[Cossix]

At least that's what some people keep saying in posts here (and elsewhere, I'd imagine).

I've never figured out where this argument comes from. If every video game tells a terrible story, then what's a good story? I spend a decent amount of time reading and watching movies and television and I'm not sure what the qualifier for a story to be "good" or not is.

Is the problem that a lot of video games are kind of obsessed with the Hero's Quest? I don't think the Hero's Quest is necessarily juvenile.

[108]

"why are videogame stories terrible?" is actually a really good question.

i'm working as we speak on a review of bioshock that will address this question!
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[Cossix]

That's not my question at all, really. My question is if video game stories are terrible, then what's a good story? And why is that a good story, and what aspect of video game stories make them terrible?

EDIT: "Video game stories are terrible" is the assumption I am questioning here. I'm not asking why they are terrible, I'm asking why people qualify their stories as terrible.

[Rya.Reisender]

Video game stories aren't always terrible. Only the stories of RPGs and some other games are terrible. I was pretty pissed by the stories in RPGs eventually. It made me switch to Horror genre. Although I hate to see blood I still switched to Horror genre because story is so superior there (at least in Silent Hill and Project Zero). Some Point 'n Click adventures have good stories as well, so I played some of those too.

Of course I also play games that don't need any story.

Some games don't really have much of a story but I consider the story still pretty awesome. If a game makes me feel like I want to survive because people depend on me or something similar that's a good story to me.
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Select Button
Push Eject.

[Lick Meth]

I imagine that the stigma comes from the titles which attempt to ape Hollywood cinema, but come off amateurish at best. Obviously not all are terrible (Uncharted), but some are pretty embarressing (Gears of War).

Not to say that Hollywood is the only source to copy.

EDIT: reminded of many game story cliches that crop up time and time again and never get questioned (at least not by the people who write the fucking things), like amnesia.

[Rya.Reisender]

Making up an original story is always best.
Or at least copy from a good books. Books leave much more room for imagination.

[BIGJ420COOLDUDE]

they're mostly acceptable but just told really poorly i guess?

[Mr. Brooks]

Personally, I've tended to suspect the having-to-push-buttons bit mutes any impact they might have or have had on me.
Something akin to trying to listen to a passenger's account of their run in with the law yesterday while also trying to drive, or perhaps fly a helicopter.

I regularly find it more thrilling to read someone else's account of a videogame and its 'story' than experience it myself (depending on the scribe.)

[gooktime]

They aren't universally terrible, just some people say so to make themselves sound cultured.

[Talbain]

[vision]

Are we talking about stories told passively—through cutscenes or instruction manual backstory—or narrative experienced through interactivity?

I ask because I feel that any story told passively through an (inter)active form of media is inherently undesired. However, a poor (or non-existent) story told through compelling gameplay can be more easily forgiven.

There are games that nail both sides of the active/passive narrative equation, such as the Metal Gear Solid series, of which the compelling cinematics and interactivity of each installment add up to more than the sum of both parts. And the Marathon series apparently lines up its own shining examples of this. But most games poison themselves alongside other passive art forms when "pausing" their strong suit, interactivity, to relate pure story.

If a great story feels shoehorned into a videogame, it loses value in the process. And what's a great story if it's not worth telling?

[Sushi K]

Well let's ask the question what is a story at all? (which I think you did.)

A STORY is a CHARACTER is a SITUATION.

For example: "I woke up late this morning." Is a story, a very bad one but a story none the less.

NOW; what makes that story bad and, for example, War and Peace good?
CONFLICT, which has two forms, INTERNAL and EXTERNAL.
Internal conflicts are what make something literature, external conflicts are what make a summer blockbuster. For a story to be considered 'good' usually there must be internal conflict.
A story becomes good when because a character, who is not you, resolves an internal conflict in a manor that you may or may not resolve it because he is a different person then you, but that you can sympathize with because you are in their head.
HERE IS THE POINT: Video games almost always consist of solely external conflict. "Hey, kill those monsters."/"Hey, get all the money." Any character in that situation would do the exact same thing. It doesn't matter if it's you, or your neighbor or Link, drop any of these people into a fantasy setting with superhuman sword wielding powers and tell them that the world will end if these monsters aren't killed and they will all do the same thing. Until video games become advanced enough for the internal conflict in that characters to be expressed (like advanced facial emotion being shown to create a sympathetic reaction in the player) or for the player's internal conflict to be expressed in the game world (by allowing free choice in the game to a new unseen level).

All the games that are considered great for their story take one of these two approaches in their first baby steps. Final Fantasy locks you into a very linear story that has a large amount of characters doing their roles while pained emotionally for one reason or another or in Earthbound where the player's choices don't change the story but your own emotions are so carefully manipulated that they line up with what is going on (especialy the final boss).
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[108]

[Talbain]

[Sushi K]

[Lick Meth]

If a game's entire appeal hinges on the story, then it'd better be fucking phenomonal, otherwise I wouldn't be able to get through it with a straight face. Or any face at all.

KOTOR was like that for me. Oh, you've got amnesia. Oh, we all speak in awkward stilted phases. Oh, it took me 15 hours to do 3 pissy tasks, fuck this off. From the same publisher, years before, was Grim Fandango. What the hell happened? No I don't care if it was Bioware.

[Schwere Viper]

I don't think that stories in games are considered bad just because they're in games; hell, that could explode into a discussion of how people still consider all video games as toys for children. It's just that now, more than ever, people seem to take a great pleasure in ripping apart stories in general. That's compounded by the fact that the internet is one gigantic soapbox. Shit, most of my early years on the internet were spent tearing apart horrible fan-fiction with a group of people.

In short, it's not that stories in games are inherently bad. There are quite a few good ones! It's just that everyone's a fucking critic.

In terms of using a game as a method of storytelling though, most games seem to just emulate other media. I'm not sure whether this is because games as a media are a mish-mash of other media, or if the majority of developers just aren't able to think of an original way that a "game" could tell a story. I can think of a couple that have done something fairly interesting (Breakdown for Xbox comes to mind), but a lot of the time it's like watching a film, or maybe reading a novel, except with those sound effect buttons on a side panel.
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[SuperWes]

The problem with a thread like this is that it's something a lot of us don't agree on.

Some believe that the role of story in a game is to give the player a reason to keep playing. If it does this, it's a successful story. Unfortunately, often this can still work well even when the plot is, "go kill your deadbeat dad who is a giant flying whale who represents 'evil'." So even when a game story is successful, it isn't necessarily good. Then there's games with great stories that try their hardest to get you to stop playing. Metal Gear is a good example of this. It tells a great, emotional story, and the game's pretty great as well, but if you're not ready to sit back and watch a bunch of movies you're probably going to turn the game off.

Then there's a third line of thinking that says any game where killing stuff is more important that plot intrinsically has a bad story. These people are looking for games to become something "more" and want games where you can be a barber or a politician. This is a great idea, but it ignores the "game" factor of games. IF people could maybe be lumped in here, but honestly I don't know enough about it.

Now this isn't a value judgment toward Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, or IF, but it just points out that this question isn't simple to answer. I'm part of the first group btw!

-Weş
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[Mr. Brooks]

As a general thought, a decent script and vocal-work that isn't fucking cringeworthy make some pretty foul medicines go down rather well.

[Schwere Viper]

Then again I think Fantasy Zone had a great story so my opinion might be null and void.
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[Felix]

i mean - there's kind of a lot of easy parallels to literature.

an acceptable "videogame" is kind of limited in terms of the kind of conflict it can present; from there we've got the expertly-crafted schlock (read: art for art's sake), versus the handful of attempts at "literature," which, games being game, invariably lean toward postmodernism, and -- dare i say "the medium is the message" ?

[Sushi K]

[spinach]

The Hero's Quest is not trite.

Saving the world is.

A Hero's Quest could mean finding a spot to eat when your vegetarian friend comes to visit. Could mean getting tea and medicine for your sick mom. Could mean finding a good neighborhood you can afford to live in when you've got a baby on the way, or finding your way out of a bad one when the baby's already come. Personal shit.

We've been killing aliens and demons and demon aliens for over thirty years, now. We've saved the world so often it barely gets a rise out of us anymore. Videogame stories are bad because of this.

Ulysses just wanted to go home.

[Mr. Brooks]

Aye, it is a little bizarre and depressing how often a videogame's tale's overall plot goal is so ramped up. That kind of powertripping's pretty ugly, as a steady feed, and often best consumed with its tongue in its cheek.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Does it count as saving the world if it's the only world you know of during the game?

(Saving the city the game takes place in, saving the country, etcetera)
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[CubaLibre]

[vision]

[CubaLibre]

[Sushi K]

Kinda further on story isn't plot: people say that a picture can tell a story, but as a static medium with no change over time it's impossible for a picture to contain a plot.

This relates back to my previous statement that story is simply a character in a situation.
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[haze]

MAN VS MAN
MAN VS WORLD
MAN VS HIMSELF
MAN VS FATE
MAN VS MACHINE
MAN VS COCK
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[dark steve]

You're on the wrong track.

It's not about the kinds of stories that they can tell. At least not that way.
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[SuperWes]

[CubaLibre]

Well I think the Odyssey is a good example. It's got adventure and cunning and monsters and fighting and fucking and whatever else, but in the end, Odysseus just wants to get home. Not SAVE THE WORLD. Videogames could do with a little humility.
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[Gironika]

[glitch]

[Talbain]

[spinach]

[spinach]

[PianoMap]

two words: Inferiority Complex
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[spinach]

[BEIGE]

Maybe some of this has to do with the immaturity of video games as a medium. As a method of storytelling, games really haven't been around that long. Interactivity throws a considerable wrench in the works.

We're still learning to do it right, and we're getting better as time goes on, I think! See the other thread in this forum marked video game stories for examples.