I hate narrative driven games

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I've been playing video games since the days of Pong but I really hate modern games that place such a strong emphasis on storytelling. Here's why:

1) First and foremost, most of the plots and voice acting are just awful. They are ripping off Aliens, Lord of the Rings, Mad Max etc for the 10,000th time. I've seen it all before, done much better. The stories are needlessly complicated. The characters are boring and cliched (there's a real problem with the way women are presented for example). If I want a good story with sympathetic characters I'll read a book or watch a movie. I don't feel embarrassed playing a game series like Mario (even at my age) but I would feel embarrassed being caught playing God of War or Bayonetta.

2) Endless cut scenes mean I can't plan my gaming I have to fit my gaming around working full time, a relationship, caring for an elderly parent and so on. I like to be able to turn a game on and know I can play for 20 or 45 minutes and then quit. I hate playing for 5 minutes and then running into a lengthy unskippable cinematic when I know I have to leave to catch a train shortly.

3) Cut scenes take me out of the game. Apart from just interrupting the flow of things they make the avatar less like me. I want to be me in games, or at least who I choose to role-play as, not some generic action movie hero. You can make video games characters interesting in many ways: by their visual design, by animation, by catchy soundbites and so on. They don't need to stop everything regularly and spout pages of witless guff.

4) Finally, a detailed narrative just isn't necessary. It's not necessary in chess to know why the two sides are at war - if they weren't at war there wouldn't be a game! There is no need for motivation. Playing because it's fun should be motivation. Why are those ghosts chasing Pac Man? Who cares? Why are those blocks falling from the sky in Tetris? Again, I don't care. I only want the barest bones of a scenario laid to for me - you are a secret agent, infiltrate the villain's base and destroy his Death Ray. That'll do.

I've outlined my views on video game plots to people before and quite often people have come back to me with the opinion that what I want is a very shallow game in which I bash buttons, kill loads of people and win every time. This is totally wrong. I desperately want games with depth and player freedom. However, I don't that these qualities are achieved by hours of angsty dialogue. Depth comes from level design, enemy AI, the plotting of the difficulty curve and so on - just good old fashioned game design.

All of this is of course just my opinion and I realise that other people will view games in a completely different way and that's cool. I just wondered what others thought. If there's interest in the topic I'll post some examples of game series that got it right and some I didn't like.

Thanks for reading.

I play first person shooters. The problem is most of them are linear. There's a per-defined path you have to take to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve. Culprits of this include the Metro series, the COD series, the MoH series, the Bioshock series, etc. One game that does allow you the freedom to move in all directions sandbox style are the Fallout series. Probably why they'll still popular years after their initial release. I currently play new maps for Fallout 3 because of fans. They've given my favourite game new life.

yeah! they are supposed to be GAMES, not movies.

You people clearly have not played Freespace 2 or Knights of the Old Republic, when you have a great game with a compelling story, it makes the game more fulfilling. This happens rarely in video games.

Bad voice acting has ruined many a modern game for me. Sometimes it is not even possible to turn it off. My enjoyment of Fallout: New Vegas definitely increased after I turned off the voices.
There is nothing like walking across a mile or so of desert to the next settlement, and all the NPCs are reciting the same canned phrases as the ones in the place you just left.
"Did you see that tower on the strip all lit up?" "Patrolling the mojave is almost enough to.." blah blah blah

The fact that KOTOR's script is considered relatively good for a game is somewhat proving the OPs point - the best you can get is a fairly mediocre script wrapped around a game. But what's perverse is when games are designed around conveying a narrative at the expense of gameplay. Think about the sequences in modern FPSs where there is no interaction, and scripted events that are supposed to be cool but rob the player of actual control.

Movie narratives and games are not compatible in any way. They are mutually exclusive. Narrative choice is a valid argument but it's not a convincing one when most games, on account of budget and other factors, only give you superficial choices.

The opposite example of a narrative-driven game is Dark Souls, where the mandatory plot content amounts to an opening and closing cutscene. It happens to be one of my favourite games ever and I don't think it's a coincidence that the developers who made that game also realised what it is that defines a game as opposed to a movie.

Ahhhhh, finally, lol, I find someone else on here with the same views on this as me.

I agree with all of those, completely. Though the bit about taking up gaming time is a bit different in my case; I have plenty of time, but I still dont want to use it on bloody cutscenes, which take too damn long. I dont have the undying patience necessary to deal with constant cutscenes in any game.

And yeah, the storylines in many are terrible. Now, I can take an interest in the CHARACTERS.... it depends on the game. Fighting games, for instance, I do tend to take an interest in the characters. But for me, that's usually about as far as I go with it. Way too many storylines in gaming are just pure gibberish. Games made by SquareEnix being the absolute worst offenders. Nothing tops the utter stupidity that makes up the storyline of one of their games.

But moreso, I dont want my games becoming more and more like movies. I dont watch TV or movies. I hate TV and movies. So I dont need games that become like TV and movies.


The good thing for me though.... is that typically, I just dont run into these problems these days. Ever since I ditched the consoles and took up PC gaming instead.... with it's dramatically wider selection of games.... it's very easy for me to find all sorts of games I like that DONT have cutscenes or too much story gibberish. And of course, certain entire genres that I'm into, shmups in particular, are the sorts of games that rarely have much if any story stuff in them. But yeah, since I tend not to give a crap about any AAA games or similar things, I lately just dont run into story stuff much.

Aye, this.

Me, I read alot of books. Both normal books and also manga. I have LOTS of books. So many. They're all over my room, and in other places. I like all sorts of different genres. And because I read so much, I have alot of thoughts on what makes a good story, and what doesnt, and what constitutes as good writing in general. And honestly, the storylines in games have yet to come close to ANY of these standards that derive from these books. Not even a single game I've played has managed it. Not.... one. Either the writing isnt very good, or the story itself is bad or made of gibberish, or maybe the characters arent well thought out, or perhaps (as happens in most of Square's games) the story is really fulla holes that the writers clearly didnt think about, or.... the list goes on.

But even a game with a story that seems very good compared to most other games just doesnt match up for me.


Not to mention.... honestly, I dont NEED a story in my games to make them more "fulfilling". Not at all necessary. It's the gameplay that determines wether or not they're fulfilling to me. After all, I'm playing them in order to PLAY them.... not to watch them. If the gameplay shines, then so does the game..... simple as that, as far as I'm concerned.

I loved Demon's/Dark Souls. There was the suggestion of what was going on which fired my imagination far more than endless exposition. The design work was also fantastic and I was compelled to play on - not to see what happened but to see the new creatures and new environments. This is exactly the sort of thing I want.

Another series I enjoyed, but totally different in tone, was Pikmin. Again it's the design of the creatures and the environments that made me want to continue playing. The animation and sound samples made me care more about the little characters than a load of cut scenes would have done.

Tell me about it!
I just bought Walking Dead as it has such high reviews and was game of the year etc, Its just like watching a cartoon version of the TV series etc now and then you click your mouse at something, its about the worst game ever.
Back to Skyrim I guess.

This is why you should always research something like this beyond just review scores :p


I'm assuming you're talking about the version made by Telltale Games. Well.... pretty much their whole thing is "adventure" games, which is what that genre falls into. It's a genre that's been around a very long time, and it started out as text adventures, such as the Zork games way back when. Something like Myst qualifies for this as well.

Most adventure games are very passive, and have little to no action, being more about puzzle solving, aesthetics, and story.

Telltale in particular.... well, their name kinda says it all, heh. Their games are FILLED with cutscenes and talking, and the puzzles are extremely simplistic. Every game I've seen from them is just like this one.

Though, also..... ALWAYS be wary of buying "licensed" games (games that use an already-existing property, often from TV/movies/anime), as it's exceedingly frequent that there's something off about them, or that they're just bad. Neither of which will always stop them from getting decent reviews, depending on the reviewer.

I dont know Freespace, but Knights of the Old Republic is mostly written (or at least the dialogues can as well be written and the babbling skipped). So its more an active part of the game, instead of that leaning back and waiting until that endless babbling is done. I choose an NPC, talk to him and get the information I want instead of being forced of watching for 10 minutes some movie of someone babbling. So its not disturbing the game, but simply about receiving information.

Depends on your point of view.

I cant stand conversation trees any more than I can basic cutscenes. They still pretty much ARE cutscenes.... the difference is that you hit a button every now and then. And the effect on the actual game that choices in this sort actually have is..... often not all that much.

Every time I run into this sort of thing, it's like "aaaarrrggghhhhh just give me a damn quest already". Many times I dont bother worrying too much about the stupid choices, and just smash buttons until they shut up. The storylines in most games are too awful for me to actually care about whatever is being said in any given combination.

As those sorts are usually RPGs though, I generally avoid them like the plague to begin with.

Heh... I don't play many games, but when I do it's usually for the story. Some of my favorites are Fallout (1,2, & New Vegas), the Arkham/Batman games, Red Dead Redemption, and The Walking Dead series--that game/story moved me to tears...

I would much rather consume a story via a game (where I can influence the ending) than by passively reading or watching.

Are the stories corny and contrived? Often, yes. But I don't care.

Maybe, it's because I grew up watching low-budget Sci-fi and reading old pulp stories, but I like corny and contrived...

Different strokes, I guess.


PS

I do like a good sandbox too. Right now I'm having a lot of fun playing Skyrim, but I haven't really paid attention to the main story or game-world lore...

I'm too busy building my character, Nanoc ( ), and trying to takeover the thieves guild.

I personally love story based games, and I don't think the good ones have terrible stories at all(and I used to read a lot of books). I enjoy cinematic cutscenes for the same reason I enjoy movies. I have enough patience that it doesn't matter to me how long it takes to get to the gameplay, as long as I'm entertained in the meantime. I enjoy a variety of genres, including genres like the visual novel, which is pretty much all story with some dialog choices along the way.

Story isn't always important to me though. It's important to me if it's important to the devs behind the game. With games that revolve heavily around the story, I'm far more likely to be critical of the story, and take note of any flaws it might have, whereas if the story isn't as important, I can let more slide. That said, some of my absolute favorite games are story based, like Persona 3 or Mass Effect(1-3).

I don't play games for an original and creative story like when I read a book or watch a movie, I play them to have fun and escape from boring reality. The fact that many of my favorite story-driven games are similar to my favorite books and movies just makes me feel like I'm entering a world where those kinds of things do exist. I never viewed them as "rip-offs" because video games are an entirely different animal from movies and books.

Maybe you're just playing the wrong games?