Are RPGs even a good medium for narratives and storytelling?

I'd like to call the 1,039 meeting of 'Trashing Narratives in Video Games' to order....

First up on the agenda:

1) Repeated posting in as many gaming forums as possible how stories are terrible for the medium.

@lrdfancypants:

Do you have evidence of such misconduct?

f**king hate mary suness , it ruined Bioware games , specially MEA which reeks of it . now let's talk about another problem ,Diversity , diversity is not only about the color of skin ,it's about variety in culture , biology , shape , demography and a lot of other things and it should be addressed right, most of D&D games takes place in middle ages European settings with mix-raced population , srsly why we don't get our inspirations from other cultures

@killered3:

Surely you don't believe there is a group called: Trashing Narratives in Video Games and they're on their 1,039th meeting.

Edit: The illuminati would never tell me exactly how many meetings they've had. Let's not be ridiculous.

@Maroxad: I'm not going to post dig, but I'll make sure to not put words in your mouth.

You just said you primarily play RPGs for the roleplaying. In what capacity can you play any role whatsoever if there's zero narrative?

In previous threads, you indicated that:

- FFVII is trash.

- Baldur's gate 1 is worse than FFVII, and that the NPC interactions/dialogue with party members was "cringe worthy".

- Baldur's gate 2 is light years better than 1, due to the less banal encounters, you really enjoyed the mage duels.

Yet you also at first claimed to have soloed through both games with a fighter type character, the Kensai, one of the most brokenly OP characters.

When pressed as to how you would know the dialogue was "cringe worthy" when you soloed the game, you stated that it was your second time through the game.

So two big problems I'm having here.

Why in gods name would you play through BG1 a second time knowing full well how "cringe worthy" the dialogue was from the first playthrough, then complain about the encounters being banal, when you're soloing with a brokenly OP melee character who gains all experience, and overpowers quickly, due to having no party to split it with?

Second of all, how did you enjoy these "mage duels" in Baldur's gate 2, when you soloed with a fighter type?

So there's two possibilities here.

1. You're just a very scatterbrained, yet intelligent individual, who has standards that constantly change/shift to suit the mood, which makes you very difficult to debate with. (not knocking you, this world has all types of people)

2. The games you bash on perhaps aren't anywhere near as bad you make them out to be, but you like the attention/debate your contrary attitude brings.

Im just going to flat out disagree with this. Some of my favorite stories are from video games and discrediting all stories in games generally is a mistake imo.

1. I think this is on a case to case basis and has a heavy amount of subjectivity in it, its kinda hard to say definitively that this is a problem for rpgs
2. Now this is an interesting point. A lot of games have lots of choices that will change the plot slightly, but Im not sure if this is really destroying the narrative. Take for example Mass Effect, whether you play as a paragon or a renegade, you are still getting the same story beats. There may be superficial points that change it slightly to the players wish, but they are still the same kind of events, the core of the story is still there. No matter if you choose x or y, you are still going to z. Now in more of a gaming sense in general, Zero Escape has a lot of choices in it that lead to completely different outcomes and paths, but it is all worked into the narrative that these choices are important. Zero Escape could only work as a video game, Movies or books would not have the same accessibility that the games do.
3. I cant really comment, but I would think there is someone in charge of consistency across writers.
4. Lots of people love rpg protagonists, though I agree that silent protags are usually just a sub for the player.
5. I would go case by case basis again on this one, its kinda hard to say definitively
6. Interesting idea, im not really a lore person myself. Quality will always beat quantity, but there are games that do have lots of dialogue and are very well written still.

Computer RPGs (defined: any role-playing game that is conducted on or confined to a computer or video game system) will always be inferior to the tabletop experience popularized by stuff like D&D. And until we invent the Holodeck this will always be the case.

To expect finely crafted masterpieces the likes offered by literature and film is to set yourself up for disappointment.

Cainetao has the right idea.

The thing is. While there is a lot of bad stuff. The ammount of novels better than even the best video game (writingwise) come out by the dozens every year.

Asking questions is often what philosophy is about... or good education for that matter.

1 bad novel and 2 mediocre novels... awesome. Like I said, even the mediocre novels top this industry in its writing. Considering how mediocre the writing is over here, that would still be an improvement over the gaming industry. Including the oh so awesome narrative capabilities (lol) of the RPG genre.

Regarding points 1 and 2. Both BG1 and FF7 are 3/10.

I didnt solo both games with a Kensai fighter, I solo'ed the first and stopped after that. Stop putting words in my mouth. If I were to solo BG2, I would do so with a sorcerer. Because with a Kensai, I would miss one of the greatest strenghts of the game. Yes, BG2 was carried by its gameplay. Particulary its encounter design, not its mechanics, because RTwP is a huge step down from the Gold Box engine games, turn based combat.

I replayed BG1 because I recall it being a good game. I didnt recall the encounters being banal, I even implied as much in the other thread. These flaws in the gameplay, are things I noticed on my second playthrough, seriously stop putting words in my own mouth.

Design is law, and BG2 was actually well designed. Another strength it had over BG1 was the quality of its content and density. BG2 was a dense game, BG1 was sparse, with maybe 2 encounters per map.

1. Well, I brought it up because more games than not seem to be overly trope heavy. For jRPGs we got this,

http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

For cRPGs... well we either get derivative sci-fi or derivative fantasy most of the time. Which is rather frustrating when novels as a whole, are a lot less derivative in comparison. The ammount of Planescapes or Morrowinds we get are few and far in between.

2. You are still getting the same story beats for ME, but several other games branch out into alternate chapters. But man, of the many choices you make, some of the choices felt like they were shoehorned in there. If Zero escape was a novel or film, it would be panned, not only because the story wouldnt be up to par, but also the reason you stated. However, Zero Escape is an adventure game, which often handle choices better than RPGs do. "Here have 2 binary choices whose only consequence is your morality meter"

3. I disagree, at least not to the extent I have seen in novels.

4. I don't think I have liked a single one. The predefined are often too flat, and underdeveloped to be really interesting.

5. This is definately a case by case basis. I was mostly thinking of the RPGs where stats do inflate. Games like Fallout 1 and 2, this was NEVER a problem.

6. Sadly I can't think of any, outside of PST and KOTOR 2 that had both quantity and passable quality. And even then, on a word to word basis, Portal got a lot more said per word than either of those 2 games.

Dozens among thousands.

And which of those 3 books would you consider mediocre and therefore better writing than all games? Keeping in mind that listing even one makes anything else you say largely invalid as you out your insanely bad tastes.

@Maroxad: Which words have I put in your mouth? Do I seriously need to go post digging?

You also didn't answer the first question at all.

You claimed you primarily play RPGs for the roleplaying. Yet you think it's a terrible medium for a narrative. So I'll ask again.

How can one play any sort of role with no narrative?

Playing a game once and enjoying it, then suddenly going back to it and rating it a 3/10 the second time makes zero logical sense.

You also claimed you laughed when Aeris died. I can see one feeling nothing, or not really being moved. But laughter is a response way outside of the norm.

Sorry, but it's extremely unusual behavior to continue to play through games one hates so much. Especially more than once. Unless you just enjoy people's reactions when you come here and rag on said games.

The final piece of the puzzle is your "LOL @ people who play rpgs for the story" comment. As if playing an RPG for the story is somehow abnormal?

I said the best writing in this industry is mediocre. Which would you know... kinda put it on par with those novels, maybe better, maybe worse? Learn to read.

Either way, The Fifth sorceress has some things going for it, not a lot, but still more than most video games. So maybe that. But it is outclassed by other video games like PST, Portal, The Talos Principle, The Longest Journey, Gabriel Knight, Wing Commander, The Walking Dead.

These would still be mediocre novels mind you. But some mediocre products are preferable to other mediocre products.

Alright I'll just keep that in mind and ignore these kinds of threads from now on.

Playing BG1 in the tutu engine doesnt mean I continued doing the BG2 stuff afterwards on that save file. Go ahead and try digging. You will find nothing to support your assertion. Baldur's Gate Trilogy is a mod, if that is what you were thinking about.

You can't play a role without any kind of narrative so to speak, but that narrative doesnt have to be premade. Hell, a narrative in can occur, emergently as a consequence to your actions or desires. In fact, I would argue that games like Liberal Crime Squad, which only story element is found right at the beginning of the game, still offers a far superior storytelling method than pretty much any AAA rpg. Same with Crusader Kings. No prewritten narrative, yet as a roleplaying game it completely and utterly decimates Mass Effect and its ilk. Hell, in tabletop, there is a reason, the best DM's by and large mostly ignore the campaign book, only resorting to it, to keep the world in track. RPGs are at their best when they are as emergent as possible, which is why the RPG I would want to play the most would be an RPG with a AI as a DM.

Yes, that can happen. Just look at all the people who began playing some f2p mmorpg, then playing the p2p ones like WoW. Then going back to their first mmo and think, "wtf have I been playing?"

Laugh is a bit of a hyperbole though, amusement might be more like it. Not amusing enough to make me laugh, but amusing enough to that I could use the hyperbole to describe how I felt about the scene. And it was amusing it was because it was a so bad its good kind of thing.

If you are playing RPGs for the story as your primary reason... what are you doing? Go play an adventure game (which includes visual novels which are a subset of adventure games), Read a book, Watch a movie. You know... embrace quality, not mediocrity.

@the_master_race said:

f**king hate mary suness , it ruined Bioware games , specially MEA which reeks of it . now let's talk about another problem ,Diversity , diversity is not only about the color of skin ,it's about variety in culture , biology , shape , demography and a lot of other things and it should be addressed right, most of D&D games takes place in middle ages European settings with mix-raced population , srsly why we don't get our inspirations from other cultures

Heh, that image. I played a Redguard with a spear and light armor in morrowind. Maybe I should have gone with unarmored, but I didnt know there was a mod at the time.

Guild Wars world outside of prophecies was fascinating. Factions was set in a china esque land and Nightfall was set in 3 regions inspired by North Africa and the Middle East. Dark Sun Shattered Lands, Age of Decadence also has more interesting setting than the typical banal stuff.

@Maroxad: Which assertion(s)?

I want to know specifically where I've misquoted you, so I can go back and verify/correct if necessary.

I haven't (to my knowledge) posted anything you haven't said yourself in the other thread yesterday.

So if I am putting words in your mouth, they're just words that originally came out of your mouth.

Funny enough, most folks I know (myself included) , long for their first MMO, and wish modern MMOs were more like the first one. I regularly go back and play on Project 1999, an emulated Everquest server, which still plays as though the game was only on it's 3rd expansion (Velious) rather than the unrecognizable game called Everquest which exists today.

Ahh, so the laughter at Aeris was a bit of hyperbole. Makes me wonder if the 3/10 for BG1 is also a bit of hyperbole no? Maybe referring to some of these games as "trash" is also hyperbole?

See that's the problem when you exaggerate to make your point. Once you're called out on it, it begins to call your sincerity into question.

I do read books, plenty of them. Don't watch a lot of movies though. Not immersive enough, and I find way too many movies have been Michael Bayized. Has to have an explosion every 5 minutes. Press a button and something awesome happens. You know what I mean.

Also, I don't recall ever saying I play RPGs for the story as the sole reason, only that it greatly enhances the experience, and it's a major factor. Again, look at Dark souls. Totally awesome games, with really not much of a story, except what's told by the atmosphere, and reading item descriptions. But again, those games are good DESPITE the lack of story, not BECAUSE of it.

Well, I was thinking of people who I know who liked RuneScape or Maple Story, until they played World of WarCraft. Then yeah.

No, that is not hyperbole. I often make a hyperbole to clarify a point by exaggerating it. BG1 simply put has very little going for it. Durlag's Tower is great, and as a dungeon, I would go as far as to say it is one of the best.. And that is a high honor. But that tower doesnt make up for the rest of the game. Had it been a hyperbole I would have said, 2/10. Because the only way a game can get a 1/10 is if it would be the worst game I ever played.

I don't like Summer Action Flicks or Michael Bay movies. In the movie industry, one could argue I am a bit of a hipster. Prefering the more niche stuff over the mainstream stuff.

You are right about that. My problem is that even on their own merits. RPG stories do nothing for me anymore. This goes for most of gaming as well. The only genre where I actually find myself potentially enjoying narratives these days is the Adventure genre. Since those tend to have the least ammount of flaws. And questionable narrative qualities.

jRPGs can be especially silly. You beat a boss fight without breaking a sweat and in the cutscene you are getting your ass kicked for no real explanation.

@Maroxad: Or be taken into custody without a fight by 8 trash guards whom you could easily defeat in less than 10 seconds. I hate that too.

You just need to play a game like the shadowrun reboot series it sounds like.

Anyway you can have a character and still have the role play, look at the witcher 3 for exmaple.

Same with the Yakuza series which have great stories but are also rpgs.

Having good storytelling in video games is like judging a female engineer by the amount of makeup she puts on.

Sure, she can look nice and people appreciate it, but that's not her function.

Likewise, games should concentrate on having good gameplay. The best games in the world get by with serviceable storytelling.

I would again say that this is a case by case basis rather than a problem overall. I dont think choice is inherently bad in storytelling

why do you hate me?

@FrozenLiquid: All depends what the game is setting out to achieve.

It's only similar to judging a female engineer by how much makeup she puts on, if she's trying to become a model.

Anyways, who are you to say what the "function" is of all video games? This varies pretty far and wide depending on the genre.

If a female engineer is putting too much make up on to stop being a female engineer, then great, you've proved my point.

Likewise if a game is adding lots of storytelling techniques in an attempt to be something other than a game, well it ceases to be a game. An example of this is the pejorative term "walking simulator".

What makes a video game successful is what makes all games throughout history (even regardless of species) successful: 1) they're all built on systems, 2) given direction through objectives, 3) and the participant is tasked with completing it within the given constraints. Those three points can be applied to anything from a game of baseball to Bayonetta. Remove, change, or de-emphasise those points, and you weaken the potential quality of the game.

But never mind all that critical thinking. What's more important to understand is that if you're actually playing video games because you want a good story, you are the world's dumbest motherf*****. The stories and storytelling are legitimately average in even the most acclaimed game narratives.

@FrozenLiquid: No, the world's dumbest motherf****rs, as you so eloquently put it, spend their time on forums trying to convince other folks that their reasons for playing/enjoying a particular game are stupid.

Pretty much, and this is one reason I think it would be great if video games as a whole focused on being video games as opposed to this misguided focus on storytelling at the expense of gameplay.

The biggest problem is that the game and story aspect often conflict. Combine this with little academic effort to find a way to make storytelling work in gaming. It is a recipe for disaster, and is one of the many reasons video game narratives are flailing around in the pool.

Giving a player a choice in narratives and storytelling is way more often done poorly than done well. Mass Effect did not do it well.

I hate you because you like waifus :P Give me my manly SNIPER sausage fest.

@Maroxad: I think you actually make a very good topic Maroxad, you bring and interesting subject to court.

You know, playing BotW lately, which kind of has more roleplaying elements than most Zelda games (a big, open world to explore, durability management, resource management, quests and the like) made me remember something about RPGs and storytelling that I had forgotten. When you have a big game with an overarching story, and tons of side-quests that distract you from it, it actually makes the storytelling disjointed and drawn-out.

I don't think it is just the story or the characters that make RPGs so compelling. Sometimes they can be quite good though. I think it's just more gameplay, more things to manage and take into consideration.

In fact, your thread may have made me realize just the opposite - that FPS games are a better medium for storytelling in many cases than RPGs or open-world games.

With an FPS or something similar, the story keeps pushing you along to waypoints with bursts of action in-between, while RPGs throw you into a place with lots of things you can go check out, and continue that story about saving the world from armageddon when you're good and ready to.

Of course this doesn't apply so much to multiplayer FPS game modes.

About the fantasy setting... Well, it's just brilliant. So many people keep using swords and magic because it works well. Some games mess with the formula a bit - Earthbound has kids wielding bats and yo-yos instead of axes and maces, and Phantasy Star had you use technology to cast spells and everyone was revived as a clone of themselves upon death. Look at Pokemon - it created over a dozen different rock-paper-scissors variants and made you limit yourself to arsenals of 4 moves each for your party of 6 monsters.

RPGs work best as games that give the player options and enable them to make decisions as they play.

Adventure games are best at storytelling. RPGs might be second (especially due to choice and consequence system) but it's not even close since RPGs are about fighting and upgrading your character, so stories are Action focused as well. There is not enough variety.

Adventure game stories can be about anything; you being a detective trying to solve a mystery, a scientist trying to prevent global warming, a funny loser who ends up saving the world, a reporter who is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, an archaeologist looking for some ancient facts and so on.

Adventure games don't have to find an excuse to flood the area with enemies after every cutscene. These things only happen when they make sense in the story.

@Maroxad: I believes games lend themselves better to world building rather than linear plots like in books and movies. That way a game can give exciting gameplay context without forcing any hands-off time.

I'm replaying an old horror adventure called Darkness Within: In Pursuit of loath nolder. There's a meaty Lovecraftian story to absorb, but the real fun is the puzzle/detective work to get to the scarier parts of the mysterious house. Games relay experience through good gameplay, it doesn't even need to be said.

IMO, because of the nature of the mediums, books, TV, and film will ALWAYS beat games at storytelling.

So if you're into gaming JUST for the storytelling, perhaps consider spending your time with one of the other mediums.

@appariti0n: Dude, this is my first post in months on this forum. Convincing gamers how wrong they are about their own hobby is the last thing on my mind.

That is something I noticed as well. Not surprising, since game writers don't quite have the tools a writer for a movie script or a novel has. In that regard. However with lore and world building, there are far fewer handicaps. And game developers may even have access to tools others dont have, relaying storytelling through gameplay.

Unfortunately, most still do it horribly. If they are trying to convey the player as being evil, they make players do evil objectives rather or give players evil dialogue options. So they can fill up their evil meter. But I find pure callousness and depravity to be far more evil.

• In This War of Mine. Watch as your desperation makes you resort to robbing other people straight in their face.
• In Rimworld Hardcore SK. Place your base in the middle of a harsh desert. Watch as your food supplies run low and you resort to cannibalism, all while harvesting organs on people you kidnap so you can sell them to buy more food. Throw in some potential child soldiers in there as well, to replace your fallen soldiers.

Thanks for the fleshed out response. I havent played BotW yet. Waiting for after the exams.

Indeed. Gameplay is the RPG genre's strongest point. They are not particulary deep. But the RPG mechanics oftentimes mesh very well with how the human conscience is built up. FPS have a lot of unmet potential for storytelling. We have seen some games do it well. Metro comes to mind. But overall most are a lot more heavy handed on the gameplay.

I am not sure about Choice and Consequence being ideal for good storytelling. It might let you see a different perspective. But then the plot as a whole has to be adapted to make use of all these different outcomes. Or in the case, the thing permanently branches off, it means more of the writer's creative juices have to be split up. CYOA's didnt exactly have the best children's stories around.

That said, Adventure Games are indeed excellent. I really should have brought up that final point in my OP. Not flooding every area with enemies is a good thing. It is often difficult to take most video game characters seriously, when they have had no problem. There is just little tension in non-adventure game stories, since either they will cheapen out with a loss. Pissing people off on the gameplayside or they will have a fair fight in the gameplay, which the player will win. Leading to the player having an abnormally high win-loss ratio, and thus no real stakes.

Point n Click adventure games are fairly mediocre at the being a game part. The puzzles are fucking abysmal half the time in even the well received point n click games. I like Grim Fandango here n there, but speaking as someone who loves puzzle games. I'd much rather be playing a proper fucking puzzle game like The Swapper or Antichamber or Talos Principle or The Witness or Infinifactory or Snakebird or even something as middling as QUBE over what Wadjet games (and I like the characters of the Blackwell series) or what I've played of Kathy Rain, or old Lucas Art joints, or Gabriel Knight's puzzles.

Which I'll at least appreciate that the old point n click format, is at least a fucking game, unlike Telltale's shit, but Telltale's method has made a level of sense to me. Besides just playing to their own strengths, their games are one giant indictment on this mediums ability to tell a story. Because when Telltale is good, they are actually pretty freakin solid, right down to them having more interesting cinematography in their game to go along with their writing to carry a production. And as a result, they are actually able to tell a more coherent linear story. The biggest problem is they did it by making the gameplay as close to non-existent as possible while still having the pretense of being a game of some kind.

And even bouncing off cloud's post, I used to think they have diversity, but now I just think they benefit from having a certain story type that action games flat out just can't do. And that's mystery/detective shit, becasue on balance, they all end up on some level being some mystery shit. Be it Blackwell, Kathy Rain, the broken sword games (which admittedly I'm at least sort of digging the lead, she's my kind of sassy). Would love try the Deponia games tho.

Plus more to it, they replace action gameplay, with puzzle gameplay. Which goes back to my thread of gaming's biggest hurdles, with one of them being, at some point you have to let me play a game. And a game is fundamentally at odds with telling a story, a game is a series of rules, that will get more n more elaborate to continue to test the players understanding of the systems going forward. So by its very nature, it asks for set ups that are contrived, because Grim Fandango yeah on one hand the puzzles themselves are a problem in Chapter 3 of that game, but also it's because the stories momentum comes to a screeching fucking halt. Where as Rubacava's puzzles never got in the way of the momentum of the story during that chapter, also happens to be among the many reasons it's the best chapter in that game.

Too long; didn't read - Adventure games have certainly told better stories, maybe, at least by benefit of having a range of characters who aren't serial killers for starters, so there is some genuine dramatic weight to those games. But, even the well received games, aren't actually that good as games or puzzles if held any scrutiny. They often try to get away with complexity, without realizing a puzzle benefits from clarity. And any other sort of mechanics in those games, is usually way too shallow.

@Maroxad: I don't think a good game needs a good story, but a good story can hep an already good game be better. A story contains no information about game design, so it can be discarded until the game design has been premised.

Puzzle games , ain't my cup of tea , most of these games try to be aesthetic and makes you think , just like Witness which got boring fast for me , It's not because these games don't have a clear motivation or a coherent story to follow , It's mostly because I don't see much variety in these games , only a sequence of formulaic puzzles

After I read the first line of the OP, I stopped reading. Totally disagree.

That formulaic complaint would apply if those games stuck to one theme for a puzzle, But Braid mixes up its own rule set for every single world in that game. So does Antichamber, so does The Swapper, entire sections of The Witness (IE not stuff like Inside, which basically plays itself) have entirely different rule sets. It may be a lot of panel line stuff, but the rule sets are completely different.

Adventure games go for abstract logic puzzles that can range from the reasonably cute to that's just bonkers, it's not even hard in a way that's satisfying. On the flip side Blow's puzzles can have the answer you staring right in the face, and because his puzzles are good enough n consistent enough to get away with hiding answers in plain sight as they test the player to actually focus and deduce more.

Hell in the case of Kathy Rain, Blackwell, and what I played of Shardlight, their work around shitty logic puzzles, was not even bother challenging the player. The puzzles lack any sort of elaborate or intricate scenario.

I'm not saying you people can't like point n clicks, I get where puzzle games lose out in comparison as far as visual variety and just having clear motivation, but gameplay variety? Nah mate.

Probably one of the worst genres in terms of quality of story. As someone else said, quantity != quantity. So many RPG's just pad out their "stories" with nonsense. Either quest-lines that make no sense, or random NPC that seem to have nothing to do with the narrative. Furthermore pacing can be a huge issue, as far as the story goes in an RPG, after performing hours of fetch quests by the time I get back the main quest I often find myself asking "wait,why am I doing this again?".

That being said, RPG's sometimes allow you to feel more connected to the characters. The past Bioware games I played were all pretty good about that. So I'm not saying the genre is bad, just that the stories are often weaker. I agree that video game stories are generally pad, and for the most part an RPG is going to require hours and hours more padding than a shorter more linear game. The story is bound to suffer.

Yes, they can be... the problem is that there aren't many these days that tell a decent story like some of the RPG's of the past. Gone are most of the memorable moments leading with character progression and here to stay, it appears, is nothing but shine.... sickening. I hope that as games continue to grow over the years that devs start to realize that a large amount of game players want a great experience, tight controls, a good story/and or MP. It seems all too often these days that graphics are all that matter to devs and most consumers. I don't get it... kids these days are all bassackwards.

I'm going with this as well. To me it feels that after the Ps1, maybe Ps2 era, the story of JRPGs got much worse.

Pixel hunts are terrible and terribly illogical puzzles are just as bad.

What was it Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation said.

"No you cant use the stick to solve this puzzle, because you will need that stick to chase off the panda 3 rooms later."

Or something like that.

The only RPG I can think of that acknowledged that you are a serial killer would be Liberal Crime Squad. Where pretty much every character you kill is counted as a murder.

The medium does not overly lend itself to story telling, outside of interactive movie games but Hollywood doesn't make literary masterpieces either. That's the main problem, another is the fact that novelists (such as Steven Erikson, David Gemmel, Robert E. Howard, Robert Jordan etc. etc.) are far more likely to be found in the medium where their talents are noted, appreciated and they can make the most money from those talents. I find it extremely unlikely that any talented, note worthy novelist has ever thought "hey. I'm going to get a job writing stories for games!"

I don't think I've ever heard about a game story being even being nominated for a literary award (not that I'm any kind of expert on literary awards)

Didn't life is strange win some bullshit the other year? I remember Texas made some corny ass thread on it.

@jg4xchamp: Looks like it won a BAFTA games award for story and a Peabody Award for "Excellence and Innovation in Digital Storytelling", not sure if those are literary awards though.

To be honest the majority of novels I read wouldn't win Pulitzer awards either, so it doesn't actually bother me.

Because there never was a better writer and a better team than Black Isle. Good writing is not as financially important as presentation and gameplay. So developers don't hire good writers and don't put the effort and money required to create this synergy of gameplay and writing. What sells is presentation, graphics.

You know why Witcher 3 was so beloved? Because its a spiritual successor to Gothic 2; the developers are huge Gothic fans and they took heavy inspiration from Gothic. More games need to translate the creative design of older role playing games, that's where the gold is. If you'd remake Ultima 7 into a modern engine, it'd be the best open world role playing game ever made, by far. That's the least, and probably the only thing left for developers in the creative void of AAA console gaming. Otherwise you end up with Bioware and Mass Effect 4.

Point and click adventure game puzzles are lazily cobbled together for the most part. There's a layer of craftsmanship required in designing narrative-driven puzzles that many don't realise. That's why abstract puzzle games seem to fair better, or on the other hand, Telltale games which just do away with most of the puzzles and concentrate on the narrative.

But damn when a narrative-driven puzzle hits the spot, it really freaking hits the spot. Broken Sword 5 was mostly mediocre, but one puzzle toward the end was just absolutely on point.

That's what I used to think about C&C before I discovered visual novels. VNs like Steins Gate, Clannad, Fate/Stay Night, Ever 17, YU-NO, etc. have shown that it's possible to have an excellent script enhanced by meaningful C&C. And unlike RPGs (or adventure games, for that matter), the choices in VNs actually branch out in wildly different directions. Some VNs have a single writer handling all the branching scenarios themselves, while some VNs have multiple scenario writers handling different sets of branching scenarios. VNs are like a modern digital evolution of CYOA books, like what modern video games are to NES games.

But the thing is, that doesn't necessarily mean narrative C&C are a good fit for video game storytelling. Depending on who you ask, VNs are either an adventure game sub-genre (because of adventure game roots) or an entirely different interactive medium altogether (because of minimal gameplay). The narrative C&C of VNs can't truly be replicated in other genres because there's still a gameplay emphasis, whether it's the action of action games, the puzzles of adventure games, or the battles of RPGs, which all get in the way of narrative C&C.

I think the problem with the story in a lot of RPGs is that the game tries to give you the freedom to make your own choices that affect the outcome, when really there are only 2 or 3 outcomes possible. It creates a situation where you are stuck playing a story that is shoehorned into the game whether it really makes sense for your character to go down that path or not. Compare that to a game like Crusader Kings 2, where you constantly make choices that affect your stats and affect what choices you will have to make down the line, where your actions have an immediate impact on the world around you, and there is no comparison. Crusader Kings 2 has no story to speak of. It just drops you into a Medieval setting and lets you go wild. I have much better stories to tell from some of my CK2 campaigns than I do from any RPG that I've ever played, though.

If an RPG is going to give you meaningful choices, then the RPG should strive to have as little of a story as possible, imo. The game should focus on your ability to change the characters and world around you and possibly have other NPCs that have the ability to do the same. That way heroes and villains would rise organically and the game would be very different every time you play it. That would be a lot more fun than the RPGs that come out now that pretend that you are making choices that impact the world, when really you are just going to get the pre-ordained story no matter what you do.

@PurpleMan5000: Pretty much. I find a lot of the C&C stuff, branching storylines to be a half measure, a comprimise. Doing 2 things poorly as opposed to one thing well.

@Jag85 I am one of those people who consider visual novels to be a subgenre of the adventure genre. Hence why you always see me mention Adventure games and never VNs. Because I put them under that adventure umbrella ;) From a storytelling perspective. I havent seen C&C done particulary well, even in the VN's that I have played.