Games with great stories.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

1 hour ago, CMR said:

I think the best video game stories are the ones that best facilitate the gaming experience.

I definitely agree with that statement, though I dunno about that specific example. I LOVE Symphony of the Night, but, uh... I dunno if great is the word I'd use to describe the story, even within the context of the game. It's... certainly there! Haha. Really the only interesting thing about it IMO is Richter's situation in that game.

[Sumez | 2,951]

7 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

1: I mean... well, no offense meant when I say this, but you've always come across to me as a VERY critical person, whereas I'm the opposite, I'm pretty uncritical when it comes to entertainment, I just sit back and enjoy it. So it's possible I'm saying this due to that fact, I'm generally easy to please.

Just to clarify, I love tons of video games with bland stories. You can be critical of something without it having to be a net negative.

I feel like if you're talking about a subect such as "have video game stories improved" that always implies critical thinking. You can't just go "i don't care, I can enjoy them all so I guess they are improving" 

Also, dude, Grim Fandango is a masterpiece. There's no advancements in video games, technical or production wise, made since that could have improved it in any way, it's all down to who penned it.

7 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

But with that said, I feel like you haven't really experienced too many good video games stories if you feel they're mostly bland and derivative

That's entirely possible! I think it's very likely that the ones with the best and most enjoyable stories aren't really high profile games, and definitely not a part of the AAA market. As with movies, really. Also, story driven games isn't something I play often outside of the occasional RPG or VN - and I already said I wouldn't count the latter because they are pretty much all story and no game

 

Edited January 7 by Sumez

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

6 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I feel like if you're talking about a subect such as "have video game stories improved" that always implies critical thinking. You can't just go "i don't care, I can enjoy them all so I guess they are improving" 

I never did do that, haha. And both things can be true at once, those aren't mutually exclusive. I enjoy stories as a whole and am easy to please, but I'm not literally incapable of being critical of things, I think you might've misunderstood me a bit there. Never said I was devoid of critical thinking, and my personal, subjective enjoyment of things has very little bearing on the objective quality of something anyway. I just said, as a whole, I am far less critical of these things than I think you are, which may absolutely color my perspective a bit. It's just that I'm generally pretty good at separating my subjective enjoyment of something from the objective quality of that thing, which is something I think a lot of people have trouble with. Absolutely fair on everything else you've said though.

10 minutes ago, Sumez said:

...definitely not a part of the AAA market... story driven games isn't something I play often outside of the occasional RPG or VN...

Yeah, definitely missing out on tons of great stories. What kinds of stories are you generally in to? What aspects of a story grip you, personally? Hellblade would be a recommendation I'd make if you'd want to check out a game that delves deep in to the mind of a single character, sort of a character study. Fairly short, pretty easy to pick up and play, gameplay's fairly simple, very immersive, and decidedly not for everyone I don't think, but I'd be interested to hear your perspective on it, and how, with the way that game approaches it's story, it really wouldn't work all that well in any other medium I don't think. Like I said, I think video game stories are at their best when they literally just would not work in any other medium. That's when the writers are at their most creative IMO.

...Actually, if you do play it, definitely ensure you're wearing headphones as you play, or earbuds at the very least. Definitely massively helps the experience.

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

I feel like video games should be a good storytelling medium but I rarely find that to be the case. They can have a interesting premise or fleshed out characters, but I've never played a video game that told a story as well or concisely as the best books or movies. The best stories are perfectly edited and paced, which seems impossible for video games which are never edited down to only the most worthwhile core and the pace is determined by the player unless you're going to load up on cut scenes.

No storyteller would say even a game as good as TLOU2 is a story that needs 30 hours to be told. As good as TLOU2 is, it's interspersed with scenes like "Then Ellie literally took out a gun and murdered 40 armed military men on her own", because you know, it's a video game. In the TV adaptation they intentionally took a lot of the serial murder stuff out because it doesn't make the story better, it's just fun to shoot dudes in video games.

I mean I'm a video game man. Video games are cool unique ways to take part in stories and worlds. But verbatim write down your next dialog tree in Baldur's Gate 3 or KOTOR where every NPC blurts out their immediate quest-ly problems to you within 2 sentences of meeting you then open up to a random paragraph of Lord of the Rings. The video game way of telling a fantasy story is just worse.

Anyway yeah the answer is Metal Gear Solid 2.

[Sumez | 2,951]

I liked Hellblade, but I thought it wore its concept thin quite some time before it ended. It's a cool concept, but also a bit of a one trick pony when they don't really manage to build on it. Maybe I missed something dunno. 

[wongojack | 214]

9 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

I feel like video games should be a good storytelling medium but I rarely find that to be the case. They can have a interesting premise or fleshed out characters, but I've never played a video game that told a story as well or concisely as the best books or movies. The best stories are perfectly edited and paced, which seems impossible for video games which are never edited down to only the most worthwhile core and the pace is determined by the player unless you're going to load up on cut scenes.

No storyteller would say even a game as good as TLOU2 is a story that needs 30 hours to be told. As good as TLOU2 is, it's interspersed with scenes like "Then Ellie literally took out a gun and murdered 40 armed military men on her own", because you know, it's a video game. In the TV adaptation they intentionally took a lot of the serial murder stuff out because it doesn't make the story better, it's just fun to shoot dudes in video games.

I mean I'm a video game man. Video games are cool unique ways to take part in stories and worlds. But verbatim write down your next dialog tree in Baldur's Gate 3 or KOTOR where every NPC blurts out their immediate quest-ly problems to you within 2 sentences of meeting you then open up to a random paragraph of Lord of the Rings. The video game way of telling a fantasy story is just worse.

Anyway yeah the answer is Metal Gear Solid 2.

Reading not only this comment but the others, and I see the positions shaping up as this (oversimplified)

1) Video games don't really tell great stories compared to other mediums.  They are restricted by player action and often when a VG is commended for great story, it would only be average if placed in a different medium.

2) Because of the player interaction, video games have the opportunity to tell a great story in a different way.  The opportunity to change the duration and emphasis of the story is an advantage that only video games provide.

 

I can honestly see it both ways.  There are times when a video game seems to transcend itself and its story by giving you the opportunity to shape the experience in a unique way.  The ins and outs of gameplay can add to the experience.  I think the God of War remake is an example.  That game made me think of all the great journey literature in my lifetime.  A great topic/theme to adapt to video games.  You got to experience Kratos and his son's journey in a literal sense but also in a more symbolic sense as father and son.  A very personal example would be playing the famous classic Pirates! bitd on my Commodre 64 and then in modern incarnations.  It is a very stupid example, but IMO, the game has always lost something when I can skip all the load times of that old C64 version.  Having to wait periodically added to the narrative that the game created as you played.

OTOH - I think video games routinely get the benefit of the doubt when they do anything impressive story-wise.  Both The Last of Us I/II and Bioshock have been mentioned here.  Those are games that routinely get mentioned as being great stories, but I think they are probably just average when taken out of their medium.  In the case of Bioshock, there is simply a great twist at the end that serves as a reward and payoff for the player.  Does a single great twist make for a great story?  Ask Shyamalan.

I think there was a moment there where VG companies were really trying to achieve cinematic quality with their productions and storytelling.  Bioware, Bethesda, Quantic Dream - even the big budget FPS games wanted a cinematic quality to their games, but I think we moved away from that.  Now companies seem to know that consumers aren't really looking for that anymore.  And they are right if you judge what consumers want by movie theatre receipts.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

11 hours ago, Sumez said:

I liked Hellblade, but I thought it wore its concept thin quite some time before it ended. It's a cool concept, but also a bit of a one trick pony when they don't really manage to build on it. Maybe I missed something dunno. 

That's somewhat fair I suppose, though my counterpoint would be it's a very short game as it is anyway, can't really outstay it's welcome if it's not even all that long to begin with. If it was like 20 hours long I might agree with you. I don't mind having just Senua's character and her experiences be the focus, since the topic of psychosis and how people experience it (which the developers were very, very, very careful to accurately portray since there's still to this day tons of stigma around mental illness) is enough of a complex and interesting issue to tackle that it's enough to fill out the whole story and, to me, not have it feel like the concept has overstayed it's welcome by the end, since it's not a particularly long experience anyway.

You never did answer my question, but just based on what you're saying here it sounds like you generally prefer when a story is always on the move and not necessarily staying focused on one very particular thing, which if that is the case then I could see why you wouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did. Plus, like I said, I struggle with debilitating mental illness myself which automatically made me latch on to the story and the character more, if you yourself don't (I don't know if you do or not) I can see how there wouldn't be as easy of a connection to be made there between you and the game.

I think them accurately portraying psychosis and doing their part to try and reduce all the stigma surrounding mental issues like that is enough to warrant the game's existence if nothing else. If playing that game doesn't cause you to have even an ounce of empathy for the real people who go through that sort of thing on a daily basis, well... I dunno what to tell ya', haha. Not referring to you specifically there Sumez, using "you" in the more general sense.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

1 hour ago, wongojack said:

Both The Last of Us I/II and Bioshock have been mentioned here.  Those are games that routinely get mentioned as being great stories, but I think they are probably just average when taken out of their medium.

I do think you make some excellent points and think this is a very nuanced, respectable take, but, small rebuttal to that point in particular:

[Sumez | 2,951]

I haven't seen the HBO series, but is it really the same? I'd imagine to work as a TV show they'd have to rework the flow of the story and characters entirely, even if the outer framework is the same.

I think TLOU2 has a nice story, with some great character moments, but it really relies on that "for a video game" asterisk.
The original game? The little story it has is so massively flawed, I honestly don't get the praise at all. It seems like all it's about is..

Spoiler

..setting up the """twist""" that your main character is an unlikeable psychopath - if him just murdering random people in cold blood from the first hour wasn't a clear tell.
Is it a bold direction for a video game? Dunno, some people seem to really like it, but I think it really fails to serve any real purpose. But I could definitely see it working better for a TV show where you aren't actually expected to also control the person.

 

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

4 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I haven't seen the HBO series, but is it really the same?

The overarching story is essentially 1:1, with fairly minor changes, and one episode which is completely different to the game, but is tangential to the overarching plot. And it works. REALLY REALLY well. But part of the reason why it works so well is that TLoU is one of those playable movie-types of game stories, not that there's a problem with that. But it's a completely linear plot where really the only deviation that's possible is the player dying, which isn't permanent. Those are the types of video game stories that are easiest to adapt to a different medium.

[Gloves | 11,778]

1 minute ago, Sumez said:

I haven't seen the HBO series, but is it really the same? I'd imagine to work as a TV show they'd have to rework the flow of the story and characters entirely, even if the outer framework is the same.

I think TLOU2 has a nice story, with some great character moments, but it really relies on that "for a video game" asterisk.
The original game? The little story it has is so massively flawed, I honestly don't get the praise at all. It seems like all it's about is..

  Reveal hidden contents

..setting up the """twist""" that your main character is an unlikeable psychopath - if him just murdering random people in cold blood from the first hour wasn't a clear tell.
Is it a bold direction for a video game? Dunno, some people seem to really like it, but I think it really fails to serve any real purpose. But I could definitely see it working better for a TV show where you aren't actually expected to also control the person.

 

Key scenes made it in, there was a pretty sweet (as in "aw, that was sweet") focus on a particular character for an episode which drastically changed the tone of that character. Overall it's incredibly faithful to the source material. 

[Sumez | 2,951]

It wouldn't be true to the game if they didn't spend 95% of the runtime "cutting through that building there"

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

I think the problem is some people think of stories in video games and in other mediums as 1:1 and directly compare the two (would this story be as good/worse if told in a different medium?) when, other than game stories which are essentially just interactive movies, such as The Last of Us, they simply are not the same and aren't all that comparable, fundamentally. Like I said before, we've had thousands upon thousands of years to hone in on and perfect the craft of telling a story in which the person consuming the story is doing just that, consuming it. They don't have any say in how it goes, the story has already happened, you're just waiting to experience it. The concept of that same consumer being able to have a level of control over the outcome of the story, or at the very least, being able to play an active role within the story as it unfolds, is an extremely extremely recent development in storytelling. And as such, is still (I think) something that writers are trying to get a grasp on what the best approach for that is, since doing that, as I've said, is a far more complex and involved task than telling a fixed story in which the consumer has no bearing on any of what happens, which in and of itself isn't an easy thing to do well.

Now, personally, I DO give a bit more leeway to video game stories due to all of this, and I'll happily admit that. However, I'm not saying everyone else needs to as well, I think it's just important to recognize the fact that a story within a video game and a story within a film/show/book are just fundamentally two completely different beasts, and to recognize that attempting to create a story within a video game inherently gives you less direct control over the story itself, thanks to the existence of the player interacting with it, which like I said, until very recently in human history, is not something that writers have ever had to consider. I just think it's important to keep all this in mind when judging the medium and comparing and contrasting the methods of storytelling between these mediums. It's obviously fair to compare video game stories to other mediums, of course it is, it's just that really the mediums are a lot more different than I think some people realize. If someone asks "Would this story work as well if it was told in a different medium?" that's often a very tough question to answer, since most of the time, for that to be the case, the story would be fundamentally different, and would have to be told in a fundamentally different way, depending on the medium in which it's being told. It's not an unfair question to ask, it's just a question that isn't nearly as easy to answer as some of y'all seem to think it is in my opinion.

That's, in my eyes, the biggest problem with, say, @DefaultGen's argument of writing down the dialogue in a dialogue tree and comparing it to something like a film or book's version of similar dialogue. If the story of that game were being told in a different medium, there wouldn't be a dialogue tree, the dialogue wouldn't be approached in that way to begin with, which renders that entire argument moot IMO. And like I said, that shows that it's not as easy to directly compare these mediums as it seems at first glance.

But, once again, all just my personal perspective on this very subjective topic, and I don't know the first thing about good storytelling so I have no authority with which to speak on the topic anyway. All just my own opinions on the matter.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

Just now, Sumez said:

It wouldn't be true to the game if they didn't spend 95% of the runtime "cutting through that building there"

You joke, but there actually is more of that in the show than you would think. And again, crazy thing is? It works.

[wongojack | 214]

3 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

I do think you make some excellent points and think this is a very nuanced, respectable take, but, small rebuttal to that point in particular:

Ha yes - I actually liked the show better than the game.  I thought the game was a little too beholden to its own creator's idea of a great story.  There were great gameplay moments in both TLOU and TLOU II, but there could have been so many more if the game wasn't on its own one-way track to tell a story.

I will contend that taken on its own, the story in the original game was nothing special.  If they had tried to release this show at the height of popularity of The Walking Dead, iZombie, WWZ etc. then it probably would not have been received very well.  Of course, none of those shows had a red hot Pedro Pascal either.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

1 minute ago, wongojack said:

I will contend that taken on its own, the story in the original game was nothing special.

We'll just have to agree to disagree there, same exact story has been critically acclaimed in two completely different mediums, a decade apart. I think the story has proven it's worth, especially seeing as how the game did indeed release at the height of the popularity of the zombie apocalypse genre.

[Kguillemette | 1,544]

Final fantasy 7 remains my favorite storytelling in any game ever.

[wongojack | 214]

2 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

We'll just have to agree to disagree there, same exact story has been critically acclaimed in two completely different mediums, a decade apart. I think the story has proven it's worth, especially seeing as how the game did indeed release at the height of the popularity of the zombie apocalypse genre.

Well talking about the original game and the environment in which it was released, the acclaim always confused me (and it wouldn't be the first or last time I've disagreed with critics).  I chalked it up to exactly what we are talking about in this thread.  Sure, it was good - for a video game, but it also re-tread themes, conflicts, sacrifices that had been done a lot.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

31 minutes ago, wongojack said:

1: (and it wouldn't be the first or last time I've disagreed with critics).

2: I chalked it up to exactly what we are talking about in this thread.  Sure, it was good - for a video game, but it also re-tread themes, conflicts, sacrifices that had been done a lot.

1: And the audience Critical acclaim alone doesn't lead to a piece of media like The Last of Us being as widely beloved as it is, even long after it's initial release.

2: But like I said, the existence of the HBO show entirely disproves that otherwise perfectly valid train of thought, at least I feel it does. Also, we live in the year of our lord 2024; it's literally impossible to craft a fully original story. Every story is massively derivative from some other story that exists. I've, personally speaking, never agreed with the train of thought of a story being bad solely because it's derivative. Every story you've ever heard in your entire life is, no matter how original it may seem at first glance.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,527]

I'm on the side that says it's quite the testament to TLOU's storytelling that you can adapt it relatively faithfully, and produce a show that is a massive hit with both audiences and critics.

Compare that to virtually every other video game adaptation.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

3 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Compare that to virtually every other video game adaptation.

We are finally starting to come out of the dark ages there, thankfully. Video game adaptations are more often good (or at least "OK") than bad these days, and I never thought we'd get to that point.

[CMR | 520]

3 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

The concept of that same consumer being able to have a level of control over the outcome of the story, or at the very least, being able to play an active role within the story as it unfolds, is an extremely extremely recent development in storytelling.

I don't agree with this.  Even if you ignore the plethora of early text based adventure games for 8bit computers, you still have choose your own adventure novels and tabletop gaming.  This stuff has been around for almost fifty years.  Granted those games may be a bit more primitive than modern games, but I don't think the modern stuff is all that impressive either.  Games like TLOU are pretty linear.  Take something like Hamlet, Shakespeare's masterpiece.  I doubt it could ever be improved by making it interactive with player decisions that effect the outcome.  In my opinion, the interactivity my heighten the experience in some ways, but will always be more limited in story telling compared to a novel or movie that are self contained.  

Also, I will admit a lot of modern games have better stories than movies, but I think that has more to do with the lack of creativity in the movie industry than anything else.

[wongojack | 214]

1 hour ago, ZeldaFreak said:

1: And the audience Critical acclaim alone doesn't lead to a piece of media like The Last of Us being as widely beloved as it is, even long after it's initial release.

2: But like I said, the existence of the HBO show entirely disproves that otherwise perfectly valid train of thought, at least I feel it does. Also, we live in the year of our lord 2024; it's literally impossible to craft a fully original story. Every story is massively derivative from some other story that exists. I've, personally speaking, never agreed with the train of thought of a story being bad solely because it's derivative. Every story you've ever heard in your entire life is, no matter how original it may seem at first glance.

There are 2 numbers up there, but I've lost track of your point in this thread.  I certainly wasn't intending to discuss my personal opinions about The Last of Us, but I think we've covered those.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

1 minute ago, wongojack said:

There are 2 numbers up there, but I've lost track of your point in this thread.  I certainly wasn't intending to discuss my personal opinions about The Last of Us, but I think we've covered those.

Look at the post I quoted, I added numbers there as well so it was more clear which individual points I was addressing within that post. I oftentimes do that to minimize confusion about what specific parts of a quoted post I'm responding to.

And I don't have a larger point, you don't need to have one to have a discussion. I just think this is a very interesting topic and I like seeing people's varying perspectives on it. And your personal opinions on The Last of Us are directly relevant to the topic at hand, even if I personally disagree with them, hence why I was responding to that.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

1 hour ago, CMR said:

1: I don't agree with this.  Even if you ignore the plethora of early text based adventure games for 8bit computers, you still have choose your own adventure novels and tabletop gaming.  This stuff has been around for almost fifty years.  Granted those games may be a bit more primitive than modern games,

2: but I don't think the modern stuff is all that impressive either.  Games like TLOU are pretty linear.  Take something like Hamlet, Shakespeare's masterpiece.  I doubt it could ever be improved by making it interactive with player decisions that effect the outcome.  In my opinion, the interactivity my heighten the experience in some ways, but will always be more limited in story telling compared to a novel or movie that are self contained. 

1: I figured someone might bring that up, and yeah, those absolutely did and do exist as well, I didn't forget that. It's just that, at least by my perspective, like you say those were much more basic examples of that type of storytelling, and in times where that sort of storytelling wasn't really "the norm," they were more so treated like fun little novelties I think. I don't think very many people were trying to tell genuinely complex, gripping stories in those sorts of formats, and I don't think very many people actually succeeded in doing so when they did try. Whereas now, that sort of storytelling has become a much more commonplace thing that's taken a lot more seriously. And even so, when I say "recent," I mean recent within the context of the larger history of storytelling as a whole. Thousands upon thousands of years, in which case, yeah, even 50 years is still very recent.

2: That's one example out of many many many that exist. I've mentioned it a few times in the thread already, but take something like Hellblade. Still a linear story to be sure, but the way in which it's told wouldn't work in another medium. You could still tell the same story, absolutely. But it wouldn't be nearly as effective. And in regards to making an existing story "better" by making it interactive, that's... not really the point, nobody's arguing that doing that would be a good idea, and that kinda goes back to what I was saying earlier about how these different mediums aren't as directly comparable as people seem to think. Most of the time (there are always exceptions, such as TLoU and games like it) you can't simply transplant a story from one medium in to another. It needs to be tailor-made for that medium, or otherwise heavily altered throughout the process of adapting it, otherwise it plain and simple won't work. And again, there are always exceptions there, but those exceptions shouldn't be taken as examples for the norm. I mean, take something like the Netflix Castlevania series for instance. Great in it's own right, but the story is so heavily altered from the "story" of the original games that it's almost it's own thing entirely, because that's how they had to do it to get the story to work at all in another medium.