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[ScientificPizza]

Long story short - gameplay and story telling often conflict to often to meld well together. One is going to have to suffer for the other to thrive

Yeah, this is exactly it. The problem with game stories is that it needs to pull you out of the game to tell the story

I don't think all video game stories are bad (and i kind of hate when people just say that they all are) but the way in which those stories are told could be reworked. I have absolutely idea how to, though

 

[Harlequin]

The thing is that narrative quality is so incredibly subjective that I often find explaining one's opinion on the matter (or discussing whether a story really is or isn't bad and why) to be a bit of a waste of time. There's no right or wrong answer, anyway. Now, of course, that doesn't mean a discussion on the subject cannot still be interesting or productive, it certainly can, it just means I'll personally have less interest in having that discussion (especially since I've had my fair share of discussions on narrative quality in the past and sort of know how they generally tend to go and which types of arguments tend to brought up by which side).

 

[MogCakes]

Why would a joke be a bannable offense lmao, defensive much?

They mean people who post a screenshot without mentioning the title. They're agreeing with it.

 

[watership]

Things are either Naughty Dog or they aren't.

No one else writes compellingly fleshed-out, filmic characters in games.

ND? Do not like the sitcom like banter crap they write at all. More dialogue and writing in games like "Life is Strange", please.

 

[Plum]

For the most part "story in video games," is what happens when you're not playing the game: when you're watching a cutscene, pressing forward to walk slower than a depressive tortoise or reading a random text log. You're essentially transported into another medium entirely whenever story needs to happen which whilst passable, only makes way for direct comparisons to said mediums or, if you're willing to be ridiculed by people on gaf, what the characters do during actual gameplay.

Developers need to stop going at story in the same way the film industry does. Writers shouldn't just be writing a script that 'is' the story with game designers in the other room making level, action set pieces and gameplay to go around it; they need to be intimately involved with all elements of the game. People love to bring up the "failed director/screenwriter" hot take but there is an element of truth to it. If you're not touching the core design of the game then you're not making the story for the game, you're making the story for the film/book that happens in intermittent chunks between gameplay sections.

The reason I love games like Dark Souls, The Last Guardian, NieR: Automata and Night in the Woods is because their story and gameplay works together, not apart. Note that all have cutscenes, I don't have anything against cutscenes, but when the cutscenes are over I want to feel like the story I just witnessed has carried on now the controller's in my hands and I'm in the gameplay loop.

 

[Crossing Eden]

People using "Hollywood" as a disparaging remark ITT really don't seem to know anything about Hollywood....mainstream films are generally still leagues better narratively than videogame narratives.

 

[Tagyhag]

When compared to other mediums, yes, 99% of them are shitty.

 

[Harlequin]

ND? Do not like the sitcom like banter crap they write at all. More dialogue and writing in games like "Life is Strange", please.

What Life is Strange absolutely nailed were characterisation, character development, making you care about the characters, etc. IMO, though, dialogue was actually one of its weak points. There were a lot of moments where it felt kind of fake/forced, like the writer(s) were trying to go for teenage slang but missed the mark. Which, in some weird way, adds to the game's charme but it still doesn't really make for good dialogue.

People using "Hollywood" as a disparaging remark ITT really don't seem to know anything about Hollywood....mainstream films are generally still leagues better narratively than videogame narratives.

Which isn't saying much. And Hollywood stories tend to have their own sets of problems. If people want to get serious about tackling the issue of narrative quality in video games, they should not be looking at your average Hollywood blockbuster as an example to follow. TV shows are probably a better bet but even then you have to be careful (and there's no reason to limit it to Hollywood-produced or even US-American TV shows as there's lots of good stuff coming out of, for example, the UK and Scandinavia, as well). Not to mention that you'll never be able to tap the medium's full storytelling potential if you keep trying to copy forms of media featuring exclusively linear storytelling.

 

[Dantis]

I think one thing game stories really, really struggle with is character motivation and groundedness. Character actions and the world around them don't often hold up well to scrutiny. It might not be perfect, but Last of Us is significant at the very least for having believably motivated characters.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

I have experienced exactly four video game stories I'd describe as good:

- Mother 3
- Ace Attorney
- Silent Hill 2
- New Vegas (and then not so much for the writing itself but the level of roleplaying)

All others are frankly not very good, and yes, I've played GAF's golden boy games. Especially don't expect me to care about the story in a shooter.

 

[Eusis]

If I'm seeking out the One Great Story I probably won't select a video game, but that's such a lofty loaded title, and one that will vary from person to person greatly, that I would rather not try it anymore outside of my own preferences.

But I've enjoyed game stories well enough! That's good enough for me (well, and if they're going to suck at it then to not strap me down and force me to watch.)

 

[CharminUltra]

Yeah, I find it hard to disagree with the poll results.

Gaming is my favorite hobby by far, but if I'm looking for a great story, it'd be near the bottom of my list.

 

[Wensih]

Honestly, stories in video games are still better than in majority of modern Hollywood movies. And same for dialogues and writing.

Typical american movie for example:

^ William Shakespeare would be jealous

What would be the videogame equivalent of a Stanley Kubrick film, a Paul Thomas Anderson film, a David Lynch film, Terrence Malick, the Coen Brothers, Charlie Kaufman? I mean those are the American film makers I would reference if I'm referencing american cinema.

But sure let's pick James Cameron as our representative of film.

 

[More_Badass]

That the Uncharted series is often held up as an industry leader in terms of story, writing, and character development says a lot, in my opinion

I dont think anyone is saying that Uncharted is the epitome of game stories. It's Indiana Jones with nicely-written character relationships, but the overarching stories are all pretty boilerplate action-adventure. The chemistry between characters is the only aspect that elevates their narratives; that's not exclusive to Uncharted though. A ton of buddy and team movies have lived and died by the chemistry of the cast, over stuff like plot.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

TLOU is better than Cormac McCarthy now? lmao stop

Lmao. It's like that one time I read an article about how Spec Ops: The Line was so good that it makes Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now unnecessary.

 

[Timeaisis]

I can explain the "anime" label.

The characters frequently aren't fleshed out and have very little motivation. The plot is the primary mechanic that moves the action forward, not the characters. Which, in (good) movies, is usually the opposite.

Honestly, stories in video games are still better than in majority of modern Hollywood movies. And same for dialogues and writing.

Typical american movie for example:

^ William Shakespeare would be jealous

Are you the kind of person that thinks Goodfellas is shit because they say "fuck" too much?

EDIT:

honestly its a lot easier to say specifically which game stories arent shitty

the best i can say about most of my favorite game stories is that they are pulpy fun or are so utterly ridiculous as to be endearing

Yeah, pretty much same here. MGS is my favorite game series' story, and it is because it knows exactly what it is...which is ridiculous.

 

[Lunaray]

What would be the videogame equivalent of a Stanley Kubrick film, a Paul Thomas Anderson film, a David Lynch film, Terrence Malick, the Coen Brothers, Charlie Kaufman? I mean those are the American film makers I would reference if I'm referencing american cinema.

But sure let's pick James Cameron as our representative of film.

Yeah, this is the equivalent of picking Call of Duty as the representative video game story.

 

[More_Badass]

What would be the videogame equivalent of a Stanley Kubrick film, a Paul Thomas Anderson film, a David Lynch film, Terrence Malick, the Coen Brothers, Charlie Kaufman? I mean those are the American film makers I would reference if I'm referencing american cinema.

But sure let's pick James Cameron as our representative of film.

Not a fair comparison, games arent there yet. It's still a young medium compared to film. All those films and the style of such directors were built on a many decades long foundation of evolving film language and structure

Games only started trying to tell stories through gameplay and prose and whatnot since the late 80s/90s, with stuff like text adventures, Ultima, Baldurs Gate, Half Life, etc. We're like in the Kuleshov effect era of game narratives and storytelling

Much like early film makers were experimenting with editing to see how it can be used to tell stories, we see developers experimenting with game design, structure, player control, and aesthetic to explore how to marry story and gameplay, and how to use gameplay and controls in service of narrative.

Everything from "forced walking" to Brothers' dual analog control is part of this experimentation

 

[texhnolyze]

If Naughty Dog games are the highest bar for good, compelling stories in video games, I have no words.

 

[Zukkoyaki]

It's the internet. It's commonplace for someone to label anything they don't personally like as objectively 'shitty'

 

[-tetsuo-]

This is and always will be dumb. Most fictional media has bad stories. Books, TV or whatever the hell ever. The sentiment that a bad book has a better story than a game with a good story is nonsense I see repeated way too often.

 

[Burbeting]

Games need more stories that only work with game as the medium it's being told. Right now there's too much trying to simply emulate movies, without the writing to back it up.

 

[Starlightmuse]

People using "Hollywood" as a disparaging remark ITT really don't seem to know anything about Hollywood....mainstream films are generally still leagues better narratively than videogame narratives.

If you think blockbuster hollywood movies like Marvel movies, Transformers, Fast and furious, Twilight or The Hunger games are leagues better narratively than something like Nier or The lat of us perhaps you are the one who know nothing about storytelling.

I respect different opinions, but there's a lot of posts here that just seem to be saying that every movie story is a hundred times better than any game story, and that anyone who thinks different don't know shit about movies or haven't read a book in their life, fuck off with that.
Yeah, good stories in games are less common than in movies and books, this doesn't change the fact that there are lots of movies and books with shitty story and some games with great story.

 

[Fou-Lu]

This is and always will be dumb. Most fictional media has bad stories. Books, TV or whatever the hell ever. The sentiment that a bad book has a better story than a game with a good story is nonsense I see repeated way too often.

Definitely. Video games might face different difficulties in storytelling than other media, but at the end of the day I don't think they are lower than movies or books as a whole.

 

[RumbleHumble]

Honestly, stories in video games are still better than in majority of modern Hollywood movies. And same for dialogues and writing.

Typical american movie for example:

^ William Shakespeare would be jealous

Still can't name a single action video game with a better plot/story/characters than Aliens. And I like video games.

Also, that line is perfect. Fucking perfect. Shit on American cinema with some actual garbage from Star Wars Episode II if you want to get your point across.

 

[Wensih]

Not a fair comparison, games arent there yet. It's still a young medium compared to film. All those films and the style of such directors were built on a many decades long foundation of evolving film language and structure

Games only started trying to tell stories through gameplay and prose and whatnot since the late 80s/90s, with stuff like text adventures, Ultima, Baldurs Gate, Half Life, etc. We're like in the Kuleshov effect era of game narratives and storytelling

Sure, I understand that video games are still emerging and experimenting as a medium. I'm also not the one who tried to make the comparison and state that most games have surpassed American cinema. If you're going to throw around flippant comments like dracula_x did then prepared to get knocked back down, whether it's fair or not.

edit: Also film makers continues to experiment.

 

[RumbleHumble]

Last of Us is better written than literally any Cameron movie lmao

Not even the slightest bit true. Aliens, Terminator, Terminator 2, and Titanic all wipe the floor with Last of Us. And I LOVE Last of Us.

 

[More_Badass]

Last of Us is better written than literally any Cameron movie lmao

I love The Last of Us, but you seriously need to study on scriptwriting and film language and whatnot if you think it's better written than Alien, The Terminator, and so on. Those movies are classic for a reason, and it aint nostalgia. They're extremely effective at introducing and developing character, and marrying character-driven storytelling, sharply-constructed plot, and masterful use of cinematography, editing, and other elements of film design for storytelling and action/suspense purposes

 

[Riposte]

Discussing story outside its overall context (the medium, the total experience) is pointless, so 99% of "stories in videogames" general discussions on GAF are fairly pointless (they become more intelligible as the discussion becomes more specified). That's basically my response when people say "stories in videogames are shitty". Among highly rated games, the "story" often does its job - functional and memorable, improves the overall game.

"Story" (and "good writing") as a term is pretty vague to begin with, especially when many seem to think it's the sum of everything within the game that's not "gameplay" (see: "gameplay vs story"). "The Last of Us has a bad story" can mean five different things while people argue over it.

 

[Spieler Eins]

The likes of Nier and Virtue's Last Reward show a potential of storytelling that's inherently far superior to classic "fixed" formats, but too few developers take actual advantage of the medium. Trying to mimmick movies is often backwards. And yes, I'm irritated when Uncharted tries to shove its forced "likable" hipsters down my throat while I'm killing hundreds of people, just because the developers can't think of actual gamedesign that would make sense for the story beyond shooting people between scripted story-scenes.

 

[Rickenslacker]

They're usually bad. Exceptions can be made, but only due to the game's mechanics reinforcing a narrative focus. For the most part, you can't really make a story really worthwhile when it needs to be padded with a lot of point A to point B killing dudes.

 

[More_Badass]

Discussing story outside its overall context (the medium, the total experience) is pointless, so 99% of "stories in videogames" general discussions on GAF are fairly pointless (they become more intelligible as the discussion becomes more specified). That's basically my response when people say "stories in videogames are shitty". Among highly rated games, the "story" often does its job - functional and memorable, improves the overall game.

"Story" (and "good writing") as a term is pretty vague to begin with, especially when many seem to think it's the sum of everything within the game that's not "gameplay" (see: "gameplay vs story"). "The Last of Us has a bad story" can mean five different things while people argue over it.

This is another thing. A lot of game discussion tend to separate gameplay and not-gameplay (ie gameplay vs story, like you said). To be fair, that's not too hard to understand as cutscenes and cinematics were the main method of storytelling in games for a long time; the two sides were literally separate in games.

But a game isn't two sides, just like a film isn't script versus everything else, or a book's narrative doesn't rest merely on the strength of its prose.

To use a film analogy, I'd say that the cutscene-focused style is akin to old silent films where the visuals would cut away to text and dialogue. As film tech evolved, storytelling in film evolved as well, just like storytelling in games have been evolving since the days of Baldur's Gate and Half Life. But the medium still has a long way to go

That's part of why I applaud rather than condemn stuff like "forced walking". That's a consequence of developers testing ways to combine storytelling and gameplay, and experimenting with controls as a means of storytelling. Good or bad, that should be encouraged, because it's better to try and see what works and what doesn't, rather than never try and let the medium stagnate

 

[Mentok]

I wouldn't say "shitty" as much as I'd say "secondary and often forgettable". The story is usually to facilitate the gameplay with a "why" to each action being done. But more often the gameplay takes precedence, probably stemming from the fact that video games originally had zero story yet sparked interest.

 

[I.R.I.S.]

I wouldn't say "shitty" as much as I'd say "secondary and often forgettable". The story is usually to facilitate the gameplay with a "why" to each action being done. But more often the gameplay takes precedence, probably stemming from the fact that video games originally had zero story yet sparked interest.

And game studios still treat writers as an afterthought, usually not bringing them in from pre production through production, only after the game is mostly done.

 

[Curufinwe]

The story and characters in Diablo 3 are so boring and awful it's kind of amazing.

 

[OniBaka]

Games need more stories that only work with game as the medium it's being told. Right now there's too much trying to simply emulate movies, without the writing to back it up.

Yes, only games that stand out for me that do this are metal gear, nier, undertale and the house in Fata morgana.

 

[PantsuJo]

Last of Us is better written than literally any Cameron movie lmao

...

I have no words

 

[Disgraced]

everything is SHIT

 

[More_Badass]

Yes, only games that stand out for me that do this are metal gear, nier, undertale and the house in Fata morgana.

I'd put Inside, Dwarf Fortress, What Remains of Edith Finch, and SOMA on that list

 

[saturnine]

Controversial opinion: if the storytelling relies on cutscenes it is auto-shitty.

I hate this school of thought. It's so stupidly reductive. Is a movie "auto-shitty" because it conveys a narrative through other means than pure cinematic technique?

 

[OniBaka]

I'd put Inside, Dwarf Fortress, What Remains of Edith Finch, and SOMA on that list

Cool, will check them out.

 

[More_Badass]

Cool, will check them out.

Dwarf Fortress mainly because of how it uses procedural generation and complex interwoven systems to craft unique stories of adventure and survival

 

[.Anema]

If you compare the stories on videogames against books, movies (or now some TV series) yup, videogames stories are shit.
Some games has a few good stories, but it's really far from being anyting remarkable. Just compare the best story on a game against some of the best movies or books ever. The differences are abysmal in every aspect.

I don't want to be "that guy..." but...
If you can't realize that you probably need to read more books and watch more movies for a better background when you compare the stories, characters and conflicts.

 

[Fou-Lu]

It feels like almost no one in this thread has watched the numerous badly written movies or tv shows or read the innumerable badly written novels.

 

[Aizo]

I've played many games with good stories, but I've played few with good writing.

The Last of Us is such an odd one to me, because I don't understand the player's standards if they were blown away by it. To me, it felt quite generic. Seems like a lot of people don't read many books.

 

[More_Badass]

If you compare the stories on videogames against books, movies (or now some TV series) yup, videogames stories are shit.
Some games has a few good stories, but it's really far from being anyting remarkable. Just compare the best story on a game against some of the best movies or books ever. The differences are abysmal in every aspect.

I don't want to be "that guy..." but...
If you can't realize that you probably need to read more books and watch more movies for a better background when you compare the stories, characters and conflicts.

"The best movies and books ever" is an insanely high bar. Most movies and books can't compare to the best movies and brook ever. That's not even the bar we tend to compare the average movie/book/show to

At best, I'd say most video game stories are on par with a b-action movie, similar to how "strong" those movies' narratives tend to be and how they use the film language and structure. (ie usually pretty generically). I'd argue that the best horror games easily put the average modern horror movie to shame

But in one aspect, you can't just compare games to movies and books and whatnot to rank the success of their storytelling. Because interactivity, the intersection of gameplay and storyelling, how a game uses its gameplay, its controls, and other aspects as a means of storytelling, is also important. Much like how panel design is an important element of storytelling unique to comics, and part of what elevates a narrative in that medium

 

[Lord of Ostia]

I can explain the "anime" label.

The characters frequently aren't fleshed out and have very little motivation. The plot is the primary mechanic that moves the action forward, not the characters. Which, in (good) movies, is usually the opposite.



Are you the kind of person that thinks Goodfellas is shit because they say "fuck" too much?

EDIT:



Yeah, pretty much same here. MGS is my favorite game series' story, and it is because it knows exactly what it is...which is ridiculous.

This just tells me you don't watch a lot of anime, or haven't seen many of the great anime out there. Plenty of fantastic character driven anime. Not saying many games try to emulate those series, but they exist.

 

[Forward]

Well-made video games write themselves as you play.

See: Super Metroid.

 

[RumbleHumble]

Well-made video games write themselves as you play.

See: Super Metroid.

This point is super important. Games are unique in how player input influences storytelling resulting in a very different overall picture than the traditional narrative. Many great games do what they do well because they aren't trying to be movies. The best parts of The Last of Us for me were in the cutscenes, they were in the gameplay because that's a means of storytelling entirely unique to the medium.

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

There a lot of well-written games lately and yes I am literate enough to recognize how good they actually are. People just don't bother looking past AAA games or beyond certain genres. (But even then there are some real well-written AAA games like Witcher 3 or Wolfenstein: TNO) The adventure game genre has been going through a resurgence in the last several years with a lot of well-written games, even some that I would consider having literary spirits to them, i.e. Kentucky Route Zero, What Remains of Edith Finch, Firewatch.

Honestly games have been making some really good strides in recent years.