I’ve noticed a trend—particularly in some recent RPGs—of, well, let’s call it ‘Netflixiness’.
Dialogue designed to leave absolutely nothing to interpretation, to exposit information in the most direct way possible, devoid of any real character or context. There’s an assumption that any moment the audience spends confused, curious, or out-of-the-loop is a narrative disaster.
I hate to keep knocking Dragon Age: The Veilguard about, especially since I still had a decent time with it all told, but the thing that made me break off from it after 60 hours really was its story. It’s a tale that does get (slightly) better, but it gave me a terrible first impression I never quite shook.
I love story based games, and the story is my favorite thing about a game, usually. Unfortunately, so many games try to tell you a story like a movie would or like a book would. They intersperse cutscenes between gameplay to tell you what you did or are doing. That’s… boring at best. Video games can tell stories in a unique way that other mediums can’t, because they’re interactive. DDLC is my favorite example, that game has a story that can only hit as hard as it does because you the player are an active participant in the story. Or Dark Souls, where the story exists for you to find, or not… everyone has a different understanding of what the story of that game is after their first playthrough, and the deeper you look the better your understanding is. Tell interesting stories in a way that uses the medium to the fullest and you’ll gain an audience. Recite a screenplay every 10 minutes between spurts of unrelated gameplay, and people won’t care about your story.
It depends on the game. I still like Metal Gear Solid 1 & 2.
Those are the best games in the series IMO. Sons of Liberty is a prophetic masterpiece.
deleted by creator
This concept of a second screen show is so unbelievably fucking moronic… It’s your own damn fault if you’re not paying attention!
I have a second monitor that I play things on, and it’s either a stream of someone playing something similar or the same game, or it’s a show I’ve already watched and know the story of.
If I’m watching something new, then I’m watching it. To have stories dumbed down, or just butchered to suit tictok brainrotted people completely devoid of attention spans is so freaking depressing and only exacerbates the issue. But in the end I guess I get it, you’re out for a profit and it hurts to have a plethora of idiots rate you poorly because they weren’t paying attention and didn’t understand the story… Ughh…
To me it feels like there is a fundamental dissonance in the video game industry. Where major publishers and studios can’t seem to internalize that there are two things that people might come to a game for; Video games as experiences, narratives, things to be explored; and video games as … well games, a set of mechanics to be interacted with, to be challenged by. This isn’t to say a game can’t be good at both, but many games are weighted one way or another.
Factorio is a truly absorbing gameplay experience, but it doesn’t really have a story beyond what is needed to frame and flavor the gameplay.
“Vampire the masquerade: bloodlines” is a classic of atmosphere, character interaction and role play, but just about everyone who played it will tell you the combat is serviceable at best, and there is one level in particular that most people just remove with a mod because it’s just combat, with no dialog or interactions with other characters.
So many major studios and publishers seem to routinely focus on the wrong elements of previously successful games. Taking the wrong lessons and misunderstanding what made previous title’s a huge success.
People are not coming to your story based RPG to play it mindlessly while listening to a podcast or audio book. If people are doing that, then clearly they’re not coming to it for the story, and the solution to that issue is to write a better story or refocus around what ever they are coming for.
Maybe make dialogue between “Find the dwemer puzzle box, it’s… uhhh… somewhere” and “GO [fast travel] TO PLACE X, KILL Y IN ROOM NUMBER 6 AND DONT FORGET TO COME BACK WITH THE EVIL SWORD OF DARKNESS [automatically picked up by your character] [a yellow marker appears on your minimap and field of view, with a magic trail leading you to the quest location]”
“What you need to know about your audience here is that they will watch the show, perhaps on their mobile phone, or on a second or third screen while doing something else and talking to their friends, so you need to both show and tell, you need to say much more than you would normally say.”
This is so baffling to me. So you’ve discovered your audience has a limited attention span. I can see that. But for the love of all that is holy, if you know this, why even make a game with a story in the first place? The thing with videogames is that stories can be minimalistic as all hell, or even optional. Just let the gameplay speak for itself and have the story be “defeat the bad guy on the mountain” or something.
Yeah, I’m gonna say this person doesn’t hate to keep knocking on Veilguard, because that seems to be the one example they can bring up. I mean, there’s a cursory name check of Dawntrail, but otherwise… yeah, not sure what games this is talking about other than Dragon Age.
Clair Obscur didn’t do that. It went to absolute pains to not do that, in fact, to the point where I find the deceptive twist-building a bit over the top, in retrospect. I wouldn’t accuse the CDPR games of going that route. Baldur’s Gate does overexplain often, but in their defense the game has a million characters, plot points you go through out of order and a runtime in the hundreds of hours, so I wouldn’t change that.
What else is even doing this? I feel like we’re back in “AAA sucks” territory where AAA stands in for “this one game I didn’t like”. Writing in games runs the gamut. I would struggle to find a single defining thing to praise or criticise across the board.
Hear hear! This is such a plague on games and media right now. I don’t blame developers that much, because lack of friction is super commonly taught in game design courses, and it’s not always bad. It can be done waaaay too much though.
there probably shouldn’t be a lot of friction for things the player isn’t supposed to be focused on, like say the interface should be unobtrusive and easy to navigate, a player probably shouldn’t have to use moon logic to figure out how to open a door. Things that aren’t the focus shouldn’t require the player’s focus.
but a story driven game should have the player focusing on the story, not actively encouraging them to ignore it!
Players who don’t care about the story would probably be better served by a different game altogether.
Yep, exactly. That’s the good use of lack of friction. The philosophy I have is just that it shouldn’t be seen as always good no matter what. It changes the experience to remove friction, so any decision to do so should be thoughtfully done with the experience in mind.
I find this so strange, because it is often the friction / mystery that compels me to keep playing. See Blue Prince, Sifu, Soulslikes, Outer Wilds…
It comes from a good place. Make things have more quality of life. Makes things feel smooth and responsive. Don’t make things obtuse and confusing.
The problem is that while some friction kind of sucks (I don’t think many would want clunky movement or controls), lots of experiences get thrown out with the bathwater when this goes too far.
My philosophy is that friction needs to be seen as a tool. It does something to the experience, and it needs to be considered whether removing it will improve the experience, and if so, what is being lost in the process?
Exposition != story.
A good story can be (and usually is) told with minimal exposition. AAA games being exposition-fests is a result of game executives and writers infantilising players in the name of “widest audience appeal”.
I wanna blame the writers more for this but honestly, I think a lot of Netflix writers know their audience is just on their phone. I have people in my life that just watch their phone, notice they missed something, then REWIND THE SCENE so I get to watch twice. It really is bad, it happens with people older and younger than me.
I feel like stories have never been my go to. I always find myself playing games with excellent gameplay, rather than story (Mindustry, Balatro, Galaga, etc). I love a good story don’t get me wrong, but gameplay is my main attraction to games, and I feel thats where games started. If you look at retro games like Dig Dug or Adventure, or even modern indie titles like Balatro the attraction is basically 90% gameplay
I think that’s kind of the kicker, a lot of studios and franchises got big based on the quality of their story telling, but did poorly with audiences that were just there for the gameplay. The gameplay in these games is there to serve the story, to support it and facilitate it, not to shine by it’s own merits. But if you’re just there for the gameplay and don’t care about the story, then the gameplay will be boring.
So they’ve sanded down the story to make it easier for people who don’t care about it to follow what’s going on, and thus make the gameplay work for them…
But now you have a story built to serve gameplay, and gameplay built to serve the story. Nether is good on its own merits, so no one really likes it.
