@Navardo95 If you plan on watching the show then definitely watch at least to the end of season 3. The game takes place between season 3 and the upcoming season 5 so it has some pretty hefty spoilers.
Only a week ago people were praising CDPR in the comments of another article. Now suddenly they're stupid? Surely they've earned our trust by now, they wouldn't do this for the wrong reasons.
I think the main difference between the film industry and the games industry is that the film industry has hit a 'cap' on storytelling. That is, there isn't really any further that films can go as far as storytelling is concerned - any room it has to grow is based purely on social aspects (as seen with Django Unchained and the slavery issue) rather than any capacity for storytelling.
Games on the other hand have further to grow in regards to storytelling. We're getting there with games like Spec Ops: The Line and The Walking Dead, but we won't really be able to say that games have fully accepted the power and importance of storytelling until all the big blockbuster games have good stories - at least.
Without stories then gaming will go stale, you can see that when Jonathon talks about how some games have become boring for him lately. Gaming will always be popular but I think it will remain a young person's hobby until storytelling is taken seriously. Again likening it to films: each medium has its own tool for creating these stories (cinematography for films and gameplay for games). A lot of games have very similar stories (or no stories at all), so in this way the only way to differenciate between many games (the modern shooter being a great example) is the gameplay. The equivalent of this in films would be if the only thing you could use to differenciate between films is the cinematography. Films would get stale pretty quickly if this were the case, but it's not, because films take story seriously. You go to a film for the story.
Luckily technological advances in games actually improve the gameplay, so the same kind of gameplay can feel fresh with better graphics or physics or larger levels. For films, technology doesn't really improve the experience (it can even ruin it for some, see 3D and 48FPS). There's not really a visible cap we can see on technology for games, so the gameplay will always evolve with this. I do, however, think that these technological advances with decrease exponentially. In this case, we need storytelling. I'm holding my breath waiting for the games industry as a whole to take storytelling as seriously as it should be. It certainly looks like this may be happening soon.
@Wawas20 @mininutta2 Honestly Assassin's Creed III has bad writing, not just from a general standpoint but from a game standpoint as well. The reason I say Spec Ops and The Walking Dead deserve mentions are because they not only have good scripts on the surface level, but they utilise the medium of interactive games to help their storytelling. The best scripts in games are those that couldn't be done in any other medium.
Assassin's Creed, on the other hand, doesn't do this. It's essentially a poor film script with a lot of filler in order to make room for gameplay. It's certainly not a horrible story, but I would not put it in the best of this year.
I can't comment on 007 as I haven't played it. Obviously it got a pretty bad reception but who knows, maybe the story was actually somewhat decent. Spec Ops got a 6.5 on this site and still manages to be one of the best stories I have ever experienced, video games or no.
This is a disgrace. From a writing standpoint Assassin's Creed III was mediocre at best. It started off well but soon devolved into poorly fleshed out character motivations and uneven pacing.
I can't speak for the quality of the other nominees, but the fact that Spec Ops: The Line and The Walking Dead did not recieve nods just makes me question the reputability of these awards.
Ed's on the money regarding good film directors moving into games. Most of the directors you guys mentioned (Tarantino, Aronofsky) would maybe make passable games, but their masters of their own mediums. These guys have been around for years and years in the film business, before video games were taken seriously as a story telling medium (arguably they still aren't). They can make great films but any video game they make would just lack interactivity in the story.
Also I think you guys are talking about writers rather than directors. There isn't a whole lot of overlap between the process of directing a film versus directing a video game. Most of the directors you mentioned also write their own work though, so I'm assuming you meant writing. If any of these directors were to write a script for a video game then it would just feel like a film script with some loosely connected gameplay surrounding it.
In my opinion, the best storytelling in games are those games that utilise the interactive element of the medium. Games like Shadow of the Colossus or Bioshock immediately spring to mind. There's been attempted film adaptations to both of these that have gone through a lot of hardship, simply because they can't be told the same way through film. Both of these games use interactivity to tell their stories. Shadow of the Colossus uses gameplay and interactivity to build character relationships, whereas Bioshock has some very interesting things to say about the nature of video games themselves.
There are some writer/directors who I believe would make good writer/directors in the video game world though. Edgar Wright clearly has a thorough understanding of video game culture so he may be able to make a good game. Knowing the culture doesn't mean he knows the craft however. Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psycopaths) is another one. He's only done two film from them it's evident that he has a clear understanding of the medium and knows how to play to the strengths of it. This could transfer to other mediums, who knows?
Article over, that was a damn long post. If you managed to stick through it for this long then you deserve some sort of accolade.
@CobraKai83 How can you think Heavy Rain has better facial animations than LA Noire? That's just absrud, although I do agree that the graphics are better.
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