Legacy of the Void

[hyde]

Wow, I accidentally caused the thread to derail.

I'll touch base on the discussion at hand, especially with just completing Bioshock Infinite. I thought that game is modern video game story telling at it's best, balance of both story and gameplay. You are never "Ripped out" to endure some stupid cinematic, the game plays out like Half Life 2 where you are simply there and always there. Something which movies can't do, but games can, Bioshock emphasizes and capitalizes on this strength. This is why I believe JRPG's have faded away, those games play out like crappy games but mediocore anime films. Of course, JRPGS are typically turnbased-3rd person and American RPG's have taken upon this "FPS-RPG" style recently (Deus Ex and Elderscrolls being the pioneers).
So you can see that the mediums above even within games causes a dramatic change in the delivery of the story. How could you ever get that sort of immersion in a game like StarCraft where you just "Watch" from the sky as always, then whisked away for some cinematic? Why are Mass Effect games so beloved despite this "Whisked away for cinematics"? It's mainly because you are largely still in control for the most part, so you are not really "Whisked away". Yet Mass Effect betrays the player and the pivotal strength of the franchise in ME3 and well - everyone knows what happened then.



tl;dr
Films, novels, plays, etc have always maintained the relationship between audience & play. Video games blur this line, it's simply up to the video game itself on how much this line should be blurred. The problem is that the audience gets so emotionally attached or wants to be "in" the play, yet they find themselves suddenly seat-belted to the audience chair. Mass effect is a great example of being in control up to the last second, then jerked into the audience chair and given some disgusting half-assed ending. Other video games that have strong "audience-play" relationships typically fall flat on the whole "Gameplay" thing, you know that little thing some developers forget about? JRPGS are pretty guilty of this. Back to point, SC2 and RTS fall in between this bizzare limbo area for me. The genre itself is not the best for story telling, and the spanning disconjoint missions create a rather staggered experience.

[Hawki]

I agree with you but Metal Gear is one of the worst examples of this. You spend much more time out of character than in character.

But you're always outside the protagonist's character in a sense, as in, it's in the third person. We're not (insert protagonist here), we're playing as (insert protagonist here). If cutscenes add to that feeling, what's the problem?

It's possible that this may not have been the case with The Walking Dead as the game had to tie into the show's continuity

Actually ties in with the comics rather than the show.

All good points everyone but, um, has anyone ever considered that videogames may also have more potential for "bad" storytelling in part (the other part being games primarily do not prioritise story telling first and utmost) because it's the youngest medium compared to movies and books?

Maybe. If we're classifying machinima as a medium of its own though, then it's younger than games by definition.

You make a good point, Turalyon. I think I touched on that in one of my posts, though I might've missed it. Games are difficult to judge as a medium, because they're too new and take much longer/many more people to make than, say, books. We don't really know what they're really capable of yet.

Games have been out for decades though. I'd like to think we'd at least have a good idea by now.

It becomes very obvious when we look at the majority of shooters. Although I don't play shooters (and the possibility that I'm talking out of my arse as a result), I find that such a gameplay mechanic is very limited, repetitive and not very conducive to weaving a story around it. As such, they are more prone to having this "cinematic experience" treatment placed upon them.

There are exceptions though. We can classify the Half-Life, BioShock, and Metroid Prime games as shooters and I wouldn't call any of them cinematic.

I think it helped that older games tended to tell simpler stories. I mean, look at Mario. While not an amazingly complex story, it's told fairly competently. Fairly early on, it's established that he's trying to rescue the Princess. And although nearly no text is given (except "The Princess is in another castle"), the changing level themes show Mario is doggedly searching far and wide for wherever King Koopa is hiding her. It's easy to convey because what's trying to be communicated to the player isn't all that complex to begin with.

Can we really cite the Super Mario games as "telling" a story though? The SM games have a premise (Mario has to save Peach/Daisy), but has no story outside said premise, and there's no real storytelling moments that I can think of.

Admittedly I grew up with the Megadrive (or Genesis, whatever) than the SNES, but I'll cite the Sonic the Hedgehog games as an alternative. STH1 had a premise - defeat Robotnik and retrive the Chaos Emeralds. STH2 had a story, as in, it goes outside the game engine to tell its final cutscene. A cutscene that I freely admit brought tears to my eyes and that of a friend when finally, after alternating turns, we finally beat the game (would have been, like 6 at the time). STH3&K had storytelling in that there were twists in the story. Basic ones of course, and not a word of dialogue was ever spoken, but still distinct divergences from the plot itself.

I'll touch base on the discussion at hand, especially with just completing Bioshock Infinite. I thought that game is modern video game story telling at it's best, balance of both story and gameplay. You are never "Ripped out" to endure some stupid cinematic, the game plays out like Half Life 2 where you are simply there and always there. Something which movies can't do, but games can, Bioshock emphasizes and capitalizes on this strength. This is why I believe JRPG's have faded away, those games play out like crappy games but mediocore anime films. Of course, JRPGS are typically turnbased-3rd person and American RPG's have taken upon this "FPS-RPG" style recently (Deus Ex and Elderscrolls being the pioneers).
So you can see that the mediums above even within games causes a dramatic change in the delivery of the story. How could you ever get that sort of immersion in a game like StarCraft where you just "Watch" from the sky as always, then whisked away for some cinematic? Why are Mass Effect games so beloved despite this "Whisked away for cinematics"? It's mainly because you are largely still in control for the most part, so you are not really "Whisked away". Yet Mass Effect betrays the player and the pivotal strength of the franchise in ME3 and well - everyone knows what happened then.

When did cinematics become the bogeymen of the games industry?

Looking at your examples, I admit, I've never played any of the BioShock games, but I have played Half-Life 2 and its episodes. HL2 "rips" you out far more than cinematics do to endure those God-awful cutscenes. There's no pace, no rhythem, nothing that a cinematic cutscene brings. There are a few exceptions, such as when the advisor kills Eli and all you can do is watch (then again, Eli's a prat, so maybe that's why I could endure it), but HL2 I found "ripped" me out of the gameplay far more than cinematics do. Cinematics are something I welcome, e.g. Mass Effect.

As far as I can tell, BioShock: Infinite may be an example of first person storytelling done right in that Booker's an actual character. Portal is another. But for me personally, they're exceptions to the rule. I'd sooner play as Commander Shepard than Gordon Freeman or the Dragonborn for instance.