What happened to video game stories?
It feels like all ambition or interest in telling something actually compelling is gone.
I recently was inspired to try and go down the Marathon rabbit hole and even just the surface story is interesting. It has a lot of personality and a particular feel I can't put my finger on. But I do know several games that feel similar, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Axiom Verge, System Shock 1+2, Half Life 1. They all seem to convey a particular feeling, dark scifi, but with enough meat to actually dive into. They raise questions.
I don't think this is just nostalgia goggles talking, because I think Axiom Verge is one of the best of the bunch. Is it something about limited resources? The WAY in which these stories are told, through snippets and side content, terminals and guesswork? Or have developers just given up on doing things that take that much work or expect that much thinking from the player?
I can't think of anything modern that gives me the same feeling as these games do. But I desperately want more of it
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I can't help but feel like the reason stories have become bland and cliche, is that developers have no faith in the average player. In the same way you almost never see hidden endings and secrets anymore because developers don't want to make something that only a few players will see, the same goes for stories. They don't want to make something that only a few players will "get".
This is why despite not enjoying From Soft games I still appreciate them as a developer. Through discourse on Ganker and watching my friend and streamers play Bloodborne I see that you can miss like half the fricking game if you're not paying attention
No, they’re bland because they’re more focused on ramming diversity down your throat than writing a decent story. If the story gets in the way of inclusion, they change the story.
it's because older games were more pretentious in their storytelling, so in playing the game, players fill in the lore themselves and feel like there is a much bigger story than there actually is. it's the same reason why people say dark souls has such deep lore, even though it's all pretentiousness (pretentiousness is not a bad thing in vidya, i'd go as far as to argue being pretentious is the bare minimum requirement for a vidya story to be at least decent)
and to clarify, a non-pretentious story cannot be a vidya story, because at that point you're primarily watching/reading instead of playing; it becomes a visual novel or a movie game. and since some might disagree that the described games are pretentious (based on the few of those that i actually played):
>alpha centauri
no real central plot. has a barebones intro (a bunch of wacky dictators get on a spaceship and try to rule a new world) and a few vague endings. the between is succinct, you see little clips and individual stories, but these are open-ended threads at best. it's not about some fully pre-defined epic story, it's just fluff to make the player enjoy their own story
>system shock 2
the plot is barebones as frick. you are mr. supersoldier, run around a space station while listening to other people's stories, the stories are full of holes since you only pick up the scraps. it's fun to see the little stories going on around you, but at the end of the day it's about you being mr. supersoldier blasting shit, the stories are there to make your story feel more powerful and interesting
>half-life
you are a scientist in a labyrinthine complex. you can only piece together that aliens are all over the place and the government is furious. it's not about alyx vance's story, it's not about eli vance's story, there's no dramatic deaths, there's no big bad villain monologuing at you, it's about you, gordon freeman, experiencing the fricked up situation in black mesa, no one else's story matters except you, and since it's your story, it can't be defined except by what you make it out to be, it has to be pretentious
tl;dr pretentious stories good in vidya
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First, I don't think you even know what pretentious means.
While all of the things I mentioned have autistic lore delvers, even just the surface level story is more interesting and compelling than anything that has come out for 15 years at least
Yeah, you don't actually know what the word means. Pretentiousness is an attempt to convey depth that doesn't exist. To create an air of importance or gravitas that isn't there.
All of these things have that depth. Even ignoring the autistic lore people's headcanons.
I think the idea you're trying to convey is right, but you're using the wrong word. You're saying the main plot isn't deep, but the surrounding details add up to more than the sum of their parts, in part because the player is adding their own headcanon. That isn't pretentious. But it is... something. I don't know if there's a single word for it.
>That isn't pretentious. But it is... something. I don't know if there's a single word for it.
It's called peripheral storytelling
>it's because older games were more pretentious in their storytelling
Imagine thinking Marathon or System Shock are more pretentious than nu-vidya like picrel
>put a couple of terminals that give the most basic b***h of a story in
>pseuds years later after finding out about it from a youtube video pretend it has a deep and rich story.
Hilarious. Only Marathon Infinity can sort of hold the title of an interesting story.
Even just the details about the warring factions, the aliens, and the AIs is interesting and has more going on than a lot of games nowadays.
To be clear, I'm not talking about Fromsoft "too deep4u" shit. I'm just talking about interesting stories told in compelling ways. The way things unfold in Marathon is still fairly unique even today, even Halo is more subdued than Marathon. I'm especially interested in the particular "feel" that I get from all of the titles I mentioned.
And maybe I'm just a moron and I'm making something bigger out of a feeling or tone I get from the combination of music, old graphics and gameplay that makes me think the story is better or more compelling than it is. But I don't really think that's the case.
>t. only played the first few levels of the first game
The interesting aspect of the trilogy is how seamlessly each bit of lore fits into the overall narrative/world building even when it's seemingly unimportant. Every detail matters in Marathon which is why lore needs still discuss the game today.
Yep, Infinity actually gave many of the seemingly lore-dump/weird terminals in Durandal a lot of added context. Helps that the story is quite tight, with really only several real characters across all three games, taking place on three different space ships and one alien planet, but with a lot of alternate-timeline stuff to recontextualize the world in so many ways.
>I've actually not played it but you've got me interested. What aspects of Borges? I've only read Fictions.
The trilogy has rather explicit references to The Garden of Forking Paths, and an excerpt from The Maker
I've been revisiting old games looking for something to show people who only recently got into vidya and are avid bookreaders, i'm finding even the old classics don't hold up to adult scrutiny. There's basically no game I would feel comfortable showing someone and making a serious claim that it's anywhere on par with a good novel or movie. Even the best vidya music is only really good in the context of other vidya music.
then you should fricking go to Ganker and be a gay there
I don't think I will.
>Borges
I've actually not played it but you've got me interested. What aspects of Borges? I've only read Fictions.
Yeah I'm not shitting on vidya, it's just hard to sell a purist of literature, music or movies on a game, because no game can compare with the best examples of those mediums. Funnily enough I've found the best games to get across to them are the ones that full embrace being vidya, like Superliminal.
On par with a true classics of literature, no, but the Marathon Trilogy taken holistically blows almost all written sci-fi out of the water. That's what happens when your game's writing is inspired by Borges instead of generic Star Wars sloppa.
>That's what happens when your game's writing is inspired by Borges instead of generic Star Wars sloppa.
I can't help but hate Mass Effect, especially given how many people praise it, for this.
It almost completely refuses to actually explore any interesting scifi ideas, and instead is focused on being a shitty action movie.
The thing that makes good video games stories good is that they're intertwined with the gameplay.
SMAC's story is compelling largely because the player is the one making the decisions. The added context of exactly the kind of dystopian nightmare they're making feeds back into the desire to win the campaign. It creates a custom story that can only exist for the player of that campaign.
Axiom Verge's story is interesting on its own, but is massively enhanced because the player is the one digging through all the details and backtracking constantly to dig out the full story. Its a story powered by the player's curiosity, and of course would be less interesting to someone just watching or reading it.
So the story has to make some concessions to the medium, but the medium, when properly executed to enhance it, makes up for those concessions.
>There's basically no game I would feel comfortable showing someone and making a serious claim that it's anywhere on par with a good novel or movie.
then why do you play video games? It sounds like you're just coming into this thread to be an asshat.
>then why do you play video games?
I've been playing vidya for 30+ years, I enjoy games for their own merits. Why do you play videogames? Do you honestly believe vidya cutscene to be better than the best movies? The plots to be more better than the best novels?
You're not saying 'the best' your saying 'good'. Yes, I consider L.A. Noir to be the best piece of noir media in the last 20 years.
Of course something like War and Peace isn't going to be topped by a video game any time soon.
>I consider L.A. Noir to be the best piece of noir media in the last 20 years.
Has there even been a big budget detective noir movie in the last 20 years? Hell, how many can you name at all from the last 20 years?
Blade Runner 2049
That's just as much a sci-fi as it is noir, also there's no way in hell L.A. Noir is better than Blade Runner 2049 wtf.
Yes it is, The Blade Runner sequel is good, but L.A. Noir beats it out. Just by being one of the few neo-noirs to actually set itself within a noir setting alone.
Original Blade Runner, however? No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_neo-noir_films#List_of_films:_2020%E2%80%932029
I can name quite a lot, but that's only because I have a bit of obsession with the genre. (This list is pretty shit though, the term 'neo-noir' has loosened quite considerably)
Yeah I haven't heard of most of those. Obviously I've heard of John Wick but wouldn't say that was noir. Basically my point was there's no really much competition for L.A. Noir with movies in recent years, but it's a great game in its own right. I still think Westwoods Blade Runner is better
The point and click Blade Runner is alright, but I don't really consider it on LA Noir's level. It's way too entangled with the movie that it's barely doing its own thing. The killer being random doesn't help it much.
The people making modern games have no life experiences to draw from. The only thing they can do is poorly copy what has already been made.
name a truly original piece of media that isn't aping off something in the last 20 years.
TempleOS
I wouldn't really consider schizos making an OS to commune with god a medium, but alright. You got me.
Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium is just a neo-noir without the cynicism.
Normies started playing games.
Old gamers got old, smoked weed, grew breasts, some took HRT.
There are EXCELLENT modern point and click adventure games, start there.
Care to name some?
I'm genuinely interested in compelling stories. This maybe sounds stupid or childish, but I have an active craving for interesting stories sometimes. The dive into Marathon just made me want more, and I'm quickly realizing that its a near one of a kind type of experience.
Broken Sword 5
Excavation of Hob's Barrow
Thimbleweed Park
NuMonkeyIsland
There's a lot more just search on YouTube there's some euro dood who played them all.
I liked Void Stranger for it's complete lack of ludonarrative dissonance.
I think the biggest problem is cutscene bloat, at least in big triple a games anyway
The best part about video games is that you can use game mechanics to convey the story to the player. The problem is that a lot of triple A games don't have much in the way of gameplay so they have to basically make a movie and stick a game on it
Granted I'm a lot more lenient if the story is good like Asuras Wrath
I don't think there has been a movie game as great as Asuras Wrath shits hype as frick with a unique art style to match
I love Asuras Wrath because it's like a "What If" Fist of the North Star was allowed to reach DBZ levels.
Man, old Bungie was fantastic
Very esoteric lore behind their stories, but interesting enough to not put off the layman
The invisible thread through all their games is what made them feel wholly unique. What nu-Bungie is doing to the Destiny lore sickens me.
I haven't paid attention to Destiny lore since 2018 but the Book of Sorrows wasn't bad. It had classic Bungie vibes
>The invisible thread through all their games
So true. I still scroll Hamish's autistic archives once in a while:
https://marathon.bungie.org/story/
Oh and the Pathways into Darkness one as well:
http://pid.bungie.org/
I miss Myth II.
And I thought Reach was the best Halo game but not altogether perfect or better in every way.
Skyboxes, level design, music were kino.
can't believe bungie has fricking knitting classes now
Would be fun to coop through the Myth 1 and 2 campaigns
It's the ultimate game for that.
I could never play AoE slop or Warcraft after Myth.
It's a game that's played 80% in formation but then having minute control of some units on top of that.
Multiplayer was fun as hell and you could share control with teammates.
I remember playing on bungie.net as a kid, glad to see from googling that people took over community server hosting after Bungie decommissioned. I might still have my old discs around, going to try installing & updating w/ the Project Magma installer.
Shit if there's a way to still play it, frick...
I heard Myth the Fallen Lords is abandonware that is almost impossible to get working because the patches are all used for Myth II multiplayer.
Bungie.net
I remember this was the patrician's version of battle.net
So ironic that Destiny ended up on battle.net
The peasants won.
At least Bungie used bungie.net for awhile to host Halo stats, clan management, forums.
I found these:
https://mythipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Installing/Updating_Myth_II
https://www.projectmagma.net/downloads/
Looks like they ported all Myth 1 assets over to Myth 2 engine and that's the preferred way to play
Yeah apparently the only way to play. Apparently something is lost in the process forgot what it was though.
The last level of Myth I is pretty nuts.
I think there's plenty of good material in the Destiny lore, it's just scattered across thousands of entries and completely separate from anything happening in the game.
>Books of Sorrow
>Unveiling
>The Forsaken Prince
>Kentarch 3
30 years later people know about Marathon because youtubers bothered to compile all the lore about it
30 years later Marathon got a looter hero shooter reboot
"Making it" as a videogame nowadays means getting your gameplay gutted and getting adapted as a streaming show
Why bother?
Just feels like even indies are particularly shallow these days. Its not like Marathon was written by a big team. It was two dudes.
The parts of America where dev types live are terrible. You either have a private life totally separate from work, or if you do socialize it's an oppressive monoculture.
Indie slop is the same shit over and over.
Weird pixel art shit made for autistic trannies.
So its just over? Or do we wait for some auteur creator to come along and make something good again?
I bet you if you got good dudes together and made a very un-PC game, Steam, Patreon and MasterCard would ban you.
It's cringe but the soft right wing leanings of the Nerdrotic community is nice. I guess Texas was emerging as a place.
Maybe there's another country to go to like El Salvador or Poland.
I don't know what to do, man, it's fricked.
I have an amazing idea for a Zelda SNES like that would definitely sell and be easy to make, but I'd need a music guy, a little help with art and level design. It's not just a LttP clone, it has other gameplay elements that bend the genre.
>I bet you if you got good dudes together and made a very un-PC game, Steam, Patreon and MasterCard would ban you.
Nothing about any of the games posted in this thread would be bannable. Hell, Aleph One, the dudes maintaining Marathon have a Steam page to eventually just release it there. I have no idea what you're getting at.
I want a game that's Marathon II but open world with a couple survival mechanics and some very very basic game systems. More like Zelda than Deus Ex.
Like, an upgrade that lets you survive toxic sludge.
So the map divides areas into dungeons, but once you unlock the upgrades (maybe 5-8 in total, and they don't scale they just exist), then the barriers separating dungeons will blend and new areas will be unlocked.
Nintendo became really huge especially after the Wii to where the vast vast majority of people see video games as nothing more than toys for children. Back when those games were made, the PC audience was almost exclusively high IQ well off college educated first worlders.
Black person, the Wii gen is when we got Uncharted, Gears of War and TLoU, when all AAA publishers dropped gameplay and chased after hyperrealism and no fun allowed.
>They all seem to convey a particular feeling, dark scifi, but with enough meat to actually dive into
I don't know about their story, but I do get that all of those give off a particular vibe. Hard to put a finger on though. I'd put it more on the tone crossed with the atmosphere than the story itself. Something about the environment. Makes you feel like a rat in a maze, but also this weird hopeless feeling. Like you'll never get out, and even if you did it would be even more incomprehensible and cruel. I'd love to get more stuff like that.
The soundtrack gets more hate than it deserves
>that song plays when you wipe out the last remnants of the pfhor on the ship
I love most of it, I don't know why people gave it shit. I even like the goofy stuff like Fat Man.
I knew these games were special when this played as I was burning aliens with a flamethrower.
Everything under the sun, has been done.
Until something truly unique comes out, and is managed well, stories just exist as a vehicle, not the forefront.
Games are also so expensive nowadays that they hedge on dlc, season passes, etc, and that makes it really hard to tell a compelling story since you have to chop it up into bits and pieces to try and recoup costs.
There's also the moronic drama oriented character-focus that a lot of westerners seem to prefer nowadays, which I personally feel destroys narratives, characters just often aren't interesting.
>There's also the moronic drama oriented character-focus that a lot of westerners seem to prefer nowadays
I think you put a finger on something that I've been hating and never knew why. I've never really liked character drama, unless its extremely well done. But focusing on it definitely completely removes any ability for the story to talk about anything else. And thats a big reason why shit feels so shallow nowadays, I think,
>writes one of the best stories for a FPS franchise
>never writes again and becomes teacher
why???
Devs want to chase the big money, and the big money now is in multiplayer co-op games that are light on story so you can voice chat with your friends (Lethal Company, Hell Divers, Fortnite, LoL/Dota, Counter strike, whatever). Plus those games get you gacha/GAAS crap for even more money. The amount of gamers who WANT good stories is small, and the amount of gamers who can APPRECIATE a good story is even smaller. Making a cult classic might be cool but won't pay the bills too often.
Then you have the libtards on top of that who don't want a good story if it means they can't push their agenda, and the picture gets even worse from there. I recommend Armored Core 6 though, recent game that had a good story, though told in very small bits at a time in between challenging gameplay.
I like how Armored Core games can give you great stories just from the Arena descriptions.
>I recommend Armored Core 6 though
I hadn't really thought of AC6 when I was busy complaining, but you're absolutely right that it tells a really good scifi story. I guess hope isn't completely dead.
>Xenogears (RPGs)
>Marathon series (FPS)
>Metal Gear series (Action Adventure)
The Holy Trinity of Ludoschizonarratives
If you thought the writers room of musical chairs in film was bad it's 100% worse in big video games. The only coherent storytelling you will ever get these days are from literally who solo indie games and while that shit can at least be consistent in narrative, it will likely still be bad.
>Run, like you're competing in a Marathon through Pathways into Darkness... run the ring, like a Halo... run, like you're doing it for your Oni-chan... it is more than just Myth, it is Destiny.
Pfprostitute
>Just finished replaying Marathon 2
>See this thread
Talk about timing. Anyway, I like Durandal, he's interesting to watch (or read rather) wreck havoc on the Phor, shame about the lack of a soundtrack though, the ear-wormy synths in the first game really grew on me, and an even bigger shame that nu-Bungie is recycling this trilogy into some live-service game rather than making a decent FPS campaign. I don't want to see what they'll do to Durandal considering they allowed Lightfall's story to be released into the world (and also how they treated Destiny's major AI).
Double Aught, the developers of Infinity, won an acclaimed award for internet graphics design, runner-up only to David Bowie's website, which should tell you what aesthetic ludokino Infinity is.
infinity's multiplayer is so fricking fun, it's a shame the netcode sucks. most custom maps just give you every weapon and don't really encourage map control either.