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Forums - Gaming - Good storyline anyone?

shio on 25 May 2008
Riachu said:
shio said:
Riachu said:
omoneru said:
>>Anime is millions of miles behind Hollywood

I agree.

I remember watching Cowboy Bebop thinking how Vicious who's fighting with a sword and a bird against Spike with a gun destroyed my suspension of disbelief, and how Japanese anime directors almost always had used a comicrelief-cute-kawaii character like Ed and had dressed female protagonists like uber-slut, in order to appease the great majority of immature anime audience, while completely eliminated its chance of being accepted as a mature artwork by the mainstream.

Part of the reasons why storytelling has been so undeveloped in both game and anime genres is that their target audience has been teenage male. It's a vicious cycle. Ridiculous in-game stories turn away adult, which in turn discourages developers from prioritizing story in their deign.

The only way to get out of this cycle I see is actually what Nintendo has been doing - make casual games without story and increase adult population. In the long term, the more adult gamers there are, the more incentive for developers to take story seriously. But it will take quite some time.
Really? I am pretty sure that 18-34 year olds make the bulk of gamers

 


But developers are trying to target the more immature group for a mass market appeal, even more than ever. That's why we most likely never see another Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2 or Grim Fandango again.
Oh yeah, because GTA and Halo were aimed at immature children(sarcasm)

 


They were aimed at teens and young adults. It doesn't matter if they're rated M, it's still mostly appealing to immature people in the sense of teens getting pr0n from teh internetz.

Think Oblivion. It's rated M, but the game was incredibly 'dumbed-down' for a mass market appeal. Because of it, the story and gameplay depth was far worse than Morrowind's.

Same thing on Bladur's Gate 2 to Kotor (which was incredibly dumbed-down)

Same thing on Fallout 1&2 to Fallout 3 (fuck you Bethesda)

Same thing on System Shock 2 to Bioshock

Same thing on UT 2k4 to UT3

Same thing on SimCity 4 to SimCity Societies  



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omoneru on 25 May 2008

No, typical dads in their 30s get hyped up about GTA and Halo like OMGWTFBBQ and check out videos at IGN and massively preorder copies and skip work to play them and talk about them on game forum like there's no tomorrow while teenagers keep studying at library. Don't screw with gaming daddy woot



No, it's not going to stop  'Til you wise up
No, it's not going to stop  So just ... give up
- Aimee Mann

Riachu on 25 May 2008
shio said:
Riachu said:
shio said:
Riachu said:
omoneru said:
>>Anime is millions of miles behind Hollywood

I agree.

I remember watching Cowboy Bebop thinking how Vicious who's fighting with a sword and a bird against Spike with a gun destroyed my suspension of disbelief, and how Japanese anime directors almost always had used a comicrelief-cute-kawaii character like Ed and had dressed female protagonists like uber-slut, in order to appease the great majority of immature anime audience, while completely eliminated its chance of being accepted as a mature artwork by the mainstream.

Part of the reasons why storytelling has been so undeveloped in both game and anime genres is that their target audience has been teenage male. It's a vicious cycle. Ridiculous in-game stories turn away adult, which in turn discourages developers from prioritizing story in their deign.

The only way to get out of this cycle I see is actually what Nintendo has been doing - make casual games without story and increase adult population. In the long term, the more adult gamers there are, the more incentive for developers to take story seriously. But it will take quite some time.
Really? I am pretty sure that 18-34 year olds make the bulk of gamers

 


But developers are trying to target the more immature group for a mass market appeal, even more than ever. That's why we most likely never see another Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2 or Grim Fandango again.
Oh yeah, because GTA and Halo were aimed at immature children(sarcasm)

 


They were aimed at teens and young adults. It doesn't matter if they're rated M, it's still mostly appealing to immature people in the sense of teens getting pr0n from teh internetz.

Think Oblivion. It's rated M, but the game was incredibly 'dumbed-down' for a mass market appeal. Because of it, the story and gameplay depth was far worse than Morrowind's.

Oblivion's story could have been a little deeper if the director wanted to.  I never played Oblivion or Morrowind but I'm pretty sure that Oblivion was better because  it was 'dumbed down'

 



 

http://www.youtube.com/user/InvaderZimGuy1?feature=mhum

shio on 25 May 2008
Riachu said:
shio said:
Riachu said:
shio said:
Riachu said:
omoneru said:
>>Anime is millions of miles behind Hollywood

I agree.

I remember watching Cowboy Bebop thinking how Vicious who's fighting with a sword and a bird against Spike with a gun destroyed my suspension of disbelief, and how Japanese anime directors almost always had used a comicrelief-cute-kawaii character like Ed and had dressed female protagonists like uber-slut, in order to appease the great majority of immature anime audience, while completely eliminated its chance of being accepted as a mature artwork by the mainstream.

Part of the reasons why storytelling has been so undeveloped in both game and anime genres is that their target audience has been teenage male. It's a vicious cycle. Ridiculous in-game stories turn away adult, which in turn discourages developers from prioritizing story in their deign.

The only way to get out of this cycle I see is actually what Nintendo has been doing - make casual games without story and increase adult population. In the long term, the more adult gamers there are, the more incentive for developers to take story seriously. But it will take quite some time.
Really? I am pretty sure that 18-34 year olds make the bulk of gamers

 


But developers are trying to target the more immature group for a mass market appeal, even more than ever. That's why we most likely never see another Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2 or Grim Fandango again.
Oh yeah, because GTA and Halo were aimed at immature children(sarcasm)

 


They were aimed at teens and young adults. It doesn't matter if they're rated M, it's still mostly appealing to immature people in the sense of teens getting pr0n from teh internetz.

Think Oblivion. It's rated M, but the game was incredibly 'dumbed-down' for a mass market appeal. Because of it, the story and gameplay depth was far worse than Morrowind's.

Oblivion's story could have been a little deeper if the director wanted to. I never played Oblivion or Morrowind but I'm pretty sure that Oblivion was better because it was 'dumbed down'

 


It wasn't 'just a little' needed, Morrowind's story/lore is 10x better than Oblivion's, and I'm not exagerating. Anyway, it is widely percieved that Morrowind is far superior to Oblivion, atleast from the Elder Scroll fans themselves: when I went to bethesda forums to check up on Fo3 news, there was a poll from the ES fans about which version was better and it was 70% Morrowind, 30% Oblivion.

http://i48.tinypic.com/120qaon.jpg
Riachu on 25 May 2008

@shio
You're saying that you want developers to make games aimed at more mature audiences than at mass market. You should know that in this day and age, games can cost millions of dollars to create with GTAIV costing $100 million to create. You shouldn't have said that teenagers are immature because a lot of them including me are very mature for our age



 

http://www.youtube.com/user/InvaderZimGuy1?feature=mhum

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DTG on 25 May 2008
Profcrab said:
DTG said:
It's not just anime and video games, it's hollywood as well. Video games and anime still have superior storylines compared to the crap hollywood is churning out.

Anime is millions of miles behind Hollywood. I like anime and most of the storylines are laughable. Some make for great entertainment, but the "point" of the stories are generally lost in the sea of fan service and characters that are very far from real. Video game story lines can be great in their support of making the game an overall great experience, but many of games that try to push their story have the same problem that anime has that their characters are completely ridiculous and the story often does not fit the gameplay. Some like the stories but serious stories can be sabotaged by gameplay elements that are comedic and out of place for the story. Great video game storylines are hard to find but generally they are not found with the complicated games. Keeping with the KISS principle is usually key.

But, while we're talking, I'll take a bagel with that coffee. You don't mind warming that up for me also, right?



I disagree.  I fail to see how having ridiculous or far from real characters translates into having a worse storyline. They are simply different styles of storytelling in a different context. Do you believe American heroes like Superman and Spiderman are very realistic? No. The reason why anime is superior to Holywood storylines is because unlike Holywood movies which typically focus on fast paced action sequences anime's tend to focus on exposition and thematic exploration. 

There are of course a huge number of exceptions in both cases. However as a rule Hollywood movies are entertainment focused only. There's a very few US movies that try to go beyond that and raise different social, political and philosophical issues or have an underlying theme and meaning. Good anime focuses on exposition and dialogue and generally addresses certain themes and raises quite a few philosophical questions during their runtime designed to mentally stimulate the viewer.

 There I think there's a great deal of disparity between the two mediums in terms of substance. Hollywood movies focus on action and emotion while Japanese animes focus on inellect and I consider the later far more important.

 Also, the story doesn't have to fit the gameplay. The gameplay can be quirky and humerous but I consider that separate from what goes on in the storyline or as serving a type of comedic contrast.

 



DTG on 25 May 2008
sc94597 said:
@DTG we play video games for gameplay,story,etc. We aren't expecting them to have a better story than movies, or books. That would be expecting way too much. I don't see how not having a better story than movies means the story sucks.

 I expect video games to have better storylines than movies.

 Movies only have a typical runtime of 90-120 minutes. Only so much exposition, action and character development can happen during that time. Video Games aren't limited by such time constraints. See MGS4 with it's 9 hours of cinematic runtime. With that added length games carry the ability to have far deeper exposition, storyarch and detailed character relationships than do movies. However most video games have not yet embraced that ability to tell such large stories in scope as does Kojima which is why we have such sub-par storylines in games like Uncharted and in most FPS games.

They generally sacrifice the story for gameplay, only providing us with maybe 20 minutes of cutscenes to explain the over arching plot which is simply not enough to create a meaningful plotline. Though developers are slowly becoming more and more confident in introducing longer cutscenes due to the success of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, but from most of their games it is still quite clear that the story is usually a tacked on feature there to justify the gameplay.

There's a great potential in video game storytelling. 



Riachu on 25 May 2008
DTG said:
sc94597 said:
@DTG we play video games for gameplay,story,etc. We aren't expecting them to have a better story than movies, or books. That would be expecting way too much. I don't see how not having a better story than movies means the story sucks.

I expect video games to have better storylines than movies.

Movies only have a typical runtime of 90-120 minutes. Only so much exposition, action and character development can happen during that time. Video Games aren't limited by such time constraints. See MGS4 with it's 9 hours of cinematic runtime. With that added length games carry the ability to have far deeper exposition, storyarch and detailed character relationships than do movies. However most video games have not yet embraced that ability to tell such large stories in scope as does Kojima which is why we have such sub-par storylines in games like Uncharted and in most FPS games.

They generally sacrifice the story for gameplay, only providing us with maybe 20 minutes of cutscenes to explain the over arching plot which is simply not enough to create a meaningful plotline. Though developers are slowly becoming more and more confident in introducing longer cutscenes due to the success of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, but from most of their games it is still quite clear that the story is usually a tacked on feature there to justify the gameplay.

There's a great potential in video game storytelling.

Well, Kojima wanted to be a film director before becoming a game designer.  Story telling has a lot of potenial

 



 

http://www.youtube.com/user/InvaderZimGuy1?feature=mhum

shio on 25 May 2008
Riachu said:
@shio
You're saying that you want developers to make games aimed at more mature audiences than at mass market. You should know that in this day and age, games can cost millions of dollars to create with GTAIV costing $100 million to create. You shouldn't have said that teenagers are immature because a lot of them including me are very mature for our age


Teenagers and young adults are the most immature groups targeted, that's not arguable, and I wasn't saying every one of them was immature. But that's the thing, many developers are forced to take the most amount of appeal in mind (or just get 'greedy'), so the story of those games don't get as much attention or they are putting fan service inside. Bioware nicely fits the description of those developers.

It is up to the small/indie developers to get the best out of the stories. CDProjekt is one of them, they released The Witcher last year and the story was far superior to Mass Effect or Persona 3.



http://i48.tinypic.com/120qaon.jpg
shio on 25 May 2008
DTG said:
sc94597 said:
@DTG we play video games for gameplay,story,etc. We aren't expecting them to have a better story than movies, or books. That would be expecting way too much. I don't see how not having a better story than movies means the story sucks.

I expect video games to have better storylines than movies.

Movies only have a typical runtime of 90-120 minutes. Only so much exposition, action and character development can happen during that time. Video Games aren't limited by such time constraints. See MGS4 with it's 9 hours of cinematic runtime. With that added length games carry the ability to have far deeper exposition, storyarch and detailed character relationships than do movies. However most video games have not yet embraced that ability to tell such large stories in scope as does Kojima which is why we have such sub-par storylines in games like Uncharted and in most FPS games.

They generally sacrifice the story for gameplay, only providing us with maybe 20 minutes of cutscenes to explain the over arching plot which is simply not enough to create a meaningful plotline. Though developers are slowly becoming more and more confident in introducing longer cutscenes due to the success of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, but from most of their games it is still quite clear that the story is usually a tacked on feature there to justify the gameplay.

There's a great potential in video game storytelling.

I disagree with you completely. Developers need to stop relying on cutscenes so much and incorporate the story into the gameplay, making the story more interactive. That would make it more personal/emotional experience imo.

http://i48.tinypic.com/120qaon.jpg