Support NeoGAF

[Ledsen]

Of course it's going to improve.

I don't think so, but most of the books I enjoy are very long-winded. The only thing I've ever read where I really felt like it could be shorter was Wheel of Time. I don't even think that The Baroque Cycle is too long

I personally consider Wheel of Time to be very badly written for a series as revered as it is (at least I think it is?), so I agree with you there. I've never seen a writer repeat himself endlessly in quite the same way that Jordan did. Still, it served me very well as something to zone out to while moving boxes around a warehouse several years ago There are of course lots of verbose writing that is still brilliant, like Dostojevskij for example. Not that I'm trying to compare Dostojevskij to 999, but that game really did verbose the wrong way. Massive expository text dumps that completely destroyed the pacing.

 

[Durante]

Well, yeah, I think the middle 6 books of WoT could be compressed into 1 without losing much.

To somehow get this back on topic, in my opinion most games could do with being more verbose, not less.

 

[Lancehead]

See, this is the fundamental divide. I'm not sure if games vs. interactive fiction is the right way to frame it, but it's obvious that there's some level of friction.

You don't need to frame it such that. Environmental storytelling can be a wonderful thing. You can have the player change that "environment" to tell the story. STALKER is an example.

 

[szaromir]

I personally consider Wheel of Time to be very badly written for a series as revered as it is (at least I think it is?), so I agree with you there. I've never seen a writer repeat himself endlessly in quite the same way that Jordan did.

I refuse to believe any book repeats itself more than 1Q84. Ugh.

 

[zruben]

In my very personal taste and opinion, I hope more companies follow Valve's model. Specifically with Portal.

There's story, but it's not forced in your throat and doesn't break the pace of the game.
You need to pay attention to the details to decipher the story bits by bits, and even search for some "metagame" stuff to immerse you more with the story, like that comic before Portal 2.

My main problem is that with a few exception, videogame writers are not professional writers, and they fail miserably when they try to be ambitious.

 

[someguyinahat]

But now that expository dialogue is voiced! So it's awesome, the next evolution of storytelling!

Speaking of voiced dialogue, anyone else find it jarring when a game allows you to pick your name, and the subtitles clearly show where people use your name, but for obvious reasons the voice actors have to dance around it somehow? You can get away with more in text that way, certainly.

Take SMT Devil Survivor, for instance. You're allowed to pick a first name, a last name and a nickname. Your friends call you by your nickname, other characters call you by first name, still others by first and last or last alone. Just with this mechanic you can see how people regard you. Then in Overclocked when everything is voiced, it becomes "him" and "you" in place of your name. Yes, you can still read the text, but if you listened to the voice acting alone that nuance is stripped away. It's a case where voice acting can take away from the story.

I'd better stop before we get too tangential here.

 

[szaromir]

My main problem is that with a few exception, videogame writers are not professional writers, and they fail miserably when they try to be ambitious.

How is that any different from writers working in movies/television/books?

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Stop playing AAA games, most smaller games have great stories.

I wouldn't say this is true as much as shit small game stories can't hide behind zeitgeist and hype like a shit AAA game story can.

Its kind of unbelievable really. It's like every writer ignored all their creative writing teachers that kept saying show don't tell.

To be fair, alot of that disgorged text is for people who can't follow shit narratively.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

I don't think it is storytelling what you have to worry about.

 

[Venfayth]

Dark Souls, and to a lesser extent, Demon's Souls.

The story is there if you care about it.

 

[Retro_]

Shits all over them? Come on, hyperbole much?

You're doing the exact same thing on the other side of the argument.

"No other game comes close to touching these two when it comes to story."

I definitely disagree when you say it's poorly written. Also, characters discussing scientific theories in the middle of life-or-death situations? I'm assuming you mean in the freezer? That scene has a purpose when it comes to the story.

Almost every puzzle room is like that

even on the wrong paths which aren't canonical and would have no place in the true purpose of Zero's game.(Seven's backstory in the challenge room with him and Lotus)

and one puzzle doesn't even make sense given the reveal at the end.

 

[Of All Trades]

The poetry isn't the point, the point is creating a narrative with random elements (making for replayability) and making you figure out what's going on with the island, who the protagonist actually is because of unreliable narrators, and what is exactly are you.

The problem is that every time the voice appeared the flaws in the writing were jarring. I thought DE was good but "swing and a line drive to 2nd" sums up my feelings on their success.

My main problem is that with a few exception, videogame writers are not professional writers, and they fail miserably when they try to be ambitious.

Professional writers is a meaningless term. The most popular professional writers write books meant for reading at airports, and plenty of games from AAA to Z have better written stories than The Da Vinci Code.

 

[Retro_]

Once developers figure out how to play to the strengths of the medium and tell stories through the mechanics of the game, storytelling will improve.

but it's really hard to do that while making something compelling and interesting to play on its own.

and I'd rather have games that are fun to play like Bayonetta and MGS than games like Dear Esther or Journey which seem to offer much more limited play experiences for the sake of story telling any day.

There are some good examples of both being done though.

In my very personal taste and opinion, I hope more companies follow Valve's model. Specifically with Portal.

I don't know what Valve's model is.(I don't like Half Life 2 and on, or even Portal 2's storytelling) But I think Portal is a good example.

Story is simple. Test subject is trained by captor in how to use portal gun until the point where she learns enough to break out of the design of the experiment and escape. but it's interesting in that the game itself is designed to do exactly that to the player. Training them piece by piece to thinking in terms of a complicated game mechanic until the end game where they're putting it all together rapidly without the test room end game in mind.

Simple, interesting, and effective. and most of all Portal mechanics are fun to play with. I don't think games need to strive for anything more than that at this point in time.

 

[Currygan]

I think that, as graphics will become more realistic, all the limits of the medium about storytelling will be even more evident. Those old point and click games like Serrated Scalpel, Syberia and Loom can already show you how to properly tell a story. The more cinematic and realistic the characters will be, tha hardest will become to make them express realistic emotions withouth having the player feel detached because of a glitch which will destroy the immersion. That's my guess

 

[Dark Octave]

I've been thinking about the current state of gaming and have started to be a bit down on the future of it. Nintendo platforms are mostly supported by Nintendo games which generally disregard story and the other areas of traditional gaming (Playstation, Xbox, retail PC) seem to be moving towards games that have mostly standard Hollywood blockbuster writing as they try to reach as many people as possible to try to beat rising costs. I think most gameplay innovation can come from independent developers in downloadable areas for PC and mobile, but I'm worried if that sector of the industry will actually push forward in trying to evolve/improve storytelling in video games.

Games like Bastion and Journey do a great and interesting job, but it seems like telling stories would be too expensive for most smaller developers with the issues of many writers and voice actors and the potential problems of boring an audience that doesn't want those types of games to be bogged down in cutscenes. Is there hope moving forward for video games to get stories and dialog and characters that are actually good? I'm starting to feel more pessimistic about this.

What was the story about in Journey again? They game was cool, you got to jump and it was beautiful, but if you think you found a story in there somewhere, you are full of it. Super Mario Bros. on NES has more plot and story than Journey. At least you know exactly what Mario is set out to do.

I don't think there is a problem with story telling in games at all. The stories are a product of what most AAA games are, Hollywood blockbuster popcorn action flicks. Did anyone expect Speed to have a great Academy Award worthy story? Did anyone expect that from Universal Soldier, The Expendables or Predator? I think games like Gears of War, Halo and Killzone have better, deeper and more fleshed out stories than any of those movies, which are pretty much their videogame equivalent. I don't understand it, but my military friends tell me that the Modern Warefare series has an incredible story. *srug*

I haven't played it but everyone is raving about that Spec Ops: the Line's story, so just like with movies, you will find a gem of a story in an unlikley genre, but finding that "Rocky" is far and few between.

I think, just like with movies, it's more difficult to tell a deep, meaningful, emotional story when 80% of your time you are shooting, running, climbing, jumping, swimming, driving, hitting, pushing and doing any action you would do in most AAA games. I'm not saying that it's impossible, but you aren't going to find it too often.

I hear Tale Tale's The Walking Dead's writing is awesome. I enjoyed the Ace Attorney and Mass Effect series. I enjoyed Heavy Rain, plot holes and all. These heavy chat titles are the type of games that I believe will excell in story. They attempt to put story above everything else. I think it's rare that an action flick/game can. This is what the majority of AAA games are nowadays and I don't think it's fair when they are expected to be what their movie counterparts aren't even striving to be.

 

[Persona86]

What was the story about in Journey again? They game was cool, you got to jump and it was beautiful, but if you think you found a story in there somewhere, you are full of it. Super Mario Bros. on NES has more plot and story than Journey. At least you know exactly what Mario is set out to do.

Stories don't have to have text and voices to be told. Sometimes the art alone can tell a story.
e.g One reason why people like to go to Art galleries.

 

[Cyrano]

Well, yeah, I think the middle 6 books of WoT could be compressed into 1 without losing much.

To somehow get this back on topic, in my opinion most games could do with being more verbose, not less.

Dark Souls and Demon's Souls have some of this best storytelling of any games I've seen thus far, but I think they figured out what makes a story in a game compelling. The player has to pursue the story, rather than the story pursuing the player. It seems really obvious when you think about it, requiring interaction to move the story and to poke and prod at the game's internals to get the most out of it, but in practice there's often so little subtlety in execution that the fascination with particulars is lost.

 

[Dark Octave]

Stories don't have to have text and voices to be told. Sometimes the art alone can tell a story.
e.g One reason why people like to go to Art galleries.

If left as a metaphor and up to the player to imagine the story, any game can have the most amazing plot anyone has ever experienced. I can interpret the blowing up a grunt in Gears of War as a beautiful drama between life and death and Marcus' journey to discover who he is and what it all means. I can come up with any old BS about what I think the game is trying to tell me, but the reality is, is Journey is about surfing on sand with another random player while an emotional music score plays to make you feel a specific way. The game is actually telling you nothing about anything.

 

[spekkeh]

I'm actually quite certain storytelling is going to improve in gaming, because this generation has seen the most important innovations in narrative/storytelling since the beginning of games. Until now it seems every game story was stuck in some kind of variant of the Hero's Journey, because games necessarily cause players to increase in skill and tell an environmental narrative, but a number of games have finally been able to break free of this mould.

To name a few,

• Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead have shown us the importance of performing menial (instead of skill-based) tasks on our experience. In the case of HR for instance doing everyday stuff was a way to offset the things that came next, but also in the grueling aspect of chopping off bodyparts in both games and the burial of the kid in TWD, having to act out the task repeatedly adds extra gravitas.
• Journey was all about catharsis by making us feel alone and then connected.
• 30 Flights of loving experimented with spatial (and temporal) editing to improve storytelling pacing as well as add meaning in sequencing. It also hints at the possibility of temporal nonlinearity in gameplay.
• Spec Ops the Line may well be the first game ever to not make us feel empowered, but actively engender guilt in the player, and was subsequently able to say something meaningful about gaming culture.
• Braid showed us that game mechanics can be used to tell stories, where the final level especially used the game structure and our newly learned gameplay skills to provide the story epiphany..

 

[Messofanego]

What was the story about in Journey again? They game was cool, you got to jump and it was beautiful, but if you think you found a story in there somewhere, you are full of it.

Looks like someone didn't go for a 2nd playthrough. It's a twist on the Hero's Journey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWKKRbw-e4U

 

[zoukka]

If left as a metaphor and up to the player to imagine the story, any game can have the most amazing plot anyone has ever experienced. I can interpret the blowing up a grunt in Gears of War as a beautiful drama between life and death and Marcus' journey to discover who he is and what it all means. I can come up with any old BS about what I think the game is trying to tell me, but the reality is, is Journey is about surfing on sand with another random player while an emotional music score plays to make you feel a specific way. The game is actually telling you nothing about anything.

It has quite explicit images between levels that tell a clear story. You then proceed to the level to learn even more about it.

 

[Warm Machine]

Funny that Bastion turned what I've maintained about storytelling in games into actual spoken dialouge. Storytelling is what you are doing at any one time. Running down a train car or blowing up a building or running and climbing up a giant monster. If you remove Bastion's gameplay narrative it really doesn't do that much, it is just putting words and conviction to what the player is actually doing at that time.

 

[djtiesto]

I don't think the average storytelling abilities of game devs are gonna improve anytime soon... as far as I'm concerned, you've had your games with good stories every generation since the days of Ultima IV and your games with shitty or lacking stories. Seems that most games nowadays seem to want to focus on the story at the expense of gameplay (see, indie titles like To The Moon or Journey, or linear setpiece cinematic western games).

Some of my favorite stories this gen:
-Nier (best story this gen)
-Xenoblade
-To The Moon
-999 (haven't played its sequel yet)
-Valkyria Chronicles
-Braid (even if it is the picturebook definition of 'pretentious indie title')
-Mass Effect 1
-Tales of Vesperia (plot is pretty basic but I really dug the characters)
-Resonance of Fate (plot is pretty obfuscated but I fucking LOVED the characters)
-Ghost Trick
-Flower (liked its take on minimalist story much better than Journey since overall the theme of tech/nature coexisting was a bit more innovative in the world of gaming)

Out of those games, Valkyria Chronicles, RoF, Vesperia and Xenoblade (and to a much lesser extent, Nier, which was a bit unrefined in its mechanics) are the only ones that I'd say have "great" gameplay as well as good story. What I've seen of Red Dead Redemption and Deus Ex Human Revolution looks like they have potential in both the story/gameplay fields too.

If the people making them are actually good and value quality over quantity, it's effective.

I guessed what game it would be even before clicking the link. I know you too well, Satellite. Be scared

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Mass Effect series overall delivered both a great story, characters, writing, dialogue, and good gameplay. It's a rare breed and I hope we see more like it.

 

[guek]

Choose-your-own-adventure storytelling has caused storytelling and narrative in general to plummet in quality this gen.

I realize this is an unpopular opinion. *shrugs*

 

[Punchpudding]

The quality of a story is definitely subjective and it's hard to make a claim that one story is better than another. What I think is worth looking at is the range of stories a medium can cover. That is where I think videogames currently fall short although there are lots of good designers out there working to fix this. It's not fair to compare videogames to literature because one has been around for as long as history and the other is fairly new but the biggest difference between the two mediums currently is the range of topics and styles written storytelling has over electronic/interactive. There are just so many more kinds of books out there than there are video games.

Do videogame stories have room to improve? I'd think so. As respected as written story telling is, it has inherent strengths and weaknesses. Writing is great for describing events, thoughts, and dialogues but I think it can lack direct emotion; how can you feel emotionally invested in a simple list of events? So many techniques of writing are created to get around this weakness and to produce an emotion in the reader. This is where a lot of innovation comes from; they helped to fill a need and expand the types of stories the medium could successfully tell. With games, it is sort of the opposite situation.

Games are inherently good at bringing out emotions and feelings (competitiveness, survival, fear, anger, etc). Just check your heart rate as you're playing an intense game to verify this. However, unlike a novel, games tend to be bad at communicating events, characters, thoughts, etc in a coherent way. For example, because of the interactive and emotional task at hand it is easy to lose sight of the bigger story and sense of urgency... OR because of the trial and error mechanic to accomplish key actions the excitement of that action is lost.

The challenge for games, IMO, is to identify what the limitations are and to find new mechanics and techniques that are unique to video games as a medium to address them. For me I don't just want to see better variations of the same kinds of stories over and over, I want to see more variety and experimentation with storytelling in general.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

The storytelling quality will inevitably increase once more talented people stay on the field of videogames. It's a slow process, but we've seen glimpses of good stories already.

But I'm starting to wonder if that is going to actually happen. It seems like big budget and large presence games are mostly going to be very safe and very safe games don't tend to have stories that would be interesting and probably wouldn't try to attract writers. If most of the innovation in gaming is going to come from small, downloadable games in the future, I'm not sure that talented writers are going to be interested in starting to write for games...

 

[zruben]

How is that any different from writers working in movies/television/books?

Professional writers is a meaningless term. The most popular professional writers write books meant for reading at airports, and plenty of games from AAA to Z have better written stories than The Da Vinci Code.

it is not a meaningless term. And yes, it is different.

you can study about writing, you can make a career about it, you study subjects about the matter, things like structure, narrative, characterization, semiotics symbolism, pace, etc., all of those give the writer resources to tell a story.
It's a stupid discussion to try to determine what makes a person a "professional", but study and take a career about it is an important step about it.

I'm not discussing the quality of the story overall, it's a really subjective matter, but the resources that the writer uses to tell the story it's different.

DaVinci code has a really crappy story, but it's a very entertaining book to read, the writer uses the best resources he knows, and whatever it's best for the story.

In videogames, you have a lot of problems with the resources the developer uses to tell a story, and that's what I'm complaining about.

Metal Gear Solid 4 has a great story with elaborated characters and twists ... but uses very poor resources to tell it, it overuses long cutscenes and that's why it's boring and tedious to follow for the player. It's great for a movie, not so great for a videogame.

Developers needs to find the balance. It's hard, and they don't take it seriously.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Dark Souls and Demon's Souls have some of this best storytelling of any games I've seen thus far, but I think they figured out what makes a story in a game compelling. The player has to pursue the story, rather than the story pursuing the player. It seems really obvious when you think about it, requiring interaction to move the story and to poke and prod at the game's internals to get the most out of it, but in practice there's often so little subtlety in execution that the fascination with particulars is lost.

This works so well reguarding victory too.

The thing about the very correct point you're going on about is that requires an active participation. Playing. Working. Fighting. Thinking. Communicating. Earning. Much of the flak that hits "cinematic" game design aims at this, which in the hands of clumsy devs and lazy players kills the interaction and player participation in many forms (physically, emotionally, mentally, etc).

Choose-your-own-adventure storytelling has caused storytelling and narrative in general to plummet in quality this gen.

I realize this is an unpopular opinion. *shrugs*

???

I don't follow, especially it's a shadow of its former self in PC days of yore.

 

[Riposte]

Storytelling (and all its similar components, dialogue, etc), along with music and visuals, are simply tools which exist to create a mood. Ultimately what matters is story-MAKING (and that doesn't only mean role-playing mechanics). It is very unfortunate "story" gets special treatment.

 

[Jonm1010]

Yeah, the more complex they try to make the story, the worse the story telling is.

Writers in general should focus on simple but impactful stories that can be told in interesting ways.

For me the complexity of games stories create problems because most people tend to take gaps of time off between sessions and then forget a lot of what can be a confusing storyline.

 

[someguyinahat]

For me the complexity of games stories create problems because most people tend to take gaps of time off between sessions and then forget a lot of what can be a confusing storyline.

Some games are getting better at that, using better quest journals, or even quick "previously on" cutscenes (Alan Wake, The Walking Dead, I think even Pokemon FR/LG did that.) But you're right, if you take time off from a game that you spent 20 hours on and don't remember what's happening, you'll either restart the game or give up entirely, neither prospect of which is very good.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Stories don't have to have text and voices to be told. Sometimes the art alone can tell a story.
e.g One reason why people like to go to Art galleries.

Journey does it poorly though. Like other titles it mostly plays with emotions without actually telling a story.

You know what game does minimalism properly (i.e. something like Hemmingway would do)? SotC.

 

[chickdigger802]

Fate/Stay night and Tsukihime shits on VLR and 999, and I like those games too.

holy shit. I'm dying here.

the art, the mullusks, ahahahahaha. Never expected type moon shit to popup in a 'I want good stories' thread!


Anyhow, 999 and VLR are good stuff, but I find the puzzles to be pretty awful tbh.

 

[PK Gaming]

We're already at the point where stories in video games can be respected. It varies from games; you wouldn't expect George de La Tour level story from platformers or standard shooters, but RPGs and point and clicks occasionally pump out some really good stories. I agree with previous users that it's ridiculously hard to blend story & gameplay together. The few games that do this are exceptional in my eyes--

Final Fantasy IX, for example is a game that perfectly blends both gameplay & story.

 

[speedpop]

I think there are many pioneers within the industry who continue to try and push the envelope of acceptable story telling within the constraint of various game ideas. We have gone from stickmen duking it out and whimsical tales of defeating evil bosses to more grand schemes and scenarios. Even the abstract ideas which border dreamscape artwork has become generally accepted over the past decade.

I can only see this improve over time as the general acceptance and importance of literature (that which has already been established as well as that which is more foreign) within gaming becomes more recognized, both via publishers who pay the bills and from the general public who consume the entertainment.

 

[Seanspeed]

We're already at the point where stories in video games can be respected.

Wouldn't say that.

But I think the potential is there.

 

[Ledsen]

We're already at the point where stories in video games can be respected. It varies from games; you wouldn't expect George de La Tour level story from platformers or standard shooters, but RPGs and point and clicks occasionally pump out some really good stories. I agree with previous users that it's ridiculously hard to blend story & gameplay together. The few games that do this are exceptional in my eyes--

Final Fantasy IX, for example is a game that perfectly blends both gameplay & story.

Huh? FFIX doesn't blend gameplay & story, it's a traditional jrpg.

 

[jaxword]

We're already at the point where stories in video games can be respected. It varies from games; you wouldn't expect George de La Tour level story from platformers or standard shooters, but RPGs and point and clicks occasionally pump out some really good stories. I agree with previous users that it's ridiculously hard to blend story & gameplay together. The few games that do this are exceptional in my eyes--

Final Fantasy IX, for example is a game that perfectly blends both gameplay & story.

You may be allowing your love for FFIX distort your opinion...FF9's story is actually rather poor. Half the characters and plot points are irrelevant to the overall story, for one.

Doesn't make it a bad game or that there aren't cool parts. Just that it sort of meanders a lot...especially towards the end. Just awful.