Zero Punctuation

I've fully enjoyed the stories of SS, SS2 and DX each and every time I've played them, and that goes for some other non-FPS titles (Betrayal at Krondor springs to mind) that weren't mentioned here as well.

But hey, you just said HL is better than DX, so a 'lol nonsense' will suffice.

Belial said:

I've fully enjoyed the stories of SS, SS2 and DX each and every time I've played them, and that goes for some other non-FPS titles (Betrayal at Krondor springs to mind) that weren't mentioned here as well.

But hey, you just said HL is better than DX, so a 'lol nonsense' will suffice.

Wow, someone else who has actually played and enjoyed Betrayal at Krondor. That game really brings back memories, mainly waisting an entire summer in the basement when I was 11 figuring out all the moredhel chests. And perfecting the strategy of going north at the start instead of south to Kronder and getting the dragon blades and having Owen learn Unfortunate Flux. Really good game in general, very well made. I still think Deus Ex is an amazing game, and I'd love to play through it again, but XP seems to have different feelings. I've never compelted System Shock 2 though. The computer I had when I bought it ran windows ME, but the game was slow as hell, albeit very creepy, but I never got very far. I've tried getting it to run on XP a few times, but it runs extremely slow and likes crashing quite a bit. Still, I'll have to find a way to get it to run decently, atmopshere like that doesn't crop up every year.

hardcore_gamer said:

And unlike a good story, good gameplay can be enjoyed more than just once.

Yeah, cause no one ever read the same book twice.

kristus said:

Yeah, cause no one ever read the same book twice.

Comparing books to video games is rather stupid. Books HAVE TO have good story's since that's what they are: Story's.

games are games, story's are story's.

I should give you an award for being generally retarded.

This will do.

Jello said:

That game really brings back memories, mainly waisting an entire summer in the basement when I was 11 figuring out all the moredhel chests.

:)

I remember developing a system for going through all the tumbler combinations in case I couldn't figure the riddle out.

I still have Antara installed, though I can't even remember when was the last time I've played it.

kristus said:

I should give you an award for being generally retarded.

Mind explaining your insult in more detail? All i said was that story's don't mean shit in video games next to the gameplay. I don't care about the story if the gameplay is bad.

Also i am not a retard, just a misunderstood genius. :)

hardcore_gamer said:

Also i am not a retard, just a misunderstood genius. :)

Yet the use of the apostrophe is still beyond your grasp.

Use3D said:

Yet the use of the apostrophe is still beyond your grasp.

English is not my first language. Therefore i am not as good as using it as you (assuming english is your first language.)

Not everybody on the internet speak fluid english, you know!

hardcore_gamer said:

fluid english

"Fluent" English.

Or, in your case, "effluent" English.

Fluid english, is when it comes from your ass

Hmm, after all this I suddenly have an urge to re-play American Psycho, maybe on the hardest difficulty this time. Oh, and perhaps I'll re-read the storyline to Half-Life, couldn't put that one down the first time around!

:p

Creaphis said:

Or, in your case, "effluent" English.

I thought "effluent English" was the Internet's native language. Am I wrong again?

hardcore_gamer said:

All i said was that story's don't mean shit in video games next to the gameplay. I don't care about the story if the gameplay is bad.

All I said was that B doesn't mean shit in video games next to D. I don't care about B if D is bad.

A + B + C = D

Darkfyre said:
Hmm, after all this I suddenly have an urge to re-play American Psycho, maybe on the hardest difficulty this time. Oh, and perhaps I'll re-read the storyline to Half-Life, couldn't put that one down the first time around!

:p

The American Psycho game was pretty good, but I couldn't find the exit in the last room.

Captain Red said:

...but I couldn't find the exit in the last room.

Brilliant :D

hardcore_gamer said:

Comparing books to video games is rather stupid. Books HAVE TO have good story's since that's what they are: Story's.

games are games, story's are story's.

And thankfully, people like you are a dieing breed.

A book is just a story telling medium. A book does not need to have a story. A book can be a game.

Interactive mediums are slowly becoming legitimate storytelling mediums. Sooner or later, designers will realise that you don't need to kill a final boss or pass a final challenge to tell a story.

GooberMan said:
And thankfully, people like you are a dieing breed.

There are two things he can be accused of seeming to be: someone who prefers non-narrative games, whether ludic or competitive (it's not clear which, nor if in combination), or someone who is somewhat dumb. Neither is a dying breed. I certainly don't think hardcore_gamer is Einstein or anything near that (I sometimes raise my eyebrows at things he says, myself), but jumping to conclusions about his stupidity given he's a foreigner and seems to display certain gaming preferences doesn't speak well of intelligence either. Also, it's "dying" :p

Telling a story and playing a game can have clearly distinct functions not combining well. You can also make a hybrid story-game (being a cross genre of both to certain degrees) if you use game and narrative elements in ways to make that work out, and it can work for some people, but then not for others.

Whether "the story" is any good or of much relevance in a game depends on its function there. For example you could have two games with pretty much the same sort of action (the navigation of a sprite or character for some purpose), except one interweaves a narrative into it, the other is just a series of vaguely themed action segments. Either can be preferred depending on the character or mood of the player.

It's not a cumulative matter like Shaviro implies, although it can be cumulative in respect to various functions, if that is an objective of the design. Like any design, though, that will cater to some and not others.

myk said:

It's not a cumulative matter like Shaviro implies, although it can be cumulative in respect to various functions, if that is an objective of the design. Like any design, though, that will cater to some and not others.

Let me elaborate.

The story aspect is as much a part of any game as the action/reaction part is. Questions like "Who are you?" ,"What are you doing?", "Where are you?" and "Where-in lies the conflict?" are some of the first one must ask himself when making a game. These are all deeply rooted in laying the foundation for your story and your game. The story is the framework for your game as it is a very important part of the concept. These questions lead to the definiton of the back-story, which is often what the player will be introduced to in the start of the game.

It seems that a lot of people are under the impression that stories in games are restricted to long boring monologues from NPCs like in Prey or Half-Life 2. It's not. Take Doom for instance. Many gamers claim this game doesn't have a story, or at least it is restricted to the readme text and the ingame text menues. Wrong. First of all, the story of Doom is what laid the foundation for the scenario you face when starting E1M1. As you play, you will find all the neat atmospheric devices that help convey the feeling of being right there, alone against the zombies and demons. Again, something that was stated through the story and reinforced in the game. At one point in the game you die and go to hell, only to land on Deimos. Why? Oh right. Deimos disappeared as it says in the "Story-so-far" intro text. We now learned that it went to hell.

You could go on about Doom, but let's take an example from another game. There's a wonderful scene in Half-Life 2 where people are rebelling against the Combine dominance. In a big courtyard you see a group of these people pulling down one of the huge propaganda monitors. A scene like this would never have been created if it weren't for the story they have planned. Same goes for quite a bit of what goes on in games like Half-Life 2, Half-Life or even "simple" Doom. Neither of these games would be what they are without the story. The very idea of trying to remove the story from Doom is idiotic, because the game is based on the story and it is what it is because of the decisions made through the story.

I will admit that the work that goes into story & setting can for some games be light, but it's always there. Except for the rare cases like Jeopardy or "Wheel of fortune", but I don't really think we are talking about these anyway.

Saying a game doesn't need a story is like saying a house doesn't need a foundation or a skeleton.
It's hardly rocket science.

Shaviro said:
Take Doom for instance. Many gamers claim this game doesn't have a story, or at least it is restricted to the readme text and the ingame text menues. Wrong. First of all, the story of Doom is what laid the foundation for the scenario you face when starting E1M1.

Well, the DOOM alphas show levels that gave more attention to the integration of the story and the flow of the game. Sure, DOOM has a story, but more in the lines of Carmack's "games need stories in the same way porn needs a plot" (although not as much as in Quake III, for example). It's more like clothes than a skeleton (in DOOM), or maybe skin, heh, because if someone told me the Hangar is a Guard Outpost instead not much would change. In other games such details affect the way the game is played much more, producing many devices and interactions that meanwhile weave a story bit by bit. It's a matter of focus and it applies to most creative work. For example in literature poetry tends to have a syntactic focus (relating the words by their function and properties), while prose is oriented more immediately toward semantics (often a relation with what is described). Even then, you can have poetry that narrates events or poetic prose by mixing the importance of these two basic elements differently.

I do not agree.
Clothes is something you put on after everything else is done. Skin is something that protects what's inside, but like I stated, the game is based on a concept with story and setting. You don't base a body on skin. It's true that Doom isn't the game with the most elaborate story-telling, but the game, its progression, action and its locations are all based on the story. Carmack's line is pretty dumb. This is why he should stay far away from the actual creation of the game and stick to what he's good at. I *think* he even stated that recently.

Shaviro said:
the game is based on a concept with story and setting.

It's based mainly around the concept of first person shooting. After Wolf3D they wanted another shooter knowing it was cool stuff and that Carmack could provide an even more powerful engine. It uses a story, but that's much more changeable than its main focus (navigate in the first person, killing stuff to reach the exit). Later FPSs with more "story" shift the focus, creating more situations where the parts of the story are introduced directly during the action (NPCs, scripts that inform you of something, &c). It doesn't even mean that one game will have a "better" story than the other, but that the story will play a greater role, with more detail and effect on the game behavior.

You don't base a body on skin.

I think that in a game where the story takes more prominence it takes another role. I don't think that the story is always "skin". Sometimes it's "bones" or "muscle", depending on how the game is designed. Even being just skin in this metaphorical sense it can still play a role as a motor during creation, adding ideas on how things will play or be developed, but with less weight that some other elements (like fighting stats and positioning).

You can compromise or ignore the story just to make combat more fun or something like that, while in a more story-geared game doing this may be disruptive of the general flow of the game or its consistency.

Also, some conceptions work during some moments or ways due to cultural and technological reasons, but aren't so prominent in others. Carmack's worked pretty well for FPSs during the 90s. Perhaps it's not what id as a company is moving with now (at least not to the same degree as before), but the idea can still work in various spectra, or for some people.

Doom is a First Person Shooter, but that tells nothing about the story or the setting. The action, reaction and method of visualizing the game is based on the FPS genre. The setting, plot and presentation are not. Those are based on story considerations. The character of Doom has, in my opinion, very little to do with the action and a lot to do with the setting and presentation. Change Doom's amazing attention to the setting and presentation, and you'll end up with something like one of the horrible Doom clones. It may be the same game to you, but it certainly isn't to me.

All I was "saying" to Hardcore_gamer is that a story is a story. Doesn't matter if it's in a game or in a book. It's still a story, and there's no reason why you can't enjoy it more than once in either case.

Shaviro said:
It may be the same game to you, but it certainly isn't to me.

By that alone? The (background) story is cool and the aesthetics help, but that's hardly enough to stick to the game in the long run.

As far as I'm concerned some clones were alright, and some had cool environments and stories, but many didn't get the chemistry of the actors (architecture, monsters, weapons, &c) going, and others added junk that got in the way of the raw power of the game form. I can say Quake is probably my second favorite game. Second (after DOOM and DOOM II) not because of how they handled the story, graphics, characters and sounds, but because the raw action is a somewhat more satisfying in the DOOM games.

I still play the original DOOM game levels as well as levels that are very similar technically (vanilla-like) very often. I think that if I valued the presentation and setting more than (or perhaps just as much as) the fighting mechanics I'd be playing something else most of the time. Some offshoot or mod, perhaps, or another game handing a similar (not that it can be the same) or even more powerful environment.

Well, my point wasn't to convince you, but rather to point out how "the story is secondary" can work. I'm quite aware people see things differently and focus on different stuff, even in regard to the same objects (DOOM in this case), which is healthy as it pushes developments in different directions and gives everyone their place.

myk said:

By that alone?

Of course not by that alone. That is my whole point :)

When referring to Doom clones, I meant those that failed. The ones that were actually successful weren't called Doom clones for long. That is how I remember it, though. I may be wrong on that.

For me, games like Duke Nukem 3D and Dark Forces were very successful, because they didn't try to copy Doom's action, but because they focused heavily on the setting and story-line (at least Dark Forces did ;))

Well, my point wasn't to convince you, but rather to point out how "the story is secondary" can work. I'm quite aware people see things differently and focus on different stuff, even in regard to the same objects (DOOM in this case), which is healthy as it pushes developments in different directions and gives everyone their place.

My point was to show that the story is part of how the game ends up being and not that it, by definition, must be primary.

Shaviro said:

Carmack's line is pretty dumb. This is why he should stay far away from the actual creation of the game and stick to what he's good at.

I agree. The real creative force (gameplay- and story-wise) at Id were Romero and Hall. Unfortunately they proved that they weren't that great at programming or running companies.

This week's ZP is funny as fuck, go check it :p

Indeed, best one in a while.

This week's what?