The "renegade" ending of Mass Effect.

Whos the lowly species now citadel? Their pleas for help made the J man cringe

It wasnt necessarily the best ending(cant decide on that really) , it just was the most satisfing and it was something the J man wanted to do soo badly when you first meet them in the game.

Dude, you keep showing your own lack of knowledge and your 'games are a young medium' reveals all. No game has come close, period, to the best in literature and film. Give me one game that's the equal of a Kubrick movie or a JG Ballard novel.

There are none. Bioshock is a shallow experience with a basic narrative borrowed from older games which borrowed from SF novels and film structures. It is nothing to hold up. As for characters I call BS. The closest I've felt to videogame characters is probably Ico and Yorda, but that is still nothing to the feelings the best films and books elicit.

As for talent, as I said there's plenty of great games talent - but you name me creative writing talent on even a par with average films and books?

As for your actions influencing the story - so far that's no better than the adventure books I sometimes read/played as a kid, where you picked one path and got a bit more story. Games are interactive, but so far this has been used only in the barest bones manner with regard to anything other than basic gameplay.

Again, the best interaction I've seen is Ico, the beat of Yorda's hand as you hold it was a superb little device. But interaction doesn't equal the level of characterisation a film/book can give automatically - again this is where games are terribly immature still. Ico and Yorda work well but are limited. As for games like Bioshock, its a great game, but narratively you are a walking MaGuffin who can't influence squat in the game, it pulls terribly obvious twists and its interaction with characters is limited to a few chats with someone on the other side of a piece of glass. Hell, in many ways you could argue Bioshock is a step back from the interaction of Deus Ex and the superior influence you had on the story there.

Sorry, but I'm afraid I find your points are the ones that fail. You have given zero feedback on my points to negate them other than losing your cool and repeating yourself louder.

I guess this is a sore point for you - but if you can't see how far games have to go (if they go in that direction at all) to get near film/literature levels of characterisation and narrative them I'm afraid its you that knows nothing.

Maybe you should read a little more and take in a few more films?

Also, should a mod be 'fuck fuck fucking' away like a child when his points are disputed or, heaven forbid, shot down?

You said

So yeah, games can be just as powerful as books and movies and there's no reason to say otherwise.

Are you kidding me? Or maybe you've been listen to Peter Molyneux going on (incorrectly) about how games are going to surprass films like The Godfather by 2016 and actually believe him. Clue - he's almost certainly wrong. Well, unless we continue to lower standards for literature and art by 2016 anyway.

Forgive my intrusion.

Shigesato Itoi is an accomplished novelist who is also the creative force behind the Mother series. He is an excellent writer whose primary storytelling tool lies in the building of theme rather than straight-up characterization, though this is more apparent in Mother 2 (EarthBound) than it is Mother 3. I would put his works up against anything that I've come across in my studies as a literature student. Mr. Itoi's work benefits not only from the quality of his writing but his understanding of video games as a unique medium that communicate themselves very differently than do more passive entertainment forms like cinema.

Another writer and designer in games who I consider essentially peerless is Chris Avellone, who was the designer and primary writer for Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, which outside of perhaps Itoi's work has the best writing in the history of the medium. The world he creates, the characters that he brings forth, are peerless - Kreia, in particular, is probably the single greatest video game character ever written, bar none.

I would argue that Mr. Fumito Ueda should also stand here, but you seem to be aware of his works, so I will simply reiterate that he understands that the power of gaming's ability to communicate a narrative has almost nothing to do with telling you a story.

I know that convincing you as to the (rarely and preciously) realized potential of the medium is unrealistic, but might we not at least agree that the criteria of what defines a game as art is very different from the criteria we use for literature, and even more different from cinema?

This goes back to what I said to why does a game have to be as good as the best to be considered good?

how many great movies or books have built off of or even borrowed from other movies are books?  Are those suddenly bad too?

I'm afraid I'm bad with names and even have trouble remembering the most famous ones (on one particularly slow day I even asked who Miyamoto was >_>), but there is plenty of fantastic writing in games.  Even a thread like this shows you how many great moments and well written games there are and I'm sure if you made a thread titles "what are the best written games" you would come up with a long list of very well written games.

Also, it seems you missed my point about games still being a young media.  Find me a handful of films from the 1920's that matched any of your Kubric films.  Books, movies, and plays have been around *much* longer than games so there is a much wider selection.

You know, perhaps if those books were well written they might have actually been good.  That's like calling all horror novels shit because R.L. Stine is a shitty writer.

Interaction doesn't automatically mean good, but it sure helps.  It helps you become so much more connected to a character in a way a book or movie cannot.

Fine, see above.  And you failed to answer my question-- why can games never be as good as movies?

I guess this is a sore point for you - but if you can't see how far games have to go (if they go in that direction at all) to get near film/literature levels of characterisation and narrative them I'm afraid its you that knows nothing.

Maybe you should read a little more and take in a few more films?

Why the fuck not?

Again, give me a reason why he's most certainly wrong?  All you given me is games are currently not as good as the best books or films.  Like I said-- no shit Sherlock.  Games are still a young medium and constantly getting better.

Hell, look at something like Doom and Gears of War.  Doom was your typical action game of 1994 and Gears of War was your typical action game of 2006 and look at the leaps and bounds in story telling in a mere 10 years.  Are you telling me in the 10 years following Gears of War that there won't be even more leaps and bounds?

I'm not calling the Gears story brilliant by any means, but you cannot deny that games are getting better and better at everything they do with every year passes.

Not at all. I know their work and do appreciate it. Rather ironically I'm actually behind some (I mean it would be terrible if they all did) videogames moving much further into Art.

But while I would defend Ueda, for example, I am also painfully aware of the limitations of what he's achieved so far versus the highest standards of literature. Shigesato Itoi I would probably be biased towards simply because of his input (voice work if I remember correctly) into My Neighbour Totoro - a gem of a film and in some ways a great example of the heights videogames have yet to approach IMHO.

Art is Art, I don't think the criteria differs so much as elements to understand of the medium - i.e. prose in literature, cinematography in film, etc.

I'm just annoyed that Twestern came out huffing and puffing that there's no reason to doubt videogames abilities in this area when, sadly, on the evidence there is every reason to doubt there ability.

The potential is there, but its almost entirely unrealised at this point, and its just plain silly to argue otherwise.

Many videogames, probably correctly, seek nothing but to entertain as a game, a smaller percentage look a little beyond that, but only in the most faltering way. A tiny few shine brightly vs their peers. But they represt the first baby steps.

Hell, I'd argue that the best films still lag miles behind the best literature - which might be expected given how long we've had written literature vs films. Videogames are so recent they're in many ways still where cinema was when it was about amazing people just with what it was, not what you could potentially do with it.

I just thought it was worth noting - the talent is there, and they are doing great things. Mr. Avellone is also behind Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout 2, and Planescape: Torment, for what those names are worth (to many, they are worth a lot).

I have no particular comment to make concerning twesterm's arguments; the fact that I have been as deeply affected by some games as I have has little or nothing to do with the experiences which have affected him.

I think that it may be fallacious - even harmful - to attempt to compare games to literature, for many reasons. The value placed on storytelling as a component of experience is very different from medium to medium - but it's also different from story to story, too. One of my favorite novelists alive today is Cormac McCarthy (you've heard of him, he wrote The Road and No Country for Old Men), and it could be argued that in many of his works, traditional narrative focus is blatantly cast aside. The artistic value subscribed to by, say, Hemingway, is nothing like that subscribed to by our good friend Orson Welles. Or Thomas Harris. Or Stephen King.

I think the worst part about discussing gaming as a growing medium is that people tend to want to compare it with other media in terms of its growth and profundity, when that growth and profundity operates in very different ways. Yes, ICO affected me more than The Road did, though I loved that book very much. I'm not ashamed to admit that. There is some advantage incurred to it by sheer virtue of interactivity - and if it's not an advantage, it is at least a qualitative difference that has to be taken into consideration in discussions like this one.

And you are right, gaming is a very young medium, but that's not quite the proper perspective to take when comparing it to films or books. I would argue that we already have our Citizen Kane, our Wizard of Oz, our Gilgamesh - but even if we don't, it's understandable. Books and cinema are much older than they seem.

Cinema in particular doesn't exist in a vacuum, because it was born from theater, an art that's older than books, an art that's older than Rome was. It took a long time for them to realize what they could do beyond the boundaries of those storytelling methods, yes - but Citizen Kane, and the Seven Samurai, and countless other movies, were built on the shoulders of those traditions.

I don't have to tell you what kind of storytelling traditions that the novel is built on. Oral storytelling is probably closest and it predates recorded history by a considerable margin.

Video games are unique: we've never had interactive storytelling before. This is the first truly infant medium that we've really ever seen as a civilization. That we see out of it what we do now is marvelous. I make no excuses, because I feel that games as they are don't need any, but that perspective, that knowledge of the medium's real youth, helps us understand exactly how far we've come in so little time.

I'll keep it simple since you seem to have trouble with the thread of my points.

1) I'm not saying videogames can't be good - I believe they can

2) I am saying that so far they haven't really.  And sorry, but anyone arguing about JRPG characters or Gears or Bioshock is refusing to see the gulf between almost every videogame with a story/narrative/characters and the level they'd have to hit to be considered equal or even in the ballpark with literature/films

3) I do believe there has been improvement, but its tiny and damned slow and actually more likely to slow up than accelerate with the current focus on selling millions with another shooter vs anything more artistic

4) Again, I've seen zero evidence of interaction meaning more involvement - as I judge it anyway.  Interaction is proactive and interesting, and I've never seen any evidence it can be used to drive the same level of involvement as a film/book in its characters

So its simple, there are great videogames, there are some good stories within the realm of videogames compared to other videogames, there are no videogames I'd compare to even average (not the best) films/books.

I hope to see it one day, and I do expect to see improvement, but I very, very, very much doubt a videogame is going to equal the artistic achievement of The Godfather by 2016.  Why, its clear that the process is too embryonic right now, and its clear that with a very few exceptions (and even there I'm being generious) videogames are in copy mode, not create mode.

That's fucking why! (Just joining in since you seem to like the expression).

I just picked one scene I liked from each movie but there's tons more I could have cited from these two movies (Yours is a good choice too). I love FF7 and Aeris' death was a real shocker for me because she was always part of my party up until that point in the game and I liked her personality more than Tifa's but this doesn't compare to say how much I was praying that Red wouldn't hang himself like Brooks did in Shawshank.

Lets pretend you're good at x, or at least think you're good at x.  Well I tell you that you suck at and I have no reason to ever believe you will be good at x because you are not as good as the best.

That is your argument.

Because in your opinion there is no game that tells a story as well as the Godfather games as a medium are worse at story telling than books and films and there's no reason to believe they will ever be at the level of books or films.

That's bullshit.

Games do not have to be better than the best, they just have to be in the same league and they are.  You've given me reaons why games aren't currently the best, but that doesn't matter. 

I can give you 100 examples of how games are better than the next Hannah Montana movie, does that mean games are suddenly better?

Of course not because that is fucking stupid.  Games are without a doubt in the same league as books, films, and theater and it's just stupid to think otherwise because you don't feel a connection.

Your argument totally makes sense if you're arguing which is currently better, that's fine, but not that games aren't in the same league as books and films.

Chrono Trigger, all 13 of them.