Not to say that I agree with the article (I'm about 50/50 in that regard), but I do feel you've missed the author's point. The idea of the article isn't that all games suck at telling stories, it's that games are a unique and interactive medium, and that game developers are not taking advantage of these unique opportunities (and challenges) to tell a story in a way that does not fit any other medium. Instead, far too many of them are relying on the methods established by the traditional, passive media. Such as books, in which you accept the hero's actions because you have no say in the matter (short of using whiteout and a pen, that is...

The point of the article is that you shouldn't have to accept whatever rails the developer chooses to use in telling his story. Games, in contrast to books, T.V., theater, and other media, allow the user (listener, viewer, etc.) to decide in real time what will happen next. I personally enjoy letting other storytellers tell their story on their terms, just as I have to do in books and most present games. But wouldn't it be neat if, say, instead of going along with Aeris you made Cloud ignore her and continue with the Resistance, and as a result you get an entirely different story? Or if you didn't make your hero fall for the obvious trap, and consequently took the game in an entirely new direction?

Games are the only real medium in which the end user can make these choices in realtime. The author simply wants more developers to realize this, and take advantage of that fact. I see nothing wrong with this (from a user's perspective. I'd imagine developers have a different take...).

Of course it would be neat, but you have to realize that would be nearly impossible to do, at most you would be able to do it once (like Radiata Stories, where at the middle of the game you choose which path you take, and the story changes dramatically), or twice, you can't feature 30 entirely different stories in one game without either compromising seriously the quality of each one or having a ten-year-in-development game

I know you're quite right, hence the last clause in my post. I also have to apologize; looking back at my post, I quickly drifted from the article, and began inserting words into the author's mouth by substituting my own ideas and examples.

I was going to further extremes than the author was to best illustrate the optimum method of storytelling. The author himself limits his comments to "please don't do anything to shatter the illusion, because I want to pretend to be the character. When the character does something I wouldn't, the man behind the curtain gets revealed." Still, he does so because he recognizes that games and traditional media are different, so what works in one will not necessarily work in the other.

There was an editorial on Gamasutra which made a similar point, albeit more persuasively than this author managed. The example the author used was of the first two Prince of Persia games. In the second one, you're almost expected to feel like you're the badass Prince, and it doesn't work so well because the Prince is not only an unlikeable character, but because his situation is so different from ours that it's hard to relate.

By contrast, the first Prince of Persia had the Prince narrating the story, and in such a way that you felt that he was telling you, the player, what had happened to him, the Prince, in the past. In short, it created the illusion not that you were the Prince, but that you were his audience. In doing so, it became easier to passively accept the narrative; you know you're not the Prince, you're not expected to feel like you're the Prince, so when he does something you definitely wouldn't you're not jarred back into reality.

The problem is that most games follow the second game's model, with the same results. It is that pitfall that the author of this article wants developers to avoid in the future. I think it's a fair point, but I also don't see the way traditional games are doing things as always being fatal either. As I said, I'm about 50/50 with the guy.

In other words, the developers should avoid using unlikable characters and should have the main character narrating the story.  Is that what you are getting at?

Isn't Heavy Rain supposed to have dozens of endings? I think the developer said that it'd be hard to get all of the endings. Granted, one playthrough is only about 8 hours, but fitting multiple endings isn't a far-off concept, especially with Blu-Ray technology.

Heavy Rain is an interactive movie, in the literal definition.  The game is essentially a movie with multiple endings that are determined by the player's choices in the game.  Also, like you said one playthrough of the game is only 8 hours long whereas a lot of JRPGs have 30+ hours of one playthrough so multiple endings in the latter is a harder accomplishment than than in the former.

The problem with games is that they have a much bigger range than movies or books. A game can be sport, a challenge by a mate, played with cards, even poker machines are games. They're hard to distiguish, so to work out the best way to tell a story is hard. Also, games are a new medium compared to movies and books, so I think in the next 20 years, games will really be able to evolve and succeed in story telling.

We've yet to see how Heavy Rain turns out, and how radical those different paths. I've got hopes for that game, given QD developed Fahrenheit.

I'm sure noname wasn't talking about different endings, games have had them since the SNES (Chrono Trigger had 13, I think), but totally branching paths, like points of no return. Think of it like a "Choose your own Adventure" book in a game. I don't think that's possible to do in a game yet, not even in Heavy Rain

How on Earth did you manage to reach that conclusion from what I wrote? There's a term for what that would lead to. It's "generic.""Uncreative" is also acceptable, along with a host of others.

Think this through, Riachu: the authors of both the articles claim that the same problem exists. The authors of the two articles also cite what they feel are games that have solutions to these problems; the Gamasutra article I spoke of talks about removing the player from the character, while this article mentions games in which the Player's Character is mute (note the difference in how the two articles frame the situation. It's not accidental.).

Both of them are thus proposing that there IS a way around the problem, and they highlight a developer who has found one such way. Who's to say that there aren't others? In fact, we already know there are. FamousRingo mentioned one in this very thread; Bioware lets you make most of the choices for your Player Character, so you really DO feel that the character is acting like you would in the same situation. This maintains the illusion. I'm also positive that other developers have come up with other solutions, advertently or not, sometime in the past.

To simplify: the authors feel the medium offers its own challenges for telling a story, and they each highlight different solutions. (Plural intended)

I think you mean Xenogears... because Xenosaga was epic fail next to that game.  I couldn't even play that game for 3 hours before I packed it back up and sent it back to gamefly.

As for story... well that's what Bioware is for and I don't think Portal's story was worth a crap... I was running from a crazy computer... I didn't know who I was or even what was wrong until the very end and by then I didn't care... even if the cake part was memorable