Is quite frankly slowly nonexistent to me.

So what is the problem? If video games are interactive entertainment, the core concept should be to immerse the player inside the story of the product (the game) while the player spends time playing.

I can barely find a game that actually does that. In most cases, the game is centered around a preconcieved idea or concept or gameplay element - which is fine. Some of these actually turn out good, for example:

Soul Reaver series - the idea was that you could shift between the physical and spirit world and thus explore the same place in multiple dimensions. The game was originally developed as Shifter, later it was retooled into the Legacy of Kain series. Which is IMO the pinnacle of good story presentation, and it also does good in the immersion factor.

Seriously, the dialogues were written by professionals and professional thespians were hired to play the characters. The game is intensively awesome.

Back on track...

What I see, and among the players too, is that THIS GAME HAD A GREAT STORY! However the story is rendered through cutscenes with minimum interactivity, if at all. In fact, in most cases the story is only a framework what gives a reason to execute the tasks the game asks of us. The emphasis lies on the gameplay.


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This is basically the EXCUSE PLOT. Write a mass of bios, background, build a framework what is subservient to the gameplay. A good example for this is MK: basically the MK universe works on a highly illogical cosmology and well, it is not always consistent, and at the worst, seems stupid. It has some good parts, but here is the deal.

Ever since MK moved towards an expanded and more epic scale of world building (mythopoeia), the tournament seems ever so redundant and stupid. Back in MK1-2, it could work, because we did not know the whole cosmology, and there could have been any kind of reasons why the tournament was necessary.

In short: with the introduction of the other realms, the Elder Gods/One Being relation/necessary 10 tournament they created a less logical background framework. When it was left opaque, it could have been sustained by any number of ideas why MK was necessary.

But enough raggin' on MK. There are quite a few things what are somewhat smart in there, but sadly most of them aren't.

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What is the problem? The most successful games are still handling story in such a way. WHY IS this a problem?

There are games that do not need stories: Rise of the Triad, Doom, Duke Nukem. Enemies are there, KILL THEY ASS. Simple, popcorn fun. These are not the games that will be held up as the Citizen Kane's of video gaming.

However if Iwant to actually have a long time entanglement with something, I find most games to be downright irritating in this regard. Most of the time I cannot help but find the logical fallacies in the background, or ask myself, why?

This is especially taxing, when the writing is, well, bad, and if you can think up a less contrived solution to the problem than what the game supposes, that is the time when writing fails.

Not to mention, story is still segregated. This actually might be tied to the genre, but if I want to bring up a good example of integrated storytelling and gameplay, I would say Half-life. No cutscenes, everything happens in real time, everything is dependent on you and your actions.


And there are a lot, A LOT of things wrong with video game storytelling: mysogyny, gung-ho jingoism, puritanism, censorship, pandering and fanservice, being overtly artsy, triple A big money game development....

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So if you have any comments, or particular nitpicks about how video gaming is stuck in its place, feel free to chirp in.

And if I wasn't eloquent enough, well, that's me coming out of a 3 months long serious illness, and I am swimming in drugs. If I haven't made something clear, ask.