I think Zelda does great narrative and plot but the script can be a bit hit and miss. 

Loved the script in Goldeneye.

With the exception of Gears Of War

Waht

Let's get this boxed off.

I'll box you off in a minute.

The gears comment needs some justification.

Ftr the best AAA cutscene-game-cutscene title to date is Last of Us, but that's still made a janky experience by that very structure. They tried real hard, indeed it'll probably never be more convincingly executed, but it just doesn't work enough. You need writing that's fundamentally dislocating, even Brechtian or Lynchian if you prefer, to really allow the jarring switch from control to not-control to make a kind of sense, but that's no friend of 'straight' drama obviously.

Pure simulation engineering with player agency prioritised and where there's a minimum of non-diagetic overlay is very hard to inject traditional (i.e. easily parsed) emotional/intellectual beats into, but that's what kind of 'game fiction' succeeds best. The experience ends up being reflective more than anything else, and I think that's basically fine. Less about the grand rollercoaster than moments of poignancy that add up to something satisfying and, crucially, coherent.

The story in gears is everything that's wrong with story in games. Cliche after cliche, uninteresting, uninvolving, a pointless distraction from the main game rather than being interweaved with it. Like a lot of triple As, it's so bleak though. It's a game where you shoot aliens in the fuck over and over again, don't give me tortured angst and melancholy.

Stories like that are another symptom of the industry characteristic of not knowing what the fuck it's doing when trying to make something worthy of adult consideration.

Game mechanics being used as narrative devices. Majora's Mask is the classic example, in that the basic try-fail-learn-repeat until win structure of most videogames is its actual plot. It's also Groundhog Day, which is itself a videogame in the form of a film. Another good one is Astroboy: Omega Factor, in which a level select becomes a time travel plot.

It's that sort of thing, yeah. Dork Souls specifically writes its scenario to accommodate player death and rebirth - you lose the payoff of emotional investment in a character's life, but you gain something quieter and just as valuable in the long term as a 'reader'.

Good, deep game design just seems fundamentally out of step with the high denial of agency that upfront histrionic writing works best with. The only reason studios still make the attempt is because they're trying to straddle the expectations of several audiences at once, and it's been easier to promo and sell shit with cutscene trailers than communicate with actual play footage. Which is to say, barriers to reform at the top of the industry are institutional. There is more success to be found where the expectations of the suits aren't as severe.

Text adventures are the only genre that have a chance at narrative.

davyK wrote:

Text adventures are the only genre that have a chance at narrative.

Well, a kind of narrative. There are many kinds. The straight rollercoaster of summat like Panzer Dragoon Zwei is fine for the raw narrative of thrills, but you're gonna struggle to inject intellectual depth in that, simply because so much of the experience is about players having to do stuff quickly.

Of all written fiction, I'd maintain the best fit is probably detective/mystery stuff, simply because so much of the emotional dividend there is about maintaining interest in puzzle solving anyway.

how many times are we going to do this guiz lol

Video games could convey feelings - the hand holding in Ico is a good example of that; as is the reveal near the end of Super Metroid. That should be concentrated on and action oriented video game narrative should be left as "Expendables" style exposition that allows you to get on with it.

But he doesn't actually make them eat shit.

Yossarian wrote:

Good, deep game design just seems fundamentally out of step with the high denial of agency that upfront histrionic writing works best with.

This. And, furthermore, I'd say that when games do get this right, they do so by doing something which is not storytelling. I haven't actually played Gone Home yet, but from what I understand, what story there is isn't told to you, but simply placed in this world for you to discover. I'd describe that not as good storytelling, but rather good world-building.

It's up,to you how you'd describe it. If you're defining storytelling as 'how stories are told in other mediums', the yes games aren't particularly good at that (they can only successfully emulate it by temporarily stopping being a game). If you're defining it as 'the way in which a series of events is laid out', then games can be great at it.

CRAPDOWN!!!