your examples are so weirdly vague I think this post would get a proverbial “mega-boost” from some actual examples of video games.
And I can agree with a few of these but some of them seem so weird. Like, assuming that an episodic story automatically means each episode is self-contained with 1 major conflict is a really archaic way of thinking about episodes. In television, that all but died out in like 2002. And a fixation on things as opposed to people is actually what makes a lot of dystopic writing great. The removal of the “self,” can lead to a feeling of nihilism and can lead the viewer to appreciating how much of the world has lost its life.
Also, jokes on you, you probably don’t hate my favorite video game’s story because it actually has no story ;)
I agree that video game narratives are, on average, way worse than in other media, but… This post is like a script for a CinemaSins video on an entire medium. There’s a conversation to be had about the quality and originality of storytelling in video games and why gamers are so quick to praise mediocre narratives, but I dunno if glib one-paragraph summaries of “types” of video game stories (with no examples!) do much to advance that conversation.
There’s a conversation to be had about the quality and originality of storytelling in video games and why gamers are so quick to praise mediocre narratives,
No, there’s really not. This is just a condescending way to disreguard someone else opinion on a piece of media or writing you dislike. The simple answer is just that thehly legitimately thought it was good.
I’m so tired of people acting like they’re some keepers of “good” content because they have the nonsense notion that media/writing is obectively good/bad. Want to talk about a film you just really liked online? Nope, it’s “objectively” bad writing, therefore you have terrible taste for liking it (or get called worse). I was hoping discussions like this would be better here.
Soooo… you’re telling me there’s a game whose story you really love that avoids all these tropes completely? Hmmm… How about Stardew Valley? The premise isn’t entirely unrealistic (leaving a boring corporate job for a dream hobby farm), the story unfolds on its own, you get to decide who you side with, who you become close to and hang out with. Or perhaps you only enjoy franchises that have volumes and volumes of lore behind them to make up for game campaign plots that are too straightforward (Lord of the Rings, Starcraft for example).
Or (like me) your favourite games have little to no story at all. American Truck Simulator, Bloons TD, Age of Empires, Satisfactory, Cities Skylines, Transport Fever are a bunch of my favourite games to play.
If you believe everything you wrote in this post, you are quite hard to please. A game’s plot can’t be too straightforward, yet any surprise twist seems shoehorned in the game. Telling the story through the environment is walking simulator, telling the story through quests is MMORPG Simulator, telling it through Textboxes/Cutscenes is Reading Simulator. Someone hiding something about their character until later in the game is unrealistic, being taken for a ride in a fantasy world is “losing your basic sense of agency”.
Are you playing to try to have fun, escape real life for a bit, or are you playing just to tell people you beat the game? I like games over films and books because you are part of the action and the story, but it’s also part of the game design how far your choices ultimately take you in the world, sometimes they affect everything, sometimes it has no bearing and you’re doomed with what the game has in store.
#Your favorite game’s “awesome story” robs the player of a basic sense of agency
It is generally not awesome for the player character to join a cult, agree to assassinate their boss’s boss, cheat on their life partner, pick a side in a major power struggle, voluntarily inject themselves with an experimental nano-fluid, etc, without the player’s consent.
Right, so…please tell me a narrative medium that allows this. Somehow movies, books, comics, manga, and literal storytelling all get a pass on this?
I can sort of nod along with everything else, agreeing that there is some truth in the spewing. This statement is so pants-on-head foolish that every other assertion you make gets dragged beneath the water and drowns with chains made of the last page of shitty choose-your-own-adventure book. And for that level of strength in the chains to work, those assertions have to be pretty crappy.
Sorry, but no medium of media allows for agency. I don’t care if you have some of the best writing in a game (whether that means Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate II, Disco Elysium, whatever), or if you want to go with the old choose-your-own-adventure books, but there is ultimately little to no player agency. If you want player agency in a game, you have one choice, and it isn’t a video game: TTRPGs. Even ChatGPT can’t match what a good GM can do, because they can allow you to break the mechanics of the game or add mechanics on the fly to fit what a player wants to do. A GM can literally respond to something a game creator never imagined within seconds. I want to see Planescape or Disco Elysium react to a player doing something they thought of that the game creator didn’t imagine. Buuuulllllshit. Player agency my ass.
Also, as the OP obviously fails to mention any games that he thinks is worthy of being an ‘awesome story’, I’m calling this as a troll/bait post.
It is not a normal suggestion because the base game is probably the most pay to win mmo that has lasted more than a year or two. But both versions of Runescape (both old school and Runescape 3) have a game mode called ironman mode.
Ironman mode is an official account type that you can create where you can not trade other players items or money. Everything is earned and gathered yourself. If you want to make a bow you need to gather the flax to spin a bow string and chop logs to fletch an unstrung bow and then string it.
It is a slower mmo with most skills in the game having methods to train where you don’t need to pay much attention and you can mostly watch youtube.
Both games also have very mechanically different and difficult combat encounters you can work your way up to.
Maxing out every skill in the game takes year(s) to do and there are hundreds of incredibly unique quests that in my own opinion set the bar for mmo questing. There are no kill 30 boar quests or fetch quests (really) they are mostly very in depth stories with character archs and so much lore if you are into that.
Would recommend OS over RS3, because much as I love archaeology, RS3 is overmonetised (I think most of the community agrees with that?), and that seems like a big part of what OP wanted to get away from.
Returnal, Resident Evil REmakes, most Giant Bomb games, Firewatch, Hellblade…
If you liked Alan Wake, definitely give the RE remakes and Hellblade a shot, and don’t sleep on Firewatch. In fact, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is probably one of the most thoughtful and atmospheric experiences in gaming (at least in the field of 3rd person, pseudo action games).
Oxenfree, A Night in the Woods, Afterparty, and Gris. Gris is a masterpiece when it comes to visuals but not story-heavy. The other three are entirely story.
Seconding Oxenfree. It’s one of the few multi-choice/multi-ending games where I was completely content with the ending I got, and didn’t feel like the game ever lied to me or ripped me off for choosing the “wrong” thing. I had stayed away from it for so long because I wasn’t ready to deal with choice anxiety that I get in a lot of games of that type, but for whatever reason, the game never made me feel like that.
Oh yes choice anxiety was definitely a thing. I think I felt that more with Afterparty and even played the game a second time to try to alter things but at the end of the day, I realized it’s not that serious and simply enjoying the game made it a better experience.
People who don’t like anything are incredibly boring, in my humble opinion. Imagine putting all of this effort into an essay about why other people shouldn’t like the things that they like. I think a lot of people mistake being a contrarion for being an intellectual.
I could never get into Bioshock for some reason. I started playing it twice, but just never felt super engaged or intrigued. Which seems really weird to me because I love a compelling story and that game has a reputation for being a great story. Maybe I just haven’t been in the right mood and need to give it another shot.
Depending on how many hours you played, you might not have reached the point that gave it that reputation. I absolutely loved the story already, including the characters and the environment of Rapture, but there’s a certain point in the story where it gets taken to a new level.
Appreciate the perspective. Maybe it’s just not for me. But I may also give it another shot at some point since I’m not inclined to spend a lot of money on games these days and that one’s already in my Steam library.
The villain would have won, if he’d just had the good sense to NOT BE OBVIOUSLY EVIL FOR LIKE HALF AN HOUR. You could have just celebrated your victory over the first bad guy while you let the hero meander back to the surface and fuck off forever. But NO, you have to be like “HAHAHA I’M EVIL SO FUCK YOU!” and now the hero has literally no choice but to stay and kill you. It was so lazy, and so stupid. Up to that point, it was good, and I loved the twist, and then he had to go completely ruin it with a boneheaded move that made 0 sense except to show how evil he was.
Then Bioshock 2 fucking did the same thing again. Let these meddling interlopers get on the submarine and go away, and you’ve won, all your goals are complete, Rapture is yours. BUT NO, we have to show the reader how EVIL the bad guy is again.
Then Bioshock Infinite did it fuckingagain. Great, we’ve won, the revolution is a success, the good guys are triumphant, oh, shit, did we make these people too sympathetic? Better have them suddenly become bloodthirsty child-killers for no reason so you feel ok fighting them instead of fucking off back home! By that point, though, it was kind of a Dead Dove: Do Not Eat situation; I don’t know why I expected anything different after the previous two times.
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