Goals and Storytelling

[the dark side]

Thunderbunk, kindly do not speak ill of the health pack system in front of me, as far as i am concerned regenerating health is only for mindless casual gamers who lack the intelligence to understand the idea of "find a medkit when your health gets low". i see no excuse, neither story nor gameplay related for it, it exits PURELY to help the game appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator!

so kindly do not insult the traditional and superior health system in front of me as that grinds my gears into a Powder, thankyou, non-sequitor it might be, but it improves the games challenge, and thus, its enjoyment, and is thus superior as a gameplay mechanic.

in fact, i do actually agree that by treating story and gameplay as one in that case, it may be possible to make the medkit look more realistic, i mean, true, you are not going to find an army specification medikit in a kitchen cabinet...but you might find a home first aid kit that can restore about a 5th of the player health, match the medikit art design and location to the location the current story section is located in. and yes, putting a medkit in a red barrel is stupid,. a miltary supply crate marked "medical supplies" in the lanquage of whatever nation the story has taken you to, would be a considerably more logical place, putting it in a red barrell,even i will agree, is brain dead level design...something i hate even more than regen, and trust me, that, is really saying something.

@Aldigheri, what the player goes through is NOT a story,. it is meerly one Facet of a Story, by focusing purely on the experience of one characheter, all you have is a Need to Know version of what is happening, this is limited and boring, and gives no reason as to why exactly you are killing "evil russian general #487...or come to think of it, who Evil Russian General #487 actually is, and thus, the final battle is little more than a depressing anti climax.

Gameplay is only a facet of the story, yes, its the most important one, but it falls as flat as a pancake without the other facets.. Imagine story as a diamond,. the player experience, via gameplay and those godawfull first person cutscenes that are so in voque today, you have One Facet of that diamond. the other facets are, Who the Villains are, what are there thaughts, where have the comefrom, what is there endgame (ie, there objective, why do they want to, say, blow up new york?) where the game is taking you, and why, and why the things that are happening in the game are happening. that is the story. that is what makes the game interesting as you can populate it with 3d charachters, and villains you can hate! not just cardboard cutouts that you know nothing about, and thus, cannot judge, meaning you only kill them because "THE NUMBERS ARE F***ING TELLING ME TOO!" (sorry, i cannot resist a pop at the laughable scripting in todays games) that is lazy storytelling, you didnt not flesh out the main villain because you didnt want to use "long winded cutscenes" but because you are Lazy and couldnt be Bothered to write him a good backstory!. "iz Russian so Iz evil" is NOT backstory. also, cutscenes are not the enemy, only cutscenes that go for too long (ie Mgs4) or cutscenes that have bad dialoque and bad camara angles.

The third person cutscene is still the finest way to tell the total game story, the "big picture" if you will, let us take No One Lives Forever, a game wich i feel perhaps has the finest cutscenes in christendom, they are long, yes, up to 10 miuites, but they do not drag, as they give us the backstories of the enemy, such as Inge wagners Abusive childhood, Magnus Armstrongs war record, Why ego meant mr smith went roque, etc. they show us why the villains are the villains! that makes the villains interesting, and makes you judge them, its how i felt bad about killing Inge Wagner, but enjoyed wringing the guts out of volkov. they even show us the villains side of the story, setting up there endgame, and why they seek it, instead of focussing on just the players endgame of stopping them. it has great camara angles, and Superb dialoque that sounds natural, is often laugh out loud Hilarious, and is sometimes even inspringly moral, Cate: "Everybody Suffers Countess, but only Cowards take it out on other people.." Baroness: "Well...Arnt you a righteous little Bitch!?" morals, and humour, it makes the script sparkle, and it is well delivered by a talented voice cast (a bad voice cast can also make cutscenes clang, even with a great script, why companies settle for people like timothy watson when Adamn Blackwood could be hired for a few extra grand is beyond me, you NEED good voice actors in a story driven game!)

A cutscene is still the story creators best freind, as it, if its third person, can show the wider universe of the game, the politics of its nations, and the endgames of its charachters, it can make an interesting, more fleshed out world, making the player want to visit it, meet its inhabitants, learn to hate them, and kill them because there sick and twisted personality has horrified and offended the player, not because of "THE NUMBERS!" the numbers are not a valid reason for murder. by not having cutscenes that reveal the charachters and reasons of the story, it shows you are using the fact you have designed the game to appeal to the lowest common denominator as an excuse to not write a good story. i mean, yes, it is still possible to create a fantastic story without ever leaving the players feild of vision, Half Life 2 is More than proof that gameplay and story can co-exist as one, but it takes a lot of talent and vision, talent and vision a lot of people, even some of the best games designers in the business, such as Hideo Kojima, do, not, have. hence there use of third person cutscenes to tell the story. Story is a Diamond, Gameplay is one Facet, and i am afraid until someone can create a better way to tell an entire story, even the enemies point of view and endgame, without cutscenes, then, cutscenes will still be a valid, and often superior, mechanic for showing us the "big picture" of the story, limituing it purely to the players point of view, only gives you the little picture, so the story feels disjointed, hollow, and lazy, and that is not acceptable, even to a gameplay first point of view, better No story at all than a Bad Story.

Also, the story has to be fake, it is called Fiction, it is make Beleive for grown ups, if you want reality, then please, watch the news, as reality in games is Soul Crushingly Boring, and strikes me as intense lazyness because the developers could not be bothered to come up with some half decent fiction and just copied this weeks Daily Mail!

PS, Kman, you use the "emotional" levels a lot in that argument, emotion, especially if its done subtly, unfortunatly, just happens to be were my brain leaves the building (remember, i suffer from mild emotional blindness) and the story tends to become a load of impenetrable grey mush for me, so, do you mind waiting a while for an answer to your argument?, its going to take a lot of drafting and redrafting for me to answer it.