Is Nintendo the most incompetent story writers the gaming industry has ever seen?

Do you find Nintendo stories confusing, OP? Do you struggle with the occasional sentence of Nintendo dialogue?

If so, I think that's a Hardwenzen problem, rather than a sign that Nintendo is a bad storyteller. An eight year old kid can pick up just about any Nintendo game and understand the story from start to finish.

Meanwhile, there are tons of games out there with much worse storytelling. If you've ever cringed at a forced romance scene, or scratched your head at a villain's ridiculously complicated plan, or shouted BS at an awful plot twist, you'd know exactly what I mean.

Video games are not the best medium for telling stories, or at least developers have yet to figure out an effective way to tell them without bringing the gameplay to a screeching halt so they can show another lame cutscene. Half-Life 2, I think, has come the closest to giving a game its own storytelling voice, but even it was far from perfect in that regard. If developers can't come up with something better than cutscenes, then I would prefer they dispense with trying to tell stories entirely and focus all of their resources on compelling gameplay.

Its time to STOP.

GoW2018 gave us an amazing story AND gameplay. When a dev wants to have a quality story in a video game, said story can be as good as in a movie/series or a book. There is no such thing as "not the best medium for story telling". We're not in 2001, the tech is there.

@hardwenzen: lol at GoW having a good story.

I'd rather developers say too little than say too much, and all I have to do is think of all those unbearable Hideo Kojima cutscenes to be reminded of that.

Like you know what's a good story.

BINGO!

Its so annoying seeing you agree with his ass. He is permanently butthurt ever since he got his new job😖

@dzimm: The whole narrative that video games can't or dont have good stories and storytelling is just laughably bad at this point.

Nope. Just to troll Nintendo fans. He's like those Sony trolls on Twitter that brings up "Nintendo $60 game (Metroid Dread) to a Sony game", which all got ratio'd to Hell and back.

One of the worst for sure

The simple stories is kinda the point. Give a simple goal, bam here is your gameplay.

When they try, they can put out games with pretty strong narrative. Whether it is Genalogy of the Holy War, Thracia 776 or Mother 3.

Storytelling only becomes an issue these days when the story becomes an integral part of the experience, hence why MGS4's awful writing annoyed me, while MGS5's didn't.

Nah. I played games from other companies with worse storytelling like sega and to a lesser extent 343i and Square Enix. I don't think any game published by nintendo outside of Other M has as bad of a story as games like sonic forces or as confusing of a story as halo 4 and a lot of the kingdom hearts games. The vast majority of their games have easy to understand stories and are not cringy either.

@Maroxad: But do we need every single game, 100% of the time being "simple"? Where's the so called superior variety of Nintendo titles i keep hearing about?

Why not? Simple stories makes them able to focus on gameplay variety, which is what matters.

Sony fans complaining about Nintendo just comes off as boring people complaining about others not being boring.

So still Mario saving princess peach from bowser is a good story? LOL!

still to this day they keep rehashing same story.

Sony has the variety. Be it from their exclusives and all the third party there is. Always getting the simple stuff from Nintendo is repetitive. You don't always need games to be simple in nature to focus more on gameplay.

lol. You don't need to play Nintendo games if you find them repetitive and think story driven 3rd person action games is variety. Complaining about Nintendo not doing what Sony is, which is trying to emulate already bad hollywood stories, is the act of a boring person. Or a Sony fanboy troll, of course. Nintendo are what they are, and are really good at what they are.

Surprised you find the time to post so much about Nintendo between playing the PS5's huge library of variety.

@hardwenzen: Sony games have very simple and boring gameplay. They need to improve on that. They also make all their games too similar. Like switch it up bro, I’m tired of playing boring third person games.

Also Metroid Dreads story is pretty awesome so far.

They don't need to be doing what Sony does. They won't be able to do that no matter how hard they try.

What i am saying is that Sony offers both, the simple stuff (Ratchet, Astrobot, LBP, etc) AND the cinematic stuff you despise, while its winning GOTY all over the place. Nintendo cannot offer anything else but the simplest of stuff. That is not variety. You might not like the so called cinematic games (even tho a cinematic game such as GoW2018 has more gameplay than three Dread combined), but others clearly do, and sales prove that. You might argue that the "simple" stuff from Nintendo is better than the "simple" stuff from Sony/MS, and i would agree, but that's all Nintendo has, and that's poor variety of content.

You didn't understand my post. I'll try to help you. If I try to draw a tree, and it looks like sandwich every time I'm finished, I'm incompetent at drawing trees. If I don't even try to draw a tree, you can't really call me incompetent at it, as I've never tried.

As someone else said somewhere, Nintendo present their simple stories in ways that are enjoyable, and you rarely need to cringe when the developer pauses your game to use regurgitated methods of forcing emotions down your throat while you'd rather continue playing.

There's actually some pretty deep stories in some Nintendo games too, but you'd have to actually play some Nintendo games to see that.

I really, truly hope not. lol

Sony's simplest stuff is their best shit though, while not being as good as Nintendo's. I really liked the first Little Big Planet, despite the sluggish controls. Ratchet looks.. ok, at least. Stuff like Sly Cooper looks pretty cool, among some other stuff. Wannabe hollywood cinematic games where gameplay takes a back seat? The very thing I play games for? Crap.

And winning GOTY all over the place doesn't mean much. McDonald's doesn't make the best burgers in the world despite being popular. Couple that with the fact that game journalists today are usually 20 something year old nobodies who'd give a game 2 extra points for "it was so cool when he rode on the rocket flexing his muscles while shouting **** you to the villain", while not mentioning gameplay.

xD As shown when I was trying GoW out for two hours and my gametime was around 10 minutes. After playing Dread for 2 hours, around 1 hour and 55 minutes were gameplay. The rest were short cinematics and looking at the map.

Sure, but when "all that Nintendo has" is better than eveyone else's stuff, I can't complain, lack of cinematic/story variety or not.

@Litchie: "As shown when I was trying GoW out for two hours and my gametime was around 10 minutes."

No matter how many times you repost that, it's still complete BS. 😂

Might've been 15, and me saying 10 for effect. Point still stands.

I think I also removed the forced walking sequences and QTE boss fight from the timer.

Nah, they're better than Atari at it so they got that going for'em. lol

Poo sheep, they're really taking a good ummm.... shearing here. :P

@Litchie: Pssst ..still BS.

Well, no. That's what I remember at least. Feel free to prove me wrong by posting the actual gametime from the first two hours of GoW. Please remove the forced walking sequences and QTEs as well as the cinematics.

I suppose that's true in theory, but the fact is, the overwhelming majority of video game stories don't even approach the level of a straight-to-DVD movie starring an acting school dropout. Maybe video games can be used to tell great stories in a compelling way, but most of them simply don't.

I have never played whatever game that is you're referring to, so for the sake of argument, I will concede the point that perhaps there is an occasional game that can tell a well-written and compelling story in a way that doesn't constantly interrupt the gameplay with second-rate cutscenes, but that is exceptionally rare in my experience. For that matter, developers seem hard pressed to produce a game that tells a well-written and compelling story even with second rate cutscenes that constantly interrupt the gameplay!

It seems like a binary decision for most developers. You can either allow the player to play the game, or you can tell him a story (even if it's a bad one). I'm hoping some day a developer will figure out how to do both at the same time.

Nintendo don't really prioritize story over gameplay for them gameplay is king.

Man, I don't know, I don't hold stories in games to a high standard.

I don't actually care that Halo doesn't have a good story. If it did, I'd find it jarring and more linear feeling, like I'm trying to closely follow a story. It's the last thing I want.

When I'm playing Ace Combat games, music is disabled and cut scenes are getting skipped. I just don't care.

I'm glad Nintendo barely try with a lot of their games when it comes to story.

This is where I find some Sony games jarring. I really don't want a story shoved down my throat. I just want to play they game.

The day I see a cut scene between levels on a 2D Mario game, is when I'm completely done with Nintendo.

When it comes to Nintendo stories the basic overall premise is the same. However it's the execution of the stories in their games that makes them wildly different.

My favorite Nintendo game was Wind Waker - it had an amazing story. Mario Odyssey And Breath of the Wild were quite good too.

Here is an old quote from John Carmack which captures my opinion on stories in video games.

"Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important.”

I have played countless games across numerous platforms over the years, and very few stories stick with me.

Most of the time, I am just waiting for a cutscene to be over so I can get back to my game.

The best video games are the ones that work the story into the gameplay itself, not forcing a player to watch hours of tedious cutscenes.

That's the issue, most stories in video games can't hold a candle to movies, TV Shows, or other media

So honestly, I don't mind in a Mario game has a story no deeper then "Bowser kidnaps the Princess again". I don't play Mario games for their story, I play them for the gameplay.

@Litchie: When you tried gow for 2h, you already knew its a story based game made by Sony. Of course there will be cutscenes, especially at the beginning. How else are you gonna learn about the important characters in the story? You don't see any cinematics in a Nintendo game because they can barely do motion capture at this point, let alone complex stuff Sony is doing. And even if they were able to do it on par with Sony, none of their games have a story worth having cutscenes for. Sony titles and the upcoming MS titles can have quality cinematics because the world and characters allows you to do so. A five minutes cinematic is much better at showcasing the "bad guy's" intent than a text or have absolutely nothing than "yo ama kidnap yo bitch one more time". So you might hate the cinematics, but its important for a story based title.

"Sure, but when "all that Nintendo has" is better than eveyone else's stuff, I can't complain, lack of cinematic/story variety or not."

And that's just opinion. Mine is the extreme opposite of yours.

I play games for the gameplay. If I want cinematic storytelling, I'll watch a movie. If I want a good story, I'll read a book.

Been hearing this from you sheep for like 20 years lol.

Why is it so hard to understand that a story CAN be a positive for certain genres? Like, its no one's fault that most Nintendo titles are limited to platformers. If it had shooters and rpg's, a good story is perfectly suitable, but even when they did have the likes of The Conduit (LOL that game), the story was nothing else but a meme.

Couldn't avoid to think about this ... you don't get to complain about writting without mentioning this. Going back to than gen, i take the Super Mario Galaxy basic plot over this one any time, any day, any moment.

@dzimm: If you continually try to compare one mediums storytelling to another's you're always going to be disappointed in some way. We've finally got the book guys to mostly shut up about how much better their medium is over movies, let's now shut up the games can't tell stories compared to whatever group now.

Know what would be much better than interrupting the game for 5 minutes? Show the bad guy's intent by letting the player learn it during gameplay while he's playing the fucking game.

But yeah, opinions. I prefer playing games when playing games. You prefer half-playing, half-watching.

@Litchie: You think there's only 10 minutes of gameplay in the first 2 hours of GoW...you're opinion is invalid here. Sorry, maybe next time.

And I asked you to prove me wrong, but you backed out like a coward, and is instead back with a short post before backing out again.

What game did this well?

@vfighter: I beg to differ. Books are still widely considered a lot better than movies when it comes to storytelling. The vast majority of books are still more highly regarded than their cinematic counterparts.

@Litchie: Psst...more BS, you've gotta stop doing that before you drown in shit.

What comes to mind first is several metroidvanias where you're dripfed lore during gameplay, or see traces of shit you puzzle together yourself. FromSoft's titles are similar in that sense. I don't remember any 5 minute cutscenes in those. Half-Life.

I mean.. Regurgitating your "bs" post doesn't make you look smarter. Proving you're right and I'm wrong might help you.

Can't think of anything from metroidvania style games (even tho the world design of gow2018 is very metroidvania-like, and you do find a lot of lore while exploring without any cinematics). And for Fromsoft, i don't know. They don't really have a "bad guy", its more of a criptic story that is more about its world than a single character. In Sekiro they tried to make a standard story, and i fund it to be complete garbage, like really really bad. And i hope Elden Ring goes back to the story telling of their titles released prior to Sekiro.

A good example of an interesting story without cutscenes would be Bioshock 1 and Bioshock 2 to a lesser extent, but there's a reason why Bio1 story is so popular and remembered by most. Barely any games have achieved this.

Very true, and I wish more games did this. You don't have to completely remove cutscenes in favor of audio logs (even though I prefer that or text over cutscenes), I only ask that you tell a story without interrupting my gameplay often and for long. My patience for that is incredibly low. It shouldn't be too much to ask from devs.

Hardwenzen, Nintendo make games, not books. What do you want exactly, a confined narrative? Because that’s what you get. The technology might exist but I don’t see anyone coming to me for the ideas in which they do not have. If you want a truly great story, you’re just not going to find one in a video game. If the industry, ditched their team and a hired sone proper writing talent, the result would be totally different, but that just isn’t the experience of video games. Video games are more intimate to the player experience and not to the growth of a story or any nuanced character development. Gamers don’t have time for that.