Stories in Games?

[Sengir]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vie...-BS-Filter

A lot of these people will say 'I have something to say, I have a story to tell.' If you've really got something inside of you that's so powerful, like a story you've got to share or a philosophy about man's place in the universe, why in the fuck would you choose the medium that has historically, continually been the worst medium to express philosophy, story and narrative?

Obviously the article is geared more towards game designers, but what do you guys think of games with stories? I like a good story, or if in an open game a nice backstory.

(That was the Twisted Metal/God of War designer in the article by the way)

[Gwen]

I love a game with a good story, it gives me more incentive to play as the farther in I get the more I learn about characters and their setting. I can't really get immersed in a game if there's no existing story, unless it's geared for multiplayer like Battlefield 3.

[Sengir]

Agreed. Though there are games with thrown-together stories that aren't awful, but I just can't get into them.

[Kriven]

I absolutely need some kind of story in the large majority of my games. If a game doesn't have any kind of story, I won't be playing it for very long if at all.

The one exception so far has been Left 4 Dead, but both of those games do have a story. It's hidden all over the place. The character interactions mixed with all the graffiti and the various bits of wreckage strewn about, it's all significant. That amount of world building and the amount of story told through the subtleties is part of what makes it such an addictive game.

[puggsoy]

I like stories in games. I personally prefer those that have a lot of humour, but as long as it's interesting and nice to follow, that's good enough for me.

But not all games need a good story. Look at Mario: a dinosaur-turtle type creature kidnaps a princess. A plumber goes through a number of worlds containing ridiculous levels. He jumps on the creature and rescues the princess. The end.
The story's horrible, but it's still a fantastic game. The Pokemon games also have a vague, almost non-existent story, but they just keep on coming.

That being said, here's my opinion: some games need story, some don't. The ones that do don't always have one, and that can make them suck. A good example is Far Cry 2.
Personally I don't need a game to have a story. Gameplay and music are what I'm most concerned about in a game. But if it does have one, it should be good, and I always like it if it's got some humour here and there.

[StarSock64]

I think video games are able to tell stories in a way that other things aren't. Think about Majora's Mask. The act of helping the townspeople gets you personally involved, and I don't think the three day system would work in other mediums. I don't think I'd care much about Shadow of the Colossus's story if it wasn't a video game, either. I think establishing a good atmosphere is an important part of a game, and a story can certainly contribute to that. Rather than being independent, the story and gameplay can be used to support each other. Some games really need their stories. Seriously, would anyone care about Persona 3 if not for its characters and social links? Without those, it'd be pretty lackluster.

Even if video games usually don't have good stories, that doesn't mean you should discourage people from trying to push the envelope, especially if the story can make the game feel better overall. Don't stories contribute to some of the biggest cult hits? Judging the use of stories in video games based on the majority is stupid.

[Keychain]

Two words.

Cave Story

[Cobalt Blue]

When someone actually put a plot to something like Contra, and actually made it coherent and even allowed your decisions to develop it, we got Contra Hard Corps. and so far has been the best contra game ever developed.

[Gors]

too bad it's so ballbustingly hard, if it was a book I would read only the first line before dying heh

[TomGuycott]

Contra is Mayan for Hard as Balls.

[Gwen]

Another example of a game with a great story: Red Dead Redemption. Personally if that game didn't have a story to back it, I would have been bored a half hour in, but the story is amazing, so that's how I ended up spending multiple days just playing all day.

[PrettyNier]

Every medium has unique ways in which it can get the concepts of story across: Some stories, some ideas, some ways to execute that story, fit better as games, just as others fit better as movies, or others still fit better as novels.

But then, David Jaffe couldn't make a good game to save his life, so i'm not terribly surprised he doesn't understand the mediums place.

[Gors]

I believe I said this before, but games are an amalgamation of several media which works together to create one, rich experience. So, a good story can tie all the others together and form a coherent, harmonic game. Some games such as puzzle games or early games, require little to no story can and still be enjoyable.

Newer, more elaborated games, though, may require a well-written story to be good. It can be the defining point of being a shitty game or a good game.

You can play the same game without a story as you can play the game on mute or with placeholder graphics, but the experience won't be the same.

[X Gamer 66]

You can have great games without story, and you can have great games with a heavy focus on story. because of their interactive nature, video games also allow for a type of story presentation which simply isn't possible on other mediums. This makes the presentation options different; whether it's better or worse is subjective.

[Kriven]

Even in games without cutscenes, you could still have a story shown in the environments and the ways things interact.

For example, Super Mario 64 has an entire subplot about the war between the Bob-Omb races, but it's only really mentioned in a single line of dialogue about that. But there's way more story than that. The Red Bob-Ombs are sending in a small team of soldiers, possibly even the remnants of a rebel team after the Black Bob-Ombs eradicated their comrades, to infiltrate the last of the Black Bob-Omb strongholds and topple the tyrannous King Bob-Omb. While they've made some headway, the Black Bob-Omb fortress is simply too heavily guarded. The normal path along the bridge is of course a no-go and easily spotted from atop the fortress, and moreso it would require battling the Black Bob-Ombs guard Chomp. They could run through the canyon (which had at one point been a moat, but the water was drained by a heroic Red who sacrificed himself for his cause), but the Black Bob-Ombs have already secured the position. The Red Bob-Ombs are shown to have made some advancement up to the mountainside, even securing two cannons along the way, but it seems that they were either wiped out or forced to retreat. All they can do is hope for a miracle.

Super Mario 64 is generally considered a rather story-less game. "Save the princess yet again." Okay, but there's way more going on than that. Stories can be as much of the world as the platforms and mushrooms and coins. It's not enough to just drop details onto a setting "because they fit." You have to think about why that object is put there, and how it got there, and how it's in the state it's in and how it reflects on the characters around it. All that makes a story, even if there wasn't one.