>RPG starts talking about its story
>start skip through dialogue as fast a possible
I'm so tired of rpgs wanting me to read or hear their moronic lore dumps. There is literally ZERO storytelling ability in videogames.
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
>RPG starts talking about its story
>start skip through dialogue as fast a possible
I'm so tired of rpgs wanting me to read or hear their moronic lore dumps. There is literally ZERO storytelling ability in videogames.
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
just mod the game dude
This is satire, right?
Nah OP is right. Old RPGs just had quirky dialogues that were fun to read and all the lore was in books are scrolls that lying around.
In modern games every damn npc is telling you boring shit in a wall of text, every cutscene is more like a documentary, etc.
Take games like FFXIV or Horizon Forbidden West. It's all boring blah, blah and over explaining the world and why something is happening.
FRICK MODERN RPGs and GAMES! AND FRICK MODERN STORY TELLING!
It doesn't help that the more cinematic approach and rise of voice acting moved everything to a crawl. You have to wait for everything to be over acted and over read. In most games that still have text boxes I end up reading the characters entire dialogues before they even finish their first sentence. Even if a non rpg just has subtitles. A lot of old games were very to the point and kept things to the important bits because it trusted the player to be able to fill in the gaps themselves. It created perhaps a more exaggerated kind of narrative but it moved at a better place where things just stood out more and felt more important in small doses.
Agreed. Why do RPGs always assume their world's history is interesting? 99/100 it's nothing more than fluff that is inconsequential, 1/100 is Morrowind where it's a rather annoying roadblock.
The only time I enjoyed reading game's story was when I was passing the Sage job change exam in Ragnarok Online Classic for the first time and my first ever Shadow Chaser job change in RO Renewal, all done with 0 guides.
>Lore dumps le good!
>Good storytelling le bad!
No wonder rpgs are garbage when the people that play them lap up any slop they're given.
>le good!
>le bad!
It's called worldbuilding. It helps players to get immersed in the game to feel like they know a lot about it, otherwise games can just appear as sprites and stat numbers
>It's called worldbuilding
It's called bullshit. "WORLDBUILDING" has just become a way for hack writers to sound deep when they can write about a history that doesn't matter but not an actual story. You know what really makes people feel immersed? A bit of mystery. Some wonder and awe at seeing things for the first time and not getting a wikipedia article shoved down your gullet because lore gays think writing 10 pages about any and all background element makes their game deep. There's a reason why the Jedi were cooler when we didn't know dick about them.
Obviously everything is bad if it's not done well.
Yes, and the more shit you throw out there, the less likely any of it will be done well. We're so busy learning the lore of some stupid background shit that we can't give that time to an actual character or the game becomes so bloated it's easy to lose track of everything that does matter.
100% right! I feel more immersed in games where I know nothing about the world besides the tiny things I can exerience for myself.
No. Text dumps are not worldbuilding.
Finding a burnt house with two skeletons close together and a piece of burned paper with "... the Red Eye found you. You ..." is world building.
Finding an ravaged caravan next to a sign warning about giant centipede attacks in the area, following the trail to find an abandoned bandit camp with tents covered in blood and a few high-quality locked chests is worldbuilding.
Finding a book talking about the history of the abandoned fort, following its directions and getting to the place to witness it firsthand is worldbuilding.
Worldbuilding is always a COMBINATION of Lore and Environmental Storytelling. What we get instead is fluff - useless information disconnected from the immediate surroundings, an illusion of depth in a shallow world.
Info dumps can have world-building in them, but it's a bad way of world-building.
You described why FFXIV has horrible worldbuilding and story.
Examples? Didn't play that MMO, I wanna see what you mean.
So you don´t like RPGs then? RPGs are about the narrative experience to the point gameplay and graphics have always been secondary. You can literally play an RPG with a fricking sheet of paper and some dice...
You can have an engaging narrative without story anon.
>Narrative (n): a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.
Anon what the frick are you talking about
There are games where the story happens through the players actions instead being written by some writer.
What the writer (and artists) provides is a background setting or theme for the player to make their own story in.
longing for the days when morons didn't feel like they were entitled to play video games
or at the very least didn't need to announce how moronic they were
good times
Oh, the irony.
seriously
>come to board for storygames
>complain about story in games
>1st RPGs of the late 80s and early 90s
>Straight to gameplay adventuring and exploring
>Dialogue is brief but valuable for progression
>Late 90s and early 2000s
>Lack of gameplay. Point n clicks with even less player input
>Dialogue is just verbal diahreea. Nothing of importance told
Millennials really think all text and no gameplay means a good rpg
what's a good rpg in your opinion then? im really interested in old games before everything was fake and gay
Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 did it right. Heck, every old RPG has just gameplay right from the start.
The ones that handle the optional text good? Arcanum. Books are optional but contain valuable information about the lore and quests, you can also buy newspapers that keep the text to one screen. Also, everything is very readable, with nice black font on white background.
*also you can ask sellers in Tarant to read headlines for you if you don't want the whole newspaper.
If you need loredumps to tell the lore of your world then the lore of your world is not interesting. Just have that shit in the background, inviting the player to delve deeper should they feel enticed.
Souls games have the best RPG storytelling.
>muh zanzibart
Unironically yes. Zanzibart is kino.
>Zanzibart is kino.
Only if Zanzibart exists in a design document somewhere and not just on a basedfaced youtuber lore video.
A roguelike then, huh? No bullshit, just you, the dungeon and the epic treasure at the end. The story is told through your own deeds of heroism.
God bushes are so nice. Why do we have to live in a time where they're deemed unfashionable
A bush but shaved around the vag is the best of both worlds.
best post
looks worse IMHO
Thank god for that, clean skin will always be better
It really did become a serious problem where so many games will pride themselves on WORLD BUILDING rather than story telling.
>Let me tell you entire encyclopedias worth of information about the Erebonian empire.
>Actual story though takes 4 games where less meaningful shit happens and has less main character development than most games can put out in 1.
I'll never understand why people force themselves to play games they don't like
>those thighs and asses
>bellies
I'm confused here. Are they fit or are they not?
Frazetta really knew what his ideal woman looked like. There's something very 70s about that depiction of the female form.
Borris Vallejo used to use his body builder and fellow painter wife Julie Bell as a model. I'm not saying that to be dismissive of Frazetta or anything. I just couldn't think of a segue to bring it up.
I appreciate the anecdote.
I only know Boris by name and not his work. I'm bad with putting painters' names to their work. I should start by studying up on him.
>he did the Aqua Teen movie poster
No wonder I've always loved that piece.
Oh yeah he did a lot of shit, from film art, to movie posters to even working on X-men cards.
Vallejo was shit, Frazetta was an artist's artist. You'll notice that all of Vallejo's art looks like he got his wife or one of his body builder buddies to do goofy poses for him that he then polishes the shit out of. Frazetta's figures actually look like they're doing something and don't date themselves with trendy haircuts or nonsensical poses and he doesn't overpolish, he details the parts that need to be detailed and leaves the rest evocative of a mood so it's not overstimulating to look at
This, a lot of those old artists were borderline tracing their art with shit composition
In addition to their voluptuous bodies, their faces are neotone, thus combining both sexual maturity and youth, i.e. the physical embodiment of a high likelihood of giving birth to healthy children.
Venus figure is a thing
That's what you get for playing moviegaymes instead of true RPGs which is all about making your own stories.
if a game has a story about an ancient evil awakening after being dormant thousands of years, or has a chosen one propechy (you), or involves a "resistance" I immediately consider it low effort generic shit
>cutscene cannot be skipped
It's all about pacing and how the story is presented. Biggest problem with some JRPGs is the huge cutscenes or massive amounts of dialogue breaking up gameplay, compared to something like Morrowind where you get a short blurb and intro and then are let loose to engage with the narrative as much as or as little as you want whenever you want to, or Bioware games that have lots of dialogue but also player dialogue and choices so you're always engaged. Persona 5 for instance I lost count of how many times I set down my controller and it shut itself off from inactivity while I had dialogue running on auto. I don't mind heavy dialogue or story but I do mind when it's done in such a way that there is zero engagement in part of the player for sometimes upwards of over half an hour.
I can't even force myself to start playing Cold Steel 3 because of how redundant and poorly paced and just how slow the opening segment is. I don't care about this en medias res bullshit they tried already with 1 and Zero. I don't care about going through The Old School House 2 Apple Edition. I hate how you can't do or say anything without the conversation being excruciatingly repetitive and I'll be honest I even get a bit pissed off when you enter a new area and the camera has to sweep and pan across everything like 4 times before just getting you in and letting you do shit. It's just so dull. And I'm frankly exhausted with the whole damn franchise at this point. Like I don't mind a slow burn, I can abide an amount of world building but there is just NOTHING to latch onto and the game is more content to just have you do fluff bits while everyone just talks coy or makes you go through shit I've already done.
I love Legend of Heroes. I enjoy how long it is because I have no life and devour games, and its nice to have games that I can't keep up with and take me weeks to complete even playing a ridiculous amount of hours a day.
I am wrapping up Azure, played all the other games except for Kuro. Got Kuro ready to go with English patch but I wish it ran above 60 fps : /
But yeah I skip half the dialogue, they are always talking about nothing or stating the obvious, not sure if something is lost in translation or japs are witless monkeys and really talk this way
As did his wife.
What amount of exposition o storytelling is bad though? Are zoomers unable to read 2 minutes without spacing out?
There's not really a magic percentage that works every time but there still is a common issue where so many poor writers mistake world building, depth and lore as substitutes for an actual story. You can have volumes and volumes in your series bible but if your actual narrative doesn't have legs then it's all for nothing. It's easy to put a book in a towns library that explains their history in extreme detail but if none of that has any real meaning on what we're actually seeing it's just pointless and can often be used as a way to camouflage your lack of a meaningful story.
Unironically yes. Tiktok and facebook stories have limited their attention span to a 1 minutes slice of information.
Sometimes at work I'll hear my coworkers on their phones in the breakroom. I don't normally mind noise if someone's doing something but I swear it's like just a nonstop cacophony of random clips with zero rhyme or reason.
>Are zoomers unable to read 2 minutes without spacing out?
They're not even able to formulate original thoughts, 99% of zoomers are clones throwing Black folkpeak at each other and skull emojis.
Sounds like a you problem. Stay mad homosexual deadass fr fr ong.
No. And Millenials are not much better.
Any amount of pure exposition (the way most RPGS handle it where they just have a narrated cutscene) is honestly just bad. Its not hard to slide exposition into scenes that have engaging plot threads the audience can follow.
All the best selling RPGs are light on story, and that ought to tell something to all the failed fantasy writers who keep insisting actually being an annoyed railroady crpg is better than to be like Skyrim
I wouldn't say they're light but I feel like plots generally used to either be more straight forward or more focused.
Anon two days later: "How was I meant to know Maximillion Fightmaster, The Royal Knight of the King's Handpicked Guard would have a huge stat debuff if you cast spider swarm on him?"
>Meanwhile, in the infodump, there's a note that says Sir Fightmaster is very meticulous about cobwebs in his quarters.
Actually based players like me read through everything but overpower Maximillion by use of pause, cheese items and spell abuse, door tricks and lots of reloads.
I just kill him using my two handed axe and cheesing it with potions.
Who the frick needs to read for that shit?
>I'm so tired of rpgs wanting me to read
Biodrone-Status: Groomed
Why are you defending shitty writing and poor storytelling, rpgshitters honestly don't deserve good games.
What is "good" writing, Anon?
Provide examples.
Genshin Impact.
Video game writers are bad, it's that simple. It's not a drawback of the genre, but rather the market and professional interest. Anybody who knows what they're doing is either writing books or writing for TV and screenplays. It's far more lucrative and there are more talented professionals to collaborate with.
On top of that, the videogame playerbase is full of people who wouldn't know good writing if it smacked them in the fricking face. They haven't read a real book since 3rd grade. The only form of entertainment they know is video games and maybe D&D, so the entire medium is filled with tons of morons with no exposure to quality writing. They blindly demand that you must like their three-page exposition dumps in CRPGs, or the endless waffling and meandering and repetition in JRPG writing, and that if you don't like these things you must just have a low attention span or some other nonsense. These idiots have zero experience with good writing and don't understand how expository information is properly delivered, how to manage pacing and retain peoples' attention, how to make the dialogue actually worth paying attention to. Some video games actually have interesting story beats in their plots or interesting worlds, but they are presented in atrocious, talentless ways. And people will play those games and like those story beats and worlds and think that this automatically means that the writing and dialogue must be good, when in reality they are only good in spite of the bad writing, not because of good writing, and could be so much better.
99% of the shit you read/hear in video games wouldn't make it to the 2nd page on an editor's desk. The professional scene is completely insular too, there is almost zero crossover with talented authors from other fields. Video game writers only write for video games. So the entire medium is full of hacks clapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves because they work in a vacuum.
did you waste 30 mins writing this garbage? litterally can say anything is shit and give zero reasoning, it doesnt matter
>Anybody who knows what they're doing is either writing books or writing for TV and screenplays.
Anyone using TV shows or movies as some sort of high bar for storytelling should look at the shit that's been peddled to the public. Not a single one that's come out in the last 15 years has been worth my time or anyone else's.
>Video game writers only write for video games
That's not completely true. Some video game writers do write books and even have their own series. Now quality is another tropic entirely, but to say that no video game writer has ever written a book in his life is disingenuous.
You yourself just wrote a pointless boring essay about nothing with this post.
Why are the pseuds who complain about writing in video games always so hypocritical?
amazing brainlets are actually finding issue with these statements
>Anybody who knows what they're doing
>writing for TV and screenplays.
I dispute this.
The core of your idea is correct, but
>writing for TV and screenplays
is a field filled with nepotism to the brim. In some ways, it's worse than games.
Factually wrong though
Video game writers are often writers before working on vidya. Blizzard brought in Christie Golden to work on Warcraft novels and then eventually backstory for expansions with the main tracks appearing in her novels. This became a problem because the expansion stories stopped making sense to the average player because so much of the motivation for major character actions were not even depicted in the game.
So they brought in a book author to write. . . books. Writing a video game book doesn't make you a video game writer. And you admitted yourself that WoW's writing is terrible so I don't know why you'd even want to bring that up as a counter argument. If anything, WoW is a perfect example of everything he talked about in his post. The writing team at Blizzard is incompetent and completely failed to present any compelling narratives or character arcs in-game, and this failure was consistent across multiple expansions. The only halfway decent writing in the Warcraft universe is done by outside authors writing books.
>So they brought in a book author to write. . . books
They based the expansion plots on her books
It's why so much shit got retconned or how missions from WC3 no longer make sense because both sides were working for the Jailor
Very true.
TV shows have a fixed run time so they can't have long info dumps without having to sacrifice the plot. Books have a cost per page so there's an incentive to cut out the pointless text. Video games have neither of these restrictions and thus often have long info dumps that benefit no one.
That's the dumbest fricking shit I've ever heard in my life.
Why are you on a RPG board? Don't you have some victory royales to win on Fortnite?
problem is that most people who write rpgs can't write or design games.
It's much better to just throw the player into the game and let them discover the deep lore themselves. Its way more natural and rewards playing.
Pseuds will sneer at you but they don't know how to make engaging games. Read all the replies itt they are VN homosexuals.
RPGs are visual novels.
>obvious bait post
>over 57 replies
and people wonder why this board is so slow..
What's bait about pointing out the poor excuses for narratives and stories rpg's tend to have?
>There is literally ZERO storytelling ability in videogames.
Steve Jobs said that once, and look what happened to him. He's dead. Do you want to die today motherfricker?
Big fricking agree. If your game takes longer than 20 mins to get into real combat I will drop your game.
>developers want to tell their AMAZING story
>can't figure out a way to integrate into gameplay
>frick it, just push "A"
is this what happens when netflix rejects infest the gaming industry?
>reading bad
it's funny how zoomers are the only generation in the past 50 years to quite literally experience a drop in literacy rates, the average american reads at something like a third grade level when in sixth grade
it's cursed.
The average moron this day thinks anything belong a tweet in length deserves a TL;DR.
OP wasn't criticisng text in vidya, what's cancer is the innecessary exposition to the player. Good narrative is all about showing, not telling.
Not to mention an awful redundancy in dialogue.
It's funny because people read a lot these days. It just so happens it's all pointless social media drivel.
>I'm so tired of rpgs wanting me to read or hear their moronic lore dumps.
Man. Cyberpunk made me feel sad about all the monkeys with the typewriters that they hired to write all that "flavor text" for ingame books, knowing noone in their right mind would ever try to read it. I get it, fleshing the world out with optional text is good, but like everything else it got way out of hand. First, they are not interesting at all, and the world is understandable enough without them. It is fricking "genre: the setting", i know the "everything is fricked & corps bad" drill, don't need elaboration on every little detail.
But reading several A4 pages of angular white font on black background with red interface on a monitor, or even worse, on TV, is a recipe for visual impairment. Seriously, are devs nowadays even think of it? Are they, not even only CDPR, even playing their own games?
This became a greater problem with advent of full VA as you no longer organic means to show this info to the player.
Can't think of a single game of any genre that tells a good story. Especially RPGs are a complete disaster.
I screenshot this. thx based anon.
Here a real pepe for you
I can understand if a game is doing an absolute info-dump on you at a certain point in the game that could have been spread out during the game in books, NPCs or short cutscenes. I don't want to sit for 30+ minutes reading about why he's bad or about the world. I want to find that info through other means and put pieces together.
>Show, don't tell" means "use pictures, because words are hard :("
>character walks into town
>nothing much is going on
>you spot a couple army guys walking around
>npc walks up to you and talks to you for 20 minutes telling you why those army guys are douche bags
>this is how anon prefers things
>npc walks up to you and talks to you for 20 minutes telling you why those army guys are douche bags
>this is how anon prefers things
>anon then goes to post on Ganker.org about how heckin deep POE is
>anon can't understand why he is no longer welcome here
"Show don't tell" means to let the person experiencing the story to see examples/proof of something happening directly, rather than being told about it by a 3rd party.
This criticism is used often in written books as well, so your assumption that 'show=pictures' is proof of your misconceptions.
You know what "show, don't tell" means, but I don't think you know what green text is. Or dripping sarcasm.
Are you just pretending that you were being sarcastic because you were wrong?
If the post was in reply to someone implying that 'show=pictures' then it would be obvious sarcasm. Instead it's in reply to one that is correct about the definition, though ironically being as long winded about it as the rpgs they are criticising.
>Watch a movie
>Get mad when there's visuals instead of just giving me something to read
Maybe roleplaying isnt for you
ok, not sure why you feel like you need to share this but I hope you have fun anon
I'm glad this thread has revealed the tasteless morons of /vrpg/.
>revealed
Since the very start half of the board are morons who play (A)D&D based video games for the combat.
The problem is really that a lot of videogames and writers let you read instead of showing. Proper worldbuilding and story makes the player interested, curious and wanting for more. Nothing is more shitty than badly designed and generic maps with npcs that talk for 20 fricking minutes debriefing you on the story.
What's more is you can very often run into the problem of making players aware of a more interesting story that they're not playing.
>Playing game
>Having fun
>Cutscene starts
>SKIP.
>Keep playing
So, does anyone have a Mega folder link for Frazetta's art?
Used to have a site bookmarked with all his stuff.
I agree and think that environmental storytelling works wonders when it comes to 'show don't tell' without any unnecessary exposition or dialogue. For example, going through a devastated village that's been raided and pillaged, with piles of corpses and burnt out buildings basically tell you all you need to know that happened. You could potentially ask the few survivors for more info but that would be optional and isn't forced on the player. Also the fact that all the men were slaughtered and all the women and children were taken clues you in as to the reason of the raid and if you later happen to find another town with chained up women and children you would realize they were likely taken from the destroyed village without even being told explicitly.