Ennui with gaming.

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Hm, I gotta say, I'll never understand the viewpoint of the players that get into these for the storylines; I cant remember the last time I found a game with a story that I didnt consider to be bad, or just badly presented (or sometimes both). It was probably back in the SNES era, actually. The more prevalent cutscenes got, the more stretched out the storylines got, and the more exaggerated things got as well. Suddenly it wasnt about good writing and such anymore (not as much anyway); it was about as many flashy effects as possible. And then there's groups like Square, who seem to think that absolute gibberish is the core of all good stories. As the "movie" aspect of these games got worse and worse, the actual gameplay hit the sidelines; this is the reason behind the lowered challenge these days, because it's no longer about "beating" a game, it's about finishing that accursed storyline. If the customer cannot do this, they wont come back to later games from that developer. Even moreso than the bad writing (when bad writing happens, obviously this isnt the case in all games), this is the reason why I hate game stories so very badly. I just read alot of books instead, which is one of my other 2 major hobbies. Movies/TV I cant stand.

As it is for gaming though, I either play games with zero storyline, or games that may have one, but where it's exceedingly obvious that it isnt the focus and doesnt need to be known. This is where I find the actual challenge and depth, because no resources are shoved into movieland, and the devs dont have to worry about difficulty keeping the player from seeing all of the blasted cinematics. Or there's games like Dwarf Fortress or Mount & Blade, where the gameplay IS the story; the narrative is created by your actions, adventures, and interactions with the world/NPCs/stuffs/whatever instead of by a premade script; those I can get into, because the gameplay has to be GOOD for it to work (they cant put the story element above it, or it collapses), and I feel like I"m actually involved instead of just on the sidelines, when the story-ish stuff happens.

Though, I'd probably deal with stories in games alot easier if they were told differently. It's the way they're shoved in the player's face (that "movie-like" idea) that bugs me so much (particularly if the story then ends up being bad). A game like Five Nights at Freddy's is better for me; the game never just blatantly waves the story at you, but there's a ton of lore behind it. Without "normal" storytelling like cutscenes, you have to pay attention to things, as all the little details and things that happen can be pieced together to figure out just what's really going on.


But anyway, it's interesting to hear things from the perspective of someone that understands the value of challenge/depth/complexity as well as older games, yet has the difference from me of being into the story aspect of games as a whole. I'm curious, what kinds of elements of these draws you into that aspect the most? Are there any particularly good examples of games that you think do it right?

One big beef I have now with video gaming story telling is the absolute amount of endless exposition. Silent Hill 2 has one of my favorite video game plots ever and while you do eventually get told the main twist there's A LOT of the story purely left up to your interpretation from hints/clues you can dig up.

I've enjoyed "story" heavy games in the past, like Xenogears and Planescape Torment but those games were also fun to me or atmospheric in some way. Atmosphere and execution to me is far more important than just having a really good plot.

Demon/Dark Souls is a great example of this. There's very little story directly explained to you but there is still some very deep and fascinating lore about the world and bosses.

Gameplay has always been most important to me though. I can count on one hand the number of games I've played purely for story, those being Snatcher, Xenogears (I loved the gameplay too though), Silent Hill and PS:T.