Story?

DaHeckIzDat1 · Postby **DaHeckIzDat1** » March 18th, 2013, 7:26 pm

When you play a video game, how important is the story to you?

Personally, there's nothing I love more than a game that combines excellent gameplay with a great story. If the story's good, I'll feel much more motivated to keep playing. Games that just say "This is a video game, so go kill people," have a much harder time holding my attention. But if the game overdoes the story, like Metal Gear Solid 4, that will turn me off too. Kingdom Hearts, in my opinion, did this almost perfectly, giving me a good, solid story that didn't take too long to tell, and still had some awesome gameplay. Heavenly Sword's story really hooked me as well. And the Legend of Zelda games have amazing stories too. But what about you? How important is story to you?

darkrage61 · Postby **darkrage61** » March 19th, 2013, 12:17 am

I think the story is fairly important, while I don't need ridiculously long cutscenes like the MGS series, a decent amount of plot can really make a difference in how compelling a game is.

Ozzybear1 · Postby **Ozzybear1** » March 19th, 2013, 12:23 am

while i will be the first to admit, i do love a game that lets me go on a total slaughterfest.
I also love a game that the story just sucks you in and makes you not want to put the
controller down or keep coming back for more, it only adds to things that much more!!

Ozzy

billydeethrilliams1 · Postby **billydeethrilliams1** » March 19th, 2013, 10:21 am

I feel that developers are putting to much of an emphasis on story and sacrificing good gameplay these days. See: Resident Evil 6, Hitman Absolution, Splinter Cell Conviction,...
That's why I'm a hesitant to pick up the new Tomb Raider. People keep talking about how great the story is. I don't care about that. Is it fun? Being a frequent reader and a bit of a cinephile, maybe I'm a bit too harsh when it comes to game stories. Let's face it, most of them are terrible.

For the record, the best game story in my opinion is Mafia for Xbox. And that ripped off The Godfather and Goodfellas. I also like crime stories, so maybe I'm biased.

JustLikeHeaven1 · Postby **JustLikeHeaven1** » March 19th, 2013, 10:49 am

Story in games is 100% equivalent to the type of game that you're playing. If its a shooter I really don't want the story to get in the way of the action. I could really care less about the crummy stories in Gears of War, Call of Duty, Halo etc... Just point me in the direction of the bad guys and let me annihilate them.

If I'm playing an adventure game or a role playing game I'll be much more interested in the story. I expect to sit through long verbose cutscenes. Though I do wish this stuff wasn't all voice acted...Having to listen to every villager is annoying. Reading text is much faster and in my opinion it can help immerse you into the story better than poorly done voice acting.

Story in games is a tough tightrope to traverse and I feel like 90% of developers get it wrong. The main difference between games and movies is that the medium is interactive. Don't skimp on gameplay to try and tell your story. Focus on making the game polished and above all else, fun to play. I'm more inclined to keep playing a game because I'm having a blast than if the story is good.

Rev1 · Postby **Rev1** » March 19th, 2013, 12:20 pm

[QUOTE=JustLikeHeaven]Story in games is 100% equivalent to the type of game that you're playing. If its a shooter I really don't want the story to get in the way of the action. I could really care less about the crummy stories in Gears of War, Call of Duty, Halo etc... Just point me in the direction of the bad guys and let me annihilate them.

If I'm playing an adventure game or a role playing game I'll be much more interested in the story. I expect to sit through long verbose cutscenes. Though I do wish this stuff wasn't all voice acted...Having to listen to every villager is annoying. Reading text is much faster and in my opinion it can help immerse you into the story better than poorly done voice acting.

Story in games is a tough tightrope to traverse and I feel like 90% of developers get it wrong. The main difference between games and movies is that the medium is interactive. Don't skimp on gameplay to try and tell your story. Focus on making the game polished and above all else, fun to play. I'm more inclined to keep playing a game because I'm having a blast than if the story is good.
[/QUOTE]

Pretty much this is my opinion to a T. Although I'm not quite a fan of FPS, I'm definitely into Platform games (2D and 3D) and most of the times the story on those games are pretty basic. I also enjoy games in the shumps, fighting, party games, racing, and rhythm genres and each of those tend to have a pretty basic storyline. Still, once in a while I really get an itch for a RPG or adventure game and those are the games where a storyline is really important to me. When I play those types of games I'm expecting a grand tale. So as was previously stated, it totally depends on the genre I'm playing and my expectations from the game.

billydeethrilliams1 · Postby **billydeethrilliams1** » March 19th, 2013, 1:49 pm

Okay, I do have to admit that some of the old point and click games have decent stories and voice acting.

darkrage61 · Postby **darkrage61** » March 19th, 2013, 7:20 pm

I have to strongly disagree on RE6 , Absolution and Conviction, I don't think the gameplay was sacrificed for the story at all, I think the stories really complimented the gameplay in those cases. Personally, I thought the story in Mafia sucked ass, but that game had a ton of other problems, so a better story wouldn't have really made a difference.

Don't worry about Tomb Raider, the gameplay is very fun and there actually aren't all that many lengthy cutscenes(and you can skip them anyways) so i'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Irenicus1 · Postby **Irenicus1** » March 19th, 2013, 11:05 pm

Story is important, but what bothers me is when the "story" forces me to play a certain way. I hate it when some character gets mouthy & I try to kill him only to find out that I can't because he's part of the "story".

I would like to see more games that evolve based on your actions rather than having your actions be part of the story.

billydeethrilliams1 · Postby **billydeethrilliams1** » March 20th, 2013, 1:02 am

darkrage6- I'm not sure about RE6, but with Absolution and Conviction I remember the developers talking about the differences in gameplay being there because of the stronger emphasis on story. And when I played the games... as you know I didn't like the changes that were made. I was a big fan of the last couple Splinter Cell games and the Hitman trilogy(never played the first) and I just didn't like the new takes on them. RE6... cutscenes that can't be skipped and (in my opinion) sloppy gameplay didn't help my overall judgment.

Now with Tomb Raider, I think the reverse could be true. I've never really been into that franchise and I do think the reboot looks intriguing. I just hope it's not an Uncharted rip-off. And I'm still in the dark as to whether it's open world or not.

What didn't you like about Mafia? As I said, I played it on the original Xbox, and my main problem were the long loading times.