what's this got to do with video game narratives? most people complain about them because by and large they are terrible and done inefficiently. who are these dense neckbeards that would prefer portal to share the structure and style of a mario game?
Those would be the people who say more linear, narrative-focused games are, by definition, not "real games." "Real games" don't bother you with a bunch of story! If I wanted a story, I'd go read a book! No,
real games give you an objective and a set of fun mechanics and then they get the fuck out of the way so you can kick ass and have fun!
And those people are
everywhere. Just look around NeoGAF for a while.
The lamentable lack of quality in almost all game stories is a separate issue and very true, but I don't think that's why the people I'm talking about object to them.
Personally, my beef has traditionally been more about execution. I'm generally gameplay>story, BUT it's really not that black and white. It's more the idea of using it primarily as a story telling medium can be misguided, moreso when you don't try to even do anything interesting for story interactivity or blurring the lines, and worse yet try to fit within a traditional design mindset only to bog yourself down with bad gameplay or even just frustrating people who want to see how it continues or ends through gameplay choke points (Xenoblade was kind of frustrating there). On the flipside, some of my favorite games have been gameplay centric ones... with a bit of VERY engaging story material sprinkled in. Vagrant Story is close to that, though it's more on the story focused spectrum, but the same goes for SMT: Nocturne and Dark Souls. SMT:N has a strange, unreal world and a fascinating tale about shaping the new world, whereas Dark Souls isn't just dropping you in some generic fantasy land, it has a dark foreboding atmosphere reinforced by what story tidbits you gleam from NPCs or items/equipment you pick up. Hell, Dark Souls is one of the cases where I most wanted to discover more about the world, and a lot of it is left to your imagination, especially the ramifications of your choice at the end.
I mostly agree with you here, especially on the execution issue, but the bolded I sort of disagree with. The idea that what we think of "gameplay" (uninterrupted by non-interactive cutscenes) as "the point" of video games, and the idea that any game that emphasizes story over what we think of as gameplay is wrong to do so, those ideas I don't agree with. Look at visual novels. Whether or not you personally like the genre (I'm not crazy about them), these are games in which a comparatively limited degree of interactivity adds something to the experience for the players. The experience of a visual novel is different from just reading a book or watching a movie, and even though visual novels usually don't have a lot of what we would call "gameplay," people enjoy them. That's okay.
As I've said many times before on GAF, if any measure of interactivity changes the experience, that's noteworthy and should be explored. I think gameplay (or interactivity) in the service of story-telling is perfectly fine for some games, too. I don't want all games to be visual novel experiences, but I'm okay with the idea that people value that game genre/design and that they'll keep getting games like that. But there are a lot of narrow-minded people who vehemently disagree that such radically experimental or different genres can result in worthwhile, "real" games, and I do think those people (who would have gaming be basically what it is now forever but with stronger hardware) are in the majority. I think a lot of them are developers, too, and that's troubling.
I do, however, feel the notion a game MUST have story in it as a serious focus is completely and horrifically misguided. Let's contrast Sonic Team efforts with Super Mario Galaxy. Sonic 2006 is an outright abomination by most accounts, trying for some sort of FF-style story in what should've remained a light hearted fun platformer series, and even later games that don't trip as badly still have more than they probably should, and similarly NiGHTS Wii is wrecked half because of a ton of awful and unskippable cutscenes staring creepy doll children, so if you're having trouble with a part of the game and want to put it down, hey, you have to watch that again! Nevermind people who just want to PLAY A GAME having to put up with the stupid drama unfolding. Meanwhile Super Mario Galaxy, while still having more than Miyamoto would apparently prefer, keeps a small, endearing story to the side that you can pursue at your leisure, or ignore entirely for the main game. The former is the purest representation of WHY some of us are so cynical about story telling in games, and the latter shows how to smartly add a bit to a gameplay focused title.
Agreed, totally. Not all games need stories. I mean, games never used to have much story, and we loved those, so that should be obvious! But so many games these days force them to the detriment of the actual games, and that's a shame. And unskippable (and unpauseable, I'll add) cutscenes are unacceptable, and your story doesn't
have to necessarily dominate or even impact the gameplay itself.
Then there's games that aren't AWFUL, but may've focused on story at the expense of gameplay. Final Fantasy XIII's story doesn't really allow anything BUT forwards momentum with no looking back, yet it doesn't really make for the best RPG so maybe it should've been saved for some sort of action RPG spin off or something, and Zelda seems to have become increasingly linear the more story and event focused it becomes, yet for the increased focus on telling a story they really aren't getting significantly better or more interesting than Link's Awakening or Majora's Mask, usually I'd rather they stopped throwing that bone to the cinematic JRPG fans and focus that kind of effort on NPC sidequests instead while loosening up the main game more and tying progress in that more to items again.
Obviously opinions will different on specific games and specific design choices. I'm okay with the idea of linear JRPGs (I'm okay with basically any type of game existing, even if it won't appeal to the mass market), but I don't play JRPGs for extreme linearity, and if the story isn't phenomenal (or only "get good" 30+ hours in), why would I want to play it at all? As for Zelda, I have my own complaints about the modern games, and I'm very disappointed in how the series seems to be stuck in the shadow of OoT, but that's another discussion. I haven't played Skyward Sword yet, though.
