Do we really need a "good" story being told with every game?

What if there is game with great gameplay, great graphics and great mechanics...but a completely shitty and utter crap, cringe-worthy story?

There are and I'm totally down with that. Shit, most of the best games I've played have whateverthefuck stories.

In general I'm fine with stuff just being contextualized, even if it's dumb, silly, tongue in cheek.

Had a phase where stories in games carried some significant weight for me, around gens 4 through 6. Wouldn't put up with a bad game for a story, or skip a good one for lack thereof. Just felt it made for a more complete experience.

Now I'm just over it. Especially with how often a lot of games strip control away from you to tell you some story that isn't all that interesting. Often just aping stories and storytelling methods that are done sooooo much better in other mediums.

Stories can still add to the experience for me and can be told in ways that don't feel so invasive, but more often than not I just want to get on with the game.

Is this probably a thing of "Humans need a reason and a meaning for everything, other than that then they don´t have fun because everything seems pointless?"

Actually seen this a lot "then what am I even playing for?!?"... always trips me out lol. If the game is fun to play, shouldn't need a cutscene or textbox every ten minutes to keep your interest.

I think most games would be better off without a story.

Now, there are narratives that are compelling in their own right that augmented the game. But most games do not have a story worth a damn. And just interrupts the flow.

Games need to focus more on what works best for the vision, and not tack on nonsense because the committee demands it.

Fully agree with the two gentleman above.

I'm open minded to a game having a good story as an extra layer (rarely are they ever good)

However not at the cost of the game. When I buy a game, want to enjoy my time with 'playing' the video game. It's not rocket science.

Example- no one ever states Monster Hunter series is a storytelling masterpiece. Yet it's top tier ARPG franchise because its mechanics, map design, and A.I. puts other more shallow games to shame.

It depends on the game, but generally I like a story to be there for context if it stays unobtrusive. Ideally it should be visually told like in Journey, Super Metroid, or Ico; or give the player agency in digging it up like System/Bio Shock or Metroid Prime.

I see 17% voted for the first, so i assume you guys are never playing multiplayer-only games, coz their lacking story? LOL

THAT is one major problem i have with games being so much focused on telling their story so that even a somehow "good" story starts to become a pain in the ass too soon.

I am actually having that problem with BIOMUTANT now, i mean besides all those cringe-worthy moments of "doo-doo-doodle-dee-dum!"-kinda childishness of that otherwise lovely title, i am still alyways getting interrupted with more or less uninteresting story bits about the in-game history and other crap i am actually not really interested in, being thrown at me to the point i already started to click it all the hell away so that i can just move on with the damn game.

Guess just like certain games give options in terms of the games difficulty, some probably would be better off with giving options as to how much of its story one wants to experience.

Of course not gameplay is king.

Maaaaaan I'd love to have some autoskip option, at least for games that are clearly built around replayability. Or at the very least something like what a lot of Platinums games have. R2+select for quick skip, right back in the action.

Usually not too big a deal for a lot of the games I'm into. It's when the un-skippable "cinematic walking" kicks in that I begin to groan. No, I don't want to hold W or left stick forward while my character walks in slow-mo for some exposition dump. I'm sure there are plenty of times when it's just a "clever" way to mask loading, but at this point would rather have the load screen lol.

Yeah these are all solid examples of using the mediums strengths to get the story across. Was specifically thinking about the Prime games when I saw this topic. Can easily dig in at your own leisure if you want the extra flavor, or just say screw the direct context and allow the surroundings to be enough. Get a lot of that in Souls as well.

There are times when i get the idea some devs have so much fun (probably demanded by their publishers too) putting an un-skippable cut-scene (probably not too short too) just at the beginning of a boss-fight, so you have to watch the same fu** retarded a-hole cut-scene for a hundred times, making that boss-fight a totally cringe-worthy and hateful expierience pulling you on the edge of rage-quitting that goddamn piece of shit game over and over again...and if it´s not placed right before some boss-fight, then they put it into the middle of a level right before some passage where you keep dying a hundred of times.

Even just to think about those games who are really doing this, gets my blood pressure raising and i keep asking myself: Why the hell are they doing this?

Devs just can´t be THAT dumb! This must be a way for them to pay us back all those review-bombings, negative user-reviews, death-threats and all that other shit devs have to deal with all the time.

I hear that man, really is inexplicable. Like no fucking way they didn't realize that in the most basic of play test sessions.

@wladolfputler: Tetris is the most popular video game of all time, and it has no story at all!

A game can be good in spite of a lousy story. Roadkill is a fine example. The plot is unoriginal and the storyline is extremely cringey, but it doesn't matter because the car combat is so fun that I don't care about the story!