Many video games have very poor or bare plots, but amazing settings. In fact, I'm not sure that video games are actually good vehicles for plots. Video games are interactive, but all good plots require careful pacing and timing in order to be successful. It's possible to force this in a game, but the more you do, the more the game becomes an interactive movie.
A great example would be Dark Souls: incredible setting, but really bare-bones plot. The plot is effectively: "You're the chosen undead, and you must quest for some items." The setting, on the other hand, could fill books.
In some sense, it's similar to comparing a good news article to a good story. A good story. Good story generally can't be purely fact-based, since this interrupts the needs of narrative: pacing, good vs. evil, moral decisions, defeats, and victories, etc. A good news story may have something like a narrative, but it's more of a collection of facts. If there's an narrative at all, it exists simply to help explain the relevance of the facts presented.
Video games are metaphorically similar: You may have an interesting plot in the game, but it is punctuated by the actions you get to take as a player. For example, in Wind Waker you must rescue your sister, but in practice the player is running around an island, breaking pots, and doing sidequests. The narrative plot and the play actions are almost totally disparate. The plot is nearly a side story, which helps add context to the player actions.
I guess the problem with plot on video games is the sequencing.
Some of the most impactful stories I've experienced in games have been more environmental storytelling than plot based. That is, the game expects me to find the overall narrative and story in my own time, usually because the story beats have happened already before my character even existed, and I'm trying to find where the current gameplay fits into it, e.g. Outer Wilds.
If you want a normal "movie like" story, you more often have to Railroad your player along certain paths, or tack it on in between gameplay.
Games like (the finale of) Braid do a good job of showing how gameplay and narrative can coexist in a way that films can't do, and that's one of the lessons for me.
Plot in the movie sense within games can be a fun way to mash gameplay and story together, buy it isn't superior in telling the story. You need to do something different in games to tell a story in a way where games are stronger stronger film, for me, usually slow paced games with environmental storytelling, or games that use your feelings of being the main character to mess with you, e.g. spec ops the line.
YOU chose to kill people not the protag of the film you're watching.
I guess my point is, some games use video game only devices to enhance the impact of their story in a way that only games can, where the games that try to take on films using the tools of films won't be able to.match up with films.
I have had a hard time forgetting the scene in Ico where you are separated from your companion. Such a simple scripting, but completely hooked me.
Which, I think, makes your point. The setting is basically drowning you in that game. And you are a bit player that does not impact any world, per se. At least, if you did, you aren't aware of it.
It's not so much that they have a story, because there's more to it than that, and the lore seeps through every aspect of the games.
I have never played a game that does cosmic horror so damn well (because Lovecraftian games are about 99% disappointing, or cliche rip offs of like two Lovecraft stories).
I prefer Sunless Skies, but both of them look gorgeous, have amazing sound design, and while abundant with moments of terror they are a real feast for the imagination. It's the writing that ties it all together, makes it special.
I feel it gave me room to think, and spoke to me in areas I usually don't engage. Themes of accepting you can't halt the end, no matter how hard you try and all the work you put in, and ultimately we all end up alone, but with the memories of others as parts of ourselves, as we enter the unknown.
Just my readings, but the point is it hit me in a way other media hasn't. Not better or worse, but unique and different because games haven't quite found how best to use the medium for the possibilities in storytelling.
This is something which didn't come through in my original post, but I feel one of the major problems here is that people are trying to compare video games to other mediums such as theatre, movies, and books. In other words, video games are an art form which is different enough that direct comparisons to other art forms may be misleading. Now I realize that we are talking about the general quality of plot in games, and not the wider debate regarding whether video games constitute art. That said, imagine the complaint that music is not art because it lacks a proper plot. Video games have aspects of other mediums, but the interactive nature of games means that they will never really be directly comparable.
For example, in film school you might study aspects of film which are somewhat oblique to the quality of the actual storytelling in the film. Such as: cinematography, and the framing of characters in the shot. Video games have analogous things, such as level design, game design, etc. A famous example is how the first level of Super Mario Bros. teaches you that mushrooms are beneficial, by making the player's first interaction with one mostly unavoidable. Modern games have more complex game designs, and of course these designs represent a complex communication between the game creators and the players. A lot of nuance an information is conveyed this way, and it can potentially amount to art. Much like the art of cinematography cannot exist in books, the art of game design cannot exist in other mediums.
Video games can also teach you things which movies and books cannot, (at least potentially) and this can be performed via game design. For example, when I was a child, people would exclaim "life's not a video game!" I heard this quite a bit, and I believe most people meant: the things you do have consequences, and you won't get very many second chances. Now this is frankly not really correct. Yes, the things you do have consequences, but almost everyone gets multiple second chances throughout their life. For example, if I fail at one task in a workplace, I usually get multiple chances to improve and correct my error. Even if I fail overall at a job, I will likely have future chances to prove myself at other jobs. Some mistakes can be fatal, of course, but for most of the actions I take, I can plan on success by trial and error, repetition, and iteration. In other words, exactly like a video game. Interestingly, it was video games which first taught me this. I had a friend who by all accounts was objectively not as talented at video games than I was. We'd play together, and I'd best him at nearly everything we touched. However one day he wanted to take on a challenge in a game which I felt was above my skill level. I was certain he'd never be able to succeed, because I was certain I could never succeed. But, he had something I didn't at the time: persistence. He kept trying and failing, and trying again. He never became discouraged or emotionally frustrated, and slowly he iterated on his failure and eventually succeeded. (To be clear here, when I say "iterate on failure," I simply mean to attempt a task, fail at it, and attempt it slightly better the next time.) I learned a very important lesson that day, and have been re-learning it ever since: part of success is persistence, and things which seem impossible are often simply daunting. Later in life, Dark Souls and other From Software games reinforced these lessons, and of course much more importantly, I applied these lessons to my everyday life and learned not to fear failure, and to iterate on failure until it became success. I bring this up specifically because I remember years ago reading an interview with a celebrity who felt that video games could not be art. I believe it was Roger Ebert, but I'm not sure. In either case, the argument was made that art teaches you something, something about human nature, something about being a person. It's possible I'm misremembering the argument, (I can't find it online) but my point is the same. Video games taught me something about being a person which other mediums failed to teach me.
>in Wind Waker you must rescue your sister, but in practice the player is running around an island, breaking pots, and doing sidequests. The narrative plot and the play actions are almost totally disparate.
> In fact, I'm not sure that video games are actually good vehicles for plots. Video games are interactive, but all good plots require careful pacing and timing in order to be successful. It's possible to force this in a game, but the more you do, the more the game becomes an interactive movie.
I'm in the opposite camp. Movies are not good vehicles for plots, because the right pacing and timing is subjective. They almost always fail at storytelling, because they proceed at the same pace for everyone. The best you can do is to watch the movie alone at home. Then you can at least pause the film when you need time to think, or jump back to rewatch a section.
Cutscenes between gameplay sequences tend to make the game and the story worse. Both because they break the pacing, and because they are often used to show things that would not be possible in the game itself. The game already tells one story through gameplay, dialogue, and player choices. That story should take priority. The gameplay should be expressive enough that the writers can tell the story they want within the framework, instead of resorting to cutscenes that break the logic of the game.
I am wary of this kind of casual reduction of videogame plots to one-sentence summaries that is all frequent in online discussions. For all I know, the plot of Grim Fandango could be said to be "you're the chosen undead, and you must quest for some items" and Grim Fandango story is one of the best.
There's probably not so much of Grim Fandango story in Dark Souls, given there is not so many friendlies in the latter. If anything, I would compare it to System Shock 2, but in fantasy genre rather than sf. The story of System Shock 2 was fine, though maybe not that famous because Half-Life beat it to market.
Obviously those are examples from 90's and there is always the question about modern games; AAA as well as those made on lesser budgets. Funny the author of the blog roasts titles such as Firewatch and Spec Ops: Dubai.
>Many video games have very poor or bare plots, but amazing settings.
Cyberpunk 2077 is also a great example of this trope. Night City itself is magnificent, and the missions aren't half bad either, but the main storyline is tiresome and has no satisfactory outcome. It feels as if they tried to have a deep plot but ended up botching it.
> not sure that video games are actually good vehicles for plots. Video games are interactive, but all good plots require careful pacing and timing in order to be successful.
Video games are a great medium for plots! You just have to allow the plot to fail, and let the player take it on tangents. Games that go "uhh you died that's not canon let's rewind" are just shitty games.
A great example would be Dark Souls: incredible setting, but really bare-bones plot. The plot is effectively: "You're the chosen undead, and you must quest for some items." The setting, on the other hand, could fill books.
In some sense, it's similar to comparing a good news article to a good story. A good story. Good story generally can't be purely fact-based, since this interrupts the needs of narrative: pacing, good vs. evil, moral decisions, defeats, and victories, etc. A good news story may have something like a narrative, but it's more of a collection of facts. If there's an narrative at all, it exists simply to help explain the relevance of the facts presented.
Video games are metaphorically similar: You may have an interesting plot in the game, but it is punctuated by the actions you get to take as a player. For example, in Wind Waker you must rescue your sister, but in practice the player is running around an island, breaking pots, and doing sidequests. The narrative plot and the play actions are almost totally disparate. The plot is nearly a side story, which helps add context to the player actions.