Video game writing - For those who like narrative and story to sperg about it

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Please for the love of God do not do the following. Excessively quirky does not mean good.

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I like simple stories for the most part. Save the princess or save the world, like Mario or Dragon Quest. A well executed, simple story trumps a complicated AAA Hollywood-tier piece of shit any day.

Give me Pokemon Red over TLOU2 any fucking day, but also over any other Pokemon game's story. I can get invested in "collect pokemon, become the champion, beat the mafia along the way" but not "Team Galactic wants to remake the galaxy I guess so stop them?" or whatever poorly written goal they had and I forgot about until I Googled it.

More complicated stories are fine, I just think they can go wrong a lot easier and so suck more often. Mega Man has examples of both simple and complicated stories done well, it's a great series.
 
I think Morrowind's narrative is decent, but not nearly perfect as people suggest.
Still, have much more consistency than Oblivion & Skyrim.
 
This is one of the times i get to spergout about one of my favorite games ever Dead Rising, its a game that in reality doesn't need to do much since most of the plot is based on Dawn of the Dead. but it does so much in terms of story and gameplay as the additional cases give you both exp and weapons that you can use throughout most of the story missions. its just a very well designed game, and one that i think is one of the best to this very day.
 
SSj_Ness said:
Mega Man has examples of both simple and complicated stories done well
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eeeeeehhhhhhhh.......

MMX4 kinda did a shitty job with Zero's story. Iris' death is supposed to be a sad and touching moment, and yet I really didn't give a shit about her because the game really didn't give me a reason to in the first place. Like "Oh, it's implied Zero and the Conol have some history", then why not fucking SHOW that, or at least explain it better. And it's not like they couldn't either... it was a PS1/Saturn era game that had animated cutscenes like a crap-ton of other games did back then and they went to the effort of showing Zero when he was under Wily's control, so what was wrong with everything else?

Also you don't use the voice actor for regular Mega Man to give X Mega Man the same sounding voice. That's just retarded.
 
Celebrate Nite said:
eeeeeehhhhhhhh.......

MMX4 kinda did a shitty job with Zero's story. Iris' death is supposed to be a sad and touching moment, and yet I really didn't give a shit about her because the game really didn't give me a reason to in the first place. Like "Oh, it's implied Zero and the Conol have some history", then why not fucking SHOW that, or at least explain it better. And it's not like they couldn't either... it was a PS1/Saturn era game that had animated cutscenes like a crap-ton of other games did back then and they went to the effort of showing Zero when he was under Wily's control, so what was wrong with everything else?

Also you don't use the voice actor for regular Mega Man to give X Mega Man the same sounding voice. That's just retarded.
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Remember even Otacon shouting at Snake a similar phrase Zero shouts with Iris in his hands is more memorable.

Otacon: What are you doing?
Snake: Returning to its handerknief.
Otacon: Why?
Snake: Because i don't have more tears to shred.
Otacon: What i'm fighting for? What are you fighting for?
 
Trouble with the trolley, eh?

That was unironically masterful writing because Insomniac knew how to make it annoying but not so much you wanted to give up. You wanted to beat the track so you could show that damn Breeze Builder and he'd stop taunting you.
 
Video game writing is a vast subject and it depends on what I want to "get" from a game.
One of my favourite games, Okami, is very simple: You are a weakened god because people have stopped believing in you and you are walking the earth in the body of a wolf to defeat an ancient enemy of yours. Perform miracles and cleanse cursed areas to make people believe in you again, become stronger, defeat evil. There's no deeper philosophical discussion to be had either in-game or when you decipher the game, only "you=good, evil=bad".

Another favourite game of mine, or rather series, is Red Dead Redemption 1-2. The premise is simple: you are a cowboy at the ass-end of the conquest of the wild west, things are changing and you are forced to decide whether you stay the same or you change with the times.
The writing in RDR1-2 is a bit deeper than that summary and you play characters with a coloured past that catches up to them, starting the game's story. All of the named posse members have a clear personality with clear motivation, they're all flawed in some way and you get to explore most of the cast as you do the main storyline. None of the featured characters are clear villains, except for one who's a blaring red flag from the second he's introduced but he's not a boring obvious villain. Even the guy who's the big bad in Red Dead Redemption 1 is shown to have different sides in both games and you can't really reduce him to one single trait.

The kind of writing I hate is the shallow, forced diversity where characters haven't earned the respect they're given by the writing or they're flawless super-beings. "Strong" women opposite weak, toxic men who are written as squirming worms. I hate Mary Sues/Gary Stus. I hate games that force real world politics from Current Year (you know the kind, the politics that age like milk) into the game where it makes little to no sense.

As memeworthy as Hideo Kojima is and how forced some of his stories can be, I do quite like Metal Gear Solid as a series. Even if it has some political hot takes that have aged the games, I don't think they have aged as badly as some more modern titles made "for modern audiences".
 
PetiteFeet said:
The writing in RDR1-2 is a bit deeper than that summary and you play characters with a coloured past that catches up to them, starting the game's story. All of the named posse members have a clear personality with clear motivation, they're all flawed in some way and you get to explore most of the cast as you do the main storyline. None of the featured characters are clear villains, except for one who's a blaring red flag from the second he's introduced but he's not a boring obvious villain. Even the guy who's the big bad in Red Dead Redemption 1 is shown to have different sides in both games and you can't really reduce him to one single trait.
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I generally think RDR2 is the better actual game, but will forever prefer RDR1 because setting that game at the dead end of the Western era was a brilliant writing decision. That's the trick that makes all the themes of the characters snap into place.
And what makes the ending so tragic
 
std::string said:
Pillars of Eternity had a cool setting and plot but the actual writing left a lot to be desired. It was definitely a product of its time where everyone was in love with "haha grimdark so edgy."
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It's SO needlessly verbose. As I've said in the past, you could cut half of the flavor text out and lose absolutely nothing.

People talk about Planescape Torment being wordy, but it has nothing on Pillars of Eternity.
 
More "I sighed as the elevator began to shake, vibrating with motion" in an ironic way.

Less "I sighed as the elevator began to shake, vibrating with motion" in a serious way.
 
I love it when games, fantasy rpg games especially, include gods in their worldbuilding as much as possible. Different factions infuenced and defined by worshipping different gods really adds to the immersion.
Bonus points for "God of light vs god of darkness with a god of balance hanging out besides the conflict". Absolute peak, kino even.
Rambling sponsored by the Gothic series
 
Ibanez RG 350EX said:
People talk about Planescape Torment being wordy, but it has nothing on Pillars of Eternity.
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Planescape: Torment is not wordy. It's highly economical. I suppose it comes from having a wealth of material to draw from, so it only uses what it needs to. You'll never open a Planescape: Torment dialog to see a "tell me about..." option for each layer of the Abyss. Pillars, Tyranny, etc want to put everything they have into the game, for the #fans.
 
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