Yeah but the downloads man. The downloads...

No.

I find that I give stories in games like TLoU extra leeway because I'm playing a game. You don't watch a film from the 70s and think 'huh, that's not bad, for the 70s', but there's still an element of this in even the best cut-scene driven narratives in games. I'm still impressed, to a certain extent, by any sort of nuanced character (especially Naughty Dog creations, it seems), but would Joel and Ellie pass muster with the same script on film? It's a noticeable improvement compared to most games, but if we expected what we take for granted in top drawer cinema everything would fall painfully short.

Do I care what's happening in Zelda games? No, absolutely not. I'd buy them if they didn't have any text. The stories in those games feel like someone's chucked the same old shit at a dart-board and pieced the story together from whatever stuck. Those charts that show how all the games tie up? Jesus. They're almost embarrassing. Same with Tekken etc - who cares how old Heihachi is, or when the punching of other characters is supposed to take place? I once read that a certain season of 24 didn't have a conclusion when filming started. Those script-writers are far more talented than whoever deals with that stuff at Namco (etc), so why does anyone assume they know what they're doing?

Very occasionally a game comes along with cut-scenes that I don't want to skip, which is pleasant, but I'm expecting this to be the case for as long as I'm still keeping up with the medium. It's generally not the reason I play games anyway.

Bollockoff wrote:

Brooks wrote:

No.

Skerret wrote:

No.

Great tits though.

Sideboob shot for every crack entered

Moot_Geeza wrote:

I find that I give stories in games like TLoU extra leeway because I'm playing a game. You don't watch a film from the 70s and think 'huh, that's not bad, for the 70s',

I'm with you on giving games a lot of slack but I do give films leeway. Video effects are only just getting to the point where they don't look like effects most of the time. Acting styles change from decade to decade. I feel like modern audiences have a better grasp of what's possible or at least their scientific illiteracy has shifted sideways a little.

IanHamlett wrote:

I find that I give stories in games like TLoU extra leeway because I'm playing a game. You don't watch a film from the 70s and think 'huh, that's not bad, for the 70s',

I'm with you on giving games a lot of slack but I do give films leeway. Video effects are only just getting to the point where they don't look like effects most of the time. Acting styles change from decade to decade. I feel like modern audiences have a better grasp of what's possible or at least their scientific illiteracy has shifted sideways a little.

Yeah.  I didn't mean visual effects, just the ability to tell a story impressively.  All the President's Men, for example; you didn't dig it, but the rollercoaster of non-denial denials was extremely well put together.  Going back a bit further: ever watch a 1940s film and find yourself imagining how incongruous the mood-reflecting score would be in a modern film?  Either WHAT THE FUCK or blatant spoof territory, that would even stick out like a sore thumb in The Bold & the Beautiful?  Storytelling in gaming is in a place somewhere not too dissimilar to that.  It's perhaps best not to break the illusion by using additional knowledge and treating them as anything other than what they are, because it could decrease your enjoyment.  Plenty of 40s thrillers are exceptionally good, so maybe it's a poor example, but to the trained eye/ear there's a forgivable level of hamfistedness.  This all made slightly more sense before I typed it, but I know what I mean, and I've only just woken up.

Without the atmosphere provided by the visuals, the plot in Bioshock isn't the bastion of excellence it's held up to be.  It's good, especially when compared to other games, but the twist could easily be a famous joke if it were in a particularly bad sci fi film.  Just imagine Nic Cage as the protagonist. 

The ability to walk around listening to the audio tapes was a superb call though.  I played Arkham Asylum a year or so later, and having to listen to them in the menus grated.  Although talking of Arkham Asylum, the descent-into-madness Scarecow scenes (in particular the entry and exit of the morgue), were an interactive narrative highlight for me - and provided something only gaming can offer to boot.

Brothers was a good one. Made by a film director. Even the controls play a part in telling the story.

All dem President's Men wasn't bad, it's just that it was in a list of classic movies. It didn't do anything that stood out to me as more than a competent retelling of the events. It should be in a list of average films of classic events.

Yeah but not well.
It is a play on a gaming convention.

Like 'spared no expense' in Jurassic Park.  Hammond was a malfunctioning cyborg.

Mass Effect's dialogue wheel was great, but would've been even better if the options were less black and white.

Having more options means having more reactions. It's less time consuming to just code and animate "Fuck off mate" and "Let's go for a pint". It's why relatively primitive simple text stuff like Baldur's Gate has more nuanced dialogue trees because all they have to do is type. Exasperated by voice acting. Voice acting isn't really needed in a good game tho.

Yossarian wrote:

I wouldn't describe anything I saw in Brothers as something as grand as a story. There was a (massively cliched) setup followed by a game.

Well maybe you're just not appreciating the way games tell stories then. I dunno. But things like this make perfect sense to me:

IanHamlett wrote:

Even the controls play a part in telling the story.

JonB wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

I wouldn't describe anything I saw in Brothers as something as grand as a story. There was a (massively cliched) setup followed by a game.

Well maybe you're just not appreciating the way games tell stories then. I dunno. But things like this make perfect sense to me:

IanHamlett wrote:

Even the controls play a part in telling the story.

As Brooks said earlier, the issue here may well come down to the word 'telling'. Games might be good at letting you discover, explore, create, affect or even feel personal responsibility in stories, but they're fucking awful at telling them.

But, as I mentioned earlier, even the "ground-breaking", "emergent narrative" structure of Half Life 2 still couldn't break away from essentially telling the story through cut scenes (even if they of the 'you can still jump' variety), hence part of the reason why it's wank.

EDIT: missed my sarcy quote marks.