Japanese or Western Story Telling: Which one you prefer?

Western for sure... but doesn't mean I don't like Eastern story telling.

Western. Choice & consequnce along with a more grounded approach to telling a story makes me more interested in a game then the typical Japanese approach. The Japanese games at their best hit a peak with their storytelling that is good-great. Western games at their best are great-amazing. Look at Xenogears (ignoring the butchered translation, which also brings it down) vs. Planescape. Or Fallout vs. Suikoden 2. Or Mask of the Betrayer vs. Valkyria Chronicles. I enjoy all the games listed here, but the western ones just win out because of my taste.

Most video games have awful storylines, so how they are conveyed becomes subordinate to that. Even then, games like MGS2 have not ever been equaled in this respect, so I gotta give it to Japan.

On balance I care more about the gameplay and design than I do the actual plots? And like I said every now and then I'm willing to meet a game half way. Not every TV show is The Wire, doesn't mean I can't sit through Daredevil and be entertained.

It's like the concept of fun, fun in and of itself can be simple minded, shallow, and stupid, but it's fun, it kills time, and I like this medium enough to playthrough things that I'm at least being entertained by. Me actually hating a game (and I think I'm pretty blunt usually) is a lot different, than me not like one, 2, or 3 different parts of a game, the whole I might actually dig (the Witcher games for instance there are aspects I like that get me through the game, and other aspects where I thought they were lame). It takes a Mafia 2, Destiny, Resident Evil 6, Final Fantasy XIII type game for me to outright hate it, and in the case of 2 of them say "**** this, this is not worth my time" and not even bother making it the finish line.

If it makes you feel better The Witcher 3's combat is a turn off for me, so I basically stopped playing it. But for the most part I don't play my games for the plot, not always, some I get invested enough to see where they are going with it, make it the end, then I think about it. Most of the time I come up with "taht wasn't very good, because x, y, and z" and every now and then I get a Spec Ops The Line or Talos Principle and go, you know what, that was good.

And Kingdom Hearts is black and white fluff, it's just straight bad in the story department, not pretentious. Ass Creed was too boring for me to care, I thought Ezio was entertaining was as high as the bar went for AssCreed.

Also, Planescape: Torment's story still falls under the statement of "it's got a good story.... for a video game".

It's great to play through and experience, but it would probably not make it beyond pulpy fantasy at a local book store.

i actually dont have a preference...it just depends on my mood

Choices & consequences is something that Japan's Visual Novel (VN) games do much better than Western games. The choices in Western games hardly make much real difference to the storyline, compared to Japanese VNs where choices usually have drastic consequences (often leading down completely different storylines). Also, Japanese VNs are generally much better-written. Even the best-written Western games (including even PST) don't hold up all that well compared to the best Japanese VNs (like, for example, Steins Gate)... But then again, some Western gamers might be uncomfortable with referring to VNs as video games, but view them as a different medium altogether.

Impossible to say. Some Western games have great stories while others are complete garbage or altogether absent. The exact same thing goes with JRPG's, but they often go the realm of WTF is this, and WTF just happened with their stories.

I enjoy both game types though and it really is mood dependent but lately, Western games are holding my attention better. I get bored of the combat system of most modern JRPG's before I'm 20 hours in anymore.

I enjoy both really. Quality in story is what I'm looking for.

It doesn't matter if they actually change the storyline honestly. People slam the Bioware style, but I actually like it a fair amount. I play games once unless its something truly special like Dark Souls or Baldur's Gate 2. As such, the illusion of choice often leads to me feeling like a hero or whatever the game is setting out to do.

My good experiences with Visual Novels is Cinders and Chunsoft. The former is a western VN. Zero Escape has no real C&C because you are working towards the ultimate true ending. Danganronpa has C&C in the free times, but thats about it. Ever 17 is on my list of games to play, as is Corpse Party. Tried to play Fate/Zero after watching Fate/Stay Night and couldn't get into because it dragged sooo much. Waiting on the damn US Vita release for Steins;Gate.

Generally its a genre I avoid because slice of life is something I dislike and the vast majority of them seem to fall in there. Always open to recommendations if you have any.

Onto the genre itself, based on what I've played its good for video game storytelling standards. Its in a really weird spot though. The games themselves seem to deviate from both the established western and japanese tropes and plot devices because of the nature of that genre. What works for something interactive isn't going to work for something entirely text driven. For the purpose of this thread it seemed easier to simply stick with things that can be compared apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.

Edit: I took the time to list what I've played to give you a better idea where I'm coming from with the last paragraph.

in games really ppl still debate this?

outside of games Japan wins every time America has no culture they don't even have food. Ate like peasants until the Italians came over

Claiming that Western RPG's are all American..... So ignorant

I think it's a bit unrealistic to expect RPGs to be able to pull off true C&C, given the amount of gameplay they have to deal with. For every branching story path they create, the assets, workload and budget multiply exponentially, so it's understandable why RPGs can't implement true C&C. Proper C&C is possible for VNs because they don't have to worry about all the assets that RPGs need to deal with.

Some VNs have a "true ending", but that doesn't necessarily cancel out all the C&C that came before it. It just means it's the canon ending the developers chose, but it doesn't mean all the other endings couldn't have been just as real. I'm not familiar with the Fate/Zero game, so can't comment on that, but Fate/Stay Night is a quality VN with true C&C. But yeah, you should definitely try out Steins Gate when it comes out in your country. It's a great piece of science fiction.

I'm not usually into slice-of-life VNs either. But one slice-of-life VN I would highly recommend is Clannad. It has some of the best drama storytelling I've seen (with a bit of fantasy).

If VNs were to be excluded from the discussion, then I might lean more towards the West (the storytelling standards of non-VN Japanese games have been declining for a while now). But when VNs enter the discussion, then Japan comes out way ahead in terms of writing, storytelling and C&C. So it really just comes down to whether VNs are classified as video games, or a new medium altogether.

You were saying

On serious did not say that nice try though better luck next time :)