IDIOTS, PLEASE... STOP REVIEWING THE STORY IN GAMES - BY MR BIFFO

IDIOTS, PLEASE... STOP REVIEWING THE STORY IN GAMES - by Mr Biffo

8/6/2016

Since when did everyone start caring about the story in games?

One of the main criticisms I've seen levelled at Mirror's Edge Catalyst - out later this week for us normal plebs, but the reviews have started rolling out already - is that the story is weak.

Uh... yeah. I can't even remember the story from the original Mirror's Edge, and it's still one of my favourite games ever.

I mean, the story - if you're comparing it to a more traditional notion of story - is weak in the vast majority of games, isn't it? Certainly in the vast majority of action games. Y'know... tell me if I'm wrong here... but I don't think many of us are going to be buying Mirror's Edge Catalyst for the story. We probably don't need the opening half a dozen paragraphs of your review telling us how bad that story is.

It's madness, yet I'm seeing more and more reviews criticising a game's story - I've read at least three in the past week alone. Since when did games reviewers care so much?

WHERE IS THE THING?
Here is the thing: for the most part, the story in video games is a delivery method for the action.

Take Far Cry Primal. Can you tell me what the story actually is?

There are a lot of mostly very skippable cut-scenes, but it's just a load of stuff that happens. It's lots of people in caves grunting at one another.

The handful of missions with Urki the Thinker - an abject idiot whose absurd plans get him killed every time you meet him - suggest a knowing sense of humour that would've benefitted the game elsewhere. You can get away with a lot if you hide it behind the funnies.

The Witcher III? There's a lot of information and stuff happening... but an actual story? No. It's all over the fricking place, because of its structure, and told mostly via a series of big info-dumps. Halo 5? Lots of lore, lots of backstory, lots of exposition, and portent. Story? Not so much.

OFF DA CHARTS
I've talked a lot about the storytelling in Uncharted - but, for me, storytelling is something distinct from the actual story.

Good storytelling can deliver information without some big, expositional, info-dump. It makes you understand and care about characters without feeling duped into doing so. It conveys a sense of place and time. It's invisible. That's what Uncharted - and Naughty Dog - excel at. The actual story in, say, Uncharted 4 is fairly unremarkable next to the pantheon of great stories... but it's revolutionary, as far as games go, in how it TELLS its story.

Thing is, I don't mind if a game has a weak story. I don't play games to be told a story. IF there is a good story it's a bonus, but that isn't why I'm there. I don't need big, long, cut-scenes. Same as I find action boring to read about in a book, I find story in a game - which I have come to for its interactivity - tedious to watch.

As far as games go, story is a way of building the brand, something a - hopefully - recognisable, iconic, sellable character can piggyback on.

WHEN DO YOU GET IRRITATED?
The only time I ever get really irritated by story in a game is when it becomes obsessed with its own weight and self-importance. When there's no option to skip a cut-scene.

The Halo series certainly flirts with that. Tomb Raider continually rubs me up the wrong way, whenever I read about what a strong female role model the new Lara Croft is.

And what's really concerning me is that now reviewers are starting to criticise the story in games, studios are going to be investing more heavily in the story... once again in thrall to the Metacritic bottom-line.

And what worries me with that is that inexperienced storytellers think that darkness, drama, lashings of humourless portent, is good storytelling - when it isn't anything of the sort.

Certainly, if a game is trying to shove its story down your throat, and insist you pay attention to it, give them the kicking they deserve, but focus on the main event, the reason we play games.

They are not a story-telling medium. You wouldn't have marked down Pac-Man because the character was bland, or laid into a Mario game because you had no insight into the psychological trauma that was driving him to smash his head into bricks and stomp on turtles, or Sonic because there weren't enough long, drawn-out, scenes of him wrestling with PTSD.

Something like Mirror's Edge - for all its high-budget gloss - is simply the modern equivalent of an old-school platform game. It doesn't need to be Tristram Shandy or Wuthering Heights.

So please. Reviewers. If you're reviewing a game, particularly an action game, and its story can be skipped past, ignored, or otherwise glossed over, don't dedicate half of your review to it. Honestly. We don't care, and you're just going to make things worse.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
REVIEWS ARE STUPID - BY MR BIFFO
THAT DRAGON, INTERNET BACKLASH BY MR BIFFO
GAMING WILL EAT ITSELF - BY MR BIFFO

22 Comments

Ben

8/6/2016 09:37:00 am

God, I have been saying this for years; games suck at telling stories and have no need for them whatsoever beyond commercial interests.

Thing is, as bad and superficial (both in content and to the game experience itself) as game stories are, there is and has been an ever increasing emphasis on narrative (and providing a 'cinematic' experience) in games over the last 10 years; a lot of time and money is already spent telling crap stories badly in games. On that basis, there probably is merit in reviewers criticising game narrative if developers and publishers are going to continue flogging that particular dead horse.

Honestly, I just wish they'd stop. Stop exorcising your 'I'd rather be making films' demons all over my games; the overwhelming emphasis on 'brand building' narrative for marketing purposes has been detrimental to the development of the more fundamental, core aspects of video games.

Waynan The Barbarian

8/6/2016 09:45:54 am

I think a good story can be very beneficial to games these days. But i do agree that it's all about how the story is told rather than how many self important boring cut scenes you can shove in to a game every 15 minutes.

For example, i've just recently played and finished the first season of The Walking Dead game. The game itself is a basic point and click adventure that should be boring as hell but it's the story, the characters and the way the story is told that make you care about those characters that had me coming back for more.
I loved it and the ending even made me shed a lone manly tear and if a game can make you feel something on an emotional level then the developers have the done it right.

Mr Biffo

8/6/2016 10:00:32 am

I think that's different though. I'm mostly talking about action games. There are many games that I've loved because of their story. Obviously, Telltale are ALL about the story...

Acid_Arrow

8/6/2016 10:29:24 am

I think the critical acclaim games like LA Noire and Heavy Rain had encouraged companies to tack on watered-down versions of their more intricate storylines to more action-oriented games. They're trying to have the best of both worlds but as the article points out the stories are often practically redundant in certain games, resulting in at best disappointment and at worst annoyance.

Often when playing a game I've thought "I wish they would have spent the time developing those cutscenes on making the inventory less fiddly or making my character not walk like a sober Boris Yeltsin".

Merrweather link

8/6/2016 10:39:50 am

Perhaps one reason that reviewers focus on the story is that there's a feeling that games SHOULD be telling better stories. They've advanced immeasurably in other ways, yet most game stories are atrocious. It's kind of embarrassing for a supposedly mature medium.

Like you say, this generally isn't a big deal because we can take or leave the story and focus on the fun. But occasionally you get one game where the developers really nail it, story-wise - like The Last of Us - and suddenly you wish they could all be like that.

Wicked Eric

8/6/2016 10:42:09 am

I found the Doomguy's palpable disinterest in his own game's story in the latest Doom hilarious.

Matty link

8/6/2016 12:22:21 pm

"Since when did games reviewers care so much?"

I think part of it is a lot of people who feel the need to "prove" that games are a "medium" to be taken seriously, like books and films.

I think you're right on this, stories in games are there for atmosphere more than anything else. Games are a poor medium for telling stories, as someone else said. And the stories they tell are often real B-movie stuff and have to be, because anything more complex would get in the way of the gameplay.

There is a case for using interactivity to tell stories, but it needs to be in a way that means that the story is over in a relatively short time and without any real barriers to the "players" progress, something that should really be called Interactive Fiction (e.g. something like "Gone Home").

Someone mentioned LA Noire and Heavy Rain as partly responsible for the "games can tell detailed stories" idea. It's interesting that those games' reputations have both diminished significantly since their release.

Darcy

8/6/2016 12:55:07 pm

I get the impression that they're scared people won't take their game seriously if there isn't a Serious Grown-up Narrative attached. I mean, it's what Everyone is "talking about" these days, right? Spoilers and tropes! "I didn't see that one coming!" HOLD THE DOORS!

Games without deep lore and complex stories are for kids, right?

8/6/2016 01:09:57 pm

I reckon that - notwithstanding things like The Last of Us, Deus Ex, etc. doing a very good job of having a linear narrative that the player influences a bit but is mostly out of their control - I think the real power that computer games have is to let the player tell the story themselves, if that makes any sense.

What got me thinking about this was thinking about the difference between Morrowind and Skyrim, two Elder Scrolls games 10 years apart from each other. There are certain ways in which, on paper, the quality of the experience in doing the quests for the various factions is far more advanced in Skyrim, but yet I felt an awful lot more involved in the story in Morrowind because, firstly, in Morrowind the missions aren't dramatic, urgent and bombastic in the same way and you're free to do them in the order you choose, and the overarching narrative is you, the player, climbing the ranks of the faction you're working for. In Skyrim you're just on a single linear path that often takes you places you may well not want your character to go (most notably getting pressganged into becoming a werewolf or a joining a shady daedric cult, or having to do a godawful boss battle, or something). You can also visit the same location on missions for different factions (the big one being the ebony mine in Caldera, being worked by slaves) and cause very different outcomes.

But the big difference is that all of the "story" that comes out of those mechanics in Morrowind is just in the head of the player. It leaves plenty to the imagination and gets out of the way of what you, the player, want your character's story to be, and I think that the great advantage of that approach is it will always produce a better story than a single middle-of-the-road kind of narrative that aims to please everyone at the same time.

But here I think i'm betraying my nerdy, introverted way of thinking about these things and I wonder whether people actually want to do something like that while playing a video game. Maybe gamers aren't so escapist any more and would rather have something more like a TV series than a tabletop role-playing game, who knows

James of the North

8/6/2016 02:41:04 pm

"Where is the thing?" almost got me chucked out of the library.

8/6/2016 02:47:26 pm

GOOD.

Keith

8/6/2016 05:02:37 pm

Game stories are going to always be weak because the protagonist won't actually go through true stages of a heroes journey; the guy who has just bought a £50 game isn't really going to choose to stay in the shire, so the cliche heroic story never really comes off as anything but doubly fake.
The best stories are ones where implicitly or explicitly, your character is piecing together a mysterious backstory, or working within a narrative you're a small part of. Portal 2/The Last Of Us both master classes that show that story can elevate a game when the story is properly told in a way that games can do better than books/films

Paulvw

8/6/2016 05:45:48 pm

I guess it's because you watch a movie or books story play out in third person and have that distance to see how the story plays out including the lead character. A game is really you experiencing it either in first person or with some emotionless Avatar shoved in the way who one minute can be experience an event that would completely change their life forever and the very next moment repeatedly smash pots in friends houses, search grass or run around checking rubbish bins.

Macbeth as a videogame probably wouldn't have the same lasting appeal.

Damon

8/6/2016 06:03:32 pm

This is one of those pesky "it depends" moments for me.

I think if the story of do poorly told the player in confused in a way that does not intrigue them and the game is so otherwise bland that the plate actually asks "What the hell is going on here?" then the storytelling had failed.

On the other hand, I have different fingers. For an action game the story probably should take a back seat and be a premise or stage for the action to take place. Otherwise it often comes off as pretentious. But for, say, an SNES-era RPG the story can make or break it.

Tetris communicates it's story very poorly. Did you know it's about two people in love who keep trying to have a moment together but others keep crowding them?

Superbeast 37

8/6/2016 07:00:53 pm

Story is the best part of a game for me.

It motivates me to keep pushing on.

I need to be invested, to care about the characters, to get home from work and be eager to fire up my machine to find out what happened to them next. Otherwise I just won't bother.

We know that good story telling is possible in almost any genre.

Games have already done it in every genre and raised the bar. New games continue to fall short - the new Lara Croft is as you say very poorly written for example.

I love games that spoon feed the story like walking sims or even games like the Souls titles where you go out and find or even invent it for yourself. But I have to care about what is happening and why. Gameplay alone won't do it anymore.

I used to be a huge Nintendo/Mario fan as a kid but nowadays as a middle aged gamer I can't be bothered to play it because whilst its gameplay is still perfect, I just don't feel that finishing the game for the sake of it is enough of a pay off for all the effort. I want something emotional out of it. This is the reason why my favourite genres in the past (racing and flight sims) are something I NEVER play anymore.

I'd rather randomly Skype my friend and ask her about her day than play a pure platform title these days.

There is no right answer though. Some people are purely interested in mechanics and gameplay. I fully respect that.

I guess the reviews that focus on the story are not for those players. Someone like Totalbiscuit is almost entirely focussed on gameplay so I'd recommend going to him instead.

Dagenham Swish

8/6/2016 07:55:51 pm

Crusader Kings 2 is the best game for stories. There I said it.

RidiculousHuman

8/6/2016 08:46:23 pm

I think if it's in the game, it's fair to comment on it - it's part of the product (yes, usually the weakest part), and it's not like Catalyst is shy about shoving its story in your face. If I could buy a version that wouldn't require me to hold the skip button once every five minutes, I'd gladly do it.

But the distinction between "crap story" and "crap storytelling" is probably one that could be focused on a little more. I doubt most stories would get the drubbing they do if they weren't so often the intrusive, wannabe-cinematic cutscenes a failed screenwriter spunked out.

(I'm also reminded of John Carmack's comment that stories in games are like stories in porn movies: they're expected to be there, but no one ever actually cares about them.)

Spiney O'Sullivan

9/6/2016 10:41:50 am

I've always felt that Carmack quote was pretty bad for games as a medium. It's maybe true for his games (and that's no bad thing, I love Doom), but it's a medium with a lot of potential for storytelling. That said, I'd agree that it's important to focus on that distinction between storytelling and story. I do really like a good reason to feel invested in a game's world, characters, and plot. There's a reason I've played most of the Assassin's Creed series, and it's not just that I really like climbing things to uncover maps and collect a billion treasure chests and other widgets. For all the series has lost its way, the world is deeply interesting. And I always liked the Desmond sections, so there.

KaraVanPark

8/6/2016 08:48:45 pm

Mario punches blocks. That is all.

Bruce Flagpole

9/6/2016 09:16:17 am

I think there's two things going on here. the difference between story and story-telling, and then reviews focusing on the bit that's not relevant to the game.
If a game has a simple basic story ('Mario, rescue the princess') to set up the action, then the review really shouldn't focus on the story.
but if a game wants to shove it's story in your face, and tell you how clever and serious it all is, then it should be reviewed and critiqued as required, and torn apart if it's in a game that doesn't want or need it.
the porn analogy is perfect here. so the plumber turns up to fix a sink, and the housewife is hot and horny - ACTION!
if you're bemoaning the lack of detailed footage of the sink fixing and a full backstory of why these two people would want to have sex together - then it's probably not porn you want to be watching. and if that was in the porno you wanted to watch, you'd fast forward that shit and be aggrieved if you couldn't!

Gaijintendo

10/6/2016 12:23:42 am

What are stories but other people's "dreams"? And who cares about those? It is just your brain pooping out all the thoughts that it has chewed up and that would otherwise stink the place up.

MD Cribbuffs

12/6/2016 07:49:20 pm

Best plot ever "collect all the puds"

IDIOTS, PLEASE... STOP REVIEWING THE STORY IN GAMES - by Mr Biffo

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