Storytelling is an art form in and of itself, just like painting or music. And of all the art forms that comprise video games, story is often at the low end on the totem of importance. This is perfectly acceptable to me-games are more often than not held up by mechanical and/or aesthetic components, leaving the story as icing on the cake. However, this does not mean that any game that even attempts to have a deep and/or dynamic story can automatically be heralded as storytelling mastery. To do so belittles the craft. You could have a fantastic cake that gets topped with shit, and while the cake itself might be a perfectly fine baked good, you still need to contend with the fact that there is shit on your cake.

A game's story need not be an epic tale or some groundbreaking piece of fiction, although it certainly can be. The story simply needs to compliment the game's other components and bring a sense of coherence to help keep the player immersed. A sudden jolt of "WTF is going on?" can shatter a playing experience, whereas a good one can possibly overshadow the game's other flaws.

So what makes a good game story? Well, obviously there's no concrete answer to that. What I can do however, is go through some games that I think did it right, and some that I think made it seem like they did it right when they actually screwed it up hardcore.

BioShock's main story concerning the ramifications of a (theoretical) objectivist utopia is thought-provoking and haunting at the same time. The motivation and fallout of Andrew Ryan's vision are all around the player, and virtually everything revolves around dealing with his influence. Even the smaller subplots all revolve around Rapture's ideals in some way, showing how Ryan's larger plans and their ultimate failure impacted all of the normally faceless citizens. BioShock takes an idea, shows how it might have come to fruition, and then slams the player with the horrifying results. Getting thrown into a dystopia is a common occurrence in games, but fully understanding why it came about is not. BioShock manages to present us with something that could have been a run-of-the-mill FPS (which it certainly is in gameplay terms) but was much more due to some fantastic writing.

Half-Life 2 is one of my favorite games. It's also one of the most influential, counting BioShock among its spiritual offspring. However, I never understood why it gets accolades for storytelling or for Gordon Freeman as a character. It doesn't really do anything that's outright bad, but it just...doesn't tell much of a story at all. And then the player is expected to connect in some way with all of this while knowing virtually nothing about what is happening. I understand that leaving the player in the dark is intentional on Valve's part, but I think their plan really failed here.

Metal Gear Solid 4 (MGS4) is the absolute grandaddy of narrative train wrecks. Now granted, it is hamstrung somewhat by developments in Metal Gear Solid 2, but that's an excuse for being bad, not for being an utterly ridiculous piece of shit. It's even more of a shame considering the level of storytelling in the original Metal Gear Solid. In MGS1 we see Snake as a disillusioned warrior constantly questioning if he believes in what he's fighting for. The enemies and even his friends constantly deceive and betray him to try and get him to do their bidding and hope that he never finds out. The intrigue surrounding all of this kept me interested from beginning to end. Then you take your shirt off and fistfight the guy that voiced Leonardo in the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. That, my friends, is a game story.

MGS4 is a mess of holes, bad characters, and overly drawn-out cutscenes all wrapped up in a vague political message that never quite makes itself clear. I personally have no problem with cutscenes as a method to tell parts of the story that just can't be expressed by the in-game engine, but god dammit they need to be good, especially if they're this long. And to be clear, this isn't even an exposition problem-the game's final hours are a veritable exposition orgy. It's that everything being explained has been twisted and contrived around so many times that it begins to resemble the narrative equivalent of a Jackson Pollack painting. The problems with MGS4's story could be (and probably have been somewhere on the internet) a 10-page essay on their own, so I'll stop here, but if someone wants to bring up the finer points of MGS4's WTFness in the comments, I'm all for it.

So there you have it. Seven games, all of which I've seen receive accolades for storytelling, but only four of which deserve it. What about you? What games have taken an unrelenting crap on your cake?

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Read more here: http://www.gamecritics.com/richard-naik/why-does-game-storytelling-have-such-low-standards

kojima realizes the holes in the mgs story so most of it was revealed in mgs4 and if you were still confused there was always the ops thing you can download off psn and it reveals more as you progress through mgs4 so there are no spoilers. to truly understand metal gear you have to get very involved and want to. also why are you talking about metal gear like that and not halo who's story sucks. P.S. I just want to tell you how I'M MOLESTING OXES NOW!

well according to some game developers, gameplay comes first then story, i guess if story comes seconded then yeah games story lines are not going to be that good.

i agree, mgs4 story line was a train wreak

What REALLY irritates me is that people expect game, which is an interactive form of entertainment, to morph itself into a device for telling stories (story being historically a passive medium for communicating with a listener, reader or viewer), and expecting it to be EASY.  It isn't easy.  Games aren't intended to be devices to tell stories,.  Oh, they CAN be used like that, but the benchmark for a great game is NOT that it has a great story.  The benchmark is how well it plays.  A game scores points if it can tell a story.  But, I will assure you the videogame industry is going to bankrupt itself if it feels it HAS to compete with Hollywood, TV and the book industry, to be a medium for telling the best stories.  It will not only drive up its current costs, but throw into it the entire array of what is needed to make a movie work, and add that to it.  Soon, the arms race to make storytelling the TOP element, will cause games to average a cost of $100+ million to make.

Anyone here think the videogame industry will survive if perceived demands of what is needed to make a game that sells, drives the costs to $100+ million?  The surest way is to cause the videogame industry to fold is to require it get into the movie making business, and have costs to match.  But if you don't push for the top voice talent, director and so on, expect then the production value to be less. 

This being said, a reason why you get bad stories is that the talent isn't there to use the medium to actually TELL a story.  People don't have the skills, so you get the likes of Kojima producing what FEELS like a blockbuster, but is a mess in regards to the actual story, with memorable points that don't fit togeter as a whole.

A really high percentage of movies have a bad story. Such as avatar, overly simple, incredibley stereotyped and it's the highest grosisng movie ever.

I like MGS2 story cause it makes sense in a Japanese Convuluted Story Way. However, MGS4 it seemed. He tried to do to much with a plot too many characters to many things he needed to tye up.

I don't think MGS4 should be examples of great videogame storytelling also.

Mass Effect 1, I think is an example of great videogame storytelling

Mass Effect 2, I think is an example of good characters but a bad story. As your goal talk to people then destroy collectors.

Here's my thought is that these stories like in MGS4, shouldn't be regarded as masterpieces as some do, but I find them interesting with lots of problems. But I found the story immensley more intriguing than Uncharted 2's story which, Is like an indiana jones movie. But it does everything basically perfect which is why I loved it. But I'm more forgiving to story's that are more ambitious

just my opinion though

Haha, Avatar has a great story :P too bad it stole it!

On top of what I wrote before, taking what you said is true, movies also have an additional revenue stream that videogames lack, which is the movie theater.  Before a movie hits home, it stands a chance to recover its development costs and make a profit.  Games don't have this, and will suffer greatly if they can't keep their costs down to come into being.  And also, factor in what normally goes into stories, that being they are linear and far more under the control of the storyteller.  Unless a game shows it has an ability to be replayable, then all that effort to tell a story through a game will result in a product that will hit the used area, and undermine sales.  If the videogame industry then tries to counter this by blocking people from unloading once through story-drive experience titles, then look for that part of the videogame industry to dry up, and studios that make these games to fold.  No way can the industry survive on play through once and require people to pay over $60 for a game.

Disagree, PS1 had them, did you play xenogears... 45 minute cutscenes.. its just instead of watching pretty things like in metal gear. You watched pressing x button.

Plus I agree 45 minute cutscenes are too long