Reasonable said:
Half Life 2 has a pretty clever story, but Valve took the approach where its up to you whether you dig into it or not, which I think is the best way to go. However, just because you chose to play the game without bothering with any of the deeper backstory doesn't change the fact it is there. TF2 is a pure multiplayer game - of course it has no story! I play it lots and love its zany humour, but that's exactly the kind of game that doesn't really have nor need a story - it has a carefully implied context to give it a setting, but that's not a story. Some games are definately going to need stories, but of course many, perhaps most, don't. Take Uncharted 2 - it simply wouldn't work without its Saturday morning adventure serial story and context, it's characters are too well presented and it's world too realistic to work without a narrative. Bioshock whether you like the story or not certainly wouldn't work without one IMHO. Again, the setting is too rich. There needs to be a story. I thought the story in Bioshock was weak in the end, although the game started well, but that's the problem - those games that do need stories all too often have weak ones. Basically, anything like Fallout 3, Uncharted, etc. do need stories. Those are games. You're last line is in conflict with itself. You can't say games don't need stories but text adventures do. Text adventures are games - ergo some games need stories.
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I know the games have stories, I'm saying games don't need them. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had stories but neither needed them. I paid little to no attention to the stories in Zelda and HL but I still found them to be great games. The poster above says they played Fallout 3 whilst ignoring the plot.
By text adventures I mean the books from years ago that had 'turn to page 46 to take path A or turn to page 48 to take path B'. I never considered these books to be games and I don't consider their modern equivalents to be games either.
Valve does story well. It never/rarely gets in the way of the game.
Music/sound improves a game infinitely moreso than any B C-movie plot and we have over 30 years worth of top selling arcade games to show for it and not one successful game story to movie transition (except Super Mario Bros of course).
Nov 2016 - NES outsells PS1 (JP)
Don't Play Stationary 4 ever. Switch!