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Story "games"

Started by Blue Jam, October 27, 2017, 12:27:01 PM

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Blue Jam

I see there's another one among the November Games With Gold- Tales From The Borderlands, coming so soon after Oxenfree, Gone Home and a bit of The Walking Dead.

Anyone else really not a fan of these? For me, having a game without a good story isn't a huge problem, but story "game" without much of a game to it is just lazy and feels like a real cop-out. After reading the glowing reviews of Gone Home I  downloaded it, completed it, and immediately wished I hadn't bothered. The game seemed to have so much more scope it just didn't explore- the house could have been haunted, or there could have been something to inject a sense of peril, some combat, some puzzles, some detective work just to give me something to do, but there was nothing. As for the story being "moving"- oh come on- it was a basic teenage fling, and even the detail of it being a lesbian fling being met with disaproval by some Christian parents  didn't make that seem any more interesting. Towards the end I was just thinking "oh shut the f*ck up about f*cking Lottie for f*ck's sake".

I did give the demo version of The Stanley Parable a go and I enjoyed that, but I am wondering if the full game will just do my nut in again. I'm currently working my way through The Turing Test, another Game With Gold, and stylistically it seems to have been inspired by The Stanley Parable, but I'm enjoying it because I've got some puzzles to solve in addition to chatting with a plummy-voiced AI.

Using advanced technology to produce what feel like glorified Choose Your Own Adventure books feels like such a waste to me- anyone else?

Beagle 2

I played through and really enjoyed The Walking Dead season one, so I thought that I enjoyed these sorts of things and bought the Wolf Among Us. But it's silly. Then I had a go at Game of Thrones and yeah, turns out I basically don't like these sorts of games.

Walking simulators are the absolute worst. It's like somebody's hidden quite a shit boring story book all over a wide area and I have to go around opening drawers to look for the next page.

Bazooka

No I don't. I also played through the Walking Dead one, only downloaded to try and get my partner to play a computer game she might enjoy, as we are both Walking Dead fans. The problem is there is usually only one set way to do things, now you could apply that to all games, yet these story games require no hand eye coordination or skill, just clicking until you progress. I did like the art style but that's it really.

Kelvin

Are there really more than a handful of games with truly great stories by story-telling standards, rather by the the historically awful standards set by games? Of the small number that stand out, most either seem to manage good characterisation or good plotting, but almost never both.

People talk about games like the Uncharted series as being at the vanguard of gaming story telling, but when I watch them on YouTube, they seem to fall beneath the standard of even the top tier Hollywood blockbusters.

Consignia

Yeah, Uncharted aren't so great that they independently worth watching. However, they are pretty good fun to play, and a compelling story assists in the forward momentum.

I'll you what though, I've been trying a few visual novels recently. These are literally games without gameplay, and they are really hard work. Chaos;Child is the most recent one I've been struggling with, not content with giving you only a couple of lines of text at a time, there's constant reiteration of very basic things to make sure you don't miss a single idea. And you only a static image to look at most of the time, with largely poorly delivered voices over the top.

Although, I have finished the latest Danganronpa recently and that was lot more fun. Still story driven, but the gamey elements keep the story engaging. Apart from the shitty taxi mini game.

falafel

Quote from: Blue Jam on October 27, 2017, 12:27:01 PM

Using advanced technology to produce what feel like glorified Choose Your Own Adventure books feels like such a waste to me- anyone else?

Couldn't disagree more. Just because you can do something doesnt mean you should. Games are in  a strange place because they are subject to constantly changing technology, so it is hard not to evaluate them without that context, but I  wouldnt suggest for example that all printed books should be typographically innovative or have holes cut in pages just because it's  technically possible. I would be inclined to separate your experience of how well-executed these concepts have been, from the technology on which they depend. I think it's an endemic problem with the way we see games really, as commercial products or technological feats above and beyond their status as cultural artefacts.

Lemming

There's definitely a place for story games. I quite liked Gone Home. It's the kind of thing which would only work as a videogame, searching through the house and putting the pieces together yourself. There's also been stuff like Papers, Please which could only work in game form. Depending on how far we stretch the definition of "story game", I'd point to the entire adventure genre (Monkey Island, Space Quest, Grim Fandango, Shenmue etc) as good story games too. There's also been some great newer games in the same spirit - Life Is Strange (if you can get over the cringey fake-teenager tone that all the dialogue has), Heavy Rain, LA Noire (crap combat segments aside), etc.

My belief is that nobody's ever harnessed the Gone Home style of game to its full potential yet. There's been flashes of it - everyone really liked Vault 11 in Fallout: New Vegas and that was essentially just Gone Home in a post-apocalyptic vault, with no real combat or any of the regular Fallout gameplay until the very end. I think it's a gameplay model that would work really well on a space station or something, like System Shock without combat and with a better story.

I like some visual novels too, but only ones that have dialogue/plot choices or some other kind of interaction. The ones that are just essentially static stories that are presented in slides can be unbearable.

Shay Chaise

I'm with falafel (and Lemming - edit) on this one.

I really enjoyed Gone Home, especially because it was so low-stakes. It was an opportunity to do something I'd never do and glimpse a life I'll never live. I can understand that we might come into a game with certain expectations of what it should be, or what games 'do', but I enjoyed the change of pace.

Firewatch was another in the same vein, albeit with a good deal more mechanical interaction. There were very few puzzles though, more just direction and motivation. I found it rather moving and enjoyed the messiness of its moral and conclusions, very low-stakes again, slice of life kind of thing, and it also neatly subverts the player's expectations of games, through the characters' own expectations and imagination (!).

Everybody's Gone To The Rapture was also excellent. A somewhat frustrating experience at first until you realise how the narrative functions but ultimately, an extremely moving story, a small number of compelling characters and a truly captivating, beautiful world.

I don't always want to play this kind of thing, and I never clicked with Virginia or Dear Esther, among other highly rated walking sims, but I have really enjoyed a few peaks of the genre.

Bhazor

Can't stand them. Which is a shame because I do enjoy just plain walking sims like Proteus and so its a shame they keep ruining these nice ambient little slices with terrible narration (Dear Esther) or ham fisted intrusive excuses for game play(Oxenfree, most Telltale games). It isn't helped that most game stories are atrocious. Fucking Naughty Dog has done more harm to gaming than Zynga. At least Zynga focused on gameplay rather than trying to innovate in how to hide and lengthen unskippable cutscenes.

To The Moon tells a lovely story. But theres no point in it being a game.

Thursday

Quote from: Kelvin on October 27, 2017, 01:55:19 PM

People talk about games like the Uncharted series as being at the vanguard of gaming story telling, but when I watch them on YouTube, they seem to fall beneath the standard of even the top tier Hollywood blockbusters.

Hang on, but when people praise Uncharted's storytelling they mean it does a great job of imitating Hollywood blockbuster popcorn flicks. For what it sets out to do, it has some good writing, has solid voice acting, and very good physical acting and facial animations.

It's not like the people are saying it's the most interesting or deepest example of storytelling in the medium.


Thursday

Quote from: Bhazor on October 27, 2017, 09:10:16 PM


To The Moon tells a lovely story. But theres no point in it being a game.

I mean for a start I'd say there are quite a lot of aspects to it that wouldn't work so well in other mediums, but also surely making a game has just become the easiest way for some people to put their story out there. It wouldn't work so well as a novel, and it's not so easy to just get a film made.

Thursday

This threads all over the place anyway, because it seems to encompass, Walking Sims, Telltale style interactive adventure games and regular actions games that are heavy on cut-scenes.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Kelvin on October 27, 2017, 01:55:19 PM
Are there really more than a handful of games with truly great stories by story-telling standards, rather by the the historically awful standards set by games? Of the small number that stand out, most either seem to manage good characterisation or good plotting, but almost never both.

People talk about games like the Uncharted series as being at the vanguard of gaming story telling, but when I watch them on YouTube, they seem to fall beneath the standard of even the top tier Hollywood blockbusters.

Although the historically poor standard seems to be regularly used as a justification to not bother trying.


Moribunderast

I find narrative-heavy (walking sims/telltale) games to be very hit-and-miss but I think it takes too narrow a view of what gaming can or should be to outright dismiss them. I have no issue with a game having minimal traditional gameplay and working more as a slightly interactive film as long as the story grips me. I loved Gone Home and had as much fun discovering the story through exploration as I would watching a similar story unfold as a film. Whatever Happened To Edith Finch and The Beginner's Guide require very little input from the gamer other than walking around but both were memorable experiences that wouldn't have worked as well in another medium.

Telltale games have suffered due to over-saturation. The first Walking Dead was great and I loved Wolf A Mongoose but the (limited) gameplay is identical across all their games and it just gets too repetitive even if you're enjoying the story. The games I hold up as quality examples of the interactive movie game/walking sim genre (Edith, Beginner's Guide, Life Is Strange) maintain a focus on storytelling while at least offering just enough that is unique to the medium of gaming or wouldn't work quite as well as TV/film.

Vault 11 from Fallout:NV is a great shout - that's absolutely a walking sim (bar about 2 minutes near the end) and many would rate it as a major highlight in that game. Obviously in Fallout something like that works as a diversion rather than the entire game but I think it's a great example of how compelling an exploration-only game can be.

As a big point-and-click adventure fan, my natural instinct is to want a bit more puzzling from these sorts of games but I think that's an issue of me, as a gamer, not yet fully adjusting to a genre that is relatively new to the medium and should come with it's own standards and expectations.

Kelvin

Quote from: Thursday on October 27, 2017, 09:27:46 PM
Hang on, but when people praise Uncharted's storytelling they mean it does a great job of imitating Hollywood blockbuster popcorn flicks. For what it sets out to do, it has some good writing, has solid voice acting, and very good physical acting and facial animations.

It's not like the people are saying it's the most interesting or deepest example of storytelling in the medium.
That's what I mean, though. The very best examples of game story telling are on the level of mid tier blockbusters, which are, themselves perfectly good fun, but not interesting plots or deep characters.

Shay Chaise

I'd say those examples don't feature the best storytelling in games, though. They're aping blockbuster popcorn movies, if we're talking Uncharted, and therefore they can only achieve a passable facsimile of the source inspiration. They actually have quite low ambitions when it comes to storytelling but much higher ambitions for maintaining energy and momentum and a sense of spectacle. I think Uncharted does this really well, with the result that everything else is quite basic and limited, especially the gameplay, to maintain this forward momentum. Tomb Raider is similar.

The Last Of Us is probably the best of that form, emotionally engaging characters, a believable world, some grey morality and interesting character development, and yet even that is enormously dependent years of tropes and source material. That's fine, it doesn't need to be subversive to have an impact, and the Left Behind DLC is more ambitious and successful on that note, but it can never be better than, say, the best bits of The Walking Dead because its aspirations go no further. I'd say it's mechanically much more successful than Uncharted, though, and it's simply a better balance of game and story.

Z

Gone Home has so much of it down perfectly. The way the weirdly laid out house drips all this information and the premise (iirc it was something like the family member returning to her parents newish home from college/whatever for the first time in ages poking around to see how things have changed) was perfect.
The actual core running narrative was a bit shit though, and felt like the kind of thing someone on the team was basing partially on their own experiences, assuming it was way more interesting than they thought. The allusions towards horror movie vibes to heighten tension near the end were a really bad choice too imo.

Walking Dead seems fine, tbh it would've been great if I played it when it was new.

Life is Strange got a big boost for me in being the first Telltale styled game I played (assuming they came up with all the mechanics). In spite of the crappy dialogue, I really liked the setting and characters initially but as it pushed all the supernatural bollocks harder and harder, coupled with some laughable twists and infuriating fetch quests I grew to hate the whole fucking thing. Don't get how it has a fanbase at all.

Heavy Rain was hilariously bad at points, something kept me playing but it definitely wasn't the story. Maybe just the production values?

Quite liked the Beginners Guide, way more than the Stanley Parable actually. It was basically a game about writers block from what I could see and found that kind of neat.

That Dragon Cancer just isn't a very good game, or an especially grippingly told one. What it is is pretty damn uncomfortably close to the subject matter and that in itself carries it for me. Felt uneasy playing the whole thing.

Firewatch was pretty great, kept things vague but not too much so and seemed to have a good balance of where things were getting tedious. Like Gone Home it's biggest triump was the map design, the area feels so much bigger and open than it actually is so the fact it amounts to a few fetch quests isn't such a big deal. Unsure if it was totally intentional but the really flat and hollowing ending in the midst of an quick escape worked really well for me too.

Cant assess Kentucky Route 0 yet but I'm sure I'll be underwhelmed.

Unsure if I've played any beyond those.

Lee Van Cleef

I think story can be done really well in games, the examples in the OP are generally very linear though so it is literally the story. The problem with telltale games is that whilst it's a story which appears to promote choice, your choices don't make substantive differences to how the story plays out (probably because to create that divergence would be a massive undertaking). I will say though, Tales From the Borderlands, even though it is painfully telltale, is a great romp. Some of the set pieces are hilarious and ludicrous, and there are some really engaging characters (Loader Bot!). Walking Dead season 1 hit me hard too, partly because of those moments where humanity and being human felt brutal, and partly because of the existential crisis and nihilism of the world. That hits me because I feel that in a more pressing way these days, so something hitting that button in me got a big response (I also played it not long after becoming a dad, so episode three really fucked me up).

Gone Home is an interesting one though because it is possible to miss different elements of the story by not reading some things. The flavour of the back story is missable which makes it more satisfying when you really dig into it. That's different to, say, Virginia which basically puts it on the screen and all you are essentially doing is pushing the narrative forward without interacting with it (and I do like Virginia).

Oxenfree is an interesting one too, you can affect some aspect of the outcome and I really liked the way that then feeds into further playthroughs. That game is about relationships and loss and because of that the fact that it is the relationships around you that you are affecting makes it feel like there is a stake in the outcome.

I can understand why people wouldn't like those types of games, and I also get that if one of those games fails to deliver on story... Well, that's the only arrow in its quiver, so it is fucked.

Thursday

I would say in retrospect Gone Home really isn't all that great, but at the time it was an important step for the industry.

I am now at the point where I want a lot more from these games I feel like there's a problems with the "walking sim" that we're still struggling to articulate. Just saying "they're boring" invites the "NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE A SHOOTY-BANG BANG GAME" criticism. When the reasons why they're boring can be more complex than just the fact that they don't give you as much to do. But I also think it's a genre that's still evolving, you can see the progression from Dear Esther to Gone Home to Firewatch, but they still have a lot to do and it's still such a new genre that devs are still working out how best to do it.

Virgina actually solved some of these problems with it's fast cuts, but that won't work for every style, and I had other issues with that game anyway.

Lee Van Cleef

Quote from: Thursday on October 28, 2017, 11:33:33 AM
I would say in retrospect Gone Home really isn't all that great, but at the time it was an important step for the industry.

I am now at the point where I want a lot more from these games I feel like there's a problems with the "walking sim" that we're still struggling to articulate. Just saying "they're boring" invites the "NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE A SHOOTY-BANG BANG GAME" criticism. When the reasons why they're boring can be more complex than just the fact that they don't give you as much to do. But I also think it's a genre that's still evolving, you can see the progression from Dear Esther to Gone Home to Firewatch, but they still have a lot to do and it's still such a new genre that devs are still working out how best to do it.

Virgina actually solved some of these problems with it's fast cuts, but that won't work for every style, and I had other issues with that game anyway.

I think Firewatch really fleshed out a relationship in such a focussed way but because that relationship didn't define how the whole narrative played out, it gave that sense of agency through character. You could play your Henry in a way that, even though limited, had some feeling of authenticity.

You're right, I think there's a lot more to go for these games in the future, and I think some of that has to do with how narratives branch. As I said above, when the game is dependent on its story then the linear narrative feels like it is hamstringing the game to some degree. In a way that feels necessary because these games are not viable mainstream products so the backing to make them more divergent is limited.

Some of the criticism does just feel dumb though. I remember when there was the small shebang over the game journo spending ages being unable to get through the cuphead tutorial, and the snarky responses about this being why they praise walking Sims so highly, because there is no skill involved. They've become a focal point of the "sjw agenda" bullshit because they focus on stories which in some instances necessitates characters which aren't typical. Tedious.

Twed

Quote from: Lemming on October 27, 2017, 08:36:11 PM
There's definitely a place for story games. I quite liked Gone Home. It's the kind of thing which would only work as a videogame
Funny, because I think the exact opposite. It feels so much like a game, with its Half Life movement and objects (often identical and repeated, floating around on screen like an early Resident Evil game) that all immersion is destroyed for me. It doesn't feel like exploration because the map is remedial like a Doom player's custom map. It feels like a really bad game with a story tacked on top to me.

It would be impossible due to the expense and crowd-size limitations (one person at a time would be ideal but unreasonable), but I think Gone Home would have worked much, much better as an art installation in a real-life house than as a game.

Twed

Also I think the most affecting part of Gone Home was the audio and writing. The game component did a terrible job of tying these together.

Thursday

It was also jarring that this fairly normal family had such a huge fucking house (50% of it used as storage for their 3 ring binders). I mean I know house sizes tend to be a lot bigger in America but still.

Ferris

I think they're great. Some of my most memorable gaming experiences of the last few years have come from story games (particularly the brother's story from What Remains Of Edith Finch, all of Journey, and the last bit of Gone Home).

Some aren't as tight (I'm thinking of Dear Esther and Firewatch here), but even the weaker games have "set-piece" moments that are rewarding.

They're not really games, they are experiential pieces that wouldn't really work as a video piece. You need to fully engage with them, and forcing you to drive the narrative by doing the walking makes you buy in to the story. If it's a good story told well, it is very much worth it. If it's shit, then it's disappointing - either way, you can't skim them.

Plus playing them with my wife is really rewarding for both of us. There's only so much joy she can get from watching me take Villa to the champions league final or mow down storm troopers. This is like watching a film together, but you get to talk over it, speculate on the story in real time and drive the pace. Fun.

Need to get stuck into 2nd chapter of Life is Strange. They've nicked the argument/combat mechanic from Monkey Island, but I always liked that so I'll give it a pass on its blatant thievery.

Ferris

Everyone seems to have played Gone Home - I recommend you google up the cat Easter egg if you haven't already. It got a chuckle out of me anyway.

Ferris

Oh shit, I've just remembered the best story game I've played all year because it is so novel and fun

Contradiction

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contradiction:_Spot_the_Liar!

Buy it, download it, revel in its British eccentricity and sense of fun. Ostensibly a story game about solving a small town murder in rural England, it's a cross between cluedo, the wicker man, and a telltale game. It is flawed but heaps of fun.

itsfredtitmus

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on October 28, 2017, 03:15:46 PM
Oh shit, I've just remembered the best story game I've played all year because it is so novel and fun

Contradiction

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contradiction:_Spot_the_Liar!

Buy it, download it, revel in its British eccentricity and sense of fun. Ostensibly a story game about solving a small town murder in rural England, it's a cross between cluedo, the wicker man, and a telltale game. It is flawed but heaps of fun.
C:StL is so fucking good!!

garbed_attic

I rather like not being intensely goal-driven in games... personally I think the best way to play Gone Home is to stumble around, rearranging furnishings and listening to the mix tapes and let the narrative present itself. I like occupying spaces and looking at objects. I am lukewarm about Telltale though because I think they market their games in bad faith - implying that there are heavy ethical choices to make, when the story is barely impacted... other games which have been hailed for their moral nuance are often hilariously binary - a particularly egregious example imho being Always Sometimes Monsters.

My friend Hamish is adamant that language/ dialogue has no place in games and that they should be mathematically beautiful expressions of systems. But I need more metaphysics in my physics!

Here's Hamish on why game developers need to take a "vow of silence":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrDZ--AuiL8

I disagree with him, but he's a very clever guy with a much better understanding of game design than most Humanities academics who write cringy articles about Second Life!

itsfredtitmus

Portal 1 and 2 are story games aren't they surely

shh

I don't think so. If you removed all the voices, music, text, etc from those they would still be fairly playable puzzle games. If you did the same to some of the others mentioned you're just left wandering pointlessly around in a Dementia-Sim.