I am a story whore

I've been playing through Tony Hawk's Project 8, and it's a great game. "Nail the Trick" is a great addition to the series gameplay, and the new free-roaming world is fantastic. The controls are better and tighter than they've ever been, and the graphics are a huge step above anything the series has had so far. The multiplayer is awesome. The soundtrack is varied, and has even introduced me to some new artists I am coming to like very much.

So. Why don't I ever play it?

Well, it's the same reason I can't seem to get into some of the games everyone else says are good. I wanted to keep enjoying Oblivion after I'd finished all the story quests and side-quests - I heard about people having high-larious misadventures with emergent AI and random encounters. Not me. I wanted to like Lumines, Geometry Wars and Meteos. I did. But I invariably got bored after ten minutes.

I realized that the reason Oblivion game files immediately became dead weight on the HDD after I finished the story was that I had no more compelling reason to go have fun. I mean, it's fun to play, but am I accomplishing anything? I've come to realize that fun, for me, is a necessarily constructive exorcise. Getting a high level in Oblivion, or moving up the rankings as a skater just isn't compelling to me, because the context just isn't there. When I reach level fifty in Oblivion, all I've done is reach level fifty. I've heard people say that the 360's achievements system has made any non-points-achieving games seem like guilty indulgences, and I've never really gotten that. I don't care about points. I guess stories are my points. It's the same reason GTA could never hold my interest as a sandbox game. After a while, I just stop caring.

You can see this in the recent discussions of Gears of War. The story in that game blows. Gears is very fun, and it's a great GAME. But as an experience, the lack of a compelling thread pulling me through the campaign makes me, on some level, wonder why I'm bothering to have this fun. If I wanted to play fun combat scenarios for no discernible reason, I'd play multiplayer, and learn a new word for "dick" while I was at it. Gears, of course, makes the mistake of aiming too high. Ninja Gaiden had a perfectly passable story, because it didn't try deliver a story about a weird relationship with Daddy, a secret lab, a big bomb, a legal frame-job, and good healthy hetero man-love in essentially four major cutscenes and a total of maybe fifty lines of dialogue.

"Story" doesn't necessarily have to mean "plot." The word context seems apt. Ico gets by with little more than "I need to escape with the girl." Ninja Gaiden got by with "I'm getting revenge." Hell, Myst got by with "I'm lost." But those games support these simple premises beautifully, and thus succeed on the only level they attempt to succeed on. Despite a few faction differences, there's no such contextual support to GTA, once you're outside of a story mission. No such support for Lumines, at all.

The minute I realize that there is absolutely no contextual reason, (or as with Gears, a stupid contextual reason,) for me to be doing something, I stop doing it. I used to feel a bit guilty about this, as though my inability to create my own fun in Oblivion's open world somehow made me a boring and uncreative person. It's the reason I've subscribed to WoW four times now, and still don't have a level 60 character. It's the reason I got less than an hour into Scrapland, before I gave up.

On the other hand, I will muscle my way through flat-out bad games, simply on the strength of the story. Blood Omen 2 was a terrible game, but dude... it's Legacy of Kain. Maybe this one will tell me something about how Raziel's great grandson is actually his father's wife, but in reverse and inexplicably Asian. As much as I may shake my head at how obsessed others are with points, I can't very well take the moral high-ground. In my own way, I prostrate myself before equally absurd and pointless idols (pun intended.)

Over the years I've managed to train myself not to buy racing games, no matter how much I think I'll like them. I don't buy fighting games, or sports games, or flight sims. Tony Hawk was really my test game for a much more general type of experience. If I couldn't get into it, I would simply add games that are not narrative-focused to my list of look-but-don't-touch titles. I'll stop looking forward to GTA4, because that's just not how I'm wired. It's not how I roll.

I'll be returning THP8 after finals end, and maybe putting it towards a Wii purchase. Zelda, at least, won't have any unexplained laboratories.

As much as I ended up returning GTA:SA because it felt to me as "more of the same", the major reason I didn't like it was the story. I didn't care about the main character at all, so I didn't care how he ("I") was doing in the gameworld, and because of that I had no reason to wade through the boring and repetitive missions to get to the good ones. He's just a scumbug drug dealer, and the nicest thing he does is rescue a girl from a burning building...that he set on fire. I thought for awhile you would be given the option of "cleaning up" your old neighborhood, but that hope was quickly dashed, along with my expectations for the series.

Alternatively, that's why I liked Vice City so much. The story progression between Tommy and Lance was more than enough to string me along. I wanted to know how their stories would be resolved. Tommy was a sick bastard, sure, but interesting, and sometimes even sympathetic.

In games where story isn't an issue, like racing games, or fighting games, or shooting games (geometry wars shooting, not Halo or GoW), it doesn't bother me. But in others where the story is obviously there to drive me through the game experience I can totally sympathize with you. It's one of the reasons I've never played Halo 2 single-player, not even the first level. After Halo, I just didn't care, because I didn't think the story made any sense, and that the resolution at the end of the first game was pointless, and a bit idiotic. So I completely agree with you on how a good story can keep me going through awful, bordering on divine punishment, gameplay, more than the opposite will.

But I think that's where we differ. If a game tries to actually have a narrative, and it's ridiculously flawed (pick a Metal Gear, for example), it bothers me more than if one is completely lacking. After that it becomes a mathematical equation, where my desire to keep playing past 10 hours decreases exponentially with how bad the story is. It's a similar philosophy to how I'm willing to give a movie an hour or a book 100 pages before I toss it into the garbage.

So my golden rule would be: if the story sucks, minimize it. Being short and/or simple can make a bad story tolerable in ways doing the exact opposite never will.

unntrlaffinity wrote:

As much as I ended up returning GTA:SA because it felt to me as "more of the same", the major reason I didn't like it was the story. (..) He's just a scumbug drug dealer, and the nicest thing he does is rescue a girl from a burning building...that he set on fire. .

I think the point in GTA:SA was that the main hero was NOT a drug dealer, no? Not that it changes anything much

Great points.

I think the thing about story (in any medium) is that it is mostly there to give us a canvas on which to interpret and expand upon it - tell ourselves our own stories, if you will.
If a game gives us just enough setup to coherently form plots of our own from what is happening, that's enough (which is why I keep coming back to Civ4, really). If it really wants to tell us its own story, though, that story has to work, because it will otherwise interfere with the extended versions we're telling ourselves.

NemesisZero wrote:

Great points.

I think the thing about story (in any medium) is that it is mostly there to give us a canvas on which to interpret and expand upon it - tell ourselves our own stories, if you will.
If a game gives us just enough setup to coherently form plots of our own from what is happening, that's enough (which is why I keep coming back to Civ4, really). If it really wants to tell us its own story, though, that story has to work, because it will otherwise interfere with the extended versions we're telling ourselves.

If that were universally true then Morrolan would not be having a problem with Oblivion. Personally this story as canvas approach is how I like my games, but not my books or movies. It's a medium specific preference that builds on the strengths of gaming and avoids its weaknesses.

To me, the number of potential stories I could get out of Oblivion's 'core' game was just quite limited, which is why I saw no big contradiction between Morro's and my stance. Sure, you can raid dungeons, find stuff in the forest, watch NPCs wail on each other for more or less credible reasons, or listen to their ever-repeating conversations. Personally, I had grown tired of these potential storylines long before the main quest had run its course.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

Personally this story as canvas approach is how I like my games, but not my books or movies.

Do you really not go on day-dreaming after having put down a good book? (This is an earnest question, it'd suprise and fascinate me to find someone who reads books completely differently.)

NemesisZero wrote:
Danjo Olivaw wrote:

Personally this story as canvas approach is how I like my games, but not my books or movies.

Do you really not go on day-dreaming after having put down a good book? (This is an earnest question, it'd suprise and fascinate me to find someone who reads books completely differently.)

I wouldn't put daydreaming and expounding upon an open canvas in the same category. In cases where I am actively participating in the storytelling like some videogames there is no one to invalidate my extrapolations. With more traditional storytelling there is certain intended reality imposed by the author, and anything I add to that is extraneous.

The different mediums simply suit the different elements of storytelling better than others. Videogames are horrible at pacing. I can think of no way they couldn't be without reverting to one big CG cutscene with no participation from the player, essentially changing mediums from videogame to movie. What videogames are good at, even better than traditional mediums, is setting. Give me a Halo, a Tamriel, or a City17 and I'll supply the story. I feel coerced into doing so when given a great setting with mediocre plot, characters, pacing, etc.; which describes over 90% of videogames.

That's why Planescape Torment is generally regarded as the pinnacle of videogame stories. It's practically a book, so it is a lot easier for Planescape to do the things books get right well.

To get back to Morrolan's main point, I find myself to be just about the opposite. I'm completely fine with ignoring ridiculous stories like in Gears or R6: Vegas to get to the gameplay. I do not find my enjoyment of a game limited by story and rarely find that it helps, except in cases like the above where it is suitable to fill in the dots.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

I wouldn't put daydreaming and expounding upon an open canvas in the same category. In cases where I am actively participating in the storytelling like some videogames there is no one to invalidate my extrapolations. With more traditional storytelling there is certain intended reality imposed by the author, and anything I add to that is extraneous.

All right.
I'll claim that it is impossible for us not to expound and extrapolate while reading a book. We do it every time we visualize a described scene, or hear a character's voice. Every time we make assumptions about a character's reactions to a certain event, we are committing the fundamentally same act as when we play Civ 4 and tell ourselves little stories about the emotions behind this war and the implications of that diplomatic action. The difference is, as you correctly observe, that books are significantly more guided experiences than games (without 'Metal Gear' in the title, that is). Still, I believe it is the same basic mechanism: We take abstract information, and narrate it to ourselves.

Among other things, we enjoy a book when it suits the little stories we've woven around it - when the characters act in ways the stories we have told ourselves about them allow, for example. That's the whole point of suggestion: The author doesn't have to spell everything about a scene out so long as he can hit the notes that will make us tell the rest to ourselves. That stuff is of course external, and we are willing to ignore it in favor of later 'official' information, but it's still necessary. If a book's plot goes against the grain of our elaborations, we will not be amused.

All that seems to be pretty much comparable for books, movies, theatre and gaming to me.

I agree with you about the issue of pacing, although I'd say that especially the HL games have managed to improve this significantly. Maybe that perceived deficiency is just a matter of designers not yet knowing all the tricks.

NemesisZero wrote:

I agree with you about the issue of pacing, although I'd say that especially the HL games have managed to improve this significantly. Maybe that perceived deficiency is just a matter of designers not yet knowing all the tricks.

I think these are all good points about the different elements that can pull us in (or push us out). But I don't think what HL accomplished has as much to do with designer tricks as it does with Valve bringing an actual, and competent, novelist on board, someone who knows how to tell a good story in the first place.

A lot of games, even ones I enjoy (I'm looking at you, jrpgs) have no idea how to tell a story logically, and just tend to throw in whatever elements they feel like, whenever they feel like it (giant cybernetic chicken driving an airship in the middle of the desert. Check.) Which is why many of them are just awful when converted to more conventional storytelling mediums, like comics or movies, that don't have Chocobo farming there to distract us (I'm not referring to the later FF's here, X had a story I absolutely loved, and managed to work in the "dungeon" conventions in what I felt was an acceptable manner.)

Games without stories work fine by me, on a no-brains-only-fun level. If a game decides to have a story, it better be good or it distracts from the gameplay. I agree with unntrlaffinity here.

Story and game are on some levels very different animals, though. Stories are never interactive (unless you have spatial stories, like CivIV, but I mean scenarios thought out beforehand), games are supposed to be. Or they're not games. This is where game and story collide, but if implemented well they form a great symbiosys (sp?). This is in my opinion even more important than the story itself. The transition between game (interactive) and story (non-interactive) has to go smoothly, and if there are ways where you keep on playing AND get some of the story too: ideal!

Example of how transition is handled well in HL2: every time the game comes to a halt and some rebel explains a story tidbit or the next goal (which is referring to the game), the transition is made to the game again by the rebels shouting to Freeman he should move on. There is absolutely no reason you should do this: you could leave your computer, make a world trip, read the paper and make some coffee and you'd still be there standing ready to rumble. But you get the urge to make the switch to game again from story.

Example of how story and game fall together in Planescape: Torment: you're right Danjo that P:T presents its story much through the book medium, but that booklike story is very often tied superbly to the game itself. When you have gained enough experience and specific stats (game) AND have progressed through the storyline enough (story), you can talk to your companions about their past and how that is tied to you (story) resulting in increased stats sometimes (game). So progression in story and game result in character development storywise and gamewise. This is crucial in how the game appeals to the gamer, in my opinion.

Game designers have a lot of unchartered potential to explore in this area. More could be done with background storytelling (exposure), for instance. Like the beginning of HL2 in the train station: desolate, depressed people, evil charismatic dictator speeching to no one listening, repression apparatus omnipresent, ...: you get the message, by just walking around (playing!). Here's hoping more is just round the corner.

I'd rather have a weak plot with great gameplay where the plot is more on the sidelines (see gears) then a game with a horrific plot that is crammed down your throat whether you want it or not (see MGS or many FF games).

I play games for the experience of playing, the challenge, the unique situations, not the background behind it. I stick to film and literature to fulfill my need for plot and storytelling. Of course when the rare game comes along that has a great plotline and a solid game behind it (say PST) then that is fantastic. The problem being that it is incredibly rare as most game developers come up with the stories themselves and being technically oriented and not writers it generally comes out pretty poorly. So really as long as the gameplay is solid I could care less about the plot or lack thereof.

Sinatar wrote:

I'd rather have a weak plot with great gameplay where the plot is more on the sidelines (see gears) then a game with a horrific plot that is crammed down your throat whether you want it or not (see MGS or many FF games).

I gotta go with Sinatar here.

Story is really secondary to me when it comes to my games. There are rare games where the story does actually draw me in but it's not something that happens very often at all and it's normally on games where other people don't like the story anyway.

Good example: Final Fantasy VII. Friend of mine played through. Told me it was awesome, but did not spoil anything for me. He let me borrow his playstation and the game. I played through. He apparantly freaked when they killed whatshername. I could not possibly have cared any less. The story bored me through the entire game. The game itself was fun.. but man did I get tired of sitting through all that lame dialogue.

And I love the MGS games. I do. But the stories in those games are written by a crazy person. I just like snapping necks and shooting people in the head mixed in with crazy boss battles. The rest is secondary.

There's a very good comment on the whole 'bad plots' issue over at GI.biz. It approaches the whole thing from a different angle and comes up with a few very interesting conclusions.

Morrolan, that's a great post. You summed up something that I've felt for a long time but I never really 'got' before. A game with a good story will almost always hold my attention, and a bad story will drive me away very quickly. That's why, for instance, I liked NOLF1 so much, and rather disliked NOLF2. NOLF2 violated many of the premises of the first, and getting through the levels just wasn't very interesting on its own. And maybe that's why I keep quitting WoW at 60... it's just not interesting anymore. And I remember Planescape:Torment and Baldur's Gate and Beyond Good and Evil(to a lesser extent) because they had such good stories.

It's not, however, absolutely required in all cases. Counterstrike owned my life for like a year. And I'm still playing Civ4, which is also storyless. Strategy games seem to tickle different circuits. The ancient game Empire is just a bunch of armies and tanks moving around, but man it was fun. And I've always enjoyed sub sims, I think because it's sort of making your own story... "what would it be like to command a sub in WW2?".

If I enter an exciting new place and hear "Welcome, stranger, to our glorious village" one more time, I'm going to burst into the company headquarters, holding an ancient scroll and a pitchfork. After the murmurs subside, I will pull out the scroll, and say in the calmest fashion "It says here I have to collect 10 Programmer Hides. Let's get to work".

I completely agree with everything Sinitar says. And Thin_J is just plain funny. When I compare the "giants" of game stories to the greatest films, plays, and novels, there is no comparison. Planetscape: Torment is not Shakespeare. I can't see emotion in HL2 like I can in an actor's face. Games are still primitive.

That doesn't mean that I'm not on Morrolan's side. What the original Half-Life showed me was possibilities. I remember moments, marines shooting at me in the air ducts, the huge Beast in the parking garage, that wonderful openning sequence, moments where I was forced to act if I wanted to survive yet only had the vaguest of ideas of what I should do. The suspension of disbelief was overwhelming. By the time HL2 came out, I had seen a ton of scripted sequences and was a little jaded. I can see the artificiality of it all. But someday, someday.

Okay, I'm very conflicted here.

Story to me in some respects is everything. In fact, I intend on making a living telling stories, at its most base level. Metal Gear Solid became incredibly sickening to me right about where Vamp showed up in 2. When a dude gets shot in the head and then rises from it in what's supposed to be a tactical stealth game... yeah, but no thanks. I couldn't get it to leave my gaming system fast enough.

Nevertheless - there are some games I am addicted to that have no story at all. Geometry Wars, for example. This is because I know that this is a game that has no story, and is not intending to have one.

Gears of War is a lot more disappointing. There was supposed to be this grandiose and emotional storyline. The acting was excellent (save for the intelligence chick, who seriously was as bad as Resident Evil 1. Yes, I watched a YouTube video of RE 1 dialogue just to refresh my memory), but the plot was wholly missing. Fenix's Dad's house? Um, okay. What's the big deal? I was told there's supposed to be a big deal. Marcus doesn't even mention it.

When a game is supposed to have a very engrossing storyline, that's when I become very intense with it. I want to be fully emersed. I want to be Sam Fisher. This is why Max Payne is probably on some of the top 25 games of all time. Because no one has managed to create such a strong story-voice. Gameplay aside, because it's not about gameplay. It's about what happens to Max. People wanted to get from comic cutscene to comic cutscene as fast as they possibly could because it was just so well done.

Fallout had very engrossing storylines. Sidequests were quirky but you still had to do actual things that mattered. You could repair the nuclear plant or blow it up. Either way, there are consequences that are real, and an emotional impact (or a-emotional, if that's how your character acts, but still profond).

Multiplayer allows for the ability to create your own stories, in a sense. Being a sniper in Call of Duty 3 with hordes of Nazis running after your last territory in War mode, I felt as though I were making a final stand. They were going to be on top of me soon and if they captured our flag they would take the map and the game. So what did I do? I made a sacrifice - I called an airstrike on myself. By the time it reached me, the Nazis were right there. But there's a story there.

Gears of War right now has great stories with multiplayer, but with only three game modes and a few maps those stories are going to be repetitive.

Racing games I never touch, for the reasons you outlined, Morro.

I would rather have a game that has no plot at all and doesn't intend to have one, than a game that claims to have this immersive storyline that is altogether thin and haphazard. Various cash-in games (Battlestar Galactica, 24, and you know Heroes will be there soon) are prime examples. The TV stories were awesome. The game stories were thin. I watch the TV show, I don't play the game.

Logan wrote:

This is why Max Payne is probably on some of the top 25 games of all time. Because no one has managed to create such a strong story-voice. Gameplay aside, because it's not about gameplay. It's about what happens to Max. People wanted to get from comic cutscene to comic cutscene as fast as they possibly could because it was just so well done.

Max Payne 2 is on the very short list of games with a fantastic mature plotline, definitely one of the best in the industry.

It's not, however, absolutely required in all cases. Counterstrike owned my life for like a year.

I meant to mention, but forgot to, that all these musings go out the window with regards to multiplayer gaming.

I completely agree with everything Sinitar says. And Thin_J is just plain funny. When I compare the "giants" of game stories to the greatest films, plays, and novels, there is no comparison. Planetscape: Torment is not Shakespeare. I can't see emotion in HL2 like I can in an actor's face. Games are still primitive.

Now, this is an interesting point. You are of course correct that real-time graphics are in a virtual stone-age, compared to the images in movies. By definition, movies have already achieved that holy grail of "photo-realism." But the reason I believe games (or interactive media in general, within which games are the only viable subset so far,) can be so powerful completely side-steps this problem. Of course games can't compete with movies in the areas where movies excel. Games are getting better in those areas, but it's still an enormous gap. Where games leap ahead is in areas that movies are just completely incapable of even approaching.

Take Shadow of the Colossus. I know, it's a bit of a yuppy game that the artsy gamers always spooge all over, but hear me out. One of the things I loved most about that game was the story. As I stated in the topic post, not the PLOT, but the story. SotC essentially has no plot. I'm talking about the experience of playing through the events of the game. This contains MINOR SPOILERS, btw. Anyway, the first couple of Colossi you encounter are pretty much what you would expect: You find them, they attack you, and you kill them. But after a few of these, you'll come across one that has no beef with you. You'll find him, and he's just doing his thing. He's enormous and majestic, and doesn't seem to be hurting anybody. I have watched four people (including myself,) realize that they would have to provoke this beast, draw their bow, and pause with their aim over this big guy. I've seen all four lower the bow without firing. THAT'S amazing, to me. THAT'S something that a movie could never do. There is a whole range of emotions open to games that movies and books have no access to, because you're observing others' lives, and empathizing, rather than living that life yourself. There's a later colossus who is not only non-hostile, but had no attacks whatsoever, even when provoked. It will just try to shake you off, and never hurts you. I felt genuinely bad about bringing it down. During this and the previously mentioned fight, I was going over my motivations in my head - did I really know why I was supposed to be killing these things? Was I justified in doing so? I can't think of a book, or play, or movie that could convey that sort of moral dilemma more elegantly than SotC did. Guilt is just one of the emotions that non-interactive media can simply never hope to evoke. When the final events of that game come around, I would argue that I was more emotionally invested in that "story" than if there had been hours of movie-quality cutscenes. With just about no actual exposition, I had been shown a truly complex and involving story, in a powerful new way.

There are a number of examples of this sort of storytelling in games, some of it obviously intentional, some of it possibly completely accidental. I've said it before: There are games, like Beyond Good and Evil, that have great movie stories. Then there are games, like SotC, that have great GAME stories. As much as I liked Beyond Good and Evil, it's Souldaddy's objections that make me believe that it's the SotC style that will inevitably have to become the norm. It's the secret weapon that games have, and it's being woefully underused.

Also, with regard to the actual quality of the stories, I think the people who believe Shakespeare is more sophisticated than Planescape Torment are people who have never really read Shakespeare. That's not in any way meant as an insult to Souldaddy, I understand it was just an example, a turn of phrase. My point is that from Gilgamesh to the Cantebury Tales to Shakespeare to Michael Ondaatje, sophistication is in the message, not the medium, or the context of the story. The most artistic stories are still, of course, from the written word but let's be fair... the written word has a bit of a head-start, no? My basic argument is just that games are just as capable of conveying stories as any other medium. And also that Shakespeare is WAY overrated.

[edit] - Off topic, but I'll amend that comment by saying that Shakespeare's sonnets are worthy of truly high praise, but only when taken together as a 154-part series. Any one alone, and its flat. Also, NOBODY read a Shakespearian sonnet at their wedding. I know it may sound romantic, but he's really talking about depressing, cynical, misogynistic, arguably homo-erotic stuff. Not good wedding fair. Anyway, I should be writing a paper...

I enjoyed SotC, but I didn't feel the conflict very acutely, because I had no real choice. If I could have, somehow, opted to not kill them without just turning off the game, I would probably have taken that option, But, since I literally had no choice, I didn't feel the conflict that badly. I remember thinking at one point, "Ok, if this were real, I would now pack up my bow and go home, but I paid $50 to see the rest of this, so...."

As far as Max Payne goes... I only played the first one. I thought it was some of the most hacked-up, amateurish storytelling I've ever seen. It was like a late teenager on crack or something. It was incredibly bad writing, and I didn't think that much of the gameplay either. Bullet time was fun, but you weren't able to do it very much, and the rest of the game was pretty much... dive into a room, kill three guys, dive into the next room, kill three guys, dive into the next room... oops, six guys, bullet time! There was almost no exploration; it felt very corporate and soulless to me.

Max Payne 1 tops my list of bad games. The fact that I finished it is a little pocket of shame in my heart.

Shakespeare is nowhere near as overrated as most game narratives.

That said, the cool emotional feedback loop in SoTC is a good example of a sort of involvement you can have with a video game that is unique to the medium.

I have occasionally ruminated at length on narrative and games...but I don't think I had any great insight.

Malor wrote:

As far as Max Payne goes... I only played the first one. I thought it was some of the most hacked-up, amateurish storytelling I've ever seen. It was like a late teenager on crack or something. It was incredibly bad writing

Max Payne 1 tops my list of bad games. The fact that I finished it is a little pocket of shame in my heart.

Then you're not getting how satirical it was.

Logan wrote:
Malor wrote:

As far as Max Payne goes... I only played the first one. I thought it was some of the most hacked-up, amateurish storytelling I've ever seen. It was like a late teenager on crack or something. It was incredibly bad writing

Max Payne 1 tops my list of bad games. The fact that I finished it is a little pocket of shame in my heart.

Then you're not getting how satirical it was.

Payne Freeze

I was always conflicted as to what extent the writing in Max Payne was intentionally bad. I ended up deciding that either it was meant to purposefully lampoon the stereotypical hard boiled detective story, or that it was a painfully sincere tribute to the same genre. In either case, the results were hilarious.

The same guy is writing for "Alan Wake", so I guess we'll see.

psu_13 wrote:

I have occasionally ruminated at length on narrative and games...but I don't think I had any great insight.

I think it a mistake to look for compelling narrative in Oblivion's main quest. The Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood were a much better attempt at adding narrative to an open game.

Also I found the portion of the main quest in paradise to be extremely compelling as well as rivaling Planescape in emotionally philosophic overtones. I would have to concede that those portions would probably not be so compelling to someone not rapturously fascinated with the world of Elder Scrolls. Context is very important in that case.

If you want an example of good lipsynching take a look at the new Tony Hawk. It's creepily well done.

I was always conflicted as to what extent the writing in Max Payne was intentionally bad. I ended up deciding that either it was meant to purposefully lampoon the stereotypical hard boiled detective story, or that it was a painfully sincere tribute to the same genre.

I came to the same conclusion but then decided that neither satire nor legitimate emulation was entertaining.

Max Payne 2 ditched a lot of the cheese from the first game a put forth a pretty compelling story.

It says something about the cultural maturity of the genre that there's so much confusion about wether Max Payne is a spoof or meant to be serious. The semantics have not yet been defined, it seems.

Satire and bad story have always had a few things in common. I remember my sister reading Candide and, having little idea of its background, just dismissing it as too improbable.

Max Payne 2 and Alan Wake have a traditionally trained writer on board, which might explain some of the differences to MP1.

Malor wrote:

I enjoyed SotC, but I didn't feel the conflict very acutely, because I had no real choice. If I could have, somehow, opted to not kill them without just turning off the game, I would probably have taken that option, But, since I literally had no choice, I didn't feel the conflict that badly. I remember thinking at one point, "Ok, if this were real, I would now pack up my bow and go home, but I paid $50 to see the rest of this, so...."

This brings us to one of the most difficult things about in-game stories: Character development.
The question is whether the story should be about you, the player, in which case the protagonist is not really allowed to have any real profile because it could conflict your own, or whether the story should be about the protagonist, in which case only choices likely for him are available.
Seeing the sheer importance of the main character's personality in pretty much any sophisticated story ever written, either decision is going to be a big tradeoff.

Sinatar wrote:

Max Payne 2 ditched a lot of the cheese from the first game a put forth a pretty compelling story.

I totally loved the story of Max Payne 2. It made the game a real gem for me. I easily played it a second time (with first person mod). There are not many games I play a second time.

This brings us to one of the most difficult things about in-game stories: Character development.
The question is whether the story should be about you, the player, in which case the protagonist is not really allowed to have any real profile because it could conflict your own, or whether the story should be about the protagonist, in which case only choices likely for him are available.

True, and an interesting point, but I think not quite applicable in the case of SotC... you don't get ANY choices in that game. Nor do you get any with Ico. Both are very good games, and I'm glad I played them. But I had no interesting decisions to make, which significantly reduced their involvement for me. (particularly with SotC.)

More related to your question: when I got to the point of "OK, now I would just go home", I 'fell out' of the game world, and was just watching a movie after that. It wasn't me anymore, it was some random dude who happened to do exactly what I told him to.

Choices in a game don't have to be ones I would necessarily make for myself, just *something*.

I think that's part of why Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment had such lasting value, and remain a lot of fun. The alignment systems are simplistic and crude, but you have constant choices with lasting effects in the game world. That's cool. It makes it more of a game, and less of an interactive movie.

I have to admit that I did not play SotC (no PS2), but from what I understand, the protagonist tries to save (well, resurrect) his love by defeating the Collossi. In so far, I'd say that it's true to his personality that there is no way but through them. But that's splitting hairs.

I find your definition of 'game' interesting. Personally, I have no problem with having a disconnection between myself and the protagonist. In Sands of Time, it was obviously not me, but the Prince telling his story, but I did not feel that it was any less of a game because of it. There were still challenges for me to overcome, after all. If that is an 'interactive movie', or whichever other label appropriate, that's fine by me.

Malor wrote:

Max Payne 1 tops my list of bad games.

Tops it? Tops it?! You're dead to me.