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I think he should have just changed his statement to...

all video game stories are BS.

you want a good story? try books or movies or cheesy TV dramas. They tend to be a lot better.

"I reckon nuking the entire island is about as final as it gets?!" - Psycho

So much better "mate"!

Halos story is alongside the story in Serious Sam/Duke Nukem. Except they don't take themselves seriously... Halo 1s was pretty cool though, not particularly original but I liked the introduction and whatnot.

Yeah, I'm never going to respect the Crysis developers again.

Yes, Halo's story is kinda bullshit. Yes, it uses archetypal characters. On the other hand, it does those things quite well. Anyone who created a REAL story would realize that... unlike Crysis, which did the same bullshit, just not as effectively.

It must suck to create something that is an archetype in itself and still not rise to prominence.

I really have huge problems with people bashing Halo's story... to me, it's the perfect action film. It's nonsense and completely "let's go get those assholes" type of mentality but there's a place for that in the world.

In short, it's GOOD FUN. And you can't demean those stories, lest you forget what makes "entertainment" fun in the first place.

Okay. I've said all this in the comments on the article, so I'll just resay it all once:
1)His quotes are out of context. Original quote includes the line "Actually, Halo isn't bad. It's just average..." he then goes on to point out how his main quibble is w/ 2-dimensional side characters which lessen the emotional impact. He reflects on how you can still work within the strictures and archetypes of a good ol' let's-go-gun-'em-down action plot but still creating something impactful that resonates with the gamer beyond a superficial level. 

2) He didn't write Crysis 1. He had nothing at all to do with Crysis 1. Richard K. Morgan is a respected, best-selling award-winning sci-fi novelist with 6 novels and 2 movie deals under his belt. He was hired to help with Crysis 2's story due to his reputation.

3)He fully admits that videogames are not always the place for stories. He points out, however, that when games do fuse narrative with gameplay (he cites Bioshock), they recieve quite a bit of critical attention. Gamers who just ''skip cutscenes'' are missing half the content. He goes on to discuss the difficulties of making these cutscenes flow, keeping them interesting, and avoided Kojima-esque bloated excess.

4)In short, he's an intelligent writer who briefly mentioned Halo in a lengthy interview (where he does make a few questionable statements, but he usually does this in interviews, check out his blog/articles/etc).

1. Okay, they're out of context.

2. He's a sci-fi novelist. That puts him right up there with "game writer" in my book.

3. Instead of talking shit about games that do what they do quite well, he should go ahead and write one. Or two. Or three. Novelists are really the LAST place game makers should be looking for content, especially fucking sci-fi writers. It's like looking in a pigsty that you've been inbreeding for 50 years for a prize hog. Not only will everyone laugh at you but you'll be stuck with a six-legged pig at the end of the day.

4. He may be intelligent but really, attack Halo? Is that where you start?

1. Okay, nothing else to say about that. 

2. Discrediting an author solely on genre is ignorant. Richard Morgan is a pretty damn good writer. Think William Gibson meets Blade Runner, only not all that derivative, driven along by extremely complex characters and tight prose. I read probably 50-70 books a year in every/all genres, and he's one of my top 10 or 15 favorite working authors. 

3.Wall of Text: But worth reading. His thoughts on working on games as opposed to writing. Don't be so quick to dismiss, hmmm? You aren't the only intelligent person in the world. 

[Original Question]Richard: How are you finding the games writing process? I can understand if you can't reveal game details but I'm interested to hear the pros and cons of writing for games. I'm curious as to how it works. Do you come up with a story and they find ways of making it playable (sounds unlikely), do they tell you what's in the game and you base a story around it, or is it a mixture?

[Morgan's Answer] That varies - in some cases, I've been asked to pitch a from-scratch storyline, in others I've been coming on board to retro-fit existing story and concepts. And yes, as with everything else, there are pros and cons. 

The pros: the pay and conditions are excellent, the people enthusiastic and the industry as a whole wide open to fresh ideas (far more so than, for example, the movie industry); the sheer sense of potential is sometimes dizzying. See here where I've posted more extensively on the subject. The games industry is also an area of endeavour refreshingly unbiased where science fiction or fantasy is concerned. Over here in Literaryland, we spend so much time belly-aching about how there's no respect for genre, how science fiction is dying, etc. But in the game world, SF/F is a given. No-one looks at you funny when you say you write it, because it's the lifeblood of the medium, the staple of good gaming.

The cons: ultimately, as with writing for movies, any work you do is subject to substantial compromise. In fact, this is probably even more the case than screen-writing for movies, because so much hinges on supporting the game-play. In a movie, just as in a book, a good story (given talented acting, direction and cinematography, of course) will stand on its own merits. In games, you can write the greatest story in the world, but if it doesn't mesh with compelling game-play, then you've failed. So there's a lot of re-writing around improving the game experience, and you do sometimes have to murder your darlings, so to speak. That makes the writing a far less fluid experience than is the case with (at least my) prose work; it's much more a piecemeal problem-solving and trouble-shooting dynamic, and while this is a real test of skill, and I've learnt a lot (I'm still learning a lot) doing it, it's nowhere near as purely pleasurable as the brakes-off, steer-into-the-wind ride of writing a novel. Truth is, you just don't realise the freedom from constraint that you have as a novelist until you go and work in another medium.

4)He didn't attack it. He was asked about it and responded. Here's entire Halo portion of the interview:

Do you think getting that greater depth of character is made more difficult by the faceless nature of Nanosuit 2? Master Chief syndrome, you might call it.

I don’t like the Halo series at all. Okay Halo is not actually bad, it’s just, you know, average. The reason that its fiction doesn’t work has nothing to do with the fact that you don’t get to see Master Chief’s face, it’s because of lines like ‘Okay … I’m gonna get up there and kill those guys’. Halo is full of these bullshit archetypal characters and there’s no real emotional effect.

Bladycor, I think we're both striving for the same thing but I think we just see different viewpoints on it all. Here, I'll just link one of my last editorials:

http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=7192

The key point being:

"Mass Effect 2 does more of the same but it keeps heaping choices on you and makes you face your previous choices at every turn. Instead of trying to imitate film, BioWare took a new approach to storytelling; story by character interaction. By making the non-playable characters intriguing, I found myself not caring about the over-arcing story and instead increased focus on my squadmates. In a medium that is desperately trying to find its niche in the artistic world, this is a bold new approach to story-based games. It eschews the limitations of film and focuses on gaming's own strong points while minimizing its weaknesses. Instead of trying to compete with film on a narrative basis, an area where games will never be on the level of cinema because of the disjointed nature of gameplay time versus narrative, it focuses on interaction on a person-to-person level and allows the player to forge their own relationships. Film will never be able to take this approach and BioWare is finally spreading their wings after first taking the plunge into this area of gameplay with Knights of the Old Republic. After years of trying different approaches and experimenting with different themes, they're showing that stories can be told effectively in this new format without trying to imitate another art form."

That's where I have huge problems with a novelist talking about how much videogame characters are "mediocre". OF COURSE THEY ARE. THEY HAVE TO BE TO SUCCEED.