Game Stories Have Improved or Became Worse???

We experienced some great stories in games as well as some crappy ones. Back in the old days I enjoyed Planescape: Torment, Max Payne, Broken Sword, Thief, Deus Ex etc. During last I gen I enjoyed The Witcher, World in Conflict, The Last of Us, The Book of Unwritten Tales, Halo 3, Mass Effect etc and this gen I enjoyed The Witcher 3, Uncharted 4, Homeworld, Deponia: The Complete Journey and so on.

I personally think stories in games haven't gotten better or worse in general. They are almost the same as they always were. Just like old days we get a lot of bad ones and couple of good ones. I think storytelling is improving because of better tech but stories are almost the same when you look at overall ratio.

What do you think? Explain.

On the Nintendo side i find they have been improving. Not that the older Nintendo stories arent good, but the newer ones are more skillful. I agree its the storytelling techniques that help the most it seems.

On the PC side its more complex, but id say storytelling has improved a bunch. Half-life has made a major impression on story telling and ive loved the games who have copied its techniques.

Some games have gone backwards though and seems to although appearing to have better storytelling, have actually gotten worst.

I think all that really depends, from dev to dev.

I think there's been studios in particular over the last decade that broke unconventional grounds that now get celebrated for their storytelling methods. Take a look at From Software games, for example. Their IP's like Dark Souls tell cryptic and obscure tales yet if a player shall choose to unravel them they'll find some of the most compelling stories.

Telltale Games as well. They've become a staple modern developer of the point-and-click adventure genre, and their games like The Walking Dead have shown how stories can be in the hands of the player and the choices they make, enabling pure flexibility on our own decisions.

I agree op, it has been kind of at a stand-still for a few gens but I enjoy alot of the theatrics and story focus that come with modern games. Some of my favorite stories include Metal Gear Solid, Max Payne, Mass Effect, Amnesia and Halo.

I think visual story telling has improved dramatically over the years. By this I mean like scenes from Fallout where you come across a skeleton, surrounded by cans with a letter nearby... or walking next to troops in Halo and they are having their own conversation or praying. There are many well placed corpses or items in Dark Souls that tell stories without being the actually being the plot of the game. This tactic comes across in a lot of games.

But actual plots and stories in main storylines are just the same as they ever were. This is just not the best medium for story telling... and no matter how cinematic games get, I dont think they will every have the same impact as books/ movies. Too many moving parts... and not enough punch. Way more eyeroll than tears in games.

It is and always has been a very low bar. That's ok though because for me games are not at their best when focussing on story. Fun gameplay is what I tend to give the most weight.

To bounce off what you are saying, I don't think it's so much that games are incapable to telling compelling stories, it just so happens to be the norm of video game story development has relied so heavily on using other mediums such as books and movies as some sort of template for games. I think that's the biggest problem game storytelling has faced and why often times we find that 10 hour campaign to be sloshed and uninspired. Video games are way more capable of telling entirely unique stories that books and movies were never capable of.

You bring up two fantastic examples, including the works of Bethesda and From Software. These developers are among the few that fully grasped the potentials of unique video game storytelling. The take full advantage of the canvas at hand, that is world development, and how a video game world is anything but linear. They managed to be able to tell compelling stories that can be chiseled around the edges by the gamer oneself.

Would you pick up a great book and go from chapter 1 to chapter 15, and back to chapter 9? That's not at all reasonable for the fluidity of a book yet in a game like Dark Souls and Fallout, jumping around with narrative components is perfectly reasonable and expected. They are designed in such a way that if you were to jump from chapter 1 to 15, that eventually the blank areas with naturally fill into place and it won't feel contrived.

This is the kind of potential I see in video game development that has not been fully realized in its potential but the few like the two developers in discussion here.

I'd say presentation has improved, but the stories themselves are about the same. I'll be shocked if there is ever anything better than Planescape.

@judaspete: Fingers crossed for Tides of Numenera.

We never had any game in years which story is as Good as Mafia 1.

witcher 3 has boring story imo. Deus Ex which ones was holy grail in story yet latest part MD has terrible and unfinish story.

Stories technically don't improve over time. They just happen to be, and they're either good or they're not good. No one's going to say that Harry Potter is better than Dante's Divine Comedy, the latter being centuries older.

Storytelling in a particular medium can improve though, the more you understand the medium. In that regard, it's almost inevitable that storytelling in video games have improved. The problem is that it's at such a glacial pace because telling a story isn't necessary to making a good game. We've been enjoying video games for almost 40 years without anyone trying to reach the storytelling heights of poems, music, literature, or theatre and film. That will never change.

It's stagnated by AAA games which usually have the story depth of blockbuster movies. Even the better AAA games lately all have basic, cliched plots with the standard good guys vs bad guys tropes.

More the story-telling than the story itself.

Usually it's at the expense of the gameplay itself.

video game stories (i.e. narratives) are usually a crapshoot but as production values have increased immensely they're at least presented well.

This, but more so that this mediums stories are a lot of rubbish. Even the stuff that is "good" needs massive qualifiers. As a medium the ceiling for how good a game story can be, versus any of its contemporary mediums, it's pathetic in that department.

Some 90's PC games had some great stories. Blade Runner, Max Payne..etc. Certainly no shortage of adventure titles either that had good stories.

I think video game stories are still enjoyable.

If I would make one improvement first, rather than taking on other mediums, it would be focusing on how to tell a story in this medium.

Storytelling in video games tend to be split into two parts. There is the narrative and then there is a portion of game-play. These two pillars aren't often harmoniously woven. More often than not, the story and game-play loop are separate entities that run parallel to one another. While there has been a greater effort to retain contextual agency since the Half-Life series, it's often only during inconsequential moments like the player and an AI bantering or sharing small-talk.

While the following series may not have the greatest stories, characters or writing; the Phoenix Wright franchise is good at using its narrative as a game-play mechanic in itself that compliments the game loop. Everything is quite natural as reading and story is part of the game-play loop. In other games, it's often the case that we have a structure like story - gameplay - story - gameplay - story...

I'd like to see that structure change as I don't think it's the most effective way to tell a story in this medium, or to design a game either...

To an extent sure, are they anywhere near as capable of being as nuanced, deep, thought provoking, and do they have as much to say? Especially in the context of playing to the strengths of this medium and then telling that story through interactive means? The answer 3 decades running now, is not really. Are there exceptions to this? Yeah Journey exists, Planescape exists, but even the stuff they achieve is a little half baked when held under the knife.

But sure, part of it could just the safe way most games go about telling a story, instead of pushing harder on the stuff that gives the impression that we've only really scratched the surface of this medium.

@jg4xchamp:

I think that has become the answer for so long is because there designers are still growing in the post-modern form of the medium. Like you said, the likes of Journey is a minimalist narrative and I feel most of its impact actually comes from game-feel and agency. It's the way the player struggles walking up steep slopes or glides wistfully down them. Those situations are drawing out emotions from the player in an almost spontaneous narrative that is created by the player, and only suggested by the designer. But then you go into whether this counts as a game at all? It's almost like video game dadaism.

To create an intentional, specific story, something more like The Last of Us and blend all that into a constantly flowing interactive game is a different story.

Like you said, we've only scratched the surface but that's fine. :) The medium is only in its infancy and there's plenty of time to learn!

It still tickles me more when a game like Phoenix Wright challenges the player with puzzles based on the game's constant narrative, or when Journey gets a reaction out of me purely in game-feel. It reminds me of a little game-feel demonstration I once found on the Internet. It was a little stick man crawling through barbed wire and each one you walked through made you move slower and slower with a trickle of blood behind you until you can no longer move. It was a simplistic example that shows that interactivity can some times say something more effectively than a cut-scene.

@oflow: Right

I don't know. I'd have to play more recent titles before I make a conclusion, like Kentucky Route Zero, LISA, and upcoming NIER Automata. But it seems they're about the same.

Doom 2016 would be my tolerance limit for stories. SJW goes insane. Find her. Kill her. End of story. ;)

Older PC RPG's had better stories because they were written in full text blocks. Pacing and presentation were not important, they were a hybrid of visual novel, all the "greats" are like this, one conversation with an ally was pages long sometimes. You can't do that with full voice/animation without boring the user to death...

To this day visual novels are better stories than games for obvious bloody reasons.

Take the current critism of FFXV "It's open world gameplay is disjointed from the urgency of the main plot" .... elder scrolls games etc being guilty of this as well... unless the story controls the pace, then the story is going to be trivial at best.

But the more the story controls the pace.... usually the game suffers, or just flat out linear.