Bioshock writer: "I'm fed up with the industry" - Polidicks

[QUOTE=milkandcooki;40829969]is there some universal threshold that exists that dictates whether a game is a "real" game or not? just because you can't walk around and shoot guns like you can in mass effect or call of duty doesn't mean that the game isn't a game. the "make your own adventure" shit you're saying doesn't make sense because the story is on par with normal semi-linear stories, without the gameplay.[/QUOTE] It's a game without much at all gameplay. It's technically a game, but it damn well doesn't feel like one.

[QUOTE=Bredirish123;40829836]I thought Far Cry 2 had an interesting story; it just was poorly executed. I personally blame the fact that the developers were trying hard to keep the game open ended and free roam which caused the story to be a bit week and lacking linearity. This is why I think FC3 was so good; they were able to balance the formula well enough that you could have a great linear story with open world gameplay.[/QUOTE] Far Cry 2's story was a good analogy for the entire game: it had a lot of cool ideas and potential, but they messed up the execution. A story about war torn Africa could have been great, and the Jakal was a really good character (his tapes were really worth finding), but all in all they failed to really show that anything you did changed the world in any way. And Far Cry 3 had a shit story, don't kid yourself

A semi-linear story without any gameplay, is EXACTLY what a make your own adventure is. TWD is more of a visual make your own adventure than it is a game, but yes, it can technically still be loosely defined as a game. The whole story is already written, you're just choosing between the different outcomes. Basically the only "gameplay" is walking around and "press X to not die". It's not inherently a bad game, but I don't think it's a good direction or rolemodel for "good writing in videogames". Because even if you'd consider the writing good, it doesn't have any real qualities as a game. It isn't designed to be a game, it's designed to be an interactive story.

Many of the bigger franchises do have pretty shitty stories, or ones that are more of an afterthought, or they don't make sense at all when they try to be serious while you mow down hundreds of enemies (CoD, BF3). However there are plenty of good examples. The point of a game story is that it shouldn't get in the way of the game, yet do everything at its disposal to complement the game. You don't need NPCs to convey a story, you can tell it through the environment and player actions (Journey), and some of the best games are the ones where the players craft their own stories (Eve, DayZ, Minecraft). If you really want to have a lot of control over your story, the interactive-movie / adventure format that games like The Walking Dead and Heavy Rain use are great for that. Movie stories like that struggle in games with more player agency [I]because they are movie stories[/I]. The industry has to learn that in order to create a good story, you need to create the right [B]kind[/B] of story for the game you're making. Slapping a serious drama story on a shooter never worked out for anyone.

[QUOTE=milkandcooki;40829969]just because you can't walk around and shoot guns like you can in mass effect or call of duty doesn't mean that the game isn't a game. [/QUOTE] Regardless I don't get why people assume I must love mainstreem shooters simply because I don't like Heavy Rain or The Walking Dead. Want my suggestions for games with good stories? Abe's Odyssey, Sword and Sworcery, Portal 1, Monkey Island 2, and The Misadventures of P.B Winterbottom. These are games with fantastic stories and actual fucking gameplay. [editline]29th May 2013[/editline] Man, I wish I could wipe my memory and play Sword and Sworcery with the full experience again.

Best games are those in which you can find more of the story the more you play it. Dark Souls had this down, in that a lot of it was hinted at, and you slowly pieced it together from even item descriptions. Was fun.

Well, I agree, FC2 was really a piece of shit, but then again, she does have a good point I do agree with: Games fail to deliver good reasons to do this or that. Of course we have stories like Dishonored which somewhat justifies your actions, then again we also have games like Assassins Creed which is (in my opinion) just over exaggerating the image of an assassin without really thinking about it in a somewhat reasonable manner. (as stated before, just my opinion, everythings fine) I liked Dark Souls. It's a dark setting and I think there's a good reason to fight your way through it. Then again, we have also Battlefield 3. Anyone ever played the solo campaign? It's just stupified as fuck. "Oh, I gotta shoot ma teammate" and no real reaction regarding that coming from the main character. It's just crazy. Basically I think she should look out for another studio then. As far as I'm concerned, there are studios - not big ones though - which actually pay more attention towards stories than the usual suspects.

[QUOTE=plunger435;40828094]What about games like Heavy Rain though? That story beats quite a few books, and still has gameplay.[/QUOTE] Heavy Rain has shit gameplay though. There are quite a few games recently that have been heralded as having great writing that I simply can't be bothered to play because of the abysmal looking gameplay, for example, The Walking Dead and Spec Ops. I'm not willing to put up with 8 hours of being bored out of my mind by a game just to get a good story when I could just watch all the important bits on youtube or have fun playing a better game.

[QUOTE=Jackald;40827860]It's still linear as fuck and has a really broken story with plot holes every 5 minutes.[/QUOTE] "This thread is about bioshock infinite and how you don't like it" - nowhere in the OP, May 29, 2013, Earth, Sol-5.

Personally, I play most games FOR the story. The last game I bought for the actual game part was probably Xcom. I agree, most games today don't take enough risks with their storytelling. I'll take a game with splintered gameplay if the story is engaging. Take Spec Ops: The Line. Boring corridor shooter with a pretty unique story to it. A game like that is infinitely more interesting to me over a game where you can kill any badguy 300 different ways. 'Cause it may be fun taking the badguys out, but if I don't care about the reason WHY I'm taking them out, there's no point to it.

Mafia 1 did a good job of telling the story.

[QUOTE=Hoboiam;40834736]Personally, I play most games FOR the story. The last game I bought for the actual game part was probably Xcom. I agree, most games today don't take enough risks with their storytelling. I'll take a game with splintered gameplay if the story is engaging. Take Spec Ops: The Line. Boring corridor shooter with a pretty unique story to it. A game like that is infinitely more interesting to me over a game where you can kill any badguy 300 different ways. 'Cause it may be fun taking the badguys out, but if I don't care about the reason WHY I'm taking them out, there's no point to it.[/QUOTE] I buy for both usually.

[QUOTE=TheCloak;40827903]I herald Far Cry 2 as a superb example of a game with good writing.[/QUOTE] it doesn't matter how good the games story was, they made it fucking drag on and on and on and it was just a game where the goal is to stop yourself from uninstalling it.

[QUOTE=AugustBurnsRed;40827713]That's what I'm sayin, Far Cry 2 was mediocre as fuck[/QUOTE] I don't know, I got a good rush out of it on the hardest difficulty by just doing random ass missions and sneaking around all the time at night. I felt like a real predator and it felt like the enemies weren't that retarded.

Silent Hill 1 -3 is a great example of how to do a game story

[QUOTE=J!NX;40835030]it doesn't matter how good the games story was, they made it fucking drag on and on and on and it was just a game where the goal is to stop yourself from uninstalling it.[/QUOTE] I never actually got anywhere with the story because I never figured out how so I just did all the side missions for a few hours and then never played it.

[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;40835054]I never actually got anywhere with the story because I never figured out how so I just did all the side missions for a few hours and then never played it.[/QUOTE] its only fun after a very short time really. Game is a giant bummer.

[QUOTE=J!NX;40835076]its only fun after a very short time really. Game is a giant bummer.[/QUOTE] I'm forced to agree in retrospect, I only ever played it for like two hours at a time once a week or so.

[QUOTE=Simski;40830427]Regardless I don't get why people assume I must love mainstreem shooters simply because I don't like Heavy Rain or The Walking Dead. Want my suggestions for games with good stories? Abe's Odyssey, Sword and Sworcery, Portal 1, Monkey Island 2, and The Misadventures of P.B Winterbottom. These are games with fantastic stories and actual fucking gameplay. [editline]29th May 2013[/editline] Man, I wish I could wipe my memory and play Sword and Sworcery with the full experience again.[/QUOTE] Swords and Sworcery is just as point, and click as other games, and is the same genre as The Waking Dead.

Did anyone else like the story to Alan Wake? The game had its issues and the plot got nonsensical by the end but the way the story was presented seemed like a really good Stephen King wannabe.

[QUOTE=catbarf;40835166]Did anyone else like the story to Alan Wake? The game had its issues and the plot got nonsensical by the end but the way the story was presented seemed like a really good Stephen King wannabe.[/QUOTE] Alan Wake is one of my favorite stories but I think it would have been a much better game without the shooting mechanics. It had this great idea in using light to fight off the "servants" of The Darkness, but it was more often than not sidelined in favor of really repetitive shooting that I honestly don't even think fit the character. This guy is a writer and an all-around average guy but he's got killer accuracy and doesn't even flinch at taking down those...whatever they were. If the game were more about using light against obstacles, maybe with some intimate, harsh melee combat to add some contrast and variety, I think it would have been an even more harrowing experience.

[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;40835248]Alan Wake is one of my favorite stories but I think it would have been a much better game without the shooting mechanics. It had this great idea in using light to fight off the "servants" of The Darkness, but it was more often than not sidelined in favor of really repetitive shooting that I honestly don't even think fit the character. This guy is a writer and an all-around average guy but he's got killer accuracy and doesn't even flinch at taking down those...whatever they were. If the game were more about using light against obstacles, maybe with some intimate, harsh melee combat to add some contrast and variety, I think it would have been an even more harrowing experience.[/QUOTE] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZM2jXyvGOc[/media] Relevant, problem with violence in the industry.

[QUOTE=Novangel;40835271][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZM2jXyvGOc[/media] Relevant, problem with violence in the industry.[/QUOTE] I really enjoy it whenever a game allows me to avoid massive shootouts and find a more challenging way around things (Hitman for example)

[QUOTE=STeel;40835444]I really enjoy it whenever a game allows me to avoid massive shootouts and find a more challenging way around things (Hitman for example)[/QUOTE] Hitman felt more like a puzzle game than an action game to me; go around, investigate environments for sometimes hours, identify traps, security holes, spots of interests, and escape routes, and then execute my master plan flawlessly in a few minutes. It's a great feeling. It's also why I enjoy the stealth genre so much; seeing how well I can do by totally avoiding violence. Surprisingly, one of the best games for this in recent memory for me was New Vegas. The writers took great care in ensuring that you could find a non-lethal alternative to every single mission (at least in the main game as the DLC is a different story,) and it's not even hacky. In my non-lethal playthrough every mission I came across except for optional ones that outright told you it would involve assassination had a non-lethal alternative that involved stealth, exploration, speech checks, or some combination thereof. And I was still afforded some breathing room to become the character I wanted to become. This is also why Deus Ex (original) is my favorite game of all time. That game is an inch wide but miles deep. I still find new shit every time I play and I can fully enjoy the experience each time.

The Jackal's dialogue was the only good thing about Far Cry 2 (gameplay was marmite so let's not tackle that subject). The rest of it was boring as fuck.

Is it still cool to have the opinion that [i]Deus Ex: Human Revolution[/i] had a good story? Because I still have that opinion. I think the game did a good job of marrying the FPS / stealth mechanics of gameplay with an immersively linear story. It didn't feel like, to me, a game that "had story tacked on as an afterthought." More than anything, it almost felt like the first-person shooter elements were "tacked on as an afterthought." Take the boss-fights for example; it's painfully obvious that they were shoehorned in for some reason or another. The game seems to play as a stealth game far more naturally, in my opinion.

[QUOTE=Novangel;40835271] Relevant, problem with violence in the industry.[/QUOTE] While this has to do with video game violence, another more prevalent issue I see here is the doctrine of "quantity over quality" when it comes to shootouts or fight scenes. It's nothing but mobs of endless dumb enemies. Does anybody actually find that it is fun to shoot down mobs of enemies one by one? Why can't it just be one single, or a couple very difficult and calculated firefights with one highly intelligent bot? That's one huge difference I noticed between Mafia 1 and Mafia II, for instance. In mafia 1 a couple of shots would bring you down, the firefights were fucking intense and they'd usually be against no more than 10-20 enemies. Mafia 2 had run-of-the-mill cover shooter mechanics where you just go around headshotting people. Why can't more modern titles strive to represent violence in the Mafia 1 manner, rather than just having gratuitous numbers of walking blood bags who take potshots at you before you burst their face?

That's why FEAR has one of the most visceral combat in a FPS in my opinion. The enemies rather than being mindless targets flanked, flushed, moved as a deadly and efficient pack to hunt you down, each of them deadly in their own right. I haven't had a similar experience fighting enemies since.

Honestly I think Bioshock infinite focused too much on the story at the expense of having any form of complexity in it's gameplay. Fuck it wasn't even the story, 70% of that game is weighted on what passed for your interactions with Elisabeth and nothing else.

[QUOTE=Jackald;40827860]It's still linear as fuck and has a really broken story with plot holes every 5 minutes.[/QUOTE] yeah sure let's make every single game open world but with even worse stories what the fuck is wrong with linearity?