RPGs have shitty stories because they don't use themes. It's really basic storytelling but the only games to actually deliver on it were VtMB and Planescape: Torment.
VtMB:
>the struggle of vampires to maintain their humanity
Planescape Torment:
>Whether regret is enough to change a person
Every quest and character in these games has something to say about their central theme. No other games do this, and this makes their stories feel hollow and disconnected, because different characters and questlines will just sort of happen at the same time without anything to unify them besides the presence of the protagonist, who has no real personality. Even Disco Elysium falls prey to this in areas unrelated to Harry's backstory, a lot of the threads don't connect strongly enough to the theme of dissociation and identification with worldviews. Harry is the only one who changes in that story, which makes it feel contrived.
A story can have more than one theme
Not a good story. Read Aristotle's Poetics. A good story wraps every element back around a central concept or lesson
These games let you pull the story towards one or the other direction in this tension. The nameless one can be a jerk who refuses to change, or repent and change his ways and those of his friends. The vampire can sink deeper into being a monster in search of freedom, or allow himself to be trapped in the shell of his humanity
moron
It's a mod I think. Not my screenshot.
Most RPGs with choice do the same thing but along a good/evil axis, rather than a real theme, undercutting any real sense of role playing in the narrative. You don't need a lot of options, just options that get at a real question.
It's a screenshot from an earlier build.
>These games let you pull the story towards one or the other direction
Doesn't refute the point you replied to, though.
That's an unnecessary standard when most don't even let you shape the narrative through characterisation, role-playing itself. It would be better to achieve that with bad storytelling than to not have it at all with good storytelling, since that would just be a visual novel / adventure game.
moron
Examples, before people ride my ass:
>Dhakon regrets dooming his people and uses devotion to his philosopher master to avoid confronting his weakness
>Fall-From-Grace regrets being a succubus and avoids confronting that part of her by remaining chaste and devoting herself to the pursuit of knowledge
>Morte regrets betraying the nameless one and sticks around him looking for an opportunity to atone
>Therese/Jeanette Voreman uses her multiple personalities to prevent herself from falling into animal savagery due to the trauma she's suffered
>Prince LaCroix plays at his social climbing to make himself feel more like a person and less like monster (until the end of the game)
>the Nosferatu cling to the images of who they used to be and stay in suspended animation to avoid admitting they're monstrous
>the quay-jin don't even attempt to remain human, which is why they end up being so dangerous to the masquerade and have to be exterminated by the player
All of the choices the player can make in these games move these characters towards one end of this tension or the other, while cumulatively moving the PC towards one end or the other.
Use spoiler tags ffs
It's a 20+ year old game anon
self flagellation is a sickness suffered only by dogs
The one time OP is not a homosexual and actually has a great point. Deus Ex has some great storytelling of this short, with everyone involved in it gravitating and circling around Denton for their own power hungry agendas and goals. I cannot provide you with paradigms of every individual involved at the moment, but i wanted to give you, a (you) of appreciation for a great thread, for once!
I never got this scene of her by the pool, or recognize that location at all. Where is it? Also good advice, I'll take it to heart on something I'm working on.
>Where is it
Pretty sure that's Vesuvius private 'dance' area. Player can be nagged by VV there.
>nagged by VV
Looks like someone fricked up both the chastity and the hatter quests simultaneously
Nah, VV is just a naggin pseudo intellectual harlot, Strauss knows it best.
>pseudo intellectual
When does she ever pretend to be more intelligent than she is?
Arcanum.
Never got past the jank to play that one through. I could believe it also does this, it's the same devs.
It's one of the better jankfests out there due to combat being pretty easy. Worth playing at least for the narrative, every piece of information you get ranging from half-truth to complete bullshit is kino.
Is your complaint more about side quests?
No, most main stories in RPGs don't tie story beats to themes either. They're normally built around setpieces or character-based narrative arcs without larger implications. But the lack of thematic ties between the main quest and the sidequests IS the worst part.
do you have an example of a game where the main story doesn't have a connected theme?
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. Each mythic path consists mostly of hitting a series of tropes, rather than exploring a specific dilemma, much less one which is shared with the companions, much much less one shared with the side quests. Baldur's Gate, similarly, fails to do this. It tries a little with the "I'm becoming a monster" child of Bahl stuff in 2, but that doesn't inflect much on companions or sidequests. Pillars of Eternity is a great example. A lot of that reason the story feels so flat is that it is as self-important as Planescape but doesn't tie it all together.
It's true that this level of self consistency would frick up a simulation oriented RPG like Elder Scrolls, and it doesn't bother me at all that these sorts of games don't have strong narratives. But basically, if the game is going to make me sit through content in a "main story" without letting me wander off, then it needs thematic consistency to make it interesting.
Pillars of Eternity is a bad example. Every companion quest and main quest has the same themes tying them together.
What theme? It seemed scattershot to me. Durance, Kana, and Eder were vaguely about how past history lives on in its consequences, but aloth and the bird lady at least were barking up very different trees. And the quests were all over the place, where they had narrative implications at all. The factions in the city seemed to represent lawful/hierarchical, chaotic/populist, and evil/oligarchic. The mad king of caed nua was a "stare not into the abyss" thing.
There's 100+ hours of content for one WOTR playthrough, I feel like it would get boring if all of it was based around one theme. Not every character and sidequest in Bloodlines revolves around the retention of humanity in vampires either. There are parts that do lean on that theme heavily like the end of the movie script quest, but then there's also stuff like killing a giant shark demon in a warehouse with a Japanese schoolgirl.
To expand, if I were making a game as open-ended as Pathfinder Wotr, I wouldn't even give it a main story. You'd be dumped in and open world over world map with whatever backstory motivation you make up, and each mythic path level would be a quest you do at the end of a zone which unlocks the next area closer to the hellmouth. Rather than the mythic paths being routes that change the way the main story plays out, they'd be distinct questlines you follow to progress the game, with sidequests scattered around the map and findable through open ended exploration.
If I HAD to preserve the "commanding the crusade" format, I'd cut down the number of mythic paths to ensure they all reflected on a central theme which every companion and quest related to, probably something about the dwarf guy being spiteful to the allies that judged him harshly for betraying that city, something about whether to forgive people who won't forgive you. The whole stalemate the crusaders and demons were in would be a result of the crusaders inability to understand that lesson, it would reflected in the planar cosmology of the conflict, etc
>the struggle of vampires to maintain their humanity
that's the main theme of the board game but VTM and Bloodlines have several other themes which you might have missed while prepading your pseud rambling
Describe them or shut the frick up, midwit
>Masquerade
>The eternal struggle (Jyhad)
>Sins of the fathers
>Conspiracy
>Apocalypse
>masquerade
"To blend in with humans, we have to hide that we are monsters by acting like humans"
>the eternal struggle
Where does that come up in the story? All the conflicts you participate in are short-term and recent. Anarchs vs Camarilla, vampires vs quayjin, Camarilla vs Sabbat
>sins of the fathers
Where does that come up? LaCroix isn't going to kill you in the intro because you're guilty, but because making new vampires risks breaking the masquerade
>conspiracy
That's not a theme, it's an aesthetic that comes through in one quest, with the reporter. But the question is "do you let the sorceress in the abandoned hospital eat the reporter", which is a humanity question
>apocalypse
Thats an aesthetic or narrative device, not a theme. It's used to heighten the tension by making the vampire characters feel as though it might be time to let loose and break the masquerade to win the coming conflict, but it isn't what the story is about. What would that even mean? What lesson do you draw from the depiction of apocalypse in VtMB?
>Where does that come up in the story? All the conflicts you participate in are short-term and recent. Anarchs vs Camarilla, vampires vs quayjin, Camarilla vs Sabbat
All of those conflicts have been going on for centuries and I'd barely count it as a theme seperate from "retaining your humanity as a monster", since the factions more or less represent different degrees to which you're supposed to be guided by your humanity or your inner beast.
>"To blend in with humans, we have to hide that we are monsters by acting like humans"
Scratched only the surface, they are rules of self preservation. Being part of the Camarilla means honoring the traditions, which ties to the theme of vampire society in a modern day setting. This has nothing to do with the struggle against the inner self which you describe.
>>the eternal struggle
>Where does that come up in the story? All the conflicts you participate in are short-term and recent. Anarchs vs Camarilla, vampires vs quayjin, Camarilla vs Sabbat.
Lmao, the Camarilla and the Sabbat have been fighting since the fricking middle ages, and the camarilla is only a recent addition to the LA night file, replay the game and actually pay attention.
>>sins of the fathers
>Where does that come up? LaCroix isn't going to kill you in the intro because you're guilty, but because making new vampires risks breaking the masquerade
Every vampire is caine's spawn and is in turn bound to him, same with the antes and your sire, whose crime was creating you and your penance is being the Prince's b***h for the entire game.
>That's not a theme, it's an aesthetic that comes through in one quest, with the reporter. But the question is "do you let the sorceress in the abandoned hospital eat the reporter", which is a humanity question
LMFAO. There are countless conspiracy themes in the game. What is inside the sarcophagus? Who killed Grout? Who is the Cab driver? Who sends the chess emails to your computer? etc
>Thats an aesthetic or narrative device, not a theme. It's used to heighten the tension by making the vampire characters feel as though it might be time to let loose and break the masquerade to win the coming conflict, but it isn't what the story is about. What would that even mean? What lesson do you draw from the depiction of apocalypse in VtMB?
double lmfao, I reached character limit so I'm just going to call you a moron my man
You dont seem to know what a theme is. What that anon posted are indeed themes, you seem to think theme is some kind of moral message or lesson, which just isn't what a theme is.
Pic
>muh themes
Literally all a thene is is an idea that pops up multiple times throughout a story. Alone it is not enough to make or break a story. Midwits and pseuds like to harp on and on about myh themes because they think it makes them look smarter than if they just praised it for characters, plot, dialouge, prose.
>let's ignore the argument, play semantics, and call the OP dumb
And you're calling ME a midwit
Your gay lore fanfic doesn't have anything to do with the writing of the game
Pic related. None of the things he mentioned are unifying. Playing semantics instead of addressing the point is what keeps this board locked in moronation
Imagine being too dumb to understand VTMB and making a thread proudly pounding your chest about not understanding it at all kek
Cope and
I would say to you're more pseud than midwit. Still a midwit though.
Sneed
Why homosexuals on this board post boomerisms like this every time anyone says anything is beyond me. You're not contributing.
Stop moving goalposts. You were corrected on the themes, twice and humiliated completely with these goalposts that nobody cares about as the
exact imbecile that you are. Both of your autistic criterias were named and corrected as per request, more than twice in a row and you're pushing the line if stupidity. Now do yourself a favor and don't bother trying to save face on an anonymous website because nobody gives a shit, this isn't r*ddit.
On the offchsnce you're just another shit quality baiter then my condolences for your irreparably broken brain, take a break from the internet and handle your affairs and emotional status in a healthier outlet.
First of all, you're hardcore projecting. Secondly, you're misidentifying me as some other poster. Last of all, the only one humiliated here is the moron who didn't understand a story could have multiple themes, or even understand what a theme was in the first place.
Assuming you're the OP, it's pretty obvious from your posts that you discovered the idea of themes and literary devices yesterday and are eager to show everyone how """""refined""""" your pseud tastes are for liking a thing for "MUH THEMES" alone
I was defending you absolute double dipshit. Also saying "projecting" doesn't make you intelligent and neither it is an argument.
It's not an argument, just an observation.
It's cute how you think the concept of projection is some high-minded academic concept or something though. It's common parlance lmao.
Lmao was this addressed at me? Absolute moron, completely assblasted c**t.
>you were corrected twice
Like two morons saying the same thing automatically wins the argument. You're a fricking clown. Sneed and dilate
The only clown here is you. An infantile manchild that comes into a thread doesn't understand basic thematic of a narrative and gets humiliated, twice and refuses to let go because you pathetically need to save face on an anonymous website. Get some self-awareness.
What a dipshit you are, I was reinforcing your point and you start shit with me while trying to sound pseudo-intellectual with 3rd grader debate class buzzwords that don't even apply. yes you absolute imbecile, saying "projection" as a deflective tactic doesn't mean anything and doesn't win you the argument, which you had none. You are so terminally stupid it's unreal that I still spend my time on this shithole, I literally defended your point you absolute mongoloid, frick this shithole and frick you. I'm out.
>interactive medium
>good story
Pick one.
Everyone who posted in this thread is painfully autistic.
>look how much better I am for not talking about videogames on a forum for talking about videogames
Every genre of tiring homosexual shows up when I post here. You all post as though someone is keeping score. This isn't r3ddit, stop posting like it is.
Let them. We need to know whom to bully.
Unironically the Tales Of series of JRPGs are pretty good at this as each game is built on a central theme and then uses that theme to construct the story and each other party members' place in it. Of the games these are the biggest examples
>Symphonia is about the pointlessness of the cycle of bigotry and how everyone is affected by it in their own way
>Abyss is about how people cope with loss as like 90% of the game's cast have lost something dear to them
>Vesperia is about how one defines "justice" and the lengths they'll go in pursuit of it
Every party member follows their game's theme and are written around it.
Ok Symphonia and Abyss they're really in your face but how does it fit with all the party members in Vesperia?
>Yuri
Most obvious, he believed in doing what was right over what's correct, even if that meant going against the law and killing people who had done wrong that the system can't touch.
>Estelle
Followed her heart and conscience to the point that it actively harmed others without her intention.
>Rita
Valued Blastia over people and thus to her, justice was protecting Blastia from abuse even if it meant some people suffered in the process.
>Karol
Followed the Don's ideal of a just world instead of thinking for himself
>Raven
Being dead, he thought justice was a dead concept as well because a just world wouldn't allow a dead man to be brought back and kept alive in an enslaved way like that
>Judy
Justice is doing what's right for the planet, not the people living on it.
>Repede
...it's a dog, he doesn't have much thought into what he does other than following his master who he inherently trusts to do the right thing.
>Flynn
Justice is doing what is correct, not right.
>Patty
The right way to live is to be true to yourself without compromise, because that is the pirate's way
>Don Whitehorse
Much like Flynn, he believed in doing what is correct over what's right. He simply took it even further and choice to die rather than compromise his ideals for a second because upholding the Guild's system is THAT important to him.
>Alexei
Justice is a tool of the strong and thus those with power can make the world believe in whatever justice they want. Thus the best world is one controlled by him.
>Duke
A reflection of Yuri's ideals earlier in the game, willing to commit evil for the sake of a greater good.
>Phaeroh
Same as Duke, both are there to reexamine Yuri's ideals in a different context.
The majority of these characters either change and grow over time when their ideals are tested, or they die to ensure their ideals are left intact.
A story being good or bad comes down to whether I enjoy it, not whether it has "themes" or some other english teacher shit.