| Bodhesatva said: I've noticed many reviews recently which have trumpeted the significance of storyline, and have implied -- if not outright explicated -- that story is, in essence, always a good thing. A little bit like graphics: better graphics is always a plus. Frankly, this irks me, because I almost uniformly hate story-driven gaming; I have a strong dislike for traditional RPGs, and I find stories -- even better ones, as with Bioshock -- uniformly tedious and infantile in games. More specifically, I don't think an interactive medium is built for strong storytelling.
Does anyone else feel this way? Or have something to add? Does anyone here feel that storytelling is automatically a good thing, and if so, can you explain why? |
No offense, but you are looking in the wrong places, because jRPGs are not the best indicative of story quality. Yes, Stories have been decreasing in quality in the last few years(there is no denying it), mainly due to:
- Decline of PC gaming, since PC gaming always had a more mature audience. Less focus on PC gaming means less games with mature stories and story-centric games.
- Decline of Story-centric games (aka. Adventure games). Adventures such as Monkey Island series have become rarer after around year 2000 and developers started making more and more console games and less PC games, in fear of piracy.
Ultimately, if you are a gamer that wants mature stories of amazing quality, then start playing PC games. This year we had an amazing number of PC games with quality stories and writing:
- Sam & Max: Season 1, comeback of the comedic duo. Really fun, ol' lucas arts quality.
- The Witcher (wRPG), possibly RPGOTY, if Mass Effect doesn't live up the hype, and has a great story with a good translated writing. It also had AAA reviews: PC jeux 9/10, X6 6/6, Joystick 9/10, IGN 8.5/10, Gamespot 8.5/10 - average 90%.
- Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, NWN2's expansion which has the Best RPG Story of the last 6 years and completely destroying any JRPG's story, and almost touching Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate 2 in quality. I'm not exagerating.
- Culpa Innata. Never played it, but I heard good things about the story.
| outlawauron said: Depends on the game and the person playing it. I agree with Montana on most points. I adore a good story, but as you can see it isn't nessacary. If people can be content with the story in Kingdom Hearts. Good for them. |
Depends on the genre: Platformers and Action games usually don't need a story, and FPS don't need to focus on their Singleplayer campaign(unless they're SP-only, like Bioshock). But in Adventure Games the story is 50% of the entire game, they're very story-centric.
