| kain_kusanagi said: I'm all for good stories in video games, but to be honest I play games for the gameplay more than the story. As great as it would be for every game to have as good of writing as Alan Wake and Uncharted I'd rather game developers focus on making the best gameplay possible. Naughty Dog has created some great characters, but the Uncharted games are kind of like interactive movies. Once you've seen the story to the end there's little reason to play the game. All the set pieces and quite a lot of the games themselves are so scripted that replaying the game is liking watching a rerun. People complained that FF13 was too linear, but I'd argue that people are giving Uncharted a pass on linearity because they like the cinematic experience. I hope Naughty Dog does the rise the bar for storytelling in games. I just hope it doesn't mean games turn into interactive movies. I like exploring too much to want to see games be limited as much as the Uncharted games are. |
For the most part, i agree with what you saying, gameplay shoud never be sacrificed for storytelling. And i hope this new game doesnt fall into that trap.
However i think your views on uncharted are slighly incorrect, but it seems many people share that same point of view. I wouldnt call uncharted an interactive movie, i would say Heavy Rain is like an interactive movie. Uncharted has a very standard game structure, that of cutscenes and levels. And for the most part, these two are seperated, and every now and then you get a big time action sequence with some QTE that gives the impression of an interactive movie.
What annoys me, is that most games follow a very similar structure...yet they dont get the branding of being linear. You also said that uncharted gets a pass on linearity...firstly it should get a pass on linearity because its not really a negative, and secondly almost every review ive read about uncharted complains about linearity. Third person shooters are generally linear, but that doesnt mean that it lacks gameplay as they dont need to be non linear to bring across the core gameplay elements.
Final fantasy on the other hand is a RPG, and in that genre games are generally not linear and for good reason. The fact that FF13 was more linear than most linear games, when it really shouldnt have been linear at all, was the main reason why so many people complained.
People also seem to equate linearity with lacklustre gameplay, i fully disagree with that. The two are not the same. If i take uncharted as an example, its a linear game with good gameplay, and a good story which is perhaps why it has such a good following.
