This is exactly why I hate this argument.  Everytime I have seen the debate you have one side saying "well y'know there are different ways of telling stories, and I happen to prefer a JRPG style with a linear story that you play through like a book"

False dichotomy. I never said anything about hating "JRPG-style" stories (whatever that means) or even linear stories. In fact, I'm a fan of JRPGs when they try and tell a good game story, which is a surprising number.

While the other side acts so fuking high and mighty like they read and play games on a whole nother level and JRPG stories are simply pathetic.

It sounds to me like I'm on neither side, then.

Pisses me off to know end.  Some people don't want to use their imaginations and would rather be told the GD story.  Learn to live with it.

People who don't want to use their imaginations don't need games that cater to them; what they need is professional help.  Seriously; that's not a healthy attitude, and games should not be enabling them to continue their bad habits.

You completely missed the point.

What does the art style have to do with anything? -_-

It definitely shows you didn't finish the article, because the author actually calls out Super Mario Galaxy as part of the problem. The Wii is doing no better than the HD consoles at telling a story.

Good article and I tend to agree with it. I think that was part of the pull of Bioshock for me was the silent protaganist. Also that last section just got me excited about Far Cry 2, which is something I thought i'd never say.

Games can have great stories without all the messing about of cutscenes and stuff. Just look at half-life

I agree with your opinion but I also think that the MGS and FF series(well, usually anyways) have great storytelling.

Half Life 2 is the perfect example of blending story telling and gaming not because of the actual story itself, but how the medium itself is used fully to relay the events of the game without the crutch of cutscenes and a character who says things you wouldn't say.

The silent protagonist works perfectly for THIS medium if done correctly, the whole idea is to create a connection between you and the character. He doesn't talk, so he is in effect, you.

But most importantly to Half Life 2 completely destroying other games in this field, is the things the game tells you without TELLING you. The opening scene is straight out of a dystopian future world. The down trodden workers stumbling around, the decaying buildings, the faceless zombie like jack booted soldiers, the classic 1984 style "benevolent leader on massive screen" telling everyone how great things are. Then you are forced to feel the tension and fear of someone being chased constantly, being watched everywhere as you desperately try to escape. Then there's the visual details that fill out the world without massive monologues telling you (take note Kojima). The ruined child's playground untouched for years underlining the lack of children due to the suppression field, the docks surrounded by land because the water is being drawn away as the Earth under Combine rule is being raped of its resources.

As a game, sure it has flaws. By the time I was near the end of the airboat thing bit for the first time I was like "why are people hyping this piece of crap!" :D. That bit could have been better, but the game after that picks up immensely, and there are more sprinkled details in the visuals that underline the world and everything that is happening in it.

I think all the games in my three favorite series: MGS, RE, and FF all excell at storytelling.
I would even put Kojima's best right up there with the best of such widely acclaimed graphic novelists as Frank Miller.

I do think Japanese games tend to have better stories than American games because of the way that education works in both countries. The Japanese education program seems to create better all-around students; while in the West, there is much more emphasis upon increasing students ability to do well in one particular area once their strongest points are discovered and this could have quite a bit to do with the quality of storytelling in Western games whose storylines at best only tend to rise to the level of Sci-Fi channel Saturday night movies because the ones with the know how to create computer games aren't English lit majors while the ones writing the best novels -- Stephen King -- don't have that much experience with programming computers.

       The best stories in Western games that I've seen during this generation are Ratchet and Clank Future, Uncharted, and Heavenly Sword.

I personally believe the fundamental reason why the video game medium has not been able to establish itself as a unique medium through which to tell stories with its own merits and demerits, is because developers aiming to tell a story through a game approach it the wrong way. Almost all developers will try to put the player into the role of the main character, which from a storytelling standpoint means the player and the main character should be the same person. However, they are almost always not. The main character almost always has a distinct personality, and far too often makes decision on his or her own which may or may not conflict with the decision the player would have made. In other words, games give players a role that should have a huge influence over the events in the game, yet rarely actually allow the player to manipulate the story. The fundamental problem, therefore, is that games present unchanging (or almost unchainging) narratives from the perspective of the player.

This means that to actually take full advantage of the medium in terms of storytelling, a game would have to tell the story from a perspective with little or no influence. This makes sense since in other media the reader/viewer has little or no influence over the events of the story. This kind of approach could allow freedom in what the player observes, maybe manipulating time so as to get a look at all the events in the story (since you can do that with books and with some exceptions movies), and generally observe a story without having to work hard just to move further into the story. This way, instead of getting distracted from the story by the gameplay element, the player can actually enjoy a new level of storytelling only made possible through the gamplay.

That's just my take though. And of course developers wouldn't do this because many of them just want to create mindless fun that fools the few who want to actually make a story into thinking they need to follow the same rules of offering challenging, distracting gameplay. I find it unfortunate because I would really want to see a story where for the first time you're freed from the fixed viewpoint that other media offer.

No, because I'm not a mute.

If Valve had given me, as a player, a chance to express myself and have in-game characters react to my abilities, appearance, reputation and statements, then you would have a point (this is what Bioware games and the old Fallout games do). Instead, they just force me to play a mute, because no matter what I say in my imagination, the in-game characters just keep on chattering their pre-scripted dialogues met with awkward silence. The difference between a game which forces my avatar to say things I wouldn't say and a game which forces my avatar to say nothing at all is that one has the chance to be interesting, if not immersive, while the other just seems awkward.

It worked a lot better in Portal, where the theoretical interactions were far more limited. You wouldn't really expect GladOS to react to whatever you might say.

I do give Valve credit for the in-engine immersion narrative, though. That's definately a step in the right direction.

I like how they bag out Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid, and then directly below that is a link to "the 15 best video game stories ever" which contain both of these games in them.
They also mention how great Half-Life 2 was but it's not included in this list