story?

[vespuleth]

if all a game really offered was an engrossing story, would you still play it?

[NASH7777]

No...but the new MGS is like 10 hours of story text and videos

[vespuleth]

what i meant was a good plot. not necessarily videos and storytelling, but overall plotline.

[Draygone]

No. If I don't like what I'm playing, no matter how interested I may be in the story, I probably won't ever finish it.

[vespuleth]

i dont mean the gameplay will be boring or crappy, just nothing new.

[Doan the Nado]

I must say that a great story with decent gameplay would probably get by okay. The gameplay doesn't have to be extraordinary anyways, just not annoying. Repetitive messages during battles and seemingly pointless random battles every 10 steps or less get chalked up as annoying in my book.

I must say from firsthand experience, I played Xenosaga, and it had an awesome story. It also had a pretty good battle system, as well as fun mini-games. Yet I haven't even finished the game, and have no desire to. I was completely turned off by one cutscene that lasted 40 minutes. The menu system was overly complex (I understood it, but it had to be accessed way too often, and was quite deep), and it seemed like you would fight 5 battles or so and then have another unbearably long cutscene. In this case, a good story made the game seem overly linear and almost like a mere opening act for the movie that was Xenosaga.

On the other hand, stories are what separates RPGs from other games, and are almost necessary components. An exceptional story can give the player that extra incentive to want to beat the next dungeon and see what comes next. It would seem that the story would be about half of what makes a fun game, but I think it's actually LESS. I think it's pretty evenly split between interface, battle system, environment, originality, and story. So if everything is a 6 or 7 on a scale of 10 and the story is a 10, that would be about an 8 in my book. I think no element should be overlooked, and story is just another element that needs to be focused on.

[Deleted]

Yeah, I agree with Doan completely on this one. He really covered everything too.

[The Final Rune]

I think more often than not it is how a story is told, not the story itself that keeps us going. If the telling and discovering of the story drags us into it's world and makes us want to keep playing because the experience is engrossing then we are more likely to finish the game. Not too many people actually finished Xenogears/Xenosaga because the long lengthy story segments broke our desire to continue. The stories were great, just not told with the best presentation. Story should be well mixed with game action, battles, world discovery and MINI games. It is my greatest hope that I can present my story in this way.

[Dungeon Warden]

My only beef with the Xenogears story is that, close to the end, there is a long exposition told through text on the screen. This was boring to read and told about events that would have been better to let the gamer play through then to read. I am assuming that the programers put the text in as a place holder to tell them what they need to do, and they ran out of time and left the text in. The big finally that happens after all this text makes it worth getting through it, but I wish they could have found a better way.

As has already been suggested, it is how the story is presented that makes a game fun to play through, not how good the story is. Anyone who has read my game's background or played the demo will notice that there are very few clues about what will happen next. This is because I have the story play out depending on the player's actions. The more the player searches for clues and talks to people, the more information he will get and the more into the story he will become. If you just fight through the game, you can get to the end (although the puzzles will be harder this way), but you wouldn't experience the full story. This makes the game more replayable, especially since I plan to have different party members effect the story as well. Sort of how FF VI (FF III for the SNES) had different events happen depending on who was in the party.

So what is important? Presentation! This is why people say the game play needs to get good (not great) and that other elements enter into the formula of a great game. Many good elements put together make a greater game then a game with a great story and weak gameplay. Always play to your strengths (ex. if you're good at story telling, make a great story) but don't let anything else suffer because of it. Do your best and people will enjoy whatever you decide to do. Conversely, no matter how hard you try there will always be people who don't like your work - don't be controlled by public option. If you enjoy it, that's what matters.

[millivanilli]

i wouldn't play if it didn't have stuff to do if it had a good story and stuff to do i would.