I appreciate and respect you coming back to say this. I find myself getting in heated back and forth with Nintendo fans a lot because I'm very passionate about storytelling and presentation in video games and often feel like they intentionally hold themselves back from capitalizing on what could be truly special.
I'm as passionate as you are when it comes to any form of art.
But for me, I don't think videogames is the best medium to tell a narrative. Stories are best expressed through books, visual novels or cinema where there is no requirement to fit in user inputs that only detract from the author's original pace and message. In my years of playing videogames, there has not been one story that stands out when compared to what the other media has delivered. Almost always, the story is ruined in videogames. For instance, the
Lord of the Rings is better presented as a novel, and to some extent as a movie. But when you make a game out of it, you end up with "GOTY" junk like
Shadow of Mordor. Adding narratives to video games tend to split the time in presenting the story and in having the player participate in the experience. As a result, the best qualities that make a motion picture good and a video game worth playing are severely compromised.
I do admit that that there are instances when story and gameplay are combined to produce a cohesive result. We have games like the masterful
Pheonix Wright where you have to know the story in great detail for you to progress in the game. But then that game relied on its writing more than the visuals and sounds. Another example is
Kid Icarus Uprising where the narrative was presented while the player was busy flying and shooting. However, the story didn't really matter in that game. It was good only to make me laugh. I had a blast playing that masterpiece. It ranks high up there with
Astroboy: Omega Factor and
The World Ends With You.
As for presentation, I thought
Star Fox Zero was superb. Its clean and 60fps art style is a throwback to the 90's arcade graphics which I love. The sound effects are crisp and effective in giving a good feedback to the player. The music is also great. This game will age well for modernizing the 32-bit look, just as
Shovel Knight and
Slain will be remembered fondly for using a refined version of 16-bit era graphics.
I assume we've all been playing games our whole lives and care about them a lot seeing as how we've bothered to make accounts and post on this site. But priorities are different between everybody. On the Nintendo side, I see Mario Galaxy breaking new bounds with its stunning opening and finale setpieces, slower pace with greater contextualization, and touching story with Rosalina. Then Miyamoto gains greater control over Galaxy 2 and ALL of that gets cut. Today we have 3D World going even further in this direction. Wtf. Why?
I belong to the school of
Miyamoto. It is the player who will make a story out of playing the game. I fondly remember playing
StarCraft and the times the battle was turned around with a massive zergling drop that literally destroyed my opponent's base. Oh man, those were the times and I love watching the replays. And there are countless stories as well playing
COD,
CS,
NBA 2K,
FIFA,
Virtual On,
VF2 and so on.
It's not about copying Hollywood man, it's art. I do photography as a hobby, and the fact that video games are capable of taking advantage of the aspects of film that makes that medium so compelling is a huge reason why I love them so much. I hate this reductive stance people take on video games just "becoming" movies when all that's happening is the adaptation of the strengths that medium can provide gaming.
Art is all around us, but I only appeciate art at its very finest. If I want to see the best shots, I look at photography. If I want to see the best film, I go watch Kazuo Ishiguro's
Remains of the Day, Ridley Scott's
Bladerunner or Stanley Kubric's
2001: A Space Odyssey. I cannot stand B-movies such as
Uncharted 4. Its production values will not change the fact that it's a lousy narrative.
Anyway, as another poster said, gameplay is by itself an art. Gameplay in videogames is the one area where other media such as books, visual novels and movies don't have. Therefore, gameplay should be the primary focus in judging a videogame whether it is good or bad. The other factors are merely cosmetic. Every videogame should be stripped of its superficial layers such as graphics, music and sound in order for us to tell what it's all about. And it is in gameplay that publishers and developers should be focusing 90% of their resources on. If publishers will spend $90,000,000 on presentation and spend only $10,000,000 on game mechanics and control, then it is only a matter of time that the industry will fall. Right now we are seeing the shift from console gaming to smart devices. I suspect that gamers--both casuals and hardcore alike--have found addicting gameplay mechanics in their smart phones. When they want to watch a narrative, they go to the movies.
To focus more on Star Fox and not get too far off topic- what is Star Fox to you? What can it be? What should it be, and why did the idea of a Star Fox game in 2016 excite you before Zero was announced? I'm genuinely asking. I've been excited for both Star Fox and F-Zero revivals for years, you could probably dig up old posts on here or other forums every E3 saying "F-Zero and Star Fox pls" or whatever. In my mind I picture a Saturday morning space opera with a charming, colorful cast of characters, beautiful and imaginative environmental design, jaw dropping cinematic setpieces, and high speed action. Kid Icarus Uprising delivers all of this. Star Fox Zero delivers literally none of this.
Star Fox Zero is my GOTY. After business, it is the game (along with
Rocket League) that I look forward to playing for an hour or two before I go to bed.
