Originally Posted by Sentinel RedView Post The Broken Sword series should be up there too, George and Nico made for the best written gaming pair until the Uncharted crew showed up. Both series are of the kind where I don’t really dig the actual gameplay all that much, it’s purely because of the charm of the characters that I stick with it because they’re so much fun.
Agreed. Only played the first two, and like a fair few adventures they can suffer from an overdose of incidental dialogue, but still rare examples of games that felt halfway literate and tried to give the characters personalities that went beyond the basics of what the story required.
I wonder which part of ‘society collapses because everyone was being a selfish, unscrupulous asshole’ eluded him. I guess you could add the fact that for him at least the game was so unclear to the minus column for Bioshock’s writing.
Well it more collapses because they decided to include a fucking MANIACAL SUPERVILLAIN in their little underwater utopia. Honestly, it’s a really vague story that completely undoes itself by the end. Great game, but the calls that it’s some paragon of writing and storytelling are a bit perplexing.
Yeah, the writing and plot are no great shakes. It’s the way it conveys so much narratively through the world the designers have creates that I’ve always respected with Bioshock. The SHOCKING REVELATION! that you haven’t been in control of your actions the entire time (omg meta) and subsequent revelation that Fontaine has turned into some kind of Pumping Iron reject did very little for me at the time, and still leaves me nonplussed.
But then, I find myself taking exception to the first post’s point about how storytelling in video games has improved leaps and bounds over the last few years. I really don’t see that as the case.
I do think there’s a case to be made that it’s very effective in TELLING the story that way, even though it’s really nothing they hadn’t already done with System Shock 1 and 2. The story just isn’t really all that compelling once you get down to the nuts and bolts of it. It doesn’t really stand up to any scrutiny, and the depth is really just an illusion when it all boils down to a very facile moral choice (there’s no actual reason for the Little Sisters to exist other than to make the player feel bad for wanting more ADAM sometimes) with a strict Jesus/Hitler dichotomy as far as the endings go. Also the aforementioned fucking supervillain.
While stuff out of Japan for years has become progressively creepy, JRPGs for better or worse, did at least pioneer video storytelling on consoles.
I take “best” as perfectly fitting for the game. A great example is Portal. Made a fun puzzle game into something historic with a story and script that was a perfect match. That synergy is part of what makes Sam & Max so beloved.
As for worst, Gears of War 2. The writing on that game was horrific and laughable. And while not a game, Penny Arcade is horrible writing.
Originally Posted by JcassadyView Post While stuff out of Japan for years has become progressively creepy, JRPGs for better or worse, did at least pioneer video storytelling on consoles.
Originally Posted by JcassadyView Post Exactly, but for us kids that had a Mac and a father who wouldn’t buy Myst for them, the NES and SNES JRPGs were the best show in town.
You should probably thank your dad for dodging a coma.
Although I’ve forgotten all but the broadest details of BioShock’s overrated story, I recall a big chunk of it being told through the “found document” school of game storytelling. I get that most games are too busy shoehorning in escort missions, fix-it quests, and serum-infused mutant boss battles to tell good stories, but when a game delivers story through found items, it usually stinks. And somehow, no matter what game uses this shitty storytelling method, it always starts the same way:
“…After the first battery of tests, it appears that the patient is responding well to treatment. Project Daedalus is well underway.”
Also, the biggest plot-hole in Bioshock is that Atlas doesn’t even ask “would you kindly inject yourself with that Plasmid over yonder”. Your guy just does it with no provocation because hey that is what you do when you see a comically giant syringe full of strange glowing liquid.
I love Bioshock ever so much, but all these points are accurate, except I thought the found storytelling, which pretty much sucked for all the games post-Bioshock, worked well in Bioshock.
Also Braid’s pretentious storytelling made a fun puzzle game into something I don’t want to revisit.
I’ve said it before, but BioShock is a few great ideas sitting atop a mountain of mediocre ones. It’s one of the many current-generation games that doesn’t live up to its first twenty minutes.
I don’t know, I have different standards I guess, since I basically expect a game story to be garbage in any action/adventure like that. As a GAME, I think Bioshock is pretty great. It’s fun, inventive, atmospheric and entertaining. If you’re looking at it is as a way to convey a story, it’s pretty sophomoric.
The game ‘Pathology’ definitely belongs on this thread. It’s a wonderful (If that’s the right word for it) game that though is hampered by a dubious translation, still manages to work.
It’s a few years old now and looks ugly as sin, but I guarantee you’ll be drawn in by the utterly bizarre and thoroughly depressing world it creates. Characters actually lie to you for one thing, and straight away it sets up an air of distrust. The game manages to leave you on uneven ground through the whole thing (It also puts Bioshock’s “Difficult moral choice” to shame).