From a gamer to developers, where are..

[ninzel]

...the great story tellers?

Now that E3 is wrapped up and we have seen the direction of next gen, I feel both excited and let down.
Before this gen began we kept hearing the big promises that next gen was going to usher in the era of the cinematic gaming experience where games would become a mainstream medium on par with movies.
To some degree I see that promise being met but purely from a technical standpoint.

We are seeing better graphics, audio and things like great active cinematic cameras being used. So in this sense the cinematic quality of games is being realized. So it's all the more disappointing to see this great power being used to appeal to the typical narrow demographic.
All the stereotypical characters and settings are making a return. We see the space marine/badass/ninja in full force, we see the typical dystopian worlds under siege, and see the typical solutions where we shoot or slash everything in our wake.

I'm sorry, but I want more !

Just like I wouldn't want to watch the same type of Terminator 3 or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon movie over and over, I don't want to play the same themed video game with slight variences over and over again.

Where are the great story tellers ?
New story's and new non typical cliched characters and new gameplay experiences ?
Where are the great Lost's and Battlestar Galactica's of the gaming world ?
Games that tell great stories and elevate the genre...

I hope to see these huge budgets on video games being used to hire better writers, actors and producers and directors from outside the gaming world because I really think the gaming world needs a fresh injection of blood.
If you want games to be an par with movies, your going to need to increase the scope and variety of the experiences.
So I came away from E3 feeling let down by all 3, and find myself moving away from games and back to movies and TV once again.


[Moderator : changed shape of the text, and some spelling while at it...]

 

[pegisys]

I hope to see these huge budgets on video games being used to hire better writers, actors and producers and directors from outside the gaming world because I really think the gaming world needs a fresh injection of blood.

that has been tried and doesn't seem to work out well, it is a big difference in writting a script for a movie and writting a script for an interactive experience.

I think it is more of an evolutionary process, the big name games that are coming out now are not going to define the next generation of gameplay it is going to be a game that noone is expecting that is going to come out and change the way every one does things, sorta like gta3 did last generation

 

[ninzel]

that has been tried and doesn't seem to work out well, it is a big difference in writting a script for a movie and writting a script for an interactive experience.

I'm sure it is more difficult for the simple reason that games are interactive. I think it needs to be done though, or games will forever remain a niche medium.

 

[Danalys]

you don't play the drama in a game you play the action. even great action scenes with originality are rare in movies. action heroes are cut from similar cloths in the movies aswell.

 

[blakjedi]

I think that there are great game experiences written as stories in the last few generations. These franchises come to mind for this generation:

Oblivion
Too Human
Mass Effect
MGS4 (which I hope will be a return to the great gameplay of MGS1)

Of the last few generations:

Deus Ex
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Xenogears
Chronotrigger
Chrono Cross
Skies of Arcadia
Lunar the Silver Star
Grandia 1 and 2
Planetscape Torment
Fallout 2


Final Fantasy doesnt make my list only because I think they have very convoluted stories. I think people think convoluted equals complex but that isnt true... I understood Matrix Revolutions but not FFVII!

 

[Danalys]

final fantasy is more an emotional story where as the matrix is more a logical story.

 

[BigGamer X]

These types of games you want would benefit from having more ram and more advanced storage devices, let alone the budget costs to make them. (I'm not a dev. but anyone can see how the X360 strains to deliver Oblivion to us, let alone anything more ambitious!) It's the ugly $$$ letting us down on both fronts... (having 300GB HDDs and 2GB of ram in the consoles would let the games happen on a technical level, but the consoles wouldn't sell at what, like $750?)

 

[cthellis42]

final fantasy is more an emotional story where as the matrix is more a logical story.

I'm sorry, I had sort of a spittake seeing "The Matrix" and "logical" used in the same sentence together.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What, powering a computer with human heat output isn't logical? (not to mention talking of thermal output in terms of BTU's instead of Watts some one to two hundred years from now...)

 

[nintenho]

A movie narrates stress, a videogame stresses narration. You can't make an interactive experience like a movie where you can have the audience be a bunch of emotionally naked people who don't have a room temerature IQ. Every time a company tries to put a traditional story into a game, it makes the game straightforward and unbalanced. The point is to see how a story benefits the gameplay that you first came up with. But hey, I think Miyamoto is a fucking genius so what do I know?

 

[Platon]

I guess there is always the problem of movies and games being a different medium. Don't get me wrong I love having a game that has great gameplay but that also moves you along a story but without invading to the gameplay to much. The game that I have played that felt almost like I was playing in a movie is my all time favorite Outcast. It managed the difficult task of having really open/non linear adventure kind of gameplay but still kept you involved in the story all the time.

My hope relies on the next Beyond Good and Evil for the next great story/game combination...

 

[NavNucST3]

I guess there is always the problem of movies and games being a different medium. Don't get me wrong I love having a game that has great gameplay but that also moves you along a story but without invading to the gameplay to much. The game that I have played that felt almost like I was playing in a movie is my all time favorite Outcast. It managed the difficult task of having really open/non linear adventure kind of gameplay but still kept you involved in the story all the time.

My hope relies on the next Beyond Good and Evil for the next great story/game combination...

If only someone would actually make it...tragically, I don't think it sold well enough. I did see a blurb that it was going to be done, but I will believe it when I see it. Instant Classic, of course, looking up a couple posts, I would have to put Skies of Arcadia in there as well.

 

[NavNucST3]

I think the OP is flawed, because there is nothing new about Lost, there is nothing new about BSG, these are all stories told time and time again. There is no movie that wasn't based off of some classic prose, there is no current text that is not based on some classic prose. To expect games to do something that frankly no other medium has done I think is a bit far-fetched. Its the engagement of the stories that need to be improved, not the themes.


EDIT: Let me also add that it is the fault of gamers that stories take a back seat, if gamers REALLY wanted great stories, then madden wouldn't outsell Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil, 300:1. Vote with your pocket book.

 

[Pugger]

It seems to me that Story driven games can be very much a double edged sword. Its seems to me that great game designers tend to make very poor story tellers. When I first dipped my toe into MGS world it was with MGS2 on the PS2, it was game everyone told me to play. What did I find? Well it appeared to be have designed by someone who wanted to get into to movie business. The story which was atrocious overwhelmed the game and destroyed any interest I may have had. Take away the inept and inane story and it would have been far more enjoyable.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think the OP is flawed, because there is nothing new about Lost, there is nothing new about BSG, these are all stories told time and time again. There is no movie that wasn't based off of some classic prose, there is no current text that is not based on some classic prose.

Yes, there's supposedly only 7 plots, but I don't think it fair to say all stories are based off others. Some share similarities because there's only many stories out there, but that doesn't mean they were based off a predecessor. The differentiating factor is ideas. eg. In your Sci Fi aliens-take-over-the-world-warzone story, it's the history of the aliens, their weaknesses, how the hero(s) overcome them etc. that makes the story different. From that one generic concept lots of stories can be had. I think a downside these days to story is a lot of research and theorizing has produced a set of formulas as to what makes a good story, and there's not a great deal of imagination involved these days. Most flicks are a load of tripe IMO, with very few truly good stories. We can't expect games to be any different. The fact that games are fewer in number means the total volume of good stories in games is less, but percentage wise I wonder how different it is?

Personally, it doesn't matter to me. Games are about gameplay. The story is just an excuse. In the age of the 2D space shooter, the stories were totally generic, but the games were great. You can't pin any engaging story onto hours of content that consist of nothing more than a space ship flying in a single direction shooting huge amounts of energy weapons. Do you really want to lace that with cut scenes of the different aliens past, their internal emotional conflict, 'Nam flashbacks of the pilot... Games are a different medium and game developers should on the whole stop trying to be movie directors. Make sure the game plays well and bother about the story as an after-thought. Plenty of people just skip past those cut-scenes anyway!

 

[Draikin]

Always asking for great stories and when games like Planescape Torment, The Longest Journey or Dreamfall are released, they have a hard time selling 500k copies. Even "professional" reviewers cant tell the difference between Metal Gear Solid and a great story.

 

[Arwin]

You're just not looking all that well. Story telling is and has been an important part of gaming. It's just not crucial to a game's success, but that doesn't mean it doesn't add to it or is completely ignored. Heavenly Sword certainly has a good story premise, for instance, and there are plenty like that (BioShock should be another decent one). Way back when I played a game called Warhead right to the finish, which was a great game in every sense including an awesome story with great sidelines.

It started off with 80% of earth being killed by an alien attack, you then training with innovative weapons in space, then slowly meeting and engaging with the returning aliens, which turn out to be a kind of largish cockroach that forms a consciousness and intelligence in groups (their basic ships are kind of small, very funny), then we are diverted by a super powerful intelligent robot-ship that kills both sides making for a very interesting, surprising and somewhat scary diversion, and then after luring that thing into a black hole (awesome mission), we return to the war ending in an Epic battle near the home planet of the alien species, at the end of which the humans return the favor and nuke that planet.

It was awesome, and I played it from start to finish, great story. But I think what held it's popularity back was that it was difficult to get used to flying the spaceship. I have it on my PSP now, in CaSTaway. Still hard, especially without a mouse.

And of course, great stories are also a matter of taste. Gameplay is also a matter of taste. Graphics are a matter of taste. The more of them you combine, the more likely you are in putting off someone. So it's a tricky business.

 

[London Geezer]

Where are the great Lost's and Battlestar Galactica's of the gaming world ?

Well, the game based on Lost is being worked on at the moment. It's on the road to become the single most frustrating game ever created, if it's anything like the show...

 

[rabidrabbit]

Please keep Lost spoilers away from this thread, I have only finished season 1 and don't want to be spoiled.
Just in case, I mean if the thread started to derail....

Movies vs. games. It's about the pacing, they're different media as books vs. movies and should be treated separately.
Even though they both are highly based on visuals, I'd say storytelling in games is more comparable to storytelling in books than movies.

 

[LunchBox]

I see what you mean, However it's sad to say that sellability dictates game creation... Having a good story is quite nice but if it hinders the playability of the game, it wouldn't be welcomed by the mainstream. Although a good cult following is sure to follow through.

This is also the reason why most games either involves killing and/or sex with little story ... not that I'm complaining...