That is a joke, right?

Remember the scene in the third movie when the Emperor is electrocuting Luke before Darth Vader snaps and throws him down the shaft? When the camera focuses on Vader's face there is no reaction, nothing, but in your imagination you can see the torment he is going through, whether to remain loyal to his master who made him this powerful, or whether to help his son.

So guess what Lucas did to that scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3u70WELSEg
I mean, did anyone in the history of ever watch that movie and during that scene go "Why did Darth Vader just throw the Emperor down?"? I'm not one to bitch about the special editions, but come on, that completely ruined a great scene.

OK, I'll give you the adventure genre, although those barely qualify as game. Strategy games not so much. I am not against story, I am against interfering with the game: imagine in in Warcraft III the mission was all of the sudden interrupted forcing you to slowly walk around and talk to people. The story pieces were little rewards thrown in between missions to give context to what you were doing. The story was not what you played the game for, it was like the cherry on top of a good cake: a nice extra to make a good game even better. And you can actually skip all the cutscenes if you want.

A story does not have to constrain the game, it can give context to what you are doing and make it more interesting. What sounds better: "shoot pixels" or "save the earth from the invasion by the intergalactic plorz empire using a prototype battleship created in an unprecedented joint effort by all of earth's nations"? It only a problem when you mix up the relationship between the cherry and the cake, when you treat what was meant to be the decoration as the main meal.

Damn, I had no idea. All this time spent playing them, or rather thinking I'm playing them, and it was all an illusion.

Actually, it was. It was what kept me invested and interested in playing further. You seem to mistake your own view on the story's role and importance in games for some "fact".

I can't agree with that at all, most games have terrible stories. In fact, AC was one of the few series where I didn't want to constantly skip the crap out of the dialogs. And yes, that includes most of the RPGs I've played, the dialog and story just isn't that interesting.

I know there's issues with the story, but most of the bitching about it seems to come from psuedo-intellectuals that are picking it apart just to pick it apart. And people who have read tons and tons of sci-fi books and stories. To an extent, I get the complaints, but it's a freaking game, the story is there as a part of the game to help keep things going forward and to explain the mechanics, but it's not intended to result in a Nobel for Literature being awarded to the writers.
But, it does seem to be relatively close to the fact if I'm understanding him correctly. Games are games and not movies or books, they're meant to be played. Now for some genres the story is a hugely important part of the game and really couldn't be removed no matter how masterful the rest of it was, but that's not most games. Even most RPGs can be played without giving a crap about the story.

Ah, the "it's not Shakespeare" card, the lamest excuse for a poor, badly written story one can use. No, seriously, I've played to many games with really good stories to even consider that a valid point.

Sure they can. Why anyone would choose to do so is beyond me, it's like using a copy of Lord of the Rings as a hammer. But hey, I'm just a pseudo intellectual who read tons of sci-fi books.

This right here is where the pseudo-intellectualism comes into it.

These are games, the primary goal is to have a game that's fun. A good story can enhance the game and help motivate players to continue to the end, but there's no reason why a good game needs to have a story at all in most genres.

You know what else isn't Shakespeare? Damn near every book that's been written. There's a huge number of books that people enjoy reading that aren't Shakespeare. Some of them are of very low quality in terms of plot development , characterization and the rest, but people still consider them to be good stories.

Yes, indeed you are, you have yet to make a valid point or even explain yourself. I know I'm not going to change your mind and don't really care if I do, but your points come from so high up the ivory tower that I'm burning my retinas looking.

I don't personally like having stories tacked on for the hell of it. And I don't want to have stories in games that get in the way of my blasting things. If I want a sophisticated plot, then I'll buy a book. I buy games because I want to play games. The story is there primarily as a back up to the game itself. The story for AC was way above average for the typical game. Yes, it wasn't terribly sophisticated or avant-garde, but it suited the franchise quite well.

Sometimes I like playing games with plot and depth. I was a big fan of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics for that reason.

And sometimes all the plot you need is something like this.

Well, no story is definately preferable to a bad one, which can make any game suck, and Assassin's Creed is a great example of that. And yes, some games get by with little or no story. But does not mean they are better for it. It's just being intelectually lazy. "I don't want to have to bother my brain with a story, I just want to shoot things". Fine. To each his own. But don't act like your preference is some objective standard of what a game needs or what makes it good.

Yes. Those people are idiots. Sadly, there's a lot of them.

There we have it.

Still better to burn your retinas looking up, then only look at your feet all the time.

Any reason both can't have good plots? Is that a limited resource, are we going to run out?

No, the idea is to have it be one and the same, integrated into one great experience.

Thanks for proving my point there. You have yet to say anything substantive on the subject.

Considering that there have been literally tens of thousands of games produced over the last 30+ years of gaming, suggesting that AC is one of the worst is kind of mind-boggling.

What bout the game music? Surely you're also upset because it's not Bach or Chopin. I mean, how dare people produce artwork that's targeted at the masses and doesn't even require a PhD in literature to enjoy. Those people are horrible.

Just because you choose to ignore my point does not mean it's not there. I've actually stated it quite clearly there, and yet you still pretend it's not there. Here, I'll repeat, and then I'll call it a night.

Don't act like your preference is some objective standard of what a game needs or what makes it good.

In other words- just because you prefer games without a story does not mean games are better off not having them. Using your logic someone could say "why do movies have to have a plot and dialogue and shit? I just want to see people punch each other."

You seem to not get something very simple. I don't require everything to be high art, deep and complex. But even the simple entertainment can be done well or poorly. Even a stupid action movie takes talent to make well. Popular music can mean anything, from the greatness of Elton John to wide awake nightmare of Kesha or Nicky Minaj. That's why "it's not Shakespeare" is such a lame excuse. It does not have to be Shakespeare to be good. "It's not supposed to be high art" does not mean it has to be crap.

I love a good story in a game. It's not always necessary (games like Contraption Maker are fun despite not having anything resembling one), but I've found that an enjoyable story with well-written or otherwise likable characters tends to increase the memorability of that game in addition to helping overcome gameplay flaws by offering reasons for pushing through the less-fun sections of a game.

I think there are two ways of telling a story through video games.

The first way is like an interactive book where you play a protagonist moving through a set plotline. Most RPGs are like this -- Mass Effect, The Witcher, Final Fantasy, Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, etc. You can customize your character to a certain degree, but the story is fixed: you WILL reach this checkpoint where you WILL be making a certain decision. The story branches depending on the decisions, but you're still being railroaded towards set checkpoints within a defined story. The player doesn't have true power in the storytelling, he's just moving down paths pre-dictated by the game creators. Even if the branches in decision making are getting more complex in contemporary RPGs, the player's agency in the story is illusory, it still lies with the authors. This is where video games operate exactly like books, just with a bit more options for customization.

The second way of storytelling is to put players into the setting of a game and leave it at that. You can play Pac-Man at face value, or you can give Pac-Man an agency and a mission. You can play TF2 for the sole aim of shooting people and gaining achievements and relaxing from RL, or you can form a clan and give yourself a mission and grand purpose. There's your story, and it's the player who came up with it in the first place. In this way, all games have stories -- because the player makes it.

Basically all games provide varying degrees of storytelling agency, and thus give players different levels of satisfaction in that. Some players like being in an interactive book, some players prefer to make a story -- their own story -- by themselves out of the environment, goals and means. And some players prefer to not to do that at all.

I'm currently playing Homeworld and KOTOR, which I think proves this point. In KOTOR, I get to "enact" a book: yes I make choices, but they are choices picked from a list of dialogue options. In Homeworld, the story is barebones and hardly there compared to KOTOR. But I still get to achieve the mission goals however I want to, and in the process of that, fill in the blanks of the story with my own imagination and my own agency in fulfilling missions. In this way, Homeworld gives me a story experience that KOTOR will never provide: I created part of Homeworld's story on my own. Both give rich storytelling experiences, but in different ways.

No, it certainly is not. There is nothing special about RPGs that warrants encumbering them with stories.

I love stories.

The videogame medium has quite a few gems: The Bard's Tale, Planescape: Torment, and the Baldur's Gate series to name a few. Something about seeing these characters come to life through their actions really drives it home for me as a player.

Then again, I'm a guy who plays casually. I treat gameplay mechanics as a more interactive way to turn the page to see what happens next.

As to answer your question, KneeTheCap, you've got nothing to be ashamed of. It's human to love stories and be invested in them.

Here's my ditty. I remember playing the 2004 Bard's Tale and being in complete awe. I played it during my teens, when my core identity hadn't really solidified yet. The experience was funny, larger-than-life, weird--everything I could have ever wanted in a game. What amazed me most was how the main character always stayed true to himself throughout. Unlike the heroes I read growing up, The Bard wasn't in it to do the right thing or the wrong thing, he was all about doing the 'him' thing. And at the time I played it, I couldn't help but respect that.

Thanks for making this thread. It's always a pleasure to hear anecdotes on how people received stories.