| MTZehvor said: And as I said before, there certainly are objective standards; it's just said objective standards do not apply to all types of storytelling. Not every great story needs to be structured. Not every great story needs to be linear. It's as simple as that. Even if there were absolute standards that applied to all stories, regardless of style, your argument still wouldn't hold water, because it would be quite possibly for a video game to include some interactivity, and some linearity, and still have a great story and great gameplay. Take Bioshock Infinite, which tells a compelling story mostly through certain mostly non-interactive segments that break up rounds of interactive gameplay. Or, as I've already mentioned, the Ace Attorney games. Very linear, rigid story structure, and player interactivity cannot derail the story away from it, and yet it still remains engrossing to play. You could easily (and people have easily) tell a great story simply by breaking up the flow of gameplay. There's no need to "compromise" anything in this scenario, you simply contrast gameplay and storytelling, using one to pace the other. It's already worked quite effectively in titles such as Devil May Cry 3, for instance, despite that game's story in and of itself not being that great. I've never claimed that there are no objective guidelines to anything, just that not every single one of those guidelines apply across all forms of media. For instance, good character development and interesting underlying themes are essentials to nearly every story. But some others, such as a deep commentary on some aspect of life, are not necessary to have a good story for all forms of entertainment. It would be quite silly to think that a deep social commentary on Capitalism would have benefitted Wall-E, for instance. Regardless, you've been talking for quite some time about these supposed "objective standards to story greatness" for some time now, without actually listing any of them besides a rigid story structure. To that end, I'd like to hear: what exactly are these requirements that a story must meet in order to qualify as good? I'd be willing to bet the majority of the games I've listed so far will meet your standards. |
No, it is impossible for a game to be a great game and a great story at the same time. There is no way to make a story interactive without compromising the quality, and there is no way of making a game without interactive input and still make a great game.
You are right however that some aspects of story telling can be recreated in a video game, such as character development and following a plot line. There is no requirement that a story has to have a complex metastory, so where that is coming from I don't know.
Anyway, to answer your question, the aspects of story telling that are incompatible with video game design are these:
Linearity of the story. This is the most obvious clash and one you refuse to aknowledge, yet, to be able to tell a great story, you need to have a clearly defined structure. The story requires a set begining, a middle and and end. Whats more, the parts need to be tied together so that objects and events in one part of the story has impact at other parts of the story. This structure can be mimicked in games, but it has to be broken if you want to allow meaningful interactivity.
Also, a great story is without surplus. Meaning everything that happens is tied into the progression of the story. Redundancy is the enemy of good story telling. Games routinely break this requirement by adding mountains of fluff and filler.
Finally, a great story has a tightly controlled suspense arc. Timing of the story is of the essence, and this element is completely removed from an interactive videogame. Unless you force the pace of the game you can not control the suspense arc, and you end up with a compromised story. You might want to counter that people should be free to set their own suspense arc and a free playthrough does that, but this is not the case. The only reason people think this is because they are more or less enamoured with the interactivity of a game and so their enjoyment is driven by the sense of immersment, not by the strength of the story.
