mountaindewslave said:
good story is nice, but most people watch a movie for a good story. there are basically ZERO video games out there with stories as good as half decent movie plots... often the reason for this is that video games HAVE TO have gameplay and it creates forced plot points to enable that. play an Uncharted game and look at the absurd plot points over and over to force action. Metal Gear, Tomb Raider, zombie games... it doesn't matter, they all often end up with somewhat awkward plots simply due to the need to provide a reason for constant action gameplay is king. no one would give a shit about something like "The Last of Us" if it weren't fun to play in terms of gameplay I would put it this way- people are willing to play video games that have awesome gameplay but no story, however rarely are people interested in playing a video game that has a great story but terrible gameplay. that's a fact |
Explain the existence and sucess of 100% story based games like Heavy Rain, Walking Dead, Life is Strange etc than. And games that are all about the experience like Journey, Everybody is Gone to the Rapture, Flower. Games are not just gameplay, even packman had a backstory, a crap one but it did. And nowadays the diversity of genres and ways to make a game work and entertain ppl are almost infinite.
And there are many games with very strong plots, I dont think its fair to compare different medias regarding theyre storytelling capacities cause they are very different, its the endless debate of the movie adaptations of great books, its never the same and ppl need to learn thats inherent of the diferences in the medias, one is not better than the other theyre just different. Games are lengthier than a movie and therefore can explore stories at a slower pace and imo its greatest strength comes from how you perceive the story, as the gamer your interaction with the story is much more personal, you are the protagonist, in many games doing X or Y directly change the way things happen. Most of the great RPGs have very strong plots, even modern MMOs have strong plots, Final Fantasy XIV has a briliant ever evolving storyline. The Last of Us gameplay is fun but there are so many games that do it better than that game does, the reason many regard it as the best game ever (me included) is because it has a super powerfull personal, engaging and emotional tale, told in a way no movie ever could, Naughty Dog explored the strengths of a video game while minimizing its flaws. And ye there are moments there need to be some forced action in there but dealling with that skilfully is part of being a good developer, many games are getting proficient at using the gameplay and the setting to tell a story nowadays wich makes things even better, The Last of Us does it masterfully and the Souls series probably does it better than anyone else, nobody tells you a story on the Souls series games and yet its there and you pay atention and start piecing it together and its just fascinating. As I said its a diferent media, it worls when devs play to its strength and when they do they get praised, like TLoU did.
And ye there are plenty of games with crap story but than again there are plenty of crap books and sucky movies as well, the real good ones are always the minority in any media.
