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Yeah, Blizzard's writing has always been more like a series of events that happen to occur chronologically rather than any kind of story with a plot. Sometimes you get the sense they expect something will have a big emotional payoff and give it a big cutscene, and it's just a character introduced 20 minutes ago randomly doing something for random reasons invented on the spot.
The Warcraft universe kind of feels like if you trained an LLM on Tolkien, D&D, and heavy metal lyrics, and then had it create a fantasy story. Everything is an exaggerated version of the shared consciousness about what a "dwarf" is or what an "elf" is or what medieval fantasy looks like. And sometimes is just an exaggerated version of the real world for some reason, so we get New Jersey gangster goblins and Jamaican Trolls who love the Loa, mon.
A lot of this stuff just feels like the 1990s-early 2010s. Anyone remember early Five Gum ads? Or heck, Bionicle. There was a trend towards hard-edged and tryhard atmospheres, everything had to be edgy and serious even if it didn't warrant it. People praise those Playstation 2 ads, but they seem like surrealist nonsense with no actual connection to video games. It really does feel like the "burgers?" meme.
Exhibit A was The Matrix, there were so many neat elements of it and it's remained in the popular consciousness for that reason, but it had to go eerily spiritual in a film series about technology. Who the heck was that grandma, anyway? What does this chosen one nonesense have to do with robots using humans as batteries?
I wouldn't say I'm into hard science fiction, but I think you need to be careful about inserting vague spiritualist nonsense in a story about technology. The spiritual and humanistic elements of a story about technology have to arise from the impact of technology on people and how it changes their perception of the world, not from spiritual powers imposed from the outside.
I enjoy stories about technology, but the problem with science fiction is that its authors have always been too Big Five Open for their own good and have squirted strange new ideas onto the page alongside the thoughtful reflections about the future of science and tech. I will say, for a cluster of people so committed to materialism and atheism, science fiction authors seem strangely compelled to write about beings of pure spirit and gods.
You can tell a compelling genre story about characters struggling against evil, but you have to think about characters and their motivations and have them act accordingly. I don't understand why game stories leaned so heavily into pseudo-mystical elements to add depth (poorly) instead of character motivations, which is the way in which deep stories actually stick with people. Your game will not be the source of a spiritual awakening, but it might inspire someone to strive for what is just and right, which is an important message that's easily possible.
In mild fairness, I think some of this was an outgrowth of The Matrix starting out as an homage to Ghost in the Shell, which is a rather cerebral and philosophical story which also happens to be bracketed by gorgeously-rendered cyborg carnage.
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I increasingly think Carmack was right. Story in games is like story in porn. You need just enough to get the action going. Most of my memorable moments in games come from overcoming challenges, rarely story beats. I rarely want to replay a game with a good story, because it takes so much work to get through it. If I want a story, I'll read a book or watch a movie. Increasingly just read a book these days.
The singular exception to this was ICO, who's environmental story telling was so masterful, which tied it's game mechanics into it so subtly, it blew me away with it's story in a way no other game has since. You were buying into it in ways you didn't even realize just playing the game normally. Raw genius.
Outside of that, I think I just want unpretentious serviceable game plots.
I'd rather play a game than watch a movie, personally, even with the same linearity of plot.
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Carmack definitely wasn't right. But he wasn't entirely wrong either. Not all games need a story, let alone an elaborate one. For example, Tetris would not benefit from the blocks having elaborate backstories. But some games do need a good story (gestures at the entire RPG genre). It's all about what you prefer and what kind of game you want to make. Carmack's error was in assuming that the kind of game he wanted to make (gameplay-heavy, story optional at best) was the only kind of game worth making.
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Crying silently for poor "Fallout: New Vegas" and GTA:Vice City
A good game tells its story not in cutscenes, but with its world and interactions. To make psychonauts (and the milkman conspiracy work) you need a good worldbuilding and storytelling.
In classical doom fashion you don't need a story - why are you cutting demons witch chainsaws - because there are demons and I have chainsaw. Same with mortal kombat - why do you want to beat this guy to a pulp - because he is there. When the gameplay is pure enough - all your bases are belong to us is enough of a motivation to play.
But the first time you meet roman soldiers in full atire in mojave desert in postapocalyptic Nevada you are WTF - mind blown ... the fact that they make it work and make sense is even bigger WTF mind blown.
The problem with the story is that games have way to tried to tell you a story so you can clap the writers and not to make your experience better.
A great game that tells simple story for you is Icewind Dale - there the story was minimalistic, but extremely tight. But it did great things to make you care and feel the place - which made the quests more enjoyable.
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I disagree -- not because I think your preferences are invalid, I just have totally different ones. Story in games is hard to do right, but I do believe it can be compelling if the story is actually part of the interactive elements of the game and not just a framework for the gameplay. That's only the case if you're actively making choices that affect the outcomes for particular characters and having to make tradeoffs to accomplish an ending that satisfies your concern for the characters and their world. That's why people were so angry at the Mass Effect 3 endings -- all your choices and progress meant very little in terms of the conclusion, you just had to pick from a fixed set of options based on your progression in the third game rather than having your particular choices throughout the trilogy result in a unique ending.
So game stories only matter if participating in the story is part of the player's set of choices. Linear stories with no branching paths or player choice are to player-driven stories what walking simulators are to gameplay. Branching stories with mutually exclusive options are also deeply replayable, because you can make wildly different choices each time and see different parts of the game. Note how players keep replaying and replaying Fallout New Vegas, Witcher 3, Skyrim, Mass Effect, etc.
I would definitely be curious what your gamer motivation profile looks like. Mine doesn't really match up with any of their archetypes, I like the immersion and creativity motivations almost to the exclusion of the others. So I'll engage in gameplay if it rewards me with positive story outcomes or character immersion or a cosmetic that fits my character's style or something I can use to create a thing in the game world, but I don't find gameplay inherently compelling, except for racing games, for some reason. Games are for me an excuse to exercise imagination in an interactive fictional world, not to demonstrate competence or achievement except insofar as those drive the fantasy. (So I might think of my character's progression in terms of the obstacles they've overcome or the achievements they've made, but it's not all that important that I've overcome them.) I'm a game world enthusiast and I see a player-driven story as part of participating in the game world.
It looks interesting, but I refuse to sign up to another fucking site to take their gamer astrology quiz.
Maybe Carmack takes it a bit far, but I think story in gaming is load bearing. At best it lets a game punch above it's weight. Portal minus the writing and world building is rather bland. But by the same token, think about how sparse the "writing" in Portal really is. Do you think it cracks 15 minutes of spoken dialog? Would the scattered bits of text in the game fit on the front and back of a notecard?
From one perspective, Carmack's dismissiveness towards writing and story is proven wrong by Portal. From another perspective, Carmack is vindicated, as Portal truly does have just enough writing to get the action going.
"Just enough to get the action going" is hardly a scientific measure, and one could argue an RPG takes more to "get the action going" than a puzzle game. But I enjoy the laconic inspiration behind the ethos. Nothing kills me worse in a game, even a game I am ostensibly enjoying, even an exposition dump I am ostensibly invested in (like when Xenoblade 3 almost made me cry), than when I get the feeling like this is nice and all, but I kind of want to play too, so can we wrap up this going on 30 minute cutscene?
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Ich bin ein cashual.
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I got Skirmisher and Slayer, huh.
The closest one for me was architect. But I did notice in some of their marketing materials for their consulting services the QF people talk about "World Designers", who have the fantasy and design motivations that are my strongest, and is described as "almost entirely women in their mid 20s." So that's... good to know, I guess.
I looked at the same PDF and they happened to give a profile of skirmishers (no such luck for slayers):
You're breaking my heart here. :( But I'm guessing "slayer" came up for you because you're more likely than the skirmishers to value story.
It says you are unlikely to enjoy Dragon Age, Portal, Crusader Kings, The Sims, The Witcher, Cities: Skylines, Fallout 3, Knights of the Old Republic, and for some reason Tetris. Do you happen to enjoy Halo, Apex Legends, Cuphead, DOOM, Cuphead, or PUBG?
I do like the odd RPG here and there, and I would like to play more, but I do find it hard to stick with some of those kinds of games for some reason. I must have like a half-dozen RPGs that I've picked up and never finished. I promise I love world-building and characters! I just don't consume every game that focuses on that, I guess.
I do like action games, but out of the ones you've listed, I've only really played Doom and Halo. My tastes tend towards more of the older generations of games of that ilk.
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