Castle Paradox

[Onlyoneinall]

For me, one of the most important things for a game is its storyline. Whatever it may be, I like my games to have interesting stories and great dialogue.

Of course, some games have stories, but they are very poor either in the sense of originality, or the dialogue is terrible (or both). Some examples of this are games like Golden Sun and Advance Wars (excluding Days of Ruin). Both games are particularly memorable for crappy dialogue. Maybe I'm just picky but this really ruined the gameplay experience for me. The gameplay was still fun, but there just wasn't as much motivation to go through with it because there really wasn't any incentive as far as the story goes.

So would you rather have a game with a bad story, or one that doesn't have one at all? Why do some of these professionally made games have such a lack of a good storyline, or terrible dialogue or really banal voice acting? Is it because they think we won't care? Is the person directing the story really incompetent or not checking the quality? Is there some secret underlying motives for this that I am not understanding?

Also discuss what games have some of your most favorite stories, or have top quality writing and voice acting, or what you feel makes a good story for any and all genres.
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

[Newbie_Power]

This is such a touchy subject, but I've already decided (based on what RMZ said, I believe) that a goal of the game is probably more necessary if you are not going to have heavy emphasis on story. With that, no story is probably better than a forced, tacked on story, as long as there's a sense of accomplishment in some way.

But a great story is a great story. You can't argue against that.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[The Wobbler]

[Newbie_Power]

[Onlyoneinall]

Sorry, I know my question was broad but I guess it was too broad?

But I think what Surlaw has said would be a good starting point.

I had no idea they started adding cinematics to the Sonic the Hedgehog games. Is it done poorly, or is it chopping up the game's relatively simple story?

How about the horror genre? I've mentioned in my article on horror games how I feel story is extremely important in a horror game, more so than other genres. Does everyone agree with this, or do you feel this doesn't always have to be the case, or have played a game that works in the horror genre without having a story (or a bad one)?
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

[Newbie_Power]

[Ronin Catholic]

I think that overall, story just seems to get in the way of the game for me. I know that I'd have enjoyed Final Fantasy Tactics Advance a lot more if they'd have skipped the story and just let me fight.
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"I didn't start the flame war;
I don't know what you thought here
'Twas that way when I got here"

"I didn't start the flame war;
I can't understand a word you're saying
nor the game you're playing~"

[The Wobbler]

[TwinHamster]

I feel that a good story is primarily a motivational aid.
If I don't feel the motivation to play a game, then I'm not going to finish it.

[Clamps]

A good story is better than a bad or no story. There is no excuse, I think, for a bad story. I accept that not every game can have a brilliant, moving, epic storyline, but there's a certain level of quality I'd expect from anyone who passed English in High School, and a lot of games....fail.

It takes a special spark to make a brilliant story, but making a serviceable one takes nothing but the will to learn. If you can't bother to study up, don't bother to write a story. It's 90% learned skill, and only 10% talent.

[Rya.Reisender]

First of all I liked the story of Golden Sun a lot. Alone this statement should make you realize that if a story is good or bad depends on personal taste. Just removing a story because some people consider it bad is a thing you should never do, because there'll always be people who like it. Even it's the totally classic JRPG story, there are still some people that like those classic JRPG stories over deep philosophical ones.

However, there are types of games that don't need a story at all. Especially games that put their focus extremely on gameplay, can be easily spoiled by having a story.


Strategy RPGs were mentioned here and I have to agree here. I know MANY MANY strategy RPGs that just put in too much story and that story usually just contains out of "Royal" talk which is awful. In Fire Emblem series it happened to me multiple times that I didn't really want to continue playing only because I didn't want to read all the story dialogues until the next battle and go shopping and do all this preparation stuff.

I'd love to see an SRPG that had no story at all and only consisted of various battles you fight. Maybe even randomly created ones!

The only SRPG series I really enjoyed all the way through was Shining Force.


Horror games were also mentioned here. About those I want to say, that I HATE horror games that don't have a good story. Horror is a genre that just NEEDS a really good, deep, philosophical and interesting story. For me the reason why I started to like horror games was only because I was tired of RPGs always having the same or a similar story over and over again and horror games are so deep and way more thought out in story terms. Neither a bad story nor no story at all would do it for me in the horror genre.

[Moogle1]

[The Drizzle]

Yeah but "good" and "bad" are qualities that are not measurable in terms of stories. So the only way to make the claim that a story is good or bad is by determining whether you liked it or not.
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My name is...
The shake-zula, the mic rulah, the old schoola, you wanna trip? I'll bring it to yah...

[Moogle1]

That's not true. A closer gauge would be what percentage of people liked it. There are still objective measurements, though, even with story.

This is more true for other elements, like graphics and gameplay, where there are more objective measurements to be made than there are for story. It's still true for story, though, and I really wish Rya would stop saying that good and bad are undefined and undefinable.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Newbie_Power]