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Sagacyte's BG corner

History and Story

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When I was a kid I loved the heck out of my NES. It was a fascinating system: games could afford to become elaborate (yet also rudimentary) stories, more than simple pixels going to and fro. I stopped playing just to reach a high score or just get to the next screen, but rather to find out what happened next. The medium reached new heights in the SNES era, and it has gotten more and more complex ever since, thanks to advances in technology and storage that allow for voice and video content.

I always raise my eyebrow at people that play story-driven games but skip all cutscenes or dialogue. Never mind that sometimes they are skipping important information on how to actually progress (plug the second controller, god damn it!), I'm more curious as to why they are driven to just skip everything lore-related and "play the game". It is a perfectly valid way to play games, of course, but it just doesn't apply well to certain genres. A Call of Duty multiplayer match doesn't really need much of an expository banter - players just want to get on with it and enjoy the fast-paced matches. The single player campaign? Sure, it's not Oscar material, but the story tries to at least give motivation behind your actions and those of the characters you meet.

This is particularly true for RPGs and MMOs. In the latter, a good story is the difference between "pick 2 sheep" and "bring back two sheep that have escaped the farm and are urgently needed for their wool". Sure, both cases imply magically cramming full-sized animals into your inventory, but the second method exposes a reason for you to do so beyond "gold and lootz", and also fleshes out the world.  In FFXIV good exposition is the difference between thinking the sky in Mor Dhona is purple "just because" and knowing exactly why it is the way it is.

Good character stories are also good motivation to invest in them. The main reason I started playing World of Warcraft was finding out there was gonna be a "Lich King expansion". Years prior Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne expansion had introduced us to Prince Arthas and his journey/fall from happy-go-lucky prince to Death Knight in the service of the Legion. I was excited to know what happened next with the character. Another example would be Inspector Hildibrand Manderville, but I fear tiring you with my recent post about him last Friday. I'm 100% certain I wouldn't have shed a tear at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4 if I hadn't played previous entries and had invested in the world troll-king H. Kojima had set up for us.

A friend and former FC-mate skipped every single cutscene while leveling in XIV. She has already quitted XIV because she didn't care about the world or story at all. GEE, I WONDER WHY.

Game on.

- Sagacyte

This post also appeared on my blog.

Comments

  1. BaneTheBrawler -
    BaneTheBrawler's Avatar
    I remember going through the Halo campaign for the first time with a buddy, and he kept skipping all the cutscenes and killing our marines.

    I stopped playing campaign with him.
  2. Charismatic -
    Charismatic's Avatar
    I, personally, rarely skip cutscenes but at the same time... I don't find the stories of most games to be particularly interesting and I play games almost solely for their mechanics.

    I can certainly enjoy interesting lore, as is the case with Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, but its not why I play games.

    I think a good example would be when I played through Tales of Destiny 2 (JPN). I barely know [I]any[/I] Japanese now and knew even less then but I still enjoyed the heck outta that game. Its actually my [I]favorite[/I] game and I replay it every now and again. While on the subject, here's a random video of me playing it from some years ago on my first playthrough.

    (I was not very good then)
    [video=youtube;ZvwHpHWtkzE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvwHpHWtkzE[/video]

    Sure, it has a story and all sorts of lore and character/world building but I can't understand any of it and yet its still my favorite. Different strokes.
  3. Sagacyte -
    Sagacyte's Avatar
    Indeed, Charismatic! We're all entitled to our point of view, and it's not wrong to state it. As long as we all have fun we can do it our own ways. That said I'm surprised you could play through (and enjoy!) a japanese RPG without knowing much japanese! Those are usually full of menus and items! I see a menu in japanese and am like "nope"!
  4. Charismatic -
    Charismatic's Avatar
    Hahaha, I was (and still am) mostly the same but the game just looked so fun that I had to try it anyway.
    It was a frustrating experience at first but with a bit of memorization and partially translated menus it became pretty simple after a few hours of play!

    ...and fortunately it was pretty importer friendly with markers on the world map and such.
  5. Quicklet -
    Quicklet's Avatar
    Your post gets to the heart of the long-time debate of games as games/challenges vs games as art/media. At one time I read a book from a prominent developer who argued that the real core to keeping someone's interest in a game is the gameplay itself, and all the aesthetic features of a game are window dressing around that core gameplay. For your friend who got bored of XIV and quit, the gameplay may not have engaged her enough to invest in the story and world. MMOs are a particularly tricky genre as they require much more padding and rely a lot more on psychological and social pull to keep players interested than traditional single-player experiences.

    My experience has been that story gets in the way of gameplay much more than the other way around. Games with overly long tutorial portions are particularly bad in this department, e.g. KH2, FFXIII, Skyward Sword. I consider all three to be good games in their totality, but the amount of exposition dumped on the player at the start of each game breaks the immersion. In general, I see the "show, don't tell" rule getting broken way too often in modern games.

    Paradoxically I see story in contemporary games being taken more seriously in some ways yet remaining stagnant and at times inferior to the storytelling of older games. This is a somewhat controversial point of view, but Dark Souls is one of the games that gets it right more than most AAA games. It is the exception to the rule, though, where the typical game's story ranges from average to abysmal. Most importantly on this topic, there are lots of articles, posts, and videos that get created about story in games but most of the really good comparative analysis is spread out all over the place. For a lot of people, story isn't very big on their radar, and the medium itself still has a long way to go compared to literature and film.