In my point of view, the simple stuff you do in games that make it worth the time. Like a war game for instance, you always are in the middle of the bombing, shooting and non-stop action, it looks too superficial. An example would be something like once I was playing Vietcong (great game imho), the mission said you should do patrol the area and find the enemy, then you start WALKING (not running and jumping around). When the mission ends, you jump onto the Huey, get back to base, and from there you choose your next mission. You were always living everything, not just jumping around levels and a bunch of interfaces, everything was live-action.

Problem to games today when it comes to keep a story, is that they are cutting the “uninmportant parts”. Let’s say, i invade Omaha Beach, and on the next mission i’m already in Berlin. But what happened in the time I was transiting to Berlin? It’s breaks the chain. I’ve invaded Berlin, Omaha, Iwo Jima so many times that I really don’t care anymore about the BIG stuff, little things, like starting in point X, and while I transit to mission Y, I get ambushed, a “friend” (in-game) dies and then the story keeps going, without skipping this little things that make me build the felling and the situation in my mind.

A book for example, describes the pieces of the scenario, so you can build it in your mind, and games rarelly play with our minds in a coesive way, you are always jumping between scenarios and thats about it or making nonsense choices, where in the end it’s just a waste of time and you will likelly be killing someone, gaining something, or someone where you suposelly have ‘emotional’ attachment (when in fact the player don’t gives it a ****, only if it is a powerful character) will die. Alternate endings aren’t good, I can load the game back at any moment to make another choice and see how is the other ending, or search for it on youtube, in the end, everything is too predictable.

I’ll stop here or I will end up writing an article :p

Unless it’s trying to be novelty it becoming cliche. Storytelling needs to be re-evaluated and the effort we put into technology needs to be also invested in how games communicate ideas, tones, feelings. Because I don’t think a cut scene is always the bestway, or neither alternate endings. I want to feel something, I want games to elicit an emotional response from me. Storytelling is a powerful tool, yet it is so under utilized in the industry.

Max Payne 2 had a great story line, and no huge monsters at the end. It was engrossing and I played the game all the way through.

Christopher String
wwww.chrisstring.com

RT
http://www.anonymize.tk