Best and Worst Storytelling/Writing in Video Games - Page 2

You should probably thank your dad for dodging a coma.

Man, I'm talking about the Apple IIe, motherfucker. ZORK STYLE, BITCHES

Leisure. Suit. Larry.

Although I've forgotten all but the broadest details of BioShock's overrated story, I recall a big chunk of it being told through the "found document" school of game storytelling. I get that most games are too busy shoehorning in escort missions, fix-it quests, and serum-infused mutant boss battles to tell good stories, but when a game delivers story through found items, it usually stinks. And somehow, no matter what game uses this shitty storytelling method, it always starts the same way:

"...After the first battery of tests, it appears that the patient is responding well to treatment. Project Daedalus is well underway."

SPOILER THE PATIENT is YOU

Also, the biggest plot-hole in Bioshock is that Atlas doesn't even ask "would you kindly inject yourself with that Plasmid over yonder". Your guy just does it with no provocation because hey that is what you do when you see a comically giant syringe full of strange glowing liquid.

I love Bioshock ever so much, but all these points are accurate, except I thought the found storytelling, which pretty much sucked for all the games post-Bioshock, worked well in Bioshock.

Also Braid's pretentious storytelling made a fun puzzle game into something I don't want to revisit.

You've just described the framework for a decent Re-animator game right there.

I've said it before, but BioShock is a few great ideas sitting atop a mountain of mediocre ones. It's one of the many current-generation games that doesn't live up to its first twenty minutes.

I don't know, I have different standards I guess, since I basically expect a game story to be garbage in any action/adventure like that. As a GAME, I think Bioshock is pretty great. It's fun, inventive, atmospheric and entertaining. If you're looking at it is as a way to convey a story, it's pretty sophomoric.

The game 'Pathology' definitely belongs on this thread. It's a wonderful (If that's the right word for it) game that though is hampered by a dubious translation, still manages to work.

It's a few years old now and looks ugly as sin, but I guarantee you'll be drawn in by the utterly bizarre and thoroughly depressing world it creates. Characters actually lie to you for one thing, and straight away it sets up an air of distrust. The game manages to leave you on uneven ground through the whole thing (It also puts Bioshock's "Difficult moral choice" to shame).

'Bureaucracy'. This was a text-based game written by Douglas Adams in the mid 80s.

link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game)

That people point to BioShock's story as some sort of keystone speaks more to universally bad storytelling in games than anything else. Like TV, games are great at exploiting cheap storytelling shorthand.

Off topic: I think it was a great achievement from a design perspective, but for me, BioShock's core game was mostly unsurprising and repetitive. Enter dark maze, clear out monsters. It's punctuated by a series of escort/repair/find key quests, but besides being hackneyed elements on their own, they all comprised entering a series of relatively similar dark mazes and clearing out monsters. And that's not getting into the binary karma and vita-chamber stuff.

Of course there's a lot to like about the game, especially the inventive kills with plasmids. I feel similarly about GTA IV, which is another well-realized world with a core game that doesn't always live up to the environment. Also Dead Space, although I prefer BioShock to that game immensely.

Well when Heavy Rain comes along and redefines not just video game storytelling, but what we even know as fiction (or perhaps... reality????) we can all PRESS X TO RENDER THREAD MOOT

The Gabriel Knight Series or Pandora Directive hands down for me...in terms of games (mostly) anyone here has actually played? Despite the repetitive missions; when I was able to finally gun down Demetri in GTA:IV I was THOROUGHLY satisfied. For me, the quality of the dialog/writing & voice acting was enough to tolerate the "drive here, shoot this" mission structure. When I had to choose between Dwayne or Playboy X it was actually a difficult decision for me to make. I'll applaud the game for that.

Whatever, you can go play your fun games, I'll be mourning my dead virtual child and expanding my game horizons.

I'll be pressing RT to swivel listlessly in my desk chair.

I jiggle my legs under my desk chair, which I think should be tied to clicking the right and left sticks.

With that said, I found FC2's story telling really inovative and fascinating

Press X to fly kite with sonNO DON'T YOU PRESS THE PS BUTTON GET BACK HERE YOU SONUVA-

LOL - this reminds me of almost every single one of David Cage's interviews.

The game starts to get really uncomfortable when it just refuses to progress until you press L3 to spank child press it again yes yes more keep pressing it oh yes spank him he's been so bad

Why are you crying I'LL PRESS TRIANGLE TO GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT!

Silent Hill 2. Its hampered by stilted gameplay and inconsistent voice acting but as storytelling? Fantastic.

Also, its pretty flimsy in most respects but the moment in the first God Of War where you find out what Kratos' skin is made of was pretty fucking inspired.

DEUS EX, obviously an excellent choice.

I want to rotate the left stick to smother this thread at birth.

Obviously you push in both sticks to smother

That's actually to falcon punch.

"Falcon punch"?

Really glad to see Gabriel Knight get some love here. The first game is amazingly well done storytelling.

This is so true. The gameplay is great in Braid, but the story reads like a 15-year-old's livejournal after their first girlfriend broke up with them. Just terrible stuff. To be fair, it's not a big game, so the story takes a backseat, but I've seen people praise the writing and that's just sad.

That's not storytelling.

Another good LucasArts offering: 'Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis'. This would have made one hell of an Indy movie.

'Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom' did a really good job of making a predictable yet fairly engrossing story come to life. Having Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys Davies, Chris Mulkey, and Jason Bernard in the live action cast helped.

Mildly-interesting, true related side-story:

I once kicked the living crap out of Knight-creator Jane Jensen and her husband at five-card over at a mutual family friend's house in Danville, Iliinois during my freshman year in college. This would've been back in December, 1994 (I was home on winter break), right after the first game hit. She lost over a hundred bucks on that game.

I didn't feel guilty, though.

Trevor has just inadvertantly reminded me of the Mario & Luigi GBA/DS games. While I don't know if it could be argued that the stories in the games are great (they're actually pretty basic I suppose), but I think it CAN be argued that they're written well. Definitely funny, and funny on purpose. I'm nearing the end of Bowser's Inside Story right now and I've been enjoying the game very much. Thanks Trevor! As Fawful would say "A WINNER IS YOU!!!"

Also, this thread make me want to get back to Final Fantasy XII very much, and I have The World Ends With You waiting for me to get to it on the DS eventually. And I need to agree with the praise given to the Shadow Hearts games. I'm actually playing the third one right now (in between some other stuff), and while the second one might be the best of the bunch, the third one is gloriously bizarre and over the top. One of the weirdest, in a good way, JRPGs I've ever seen.

ETA: I'm generally a sucker for anything Silent Hill, but I have to agree with Justin on the merits of Silent Hill 2.

I think this thread summed up the two games I hold in highest regard for story (Aside from all the other LucasArts adventure games) - Deus Ex and Grim Fandango.

I'd like to add Beyond Good & Evil (unless it's already been added).

I haven't played it in a while, but remember it being something kinda great.

Agree on both points (Anyone who wasnt shocked at the "videotape" reveal in SH2 is a filthy liar), even though I dont have much love for GOW.
This thread reminds me of a letter I once read in a videogame magazine, were a self professed "gaming feminist" complained about "Castlevania; Lament of Innocence" having "dared to make a "must save the princess" plot in this day and age!" (the game had been just announced at the time of the letter); I would have LOVED to see the look on her face after finishing the actual game.

Also, I'm surprised no one has dared mention "Metal Gear Solid" yet; sure its just as ridiculous and over-hyped as FFVII was in its time, but it does deserve a nod in the storytelling department, sequel insanity side (MGS3 excluded , of course).
Also, no mention of "The Longest Journey" yet? Time to fix that.

1994 means just after the first game in the series and the release of the sequels, so you should feel a bit of guilt.
Anyone remember how we all bit on Full Motion Video being the future of gaming, specially for adventure games?

I was going to mention Gabriel Knight, but its been covered already. That game was the first time I was blown away by the story, but that was a very long time ago. Those point and click adventures were awesome. Fate of Atlantis was also mentioned, another favorite of mine.

Do you guys remember Bloodnet? That cyberpunk vampire rpg, that was also fucking sweet, although I wouldn't be surprised if I found the story a little weak if I revisited now, but at the time it was pretty damned cool. Day of the Tentacle and Full Throtle were pretty cool too, not sure about best.

As for worst storytelling? Its impossible to even attempt to answer this, there are hundreds of games with equally crappy stories, simply impossible to distinguish.

Yea Ryoken, I remember when full motion video was considered state of the art, and the end game. Especially when Wing Commander 4 came out and had full motion video for the cut scenes, I was amazed. Only my friend with his brand new pentium 1, 66 mghz, with 16 megs of ram could run it, we were all in love with his computer at the time. But when the full motion videos made its way to point and click games I was immediately unimpressed.

I have zero frame of reference on this. What happened?

As for Bioshock, I would have to agree that it got weird and silly by the end with Fontaine, but one thing about the storytelling that really worked was the way it parcelled out information. They really teased out the entirity of what happened on Rapture for a long time, like the tape of the doctor getting murdered by the Big Daddy, or the Sander Cohen subplot. And yeah, the big twist. It was the suprising way information was revealed that struck me, not so much the actual events.

I was always a sucker for a bunch of grandiose crap too. Final Fantasy X had a great story, with a great ending. And then Final Fantasy X-2 makes you feel like a total ass for getting into it!

Oh boy...
The game was supposed to be the first castlevania chronologically, telling the history of Leon Belmont, a crusader who returns to Europe to find her fiancée, Sara, had been abducted by a vampire.
Long story short, Leon rescues Sara, but he cant kill the vampire because his alchemical infused whip isn't strong enough to harm vampires; Sara is discovered to have already been infected as a vampire, and she willingly allows Leon to kill her so that the whip can gain the ability to utterly destroy vampires and spare others from sharing her fate.
The girl who wrote that letter probably mailed Konami a ticking package after that.
(oddly enough, I actually like the whole aesthetic and stories present in the Castlevania series, except Castlevania Judgement; music aside, that game was awful, and Im not alone in that sentiment in these boards)

You're not alone there; X-2 was essentially "play through this one to get a happy ending to the earlier one" in my book.
And same camp on the love of grandiose crap; thats why I own every single "Xeno gears/saga".
Oddly enough, the end of disc shocker in FFVII never really impacted me that much (aside from "Oh shit, we're boned"), since i had already experienced the "heroes fail to save the world" in FFVI; hell, Im not embarrassed to say I prefer the middle plot shock scene in hack Gu Vol 2.
I remember reading an article somewhere that said that JRPG's grandiose storytelling losing their appeal as they became more popular had its reasons to be on japanese style storytelling becoming more common for western audiences...cant remember where i read that article, dammit.

I don't assume it has enough fans to warrant its own thread, but Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines still benefits from unofficial patches made by fans five years after launch. One recent patch adds new quests and spoken dialogue, and is available for download from www.planet-vampire.com. I've got it downloading right now. This is one of those games that I might never get tired of replaying.

What a twist!

This.
What a marvelous, intriguing, captivating experience.
Hardly something you can expect from a game. Too bad there was never any sequel.

Thanks for the laugh, Arjen.
i doubt that feminist gamer found it funny, though.

Planescape is sort of like a really convoluted choose-your-own-adventure more than it is a game. I've never really understood the hype. There's so many better books you can read.

I liked the game in general, but if the Thousand Years of Dreams stories in Lost Odyssey had been gameplay or even cutscene rather than text, that game would kinda win the thread.

I'm beginning to think this thread should be called "We Don't Read Books".

Oh, I totally forgot the Bladerunner PC game from like ten years ago. Man, I wish I still had a copy of that. Incredible game with multiple paths to take.

You're not even trying anymore Brad, arent you?