So who needs a good Story ? Do we need a Story at all ?

Not every game needs a story, but if it's gonna have one, it should do it well. That said, I don't care if a game has a story or not as long as I enjoy playing it. A great story just improves a game for me.

Story is a bonus. If done well, it can make a good game great; if not, it can be hindrance and break the pace.
There are some very notable exceptions though; there are select games with writing so excellent that every cutscene is a reward itself.
But those stories are very few and far between, and it's a shame that most game stories are relegated to formulaic cliches and tear jerking schlock, in the end.

I definitely prefer having a story in my gaming experiences.

I do agree with you that if I want a good story, I'll read a book or watch a movie, but gaming is just a more interactive medium of a storytelling. So, it won't make or break my decision to buy a game is the gameplay is great, but it is important to me.

Doesn't Matter people want Stories... Even at the expense of gameplay.....

So whether or not this is good or bad (its bad so far)... Its going to stay.....

A great story never hurts, though a great game doesn't need one. Yet a great story can make an average game great.

for some games it's essential - mass effect, la noire, walking dead etc. couldn't exist without the story, for other games it's not particularly important. but even when the story isn't great it gives meaning and context to what the player does in the game and, occasionally, you'll get one with an interesting plot that helps improve the game as a whole. if you're playing a game whose story you're not interested in you can skip through cut scenes and dialogue. or play multiplayer

I play games for gameplay, you know, the thing that makes this medium what it is. Thus, whether a story is there or not, is irrelevant to me.

@Renegade_Fury

What about Adventure games ?

what i like on adventure games is......the adventure......not the story...........HAHA!

nah i love to solve puzzles and every great adventure has great puzzles, of course theyre more story-driven than beat em ups but as i said..of course i follow the story (coz i have no other choice and i dont want to skip cutscenes coz i dont want to miss any great/funny/cool scenes)

@sabretooth2066

In some adventure games the story is the the adventure.... Atleast thats how mysteries work....

I don't play them. The closest pure adventure game I've ever liked was Yoda Stories, and it certainly wasn't because of its story since it didn't even really have one to begin with.

I play some games for the story and some for their gameplay. If both are done right in a game then that's a huge plus for me.

As for Alien;Isolation, well story was supposedly a part of the game. If it isn't done right then the rating is fair. A game should do right whatever it wants to do. If you pull out the difficulty from Dark Souls game, that'll break the game completely. Even though, that level of difficulty sometimes feel like an exaggeration.

Depends on the game. Tetris for example needs no story. BTW, did you know that a Tetris movie is officially in the works?

two games that i really like: sins of a solar empire and mount and blade warband, have no story. a story of sorts can emerge as the game progresses (which is an areas of games worth exploring..emergent stories from playing the game) but there is no pre scripted story mode.

i also like plenty of games that do have stories also of course.....but its not an essential requirement for a great game.

A good story told well does make a game more special to me. All of my favourite games have great stories.

A story is more than just the plot. A good plot is only one element of a good story; other elements include compelling characters, a focused theme, an immersive setting, etc. Even a game without a "story" has a story, as un-fleshed-out as it may be. A game from Russia during cold war tensions about breaking walls? Tetris. It's thin, but it has a motif.

Fighting games, as thin as their stories may be, often have unique characters. Racing games have detailed settings. What kind of a world does the Rush series take place in?

Terrible music can knock down a game's score, so I don't see why story shouldn't.

@Renegade_Fury

"Pure Adventure Games" ?

Too strong for me... I was thinking of something Basic like LA. Noire.

you mean GARBAGE like "GONE HOME" where you run around like a retard doing nothing but opening drawers and reading shitloads of papers and following the story that way, or "RICHARD AND ALICE" where you do nothing else than running around in circles babbling shitloads of pages which reveal the story

yeah....in that case the adventure is the game but wheres the gameplay ? if the gameplay is missing then its hardly a game and more some "interactive" bullshit storytelling

Games with a shit story general get tossed to the side for me, like shadow of mordor once I'm done with the main shit I'll never touch it again. Something like the last of us will get replayed probably 3-4 times in the span of a few years just due to how fucking awesome the writing and story is. I like multiplayer but I like good writing and a well paced story to get my paws on.

@sabretooth2066

Gone Home's Mystery is a very poorly contructed one..... Nancy Drew can do better than that... Although you bring up something thats been bothering me in the deduction phaze of Adventure Games, lets say theres been a crime and you have figure out what happened....... Does Guess work count as Gameplay ? Is the interface the game gives you to put in your answers a game mechanic or even gameplay ?

Do you know what I mean ?

@elheber

Because Music can be implimented without interruption, a plot however can bring the gameplay to a dead stop, either in the form of Texts or cutscenes, or even comic strip styled slideshows like Max Payne or Mirror's Edge.

I prefer a game with a good story, i.e. Red Dead: Redemption. But gameplay is still the most important for me.

Why should movies have stories?

You go there to WATCH movies. As long as they have pretty visuals, who cares whether the story is good...or whether there is a story at all?

@Planeforger

Worked for Transformers !

Infact it works for pretty much any Michael Bay movie..... Man's a f#cking Genius !

People who tout gameplay as the end all be all of what gaming is are the same type of people that believe that physical intimacy is all there is to a relationship. Those who are utterly incapable of looking past the most basic of superficialities and mechanical underpinnings of how something works to be able to grasp something much more deep and meaningful, and that can be extrapolated upon greatly through gameplay if executed on properly.

@MirkoS77

Exactly who are talking about ? I'm sure even the most persistant gameplay enforcer is capable of emotional intimacy.... Infact its their ability to compartmentalise these things that makes them more reliable....

Also are you implying intimacy is some how related to gaming ?

well...is the dos command to start a game in dos mode already part of the gameplay or game mechanic then ?

so when theres a crime in an adventure and i have to solve it, then i expect there are some riddles/puzzles to solve in order to solve the whole crime, so then i have to use my brains and thats the fun part, if i am just running around collecting pages of letters to read them and follow the story that way then it would be far easier and less frustrating to just read that story instead of doing something lame as running around and collecting papers with text...on the other side...if i have to solve riddles or fight enemies in order to get to those letters and see the story unfold, thats another thing again because then i actually have to PLAY the game, and playing games IN MY OPINION always means having to fight against something, either fighting enemies, fighting riddles, fighting puzzles, fighting highscores etc. etc., for a next example lets take an ego-shooter and remove the "ability" to die, you have superpowers and just run from A to B killing everyone without having to risk your life or ammo or anything, so you run through the whole game without having to worry for anything or to fight anything because you just press buttons and everything just moves on without you to worry for anything. that would be as lame as just reading a book because reading a book you also have to use certain things to move from page to page...like clicks on the digital pages of a digital book.

This. It's why I loved Mass Effect and usually love Final Fantasy. Almost everything about these games immerses me because it's all done so well, from the plot to the music and voice acting. It's also why I liked Dark Souls so much (even though I had more trouble with it that the average joe probably...) The music and lore and such were enticing.

I do and I don't. There are some games that are great without a story but many of those are pretty forgettable in the long term.

It is the games that have great stories that makes the entire game stick to you like glue. It was this that makes me remember Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Bioshock, F.E.A.R, Halo, and I will for many years for come.

Destiny is fun for a short while, but without the great story there is no glue, so as soon as I got bored I was gone.

Well, it largely depends on the type of game and necessity.

Plenty of games can get away with minimal story if it isn't really all that important in the end game.

I think it is pretty much a necessity though for any heavily character-driven game (which is why it needs to be done well if that's what the developers are aiming for). I need to be interested enough in the events and characters to actually give a shit about what's going on.

I thought any game needs a story, right? Sure "Pong" didn't have a story, but that's because of technology hindering the production value. In today's world if Ping was given a story, it would be set in a world tournament (world, because you shouldn't be xenophobic to world right? No, no, no) and have many many stadiums with different and sometimes even changing weather patterns. Think Wii Sports!?

@sabretooth2066

I don't you think you understood my question, and if you did I'm not sure I understand..... Either way I think you need to relax....

I dont understand why there are still people who are so damn story focused when in fact....

..EVERY KIND OF STORY ALREADY GOT TOLD THOUSANDS OF TIMES! no matter where, movies, books, games, it doesnt matters, its actually always the same, only the characters, places etc. are changing so i really wonder and have to ask you people: What kind of stories really do it to you these days ?

Its just alwas the same, good vs evil, something or someone gets stolen or kidnapped, the hero tries to get it back, the anti-hero robs a bank, the anti-hero behaves bad, the victim suffers, the bad guy is cool, drama, death, action, scifi, horror, it doesnt matters its just always the same!

for example take all the stories from all the GTA games......so many different characters but actually its always the same shit, the fun and great thing with the GTA stories actually is never the story itself, its just the characters and the scenes, but at last the goddamn story.....stories which hundreds of crime-movies already have been told and still keep telling over and over again with every crime based action-tv-series and every crime movie in theatres and on and on and on.....and again i ask myself what you story-focused people really think is still so great about a "good story" in games these days.

sorry but everyone who claims he is playing games to follow a good story....i just dont believe it, you guys probably like to read stories (the same old stories over and over again) so you THINK its that what makes a game better but if the same game wouldnt had any story then you would like it the same way...its just that developers force us to follow the story in their game, and some here are just so happy with that while the other side here is always close to make use of the skip button to move on with actually PLAYING the game

so lets say you play a game where you have to sneak into a building and kill a few people, you play it and you have much fun with it, its one of your favorite missions in that game.....do you story-focused people really wanna tell me now that if there is no story and you dont know why you actually have to sneak into that building to kill people, that playing this mission would be far less fun then ???

gimme a break!

@tsohgallik

Tetris didn't have a story and it most definately wasn't because of technology constraints,

theres also Candy Crush....

@sabretooth2066

whoa ! Easy there..... I get the impression like what other people do with the games they paid for pisses you off.

thats even funnier, making some small tiny simple game and spinning a story around it....as if people would play pong for the story

...now i am sure the story-focused people here even think a game like tetris would be far better when it would have a story :D

wow the anger lol

@sabretooth2066

Ofcourse they did.... They already came up with a story for it.... Something about Russians destroying something.

That's why I enjoy games with stories that haven't been done by a hundred other games.

Games like Planescape Torment, Mask of the Betrayer, Virtue's Last Reward and The Cat Lady are fairly unique amongst videogames.

Also, even generic stories can be told really well. Take The Walking Dead seasons, for example - there's nothing particularly original about the stories, but they present those stories so well that they feel original, or at least they are very emotionally engaging.

@Planeforger

Amen to that... However Planescape's narrative is failed by its game design.

As long as its fun, I don't really give a s*

Really, it depends on what kind of game it is. Some games are story driven while others are primarily focused on the gameplay. Both type of games work to achieve something different- sometimes even the same, but at the end of the day, for me, it doesn't matter as long as I take something away from it, for instance, feeling prideful for winning a game of 'pong'. lol. But like someone that said it up there, a game with a story is preferably much more memorable. There is a reason why TLoU or the Walking Dead Game even won Game of the Year; people walk away from those games with long-term thoughts lingering, not just having a few seconds worth of satisfaction because of combo headshots.

your three words, followed by a typical "lol" to highlight your own insecurity, doesnt mean everyone who writes 50 times more than you is full of anger.

well you say it yourself, you enjoy games with stories that havent been done by a hundred other games, but those games with such exquisite stories are really a minority, compared to all those games swarming the market, so you shouldnt be much happy with gaming these days and rather read books then because the stories told in videogames doesnt make you much happy....except a handful.

again: If you play a stealth shooter and you have to clean a room from bad guys with the help of all kinds of cool gadgets and multiple ways to solve the room, and you like that mission so much you actually go back and play the same mission with different playstyles, does the story really matters then or i better ask: is playing this mission really any less fun without a story to it ? do you really need to know why youre going on those missions in order to enjoy the missions ? well i think not, coz if you already know the story then it would be completely useless to replay the mission, so at the times you replay a game or certain levels (or challenges like in the arkham series) the story becomes completely useless and unimportant to you but you still have much fun with the game regardless of its story

lets look at the game MANHUNT both parts and lets pretend there is no story at all, you just begin the game with the info you are being hunted and have to make it out alive, you seriously wanna tell me that the game with all its mechanics would be more fun when you know why youre being hunted ???? i just cant follow that

that makes no sense chief. and refusing to believe other people can have different opinions to you doesn't really work on a forum were people share opinion.

but that is the story in manhunt. you've been plucked minutes from being executed on death row and are forced to star in a snuff film where you're expected to die in a horrific way at the hands of some psychopath. take that away and you're just walking around killing for no reason, with no end goal. so you get none of the awesome narration as you progress, none of the cut scenes or much else that adds to the atmosphere and tension of the game. there's no meaning to what you're doing so no reason to care. how long would that hold people's interest for? i can't see why anyone wouldn't want those things in the game

@Macutchi

But that's the point of Manhunt, you assume the role of a brutal psychopath, gruesomely killing your way throughout the game with little point or motivation. The game indirectly makes the statement "why are you doing this? who is the true madman here?". That is the advantage of the minimalist story of Manhunt, it elevates the game perfectly. So yeah, minimalistic premises can sometimes be just as good as, if not better than established storylines

A game without a story does nothing to give back to your life or enrich you for having the experience, making the game either a toy or a sport (the latter enriches you because of contact with other people rather than the experience of playing that specific game). These stories can be told blatantly or as SovietsUnited has pointed out with Manhunt, minimalistically/thematically. Note that I make distinction here between an actual story which engages a player in an ongoing way and a simple premise (save the princess is not a story).

Without a story playing a game is essentially an, admittedly fun, waste of time. It does nothing to expand your horizons in the way a depiction of a power/character struggle enhances/impacts/applies/extrapolates to your life. It's been pointed out before that all stories have essentially already been told. But they stay potent over generations with countless retellings because their relevance to people's lives (what people see of themselves or take away from the story) is a constant.

Story isn't just an important part of a game, it's the only reason they actually matter in the grand scheme of things. You don't extrapolate the raw skills of a game (with really bizarre, specialist exceptions) after all, you take the happenings within the story and ultimately it's that that stays with you and impacts your life in an ongoing way.

Agreed. Just like in Limbo.

Anyways, why is the TC so butthurt over opinions?

Well I liked Fight Night Champion more with its story so... yeah, maybe.

but all that comes from the idea that you're being hunted as part of some guy's sick snuff film fantasy and you need to kill or be killed to survive. without that the game has no meaning. whether it's minimalistic or ambiguous or whatever, that premise is nonetheless the foundation and justification for what unfolds in the game