This is a proper unpopular opinion.
I love stories with my games, but I'm often too in need of something relatively mindless to enjoy them.
I can't imagine not liking them at all though
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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95% of video game stories are a waste of my damn time. Even most story-heavy games have pretty shit stories.
Let. Me. Play. The. Game.
I'm pretty satisfied playing a few games a lot rather than many games briefly/once. So it's more like the games that I gravitate towards tend to be low story, or have enough gameplay that I can play it after the cutscene slog is over
I partially agree with you. Sometimes a story adds to the gameplay, if it's an interesting one. But sometimes I'm not in the mood, and just want to blow shit up.
I like ambient story, background story, lore that is present but only if you seek it out. Dark Souls has the perfect approach to storytelling in games imho. You can ignore it completely and just BONK but if you are really into it, you can actually hear what the NPCs have to say, you can read the item descriptions that tell about the world, you can look around and see clues that tell the story. and every cutscene is skipable! you get a vibe for a world filled with madness, despair, repetition, cruelty, and mortality, but you don't have to sit there reading some hackneyed japanese translation presenting every convoluted plot point crammed into an awkward dialog
The Souls series, subnautica, and Hitman all do this well. Minimal story, skippable cut scenes, and fantastic gameplay and environments.
In all of them you can dig deeper if you want, but it's almost always optional.
There have been very few games where the story is what grabs me, I want fun and engaging gameplay and character development (stats, perks, weapons, etc).
The one exception is Mass Effect, but that game just has everything.
Mass Effect was an excellent series.
Here’s hoping the new one carries the torch
Haven't played the others, but Subnautica is a perfect example. It caused me to really want to explore further.
I don't like being spoonfed a story through endless exposition pieces of dialogue and reading - I much prefer the Subnautica approach where it is experienced rather than told.
Down voted because I feel you, buddy. A lotta video game stories feel trite and slapdash, I'd rather have interesting mechanics and interactions than a plot, most of the time.
Just kidding, my instance doesn't do down votes.
I think a lot of games borrow too much from movies, instead of trying to tell a story in a way that's suitable to a game.
right. recently an article was posted on lemmy about how Nobuo Uematsu thinks game music has been getting worse due to it becoming too cinematic. I think that's relevant here too
I can understand where you're coming from but the 'background story' stuff never really works for me because you're only getting the parts of the story that you find, remember, and put in their context.
Dead Cells is a good example here - great game, story that's hard to comprehend because it's locked behind so many expansions, difficulty levels, and randomly generated rooms, plus it makes tons of references to other games, meaning if I don't get the reference I might think it's relevant to the plot.
On the other extreme is games that force the story on you, be it unskippable cutscenes, moments during those where suddenly you need to hit a button, or playable memories, all are unsatisfying ways to make the player stop what they were doing and follow a script.
I loved the PS5 Spiderman game and like many disliked the Mary Jane levels. But my reasoning was that my girlfriend is telling me about her day and I AM FAILING.
That makes no sense, I can't fail at her memory. It's just an obstacle that keeps me from getting back to the game.
I love story in games.
But it has to be done right.
because you're only getting the parts of the story that you find, remember, and put in their context.
this works for me. maybe it's ADHD. movies and tv shows are the same way. the ones I like, I watch over and over again, but never with my full attention. (usually watching while bonking something in a game). it's fun that way! you get to experience it like new over and over. you'd be surprised at how many times I re-watched the Big Lebowski only to discover some completely new detail each time
I'm sure it works great for a large subset of gamers. And I don't hate those games at all, but the story isn't as accessible to me. That's alright, I don't mind spoiling myself.
I don't like people with a soul
you'll love final fantasy 8 then, those dialogs are terribly soulless!
"NO! I won't have anyone talk about me in the past tense!!!"
I don't dislike games with story, but if it's a bunch of character portraits with bland dialogues you can bet I'm skipping through them to get to the gameplay.
I like the amount of story that came with the original Doom in 1992. That’s because I grew up with the amount of story that came with (for example) Archon on the Atari 800.
What flavor do you like? Strawberry?
feet
I skipped all the dialog of a recent Assassin’s Creed. Stop wasting my time.
Doom.
There's a reason I've come back to it year after year for nearly thirty years.
I've thoroughly enjoyed - and even been moved by - games like Broken Sword, Life is Strange, Mass Effect, Fade to Black, ...Edith Finch, G-Police, Portal 2 etc... but Doom ~~is Eternal~~ is just pure pick up and blast gameplay. I love it.
I somewhat agree. Most games that focus on the story end up feeling less like a game and more like a choose your own adventure novel. My agency is little more than choosing between 2 or 3 options. If there is any actual gameplay in there, it's very samey and gets boring super fast. On top of that, the writing for a vast majority is just awful. And I don't just mean these days; even the shit I used to like is hard to go back to because it was also fucking terrible.
I prefer games that focus on the action and player agency. I don't want to follow along in a pre-written story; I want to create my own through my adventure. TOTK is a good example. The story isn't about Link. Like, at all. All the story bits you get as rewards for things are entirely focused on Zelda and other NPCs, so you basically get two stories in one; the cutscenes and the story you make through your travels across Hyrule. It's not the best story (though it's pretty good for a Zelda game), but that's okay because that's not what makes it great; what makes it great is all the stuff you can actually do.
There are exceptions, though. I enjoy a good mystery game and, like, almost all of those are just interactive novels. They just also tend to be better wtitten. Sometimes... Sometimes you get shit like Danganronpa which isn't well written, but it's also so batshit insane that it's still fun.
Of course my favorite types of games right now are a strange hybrid of both. I fucking love Fromsoft's Souls games et al. You can very easily just play and not even know the story, or you can dive into the deep end and piece the story together yourself from all the little crumbs left in vague dialogue, how the world is laid out, and through reading the item descriptions. These games are deep enough in the visuals that you can actually use real archeology techniques to piece together clues about the world that are not implicitly told to the player (and that's even what Tarnished Archeologist on YouTube does).
That's fair - sometimes you just want to pick up a controller and beat up baddies without the baggage of a whole story.
What grinds my gears is the reliance on loading screens, in-game books, displays, item descriptions, etc. to deliver story elements. It's one thing to use them to deliver extra flair, I.e. Skyrim's Lusty Argonian Maids, but if I'm having to read pages of text just to know what's going on in the game, then that's plain bad story-telling.
I respectfully disagree! I'm all about that kind of storytelling. I'm not about to go to bat for Skyrim though. The maid stuff felt like fluff, not what I personally prefer
Check out Outer Wilds. There's only a loose story. Don't spoil it for yourself.
Neh, I hear you. On top of that….I don't like videogames having endbosses that talk continiously about how great they are and what future plans they have once they defeated your insignificant person….on repeat too if the fight takes too long.
I'm with you my friend.
Personally I can't even relate when I hear people talking about how a game made them cry or how it changed their life.
Writing in games is largely trash. Vapid and expositional, cliche-driven pablum.
Even The Witcher isn't good.
Honestly, I agree for the most part. I used to love story based games but over time I grew to care less and less about the stories because they were usually poorly done and just wanted meaningful game play. It's why I love games like factorio so damn much. I used to play WoW a ton, but it was more because I loved min maxing characters and running through content with my friends.