[Vidmaster]

ah, thought you forgot you press "enter" 

Immortal isn't too bad.

[Ransom]

Isn't too bad? Isn't too bad?

Bah!

[Vidmaster]

relax, I just played 10 minutes so far.     

[NGTM-1R]

Ye gods, how can I have never heard of this!?

<3

Quite possible because this was made by people who thought Panzer General was too easy. The campaign difficulty ratings are lulz, too. South Guard is right on the money as a beginner's campaign, but beyond that the rest of the campaign difficulty ratings are, mildly put, bull****. (Under the Burning Suns is one of the few I've ever completed, I think there are about three others not counting South Guard, and it's ranked as hard. Okay, so why could I manage to complete it but not others you've ranked as easy like Northern Rebirth you loons?)

[Vidmaster]

maybe because Under the burning suns is more RPG like?

[CP5670]

Good stories are hard to come by in free games. Your best bets are old adventure games that are now abandonware. (BASS mentioned earlier is one example)

Good gameplay, on the other hand, is abundant in free games, and is at least as common as in retail titles.

[Roanoke]

Read a book.

[Ransom]

As an interactive medium games are capable of telling stories in ways that linear narratives like that of film and novels are incapable of expressing. That attitude is disappointing coming from another gamer.

[Vidmaster]

While that's correct, it's still the exception. STILL!

But a book is able to tell a story in a other way that's impossible to do via any graphic medium as well. Every medium has it's strong points. And that's the reason why I have a huge library, a huge DVD library and gaming rigs 

[Ransom]

You don't say.

The point is 'read a book' is a worthlessly dismissive response. A good story in a game is almost always a completely different experience from a good story in a novel, even when it doesn't try to do anything fancy with the medium. If I wanted to read a book I'd just read a book.

[Vidmaster]

As an interactive medium games are capable of telling stories in ways that linear narratives like that of film and novels are incapable of expressing.

Ransom, you telling me that this is not the exception? Most games don't have a good story. Lots of even don't have one at all. The gems like Deus Ex are so infrequent.
Most games don't want to tell a story, it only serves as some kind of distraction *farcry2cough*

[Ransom]

No, that's not what I'm telling you at all. Where did I say anything like that?

In any case, it's the exception in every medium. That's the reality of a mainstream industry, and particularly that of such a young industry as gaming is.

Far Cry 2 is actually an example of storytelling that uses the medium intelligently. The surface narrative isn't impressive, no, but that game is a rare case where there's more to the story than a jumble of cutscenes. I'm sorry that it didn't click for you, but it doesn't really serve your argument here.

[Hellstryker]

Oh ****, I almost forgot, Marathon: http://source.bungie.org/

[phatosealpha]

An interactive medium that 'tells' stories is entirely missing the point.  Telling is one directional.  Therefore, storytelling in a game setting is robbing the game of the one thing that differentiates it from other types of media - interactivity.  I figure the fact is that 99.9% of all game stories are best described as 'written by someone aspiring to be a storyteller in a more traditional medium, but lacking the talent' is a direct effect of this. 

[Dark Hunter]

I disagree.

Games are capable of pulling one into a story in a more complete manner than any other medium could ever hope to, due to that interactivity. The story gets told, but instead of being a spectator, the gamer is taking part in and shaping the story.

Naturally, this requires the game to be written competently: so that the story moves forward in a particular direction, through cutscenes, specific objectives, or scripted events, but so that the players don't feel constrained, and still feel like they have some effect on the way things are happening. It takes some real talent to pull that off properly. And when it is, a game becomes an extremely effective medium for storytelling.

[phatosealpha]

I would argue that even in those events, the player is still little more then a spectator - at best, he's a reader of a choose your own adventure book where you can't turn the page unless you win a round of tetris.  In all examples of this medium, the player is extremely constrained - as Deus Ex reminds us, it only counts if the developers thought of it before hand.  Go into the lady's bathroom, and your boss will scold you for it.  Repeatedly bounce a trash can off his head, and he'll simply repeat canned phrases.  Try that in real life, but only if you don't value your job - it simply doesn't work that way.

He's no more shaping the story then a mouse who chooses a particular path through a maze is shaping the maze.

What worse, the only way to eliminate this problem is to handle every possible outcome, at which point one has to wonder if a story even exists there.


Equally, the storyteller is crippled by the medium - there's a reason there is no Schindler's list: the game.  Certain stories simply do not allow for the kind of jury rigged 'interaction' that passes for actual involvement in the story in video games.  People complain about there being too many high fantasy, sci-fi and WW2 games, but this is simply an end result of the belief story is a reasonable consideration in gaming.  In order for any story to be 'told' as a video game, it requires more then just a plotline - it requires a very particular kind of plotline that allows for the page-turn minigame 'interaction' that's used to mask the static nature of the story.  If you don't have anyone to shoot, stab, or sneak from, the illusion that you're even relevant instantly disintegrates, since you were never anything more then a combat thrall anyway - and let me be blunt here: Finding a game where the player's role couldn't be fairly describe as combat robot hooked up to choose your own adventure book is difficult, except in the places where they leave out the choose your own adventure book.


Now, perhaps there is some value in practicing in such a heavily handicapped environment.  But as a measure of the potential of the medium, it fails utterly.

[Ransom]

An interactive medium that 'tells' stories is entirely missing the point.  Telling is one directional.  Therefore, storytelling in a game setting is robbing the game of the one thing that differentiates it from other types of media - interactivity.

You're using a very literal definition of storytelling here. That's not what I meant, and you know it. I'm referring to any method with which an author conveys a story to an audience.

Every truly good game story is more than just a bunch of cutscenes, no matter how well they're made or how good the writing is. For it to have real weight the story and themes have to be a part of the gameplay - the player's actions throughout the experience must reflect what the game is about or all those awesome cutscenes become nothing more than narrative window-dressing. Strip the cutscenes out of Gears of War or Halo and there's nothing there that tells a story. The same can't be said for games like Torment, Far Cry 2 or Immortal Defense.

It's not to say you can't have really good window-dressing. Some of the better Final Fantasies can attest to that, and it could be argued also our beloved Freespace. But it's like a film constructed entirely of long shots - it could still be a fantastic story, but it's essentially a radio play with a visual gimmick. It would very probably be more at home in a different medium.

To that end I think your exploration of interactivity is a dead end. Pointing out the fact that the player can't shape the story is missing the point just as much as any game that strictly 'tells' a story. I might be opening a can of worms by mentioning the A word here, but art is all about intent. Of course the interactivity is limited. Ignoring the technical limitations, any story must have constraints or it will become flailing, unfocused and ultimately meaningless. You rightly point out that no story - at least not the sort we're talking about - can exist in such a game. It's a whole other discussion about emergent narrative which, while fascinating, I don't think is relevant here.

[Roanoke]

Even Deus Ex has a lacking "storyline", really. Charicter interaction and storline aren't the same thing.

[BloodEagle]

The one thing that really bugged me (story-wise) about Deus Ex was that

Spoiler:

you couldn't stay with UNATCO.  Even if you tell Paul that you won't leave UNATCO, when you go to the train station they will still turn on you. Albeit in a buggy fashion.

[CP5670]

The game was going to have a branching point there and allow you to work for UNATCO in Hong Kong, but Ion Storm dropped that idea later in development. Even though the game is quite long, they actually left out quite a few things that were originally planned.