not very talented writers of game plots have to deal with.
Oh for sure, there are a lot of hurdles videogames have to jump that books and movies don't. But the element of interaction opens up so many opportunities for unique narratives and I'm getting tired of reading a plot that's summed up in three sentences. If this medium is going to progress and be taken seriously, the writing needs some serious improvement.
As long as we're allowing stuff that has decent plots told extremely well, I'd like to throw in that Unreal is basically a first-person Out of This World. There is backstory involving evil aliens enslaving peaceful ones to do hard labor and die a lot, but basically the plot is typical 'sole survivor vs. bad guys' shooter fare.
Where it excels, though, is creating an alien world and making you feel like the one that doesn't belong. The natives don't speak your language, and instead try to get the point across through body language and contextual clues; the hostile Skaarj are a bit more direct in their approach. There is no spoken English narration, no adviser to radio you and tell you exactly where to go and what to do, there are no mission objectives, and there is no mission other than "Your prison ship has crashed and you are impossibly fucked. Survive!" The few scraps of text you can decipher hint at what's going on, and it's neat how they never out-and-out say why the Nali help you.
Again, not an epic story by any means, but it's one where the game itself conveys the idea very well.
Oh for sure, there are a lot of hurdles videogames have to jump that books and movies don't. But the element of interaction opens up so many opportunities for unique narratives and I'm getting tired of reading a plot that's summed up in three sentences.
Uh. I have a hard time coming up with a plot that can't be summed up in three sentences. Three might be too many, in fact. Doing just that is part of the publishing process, even. I mean, I do agree with you that video game stories could use more depth. (I'm getting a computer science minor specifically to explore interactive storytelling.) But please, pick another complaint. Any other complaint.
That said, when I get some time for games, I am totally coming back to this topic.
Oh for sure, there are a lot of hurdles videogames have to jump that books and movies don't. But the element of interaction opens up so many opportunities for unique narratives and I'm getting tired of reading a plot that's summed up in three sentences.
Uh. I have a hard time coming up with a plot that can't be summed up in three sentences. Three might be too many, in fact. Doing just that is part of the publishing process, even. I mean, I do agree with you that video game stories could use more depth. (I'm getting a computer science minor specifically to explore interactive storytelling.) But please, pick another complaint. Any other complaint.
That said, when I get some time for games, I am totally coming back to this topic.
If you can't write a plot that can't be summed up in 30 seconds I'm going to go ahead and call you a poor writer.
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
Oh for sure, there are a lot of hurdles videogames have to jump that books and movies don't. But the element of interaction opens up so many opportunities for unique narratives and I'm getting tired of reading a plot that's summed up in three sentences.
Uh. I have a hard time coming up with a plot that can't be summed up in three sentences. Three might be too many, in fact. Doing just that is part of the publishing process, even. I mean, I do agree with you that video game stories could use more depth. (I'm getting a computer science minor specifically to explore interactive storytelling.) But please, pick another complaint. Any other complaint.
That said, when I get some time for games, I am totally coming back to this topic.
If you can't write a plot that can't be summed up in 30 seconds I'm going to go ahead and call you a poor writer.
if you sum up enough you can sum up anything into a sentence.
if you mean you want someone to explain the entire plot and all of the plot points that's different.
Oh for sure, there are a lot of hurdles videogames have to jump that books and movies don't. But the element of interaction opens up so many opportunities for unique narratives and I'm getting tired of reading a plot that's summed up in three sentences.
Uh. I have a hard time coming up with a plot that can't be summed up in three sentences. Three might be too many, in fact. Doing just that is part of the publishing process, even. I mean, I do agree with you that video game stories could use more depth. (I'm getting a computer science minor specifically to explore interactive storytelling.) But please, pick another complaint. Any other complaint.
That said, when I get some time for games, I am totally coming back to this topic.
If you can't write a plot that can't be summed up in 30 seconds I'm going to go ahead and call you a poor writer.
if you sum up enough you can sum up anything into a sentence.
if you mean you want someone to explain the entire plot and all of the plot points that's different.
Important things. For example I couldn't sum up (forgive me for saying this) any of the books of Lord of The Rings in three sentences.
But this is all vapid, my point is that videogame plots - all elements relating to the story and characters in it - are pathetic compared to other mediums. You can argue there's a lot more to making a videogame than a book, but I'm not going to excuse poor execution for that. If anything we should expect more from the videogame industry.
Somehow I forgot about that one. That's got a creepy, engaging story. Anyone who likes adventure games should give it a shot.
Zombiemambo:
I'll do the whole trilogy for you. "Adventurers band together to destroy a magic ring."
Anything can be summed up like that if you're abstracting it enough. The length of a summation isn't a good indicator of complexity, because everyone will sum things up to a different degree.
I do agree with you, though. Many games don't include much of a story. And really, that's ok. It's still a young medium, and not every game even needs a good story. I think that game stories have been improving, though. Look how far we've come from Pac-Man already.
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Oh oh wait. Are you talking about
I mean, writing a good book is obviously hard, but it's way easier to get hundreds of millions of interesting premises when any asshole with a piece of charcoal is in the business.
The thing about the Half-life series is that it's the presentation which makes it work more than the story itself, but there is more to the story if you go looking and fill in the blanks yourself.
I agree it has a great story compared to most games, insofar as the "you playing it out" sense is concerned, but given what he listed as likes/dislikes in the OP, I doubt it'd be his cup of tea.
I don't think so. A plot is a plot, quality doesn't come from price. A good plot may be harder to implement into a game, but it's not more difficult to write. Game companies aren't investing a ton of money into writing the plot to begin with.
Tomorrow, I'd like two things from you
1.) A 1000-word short story with an interesting premise.
2.) An 8-hour game designed for the 360 with an interesting premise.
Let's do this realistically, now:
1) A 1000-word short story with an interesting premise.
2) A 1000-word premise for a videogame plot.
The two are not that different. What you're doing is lumping all of the other game elements in with the plot when that's not handled by the writer, it's handled by the programmers.
Yeah. It's not so much scary, but it'll mess with your head. The hospital (pay attention whilst riding the elevator) and Prison are the highlights.
Writing an interesting book that will take you eight hours to read is a project undertaken by one person. It might take him a year to write it, but all he needs is a word processor or a pen.
Creating an interesting game that will take you eight hours to play is a project undertaken by at least a dozen people and often hundreds. It will probably take at least a year to create it, and the development costs will be measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.
So if you follow this logic to conclusion, it's kind of obvious that, even if the same fraction of books and fraction of games are "interesting" we're just statistically going to have a zillion more interesting books.
Get it?
I get it, but I'm not going to excuse it. Game plots are mostly horrendous and can be summarized in a paragraph and often are presented in a paragraph.
Edit: I would say the reason that most video game plots really do suck (though lots of interesting plot alone doesn't make a good story: Portal is a good example) is because it's far far easier to get funding when you say "this is Halo... 2" than it is when you have to actually explain something reasonably interesting.
So awesome. Can't be stressed enough.
I don't mean cutscenes or cinematography or any of that, just a rich world with memorable settings and character interaction, and some internal laws that make it all cohere. The last part is important, because many so-called story intensive games feature completely unnecessary segments that lengthen the play time but do little to serve the development of the story.
Sorry, when I refer to plot I mean all of it - the characters, the setting, the interactions. I think gaming in general severely lacks characters with more than one dimension and worlds that really feel alive.
But what I'd really like to see is more games based in a modern, realistic setting that aren't war games.
For the PS2 Devil May Cry 3 is a ripping good yarn and so is Silent Hill 2. If you can, try and track down clock tower as well for the atmosphere.
And uhh you know, jedi knight.
Best. Game. EVER.
The superior 3DO version has been ported to PC with full voice acting.
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
If you haven't played this gem before download it immediately and play it.
Why are you still reading this? GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO
With games you need to build the entire world from the ground up every time; coding, level design, interface, modeling, an animation system, balancing, debugging. And you need to account for these things on two levels; both in terms of gameplay and narrative. Which is why indie developers usually go for either a two dimensional perspective, or a relatively simplistic 3D engine. And at this point your ambition is still bound by other limitations, such as the tools used to develop games, and getting people to even play the thing in the first place.
I think a more apt comparison is to the animation industry, which gaming is probably closer to in terms of narrative quality, but that still doesn't account for the presence of gameplay.
Also, Max Payne and Max Payne 2. A very intriguing mystery/noir story in each, as well as an overarching romance connecting the two.
edit: and oh lord, how could I forget Legacy of Kain games? Seriously, this is the single best story in a game (well, series) I've ever encountered. It actually manages to even handle time travel without being horrendously confusing or incomprehensible. And the voice acting is quite simply top notch. I would pay money for a movie release of the LoK series.
Actually, I think Portal is the best example of this. Oh, and maybe Zeno Clash depending on whether it's good or not. The Source engine allows people to say "fine we're done with the graphics engine, let's decide what to model and why, and what story we're gonna tell." The reduced investment of time and money allows for more interesting artistic designs and storytelling conventions.
I mean, why does most exposition in Gears come in the form of "finger in ear slowly walking radio"? Because it hides a loading screen.
Edit: Also, I nominate Gears for some of the worst storytelling in the history of the medium.
Now, individual scenes are good fun, well-presented, and action-movie style badass. But each plot development has made me less certain that I'm playing an actual sequence of connected events. I mean, 2/3 of the way through the sequel I became convinced for the first time that we weren't on Earth. I have no idea why the main antagonist is a British lady. Most scenes are completely absent a transition. You're in tunnels, now you're not, now you're a thousand miles away! It's just really really poor. Like they got a bunch of guys together the first day, said "each of you design one level" and then locked them all in different rooms until they finished.
Did you even read the OP?
Agreed. For example, the plot in BoF: Dragon Quarter is nothing special, but the story as a whole is one of the best executed I've ever seen.
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The major problems with making a fully fleshed out game story, like a book, since that's what we're arguing over, is that you're also giving the player control over the character(s). By creating a story based game, you have to let the player wrestle some control over how it gets told, lest you cut the middleman and sit them in a chair and throw text at them. It's much, much, much easier to create a believable world in a book, simply because the reader is just in a rail car, following along.
The whole "interactivity" bit staples the story's wings to the ground, really. It's a battle of manpower and money. Anachronox proved that it doesn't matter how great your story is, if the game is no fun to play, then no one's gonna play it. The world that is being portrayed has to be realized enough that it can be created by the developers, but if you leave room for the player to imagine some of his own stuff about this world, it comes off as shallow. It comes off as shallow if only because it's been used as a cost cutting measure.
There's a really fine line, I feel, between story:gameplay. You throw in too much story and the gameplay is bitter, you put all the effort into the gameplay and come out with an undercooked story. The pinnacle, so far, I feel is Planescape, simply because it was an incredibly well written story with pretty all right gameplay. It felt right, let's say. Mass Effect almost had it, but it's a prime example of tagging on an attempt at a more fleshed out world with the side-planets, only to have it half-assed or overlooked simply because it wasn't important to the meat of the game. (Just so I'm not throwing mud, I don't know why the side planets and quests in ME were so shallow and repetitive. Just speculating.)
The bottom line is that gameplay is far more important in a game than story, because if the game is still fun to play, it's going to get played. You can make sacrifices to the story to make the game more playable. Doesn't work out the other way around simply because it's a game.
I'm going to throw out recommendations for the following:
Company of Heroes - the campaign is one of the best I've played in an RTS. If you're not too tired of the whole WWII fad, I'd put this one on your list. It's obviously not an original story, but it definitely makes an attempt to remind you that real people did this kind of shit.
Clive Barker's Undying and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth - it's been a bit since I've played through either of them, but I recall the stories being pretty good, if a little poorly written at times and fluttering out at the ends. They're interesting, at least.
and I really like American Mcgee's Alice. It's a peculiar retelling of a favorite story of mine, and while a bit contrived and edgy for the sake of edgy, I liked what was done with it.
I'd also throw in Republic Commando, but I've got a somewhat sick obsession with that game. One of the few singleplayer Star Wars games that doesn't focus at all on jedi, and I love it for that.
one last one for now: Sanitarium.
As a game master you have the ability to improvise on the spot and even lead the characters by the nose if you have to. Game developers do not have this luxury, and this means making games that are not linear very hard. This is by no means an excuse for the poor stories in games, but it is a limitation that the often not very talented writers of game plots have to deal with.
Oh for sure, there are a lot of hurdles videogames have to jump that books and movies don't. But the element of interaction opens up so many opportunities for unique narratives and I'm getting tired of reading a plot that's summed up in three sentences. If this medium is going to progress and be taken seriously, the writing needs some serious improvement.
Where it excels, though, is creating an alien world and making you feel like the one that doesn't belong. The natives don't speak your language, and instead try to get the point across through body language and contextual clues; the hostile Skaarj are a bit more direct in their approach. There is no spoken English narration, no adviser to radio you and tell you exactly where to go and what to do, there are no mission objectives, and there is no mission other than "Your prison ship has crashed and you are impossibly fucked. Survive!" The few scraps of text you can decipher hint at what's going on, and it's neat how they never out-and-out say why the Nali help you.
Again, not an epic story by any means, but it's one where the game itself conveys the idea very well.
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Uh. I have a hard time coming up with a plot that can't be summed up in three sentences. Three might be too many, in fact. Doing just that is part of the publishing process, even. I mean, I do agree with you that video game stories could use more depth. (I'm getting a computer science minor specifically to explore interactive storytelling.) But please, pick another complaint. Any other complaint.
That said, when I get some time for games, I am totally coming back to this topic.
If you can't write a plot that can't be summed up in 30 seconds I'm going to go ahead and call you a poor writer.
if you sum up enough you can sum up anything into a sentence.
if you mean you want someone to explain the entire plot and all of the plot points that's different.
Important things. For example I couldn't sum up (forgive me for saying this) any of the books of Lord of The Rings in three sentences.
But this is all vapid, my point is that videogame plots - all elements relating to the story and characters in it - are pathetic compared to other mediums. You can argue there's a lot more to making a videogame than a book, but I'm not going to excuse poor execution for that. If anything we should expect more from the videogame industry.
Somehow I forgot about that one. That's got a creepy, engaging story. Anyone who likes adventure games should give it a shot.
Zombiemambo:
I'll do the whole trilogy for you. "Adventurers band together to destroy a magic ring."
Anything can be summed up like that if you're abstracting it enough. The length of a summation isn't a good indicator of complexity, because everyone will sum things up to a different degree.
I do agree with you, though. Many games don't include much of a story. And really, that's ok. It's still a young medium, and not every game even needs a good story. I think that game stories have been improving, though. Look how far we've come from Pac-Man already.