Not good as far as videogames go, genuinely good. 'Could be on HBO' good. Anyone got any nominations?
I'm still playing through FF14 which has, for my money, the only good JRPG story. Once the expansions hit and they find their feet, it's interesting, pacey, human, and genuinely enjoyable.
And I can't think of a single other game with a properly good story. Even adventure games like The Walking Dead. They're not GOOD. Not really. They're just good for games.
Yakuza Zero is pretty good, I think. Its strokes are broad and it's not trying to be anything more than a big soap opera but within its own constraints it works pretty well: the characters are distinct and relatable, the twists mostly land successfully and it hits the right emotional notes.
I reckon you could make a series of Mass Effect pretty much as is and it would be very watchable. I'm pretty sure Picard lifted most of its central plot twists from that game series.
Life is Strange 2 was really good. Maybe just "good for games" but honestly, really good for games. Don't forget that stories with branching narratives can actually work better in this medium, don't assume that HBO is what everyone should be aspiring to.
And don't forget that The Witcher did pretty much get filmed "as is" and it worked. Yes I know the Netflix series was technically an adaptation of the books but you can't look at that and say that a straight adaptation of The Witcher 3 wouldn't be at least as good if not better.
I'm not sure a videogame has ever had a truly great story. You could argue stuff like Gone Home or Spec Ops gets close and there are moments of storytelling in games (e.g. that moment in Two Brothers, the end sequence from Batman VR or tales of industrial espionage from EVE Online) that either have a moment that couldn't be done in a non-interactive medium or have moments created from a large playerbase with freedom to express themselves within the engine. But, and I fear we're in a "gaming's Citizen Kane" thread, and I don't think we're there yet.
Gar insisting Witcher 3 has a good story highlights the risks of me agreeing with him yesterday. Give him an inch….
Most games have terribly stories because the story is an afterthought, hastily written by a writer hired about ten minutes before the thing ships, to justify the mechanics and levels they've already built.
The games whose narratives have stuck with me the most have been ones mainly about uncovering things about the world, like Journey, or The Talos Principle, or the ones that play with the fact that, as a game, you're complicit in what's happening, like Bioshock or Papers, Please. But there's an argument you be had that any of them even have what you'd call a story, never mind whether it's any good.
In terms of traditional narrative, I think Naughty Dog and classic BioWare (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, KotOR) fare the best, because they tend to focus on the story more than most, or - as is the case of Naughty Dog - the director of the game tends to also be the narrative director, so there's more of the movie-style "singular vision" approach.
I think Horizon Zero Dawn has a great story, and Bioshock Infinite had things to say about the effects your choices have on you, on others, and on the world you inhabit - but I'm well aware that a lot of folks bounced off (if not outright hated) those.
Ultimately, I think "good story" is too subjective for consensus. We can't even agree on what's a good story in films, TV, or novels, and they're ask been around a hell of a lot longer.
I'd watch a Mass Effect show or film but when you aren't the one making the decisions it's going to lose a lot of the weight behind those events.
Spec Ops too was fantastic to play, but the whole point is that it's not really about what Walker does, it's about what the player does. Maybe it could be reworked to be about what the viewer chooses to watch for entertainment, but the parallels aren't really there.
Ico or Shadow of the Colossus would both make great slow sad arty animations but they'd hardly set the world on fire.
How about condensing Borderlands down into a 90 minute tornado of guns and violence? Get the teams behind Fury Road and John Wick together and just go for it.
Something good could be done with a Silent Hill TV series. Start in the town and bing the other side in more and more as the series goes on.
I would watch a Borderlands film. Especially if it was literally called "A Tornado Of Guns and Violence"
The problem with games as narrative devices is that the things that make a traditionally strong story aren't possible in a medium where the main character might not be looking in the right direction, or can die dozens of times without any narrative impact, or can do things directly in contradiction to the intended themes of the world, story or character.
I ended up thinking about GTA after this thread appeared – Houser tries more than most to ape TV and cinematic conventions in his writing, but any efforts made towards gravity and consequence in the plot are entirely in opposition to the mechanics of the series. You can't tell a story about a man trying to escape his violent past in a new country when your mechanics entirely revolve around committing indiscriminate violence consequence-free.
This is even the case in Naughty Dog's stuff – they tend to be more consistent in their deployment of set pieces at certain narrative moments, but I don't remember hearing the term "ludo-narrative dissonance" before Uncharted 2 came out. The Last of Us' ending – and the disagreement many players had with Joel's decision – shows what happens when the player isn't given the freedom to choose, undermining the "willing participant" element that actually gives the story its much-lauded moral ambiguity (see also Spec Ops: The Line's white phosphorus section).
I'd go as far as to say that in most cases, a game's mechanics are at odds with telling a compelling narrative story, and it's probably no coincidence that my favourite stories from games are from games that don't have much of a plot.
I've had voyages in Sea of Thieves that were funnier and more exciting than many TV episodes. I had one Journey playthrough that still gets me teary when I think about it. A desperate position turned into a nail-biting victory in XCOM can be more dramatic than any movie.
But those aren't stories told by the developer, they're written by the player(s) – and in most cases they wouldn't work if you were a passive observer.
I agree with Cav generally – hastily typing this before I have to go and wrangle children – though weirdly when I was reading comments I started to think about moments in games that really stuck with me. One was in FarCry 2 where there was a mini Apocalypse Now style section to assassinate a drug lord or similar. Anyway, this mission could no doubt play out in many different ways for different player but I took a boat up the river as far as it could go and snuck into the compound, cleanly completed the mission and escaped unnoticed back to my boat. There were incidental moments on the river, tonnes of atmosphere on the river and in the jungle as well as an emerging story that in a lot of ways came from the game engine and my – for want of a better word – interpretation of it that which really meant something at the time.
Another player could quite easily have found a jeep and a pile of guns and come to the same basic outcome of 'mission complete'. Games are better at that kind of thing… Sorry, bit half formed. I've a Duplo garden to tend to.
I agree with Cav generally –
And that's why you'll always be my favourite.
(Apologies in advance - I haven’t turned a PC on in about a month now so, as with all my posts at the moment, this is me distractedly tapping away on a phone (or, best-case, maybe an iPad).)
I tend to find it’s world-building that I get more invested in rather than specific story beats. If you ask me what my favourite settings are in games I can instantly reel off a bunch (Rapture, the Ishimura, Yharnham, etc), but if you ask me for great stories (or even story moments) in games then that’s likely to involve a much longer pause, and a whole lot more second-guessing.
Horizon: Zero Dawn has already been mentioned, which is a good example because I remember the world fondly, and think a tv series or movie(s) might’ve actually done the story less justice because of how important the environments and world-building felt to it. Then there’s Bloodborne, which is something with excellent world-building that feels like it tells a story even though it only really does if you’re reading all of the item descriptions.
Also expanding on another point somebody already made, about traditional storytelling not always working well in games; we’re rapidly approaching the 25th anniversary of the first time I ever remember thinking something along the lines of ‘okay, she’s dead, sure, but what makes her too dead for a Phoenix Down this time instead of all the others?’
Story in games feels to me like vocals in music - they can be completely absent, or basically the whole point, but they should only really play much of a part if they work as part of the whole package, as they’re not strictly necessary in the first place, and are not generally what I’m most interested in.
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/cate-blanchett-borderlands-movie-lilith-1234581917/
The fuck did you guys do?
Wow. Ok.
I'm trying to think of something cool to do with my newfound power, but I've got nothing.