Yeah, the MGS series is alleged to have terrible verbal diarrhea. Never played it, though.

The thing about Gears is that it doesn’t need to be sophisticated. It’s a dumb shooter – if it were Proust, again it might seem out of place. I agree that this doesn’t mean its storytelling is good (and as a qualifier, again, I haven’t played it).

That said, HL2’s plot isn’t really any great shakes, it’s just delivered in an interesting way, but I’m not too interested in the tale they tell (aside from who G Man is perhaps). What it does capture well it a particular moment in a familiar narrative (the otherthrow of an oppressive dystopia), perhaps going back to what someone said about scenes earlier. It doesn’t really tell a story so much as capture the mis on scene (ooh look at me with my fancy words) of that moment.

Like I said, there’s lots of ways to do this thing, and I don’t think any one is superior to the other, Deus Ex, for example, puts a premium on plot, with the twists and turns of the conspiracy. Prince of Persia (the first one) tells a traditional Arabian Nights tale, but concentrates on the two main characters and their interaction to really charm the player. Whereas Monkey Island, for instance focuses on crafting indiviual gags (form).

Of course, there’s plenty of big games that cack this up no end. Gears of War, for example, fails on every level; it’s characters a cliches, it’s ideas are derivative, it’s plot is riddled with holes and it’s form is clunky, ugly and uncharismatic. Some people however, think it’s narrative is high quality, when faced with this, you have to wonder what you can do.

I’m quite happy for games to look outside the genre for inspiration, it’ll hopefull stave of the self propigating flaws of storytelling in a medium where Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy are considered things to aspire to, rather than things we need to move past. I only hope they reach beyond the familiar Aliens/Predator/Terminator reference pool, perhaps beyond films altogether, into novels? It would certainly be refreshing.

I’m totally going on a tangental rant here, so I’ll stop.

I cite Half-Life 2 because its storytelling, in my mind, worked perfectly – there were hints towards the backstory, which is exactly the way it should work – if you’re sitting listening to a speech about the history of the Seven Hour War, the writer has failed. Better to do what it did, which is focus on the game itself and leave hints on the story in newspaper clippings, short mentions in dialogue, and so on. Of course, Half-Life needs a minimalist storyline, and I accept that Mass Effect, say (sorry for picking on this game…) needs more than that. But Star Trek has done aliens with funny coloured heads already, and if you’re going to do that, I suspect you can take it as read that they’re funny and alien, and get on with what’s interesting and new about the story you’re telling.

I really detest the idea that you have to read backstory for games. Backstory is only there to make the game richer – you should never have to stop and read it. Newspaper clippings are OK – Bioshock’s audio recordings suffered from being too quiet, but otherwise they were a tolerable way to tell a story.

(If anyone knows of a mod that prunes these extraneous dialog options, please let me know.)

P.

It’s “A handbag!” because it’s funny. If it was funnier to be long, it would have been long, the length serves the material, not the material the length.

If The Importance of Being Earnest was written with the minimal amount of dailogue to forward the plot, it’d be about three lines long.

Anyway, this has drifted a bit, what I’m trying to say is that you might be right about the line in question (I don’t remember it) but beware advocating minimalism as general policy, while it might work for some (Isaac Asimov wrote minimally in order to focus attention on his real strength, the idea).

Blanket rules serve no-one, everyone needs to play to their own strengths. The most important thing is giving the creatives freedom and putting them in control, not the executives (or in some games, the coders).

And be aware you’ll still get some stinkers, because if the good writers get freedom so do the bad ones, and not everyone can tell the difference.

It’s actually quite a handy way of showing the ‘invisible book’ of background without making it seep into the actual narrative, it acts like an appendix on a novel.

We show them by the games we buy and the games we dont. We show them by being vocal about the POSITIVE element of games, rather than just the negative, like so many game players do.

And then of course, if you have the skill and the passion, you could just get involved!

@Fenchurch: You’re very right. It was pretty cool how you could beat the entire game killing virtually no-body. It was the depth of roleplaying that made that title stand out.

It really made a difference if you were a meat head or a fast talker or a moody but intelligent weasel to the entire game. God i love that game.

Also, as an aside on this, I really like the indoor parts of the game as well. I thought they were great atmosphere, and they tended to fit in with the story. They were claustraphobic, sure, but that was appropriate.

@ Nalano & obscura. Excellent, now we just have to convince the industry. Any idea how we do that?

Planescape is generally cited because of the depth of options in response, not just the waves of text thrown at you. =-3

Remember that you could constantly lie and bluff your way into getting quest rewards for things you did or didn’t do! Got to get that jink jink, cutter, aye! ;-)