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which game this gen is the WORST story-wise?

N

nickcv

Member
we just had a thread with the opposite question, and to my surprise RDR stole the spotlight.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=493363

now let's revert the question: story-wise which was the worst game of this gen?

keep in mind that this thread is only about this gen (PS360 / Wii / DS / PSP / last 6 years of PC ), and no, ports/remakes of old games do not count.

you also cannot include games which obviously don't have a story or are not even trying to actually have one (ie: tetris and any super mario).

what we are discussing here are games that tried and failed.

try to argument your choice and don't let this one become a list thread.
 
Final Fantasty XIII. The execution was more offensive, most of the story was to be found in the games lengthy and tiresome codex. Terrible.

Then there's Star Ocean IV, which is just all-round awful.
 
Off the top of my head? I'll give the nod to NiGHTS. It actually isn't QUITE as putrid as Star Ocean 4's, but it's still pretty bad and worst of all it's all unskippable. At least SO4 gives the more forward thinking out (let you skip, give you a summary) but this? I just want more NiGHTS gameplay similar to the Saturn classic, I don't want this bullshit with the creepy Children of the Corn kids. What makes the unskippable cutscenes worse is that there are a few minor ones you CAN skip, so it's the development team deciding no, this is important, and you NEED to watch it! Then you combine that with the fact you might get stuck on challenges, quit out, then come back to watch that awful fucking cutscene again... Eugh.

EDIT: Actually, if I had to go based on story I saw through to the end? Uhhh, probably Other M then. Some of the same problems as NiGHTS (unskippable cutscenes UNTIL YOU REPLAY, slapped onto a sequel to a game that focused on less-is-more when it came to the narrative), but with the extra layer of ruining a classic character and being (subconciously or unkowningly?) misogynistic.
 
I can't say I really found star ocean 4's storyline to be that offensive. It was a bit generic and unremarkable but there are plenty of more offensive storylines coming out of this gen in my eyes. SO4 had some awful characters and really silly optional scenes but the main storyline was simply meh for me.
 
Does Medal of Honour qualify? I say this because I'm not even sure it has a story to critique.
 
I would probably say Heavy Rain simply for the fact that there is no real game there, it was made for that story. That story with plotholes and loose ends, and the 'gameplay' being so centered around the plot that trying to mess with the plot ends up showing how a good 98% of it is linearly told.
 
StarCraft II's single-player campaign story was pretty bad.
Blizzard apparently lost all their writing talent years ago.














But this is a Metal Gear Solid 4 thread, right?
 
aliencowz7 said:
I can't say I really found star ocean 4's storyline to be that offensive. It was a bit generic and unremarkable but there are plenty of more offensive storylines coming out of this gen in my eyes. SO4 had some awful characters and really silly optional scenes but the main storyline was simply meh for me.
Click to expand...

You mean you weren't offended when the main character handed over an antimatter engine to someone who was quite clearly a villain, led into an empty room, trapped, shouted "YOU TRICKED US!", and then watched as the entire planet was blown up?

Not even the worst kids shows from the 90s and 80s could write stuff that corny.
 
You know that feeling when you know that you've played so many games with garbage stories but can't even name one?
 
(We had this recently sort of and my answer still stands, definitely adheres to all the criteria given in the OP )

It might not beat Sonic 2006's unique mix of anthropomorphised animals, time travel and bestiality, but Metroid Other M is up there.

I could go into yet another long long rant as to why, but I'm literally running out of hate and bile, the game has managed to exhaust my normally plentiful supply.

Suffice to say, the writing of the character of Samus, her self-harm and subservience, her panic attacks and fear paralysis, and the worst written self-sacrifice scene in history can mostly be attributed to one source: the imbecilic writing of Yoshio Sakamoto. Every baby-fueled clumsy monologue, every pitiable order, every supposedly emotional outburst, is a spewing gutter of asinine diarrhea dressed as dialogue. Its portrayal of post-traumatic-stress-disorder in all of its horrors, is cartoonish, idiotic and insulting. Its portrayal of women, is profoundly sexist and condescending.

For a writer to say: I know, lets turn Mother Brain into an
angsty moody teenager
- frankly it beggars belief. For the writer to build up an entire murder mystery plot for the first half of the game, and entirely forget it by the second half, is baffling. For the writer to actually not have a conclusion to all their unskippable cutscenes, and write a nonsense out of context endgame which can be surmised as:
LOL PHANTOON LOL
- it smells desperately of the writer hiding their own deficiencies beneath a veil of cheap, nailed-on nostalgia.

The writing in that game ranges from imbecilic at best, to all out offensive and sexist at worst. Its abhorrent.

(The rest of the game is shit too.)
 
Lingitiz said:
Fable 2 and 3. Horrible stories with zero thought to pacing, all marked by godawful endings.
Click to expand...
Actually, shit, I may need to move my completed game answer from Other M to Fable II. Well, then again we're talking about ruining a series, whereas Fable's consistently wonky on the narrative side anyway so it's really just par for the course.
 
we should clarify what we mean by worst and story imo.

Schlock like gears of war is different than heavy rain. At least one has a sense of being a joke upon itself (cole train stuffs for example), but heavy rain is so damn seirous about itself that is just atrocious.
 
LeleSocho said:
Heavy Rain
Click to expand...
The whole "unreliable narrator" thing in the antique shop was bullshit. You told a lie, to make the ending more of a surprise, it's as simple as that. If that was a movie, it would be renowned as the single biggest plot hole in movie history.

I still loved the game though, horrible acting be damned.
 
Sophia said:
You mean you weren't offended when the main character handed over an antimatter engine to someone who was quite clearly a villain, led into an empty room, trapped, shouted "YOU TRICKED US!", and then watched as the entire planet was blown up?

Not even the worst kids shows from the 90s and 80s could write stuff that corny.
Click to expand...

It was at most like a couple hours out of a 100ish hour game, so yes while silly it certainly didn't push the overall storyline of the game into worst of the entire gen territory for me.
 
aliencowz7 said:
It was at most like a couple hours out of a 100ish hour game, so yes while silly it certainly didn't push the overall storyline of the game into worst of the entire gen territory for me.
Click to expand...

Excuse me for mentioning only one part of that travesty then. :P

Mama Robotnik is providing good arguments as to why Other M is a fantastic runner up.
 
Dictator93 said:
we should clarify what we mean by worst and story imo.

Schlock like gears of war is different than heavy rain. At least one has a sense of being a joke upon itself (cole train stuffs for example), but heavy rain is so damn seirous about itself that is just atrocious.
Click to expand...
Gears of War is mainly serviceable until you pretend Marcus is actually Bender, then it's a comedy gold mine (or I have an odd sense of humor), so I can't honestly begrudge that at all.
 
Deus Ex: HR's story takes a proper nosedive into slurry when it reveals itself about halfway through, but it's not really too far removed from the original's, just with more zombies. It's hard to pull off apocalyptic scenarios nowadays.
 
Mama Robotnik said:
(We had this recently sort of and my answer still stands, definitely adheres to all the criteria given in the OP )

It might not beat Sonic 2006's unique mix of anthropomorphised animals, time travel and bestiality, but Metroid Other M is up there.

I could go into yet another long long rant as to why, but I'm literally running out of hate and bile, the game has managed to exhaust my normally plentiful supply.

Suffice to say, the writing of the character of Samus, her self-harm and subservience, her panic attacks and fear paralysis, and the worst written self-sacrifice scene in history can mostly be attributed to one source: the imbecilic writing of Yoshio Sakamoto. Every baby-fueled clumsy monologue, every pitiable order, every supposedly emotional outburst, is a spewing gutter of asinine diarrhea dressed as dialogue. Its portrayal of post-traumatic-stress-disorder in all of its horrors, is cartoonish, idiotic and insulting. Its portrayal of women, is profoundly sexist and condescending.

For a writer to say: I know, lets turn Mother Brain into an
angsty moody teenager
- frankly it beggars belief. For the writer to build up an entire murder mystery plot for the first half of the game, and entirely forget it by the second half, is baffling. For the writer to actually not have a conclusion to all their unskippable cutscenes, and write a nonsense out of context endgame which can be surmised as:
LOL PHANTOON LOL
- it smells desperately of the writer hiding their own deficiencies beneath a veil of cheap, nailed-on nostalgia.

The writing in that game ranges from imbecilic at best, to all out offensive and sexist at worst. Its abhorrent.
Click to expand...

I feel like the only reason more people aren't saying Other M is they've completely forgotten it existed.

This game's terrible story doesn't just ruin the one game. It also taints previous games in the series as well. That's talent.
 
NinjaBoiX said:
Seriously? Is this a joke? I thoroughly enjoyed DEHR's story.
Click to expand...
I feel like a lot of these mentioned really aren't fit for "worst", though maybe most disappointing. And to be honest I'd consider DXHR one of those, it just felt hollow and empty at the end on the narrative level, though that might be partially the endings and (more gameplay than story)
revisiting Detroit/Hong Kong instead of having a third proper hub
.
Ubermatik said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFTiSRdKozo
Click to expand...
Nice. Though now that I'm hearing this I think I see why I didn't quite hear Bender before I knew John DiMaggio voiced Marcus, though after I found that out I couldn't NOT hear Bender.
 
ElTopo said:
Deus Ex Human Revolution. I can't think of a game that comes even close.
Click to expand...
There are many, many games that are far worse than Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Most of what I was going to mention has been said but I really need to add Vanquish to the list. Brilliant game but the story makes no goddamn sense at all. It was pretty much incoherent. Characters that betray you become good again right before they die for no reason. And the most confusing part is the last scene of the ending into the credits.
The president kills herself
and then the credits start playing upbeat music while the heads of the dev team fly by in space for you to shoot.
 
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