Do you get really involved in the storyline of the games you play?

Arcadio

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2007
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Do you try to understand every single part of the storyline, characters, and mythology in the games you play? Or do you usually play the game without getting involved too much in the complex storyline of some games? Recently I've finished some games thinking that I've absorbed most of what there is to know, but then I check websites, walkthroughs, and wikis, and realize that I missed a good portion of the background story of some of the games I play. (i.e: Bioshock Infinite)

It seems to me that some games out there require you to play them a few times before you can say you completely understood them.
 

psychosiz

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Jan 8, 2015
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With certain games I do. I must be immersed in the story most of the time to truly enjoy a game. I think the games you need to play through a few times to get that complete understanding and the ability to want to play them through again are the ones that hold a special place in my heart.
 

darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
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For the right game, yeah. I got super involved with the Mass Effect story and lore. It's more powerful in a series but solid standalone stories like Bioshock Infinite and HL2 and Valkyria Chronicles all have too.
 

Arg Clin

Senior member
Oct 24, 2010
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If the game catches me yes. Examples; Dragon Age, Mass Effect, The Witcher, Tomb Raider
 

Sulaco

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2003
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It depends on:

  • The quality of the game and story they're telling
  • The type of game it is (If an RPG, YES! If a mindless shooter, potentially, but not always)

The story behind a game like, say, RAGE? Not so much.

A quality RPG (why would you play one if not to immerse yourself in story and characters?), or deeper, more intellectual other genre? You bet.

How GOOD and COMPELLING the game is will usually determine just how deeply I get into it and want to learn more.
 

sushicide

Member
Nov 7, 2001
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If the setting/story/characters interest me, sure.

Most of my friends just skip every cutscene & dialogue and rush to the end.
 

runzwithsizorz

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2002
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Story line most important aspect in any game. Shooters must have some sort of justification for killing (people) or I will not play at all.( i.e. games like the GTA games disgust me). Story is especially crucial in RPG's and preferred in "shooters". However, I notice that many of the "young" crowd ignore story lines and side quests and romp through a game just to reach the end. Sadly, they miss much of the complexity of a game with that style of play.

the Wife
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
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runs, I like that - I feel somewhat similar, but not as strongly about it. My dividing line is different, if the killing is just 'fun', ok, but when it seems too murderous, like the Hitman series I've never played, or requires 'killing innocents as a bad character' type things, I basically don't play those.

I've discussed before the connection between art and things like desensitization. I do think a lot of people are desensitized to reaol violence by some 'artistic' versions.

Taking it away from games for a moment, I think one of the worst offenders is the show "The Walking Dead'.

I think a basic moral issue is how people can dehumanize other groups of people - that's the root behind things from Nazis to racism to many, many more cases.

The moral fight is to get people to appreciate the universal humanity of people and not to dehumanize anyone, and a show like the Walking Dead is trying to get you to dehumanize a group. While it's 'not real', and 'only zombies not people', that's the point - overcoming your resistance to be a barbaric murderer and make it ok and even needed. And the act of doing it with zombies I think can easily affect doing it to other groups.

The 'realism' and emotions and turning on former comrades is some sort of pornography of violence. It revels in taking the viewer to a place of 'you wouldn't want to do this to real people, but hey it's ok, it's just zombies!'. It doesn't really do much to recognize the horror that should be felt about the violence. And it's easily replaced by violence against other 'bad guys' - criminals, 'terrorists', jihadis, Muslims, and for some, other religious groups, other nationalities, and so on.

I remember watching it thinking 'what if they set up the need for the boy to kill his own mother as a zombie, and sure enough, they did. Violence porn.

The gaming equivalent is mostly Nazis. You can't kill racial or religious or other groups with mindless violence (with exceptions like Postal), but Nazis, go crazy!

The next on that list is aliens. No need to humanize them, ok to mindlessly exterminate.

And hence the extreme stories are so common, 'they killed your king and want to destroy your society, so you have to kill them'. No need to consider moral issues.

And I think people then start to take shortcuts. And that it can affect their views on things like real wars - not asking so many questions about right and wrong.

Rather, it's 'are we winning'.

The success of the movie American Sniper, I think, is somewhat consistent with this reduction of moral filtering. In discussing the film, the new shows "The Nightly Show" had a real sniper on who did five tours, saying on his most recent he killed 33 people. And when answering a question about PTSD, he indicated he has been affected, but not at all by the killing he did - he has absolutely no concerns about the killing. That's a very successful indoctrination of a person that's good for military success, not so much morals.

There are more thoughtful games about violence, which are a bit of 'emotion porn' in their own way, but show some concern about the violence, can even be anti-violence.

But artistic products so often degrade something. Porn reducing relationships to animalistic sex, movies where the star kills dozens and hundreds, shows with those simple premises that say 'it's ok and even needed to not consider that other group as people, but kill all of them'.

We like to think we're not at all like that because we'd be shocked if the government said 'we're going to kill a hundred American Muslims just to send a message'.

But that desensitization happens a lot more easily than people realize. Nazi Germany is a classic example where it was just accepted. Recovered private communications from terrible killers show the 'banality' as they lost any moral sense of what they were doing, and it seemed little more to them than killing in a computer game does. Even joking about it, but not having any real concern.

That's a temptation for entertainment - to take you on the 'taboo road' of that sort of unconcerned violence you shouldn't really do.

The realism, the speed of killing, the numbers, that computer games allow make it vulnerable especially to exploiting that.

It's a little like gangster movies. At first, even a little killing scratched the itch, with most of the movies just talk. Then you get to the logical next step, Scarface, an orgy. And then The Sopranos, making the violence very personal - where Tony Soprano murders a man he spots while taking his daughter to a school, murdering the boy he promised his father to care for who his daughter is in love with, murdering the 'nice person' he knows socially who borrows money for gambling he can't repay.

And then where do they go? Audiences get 'bored' with those and they have to escalate somehow - real gangsters become boring in comparison.

And you start to see where real gangsters can become more acceptable as 'celebrities', as they have from Al Capone to John Gotti. Hey, it's entertaining to hear, right?

I think we're better off with games that show better morals, respect for all people, abhorance to violence, but that conflicts with the entertainment desire.

Almost every MMO has you kill thousands. They can't find something else to entertain people enough without that.

I know one exception - "A Tale in the Desert" - and you have probably about never heard of it, with its small numbers.

Unfortunately, an appetite is created for violence as the 'solution'. Before WWI, leaders said 'we need a good war', and embraced it, and that's why it was later called a 'needless war', there wasn't really 'justification' for it, but there was a high price in lives. Countries have done things from foreign wars to colonization that they see as ok, with a warped view of the effect on others. To this day, whatever concerns you hear about Vietnam, they rarely include the two million Vietnamese people killed. More about not 'winning'.

It's not easy to resolve these things. From the early days of film, the western was a genre with the standard slaughter of Indians that no one questioned - until finally around the 1970's, people began to feel a little guilt about it and it wasn't so much fun to just watch them slaughtered. A movie today based on the pleasure of watching US troops kill a thousand Indians would correctly face resistance for moral issues. But there's always that tension.

One place we see it is a sort of taboo on games that are TOO realistic about current conflicts. WWII has always been ok, Vietnam was more controversial but become ok, but you didn't see that many about 'current conflicts' out of some sense of how the game trivialized real violence, but that taboo seems to be under attack also as games are more and more willing to turn even current real violence into fun.

We still have others - while there is "Hitman", there isn't 'SimTerrorist' where you plot and execute a school slaughter or airport suicide bombing.

That's just tasteless, right? Because we're 'actually' against those things we're worried about, so all the 'it's just a game' doesn't apply as much.

Even though such a game would fit gaming well, and provide the same kind of 'entertainment'.

Save234
 

giggity

Junior Member
Jan 13, 2015
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it all depends, sometimes mutiplayer outshines story mode and i just stick to multiplayer. sometimes the story is good and i'll get into that. it just all depends.

like uh, Red Alert 2 had a good story line. Left4Dead2 had close to no storyline, so i pretty much kicked it on online multiplayer (versus) on that game.
 

xantub

Senior member
Feb 12, 2014
717
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Definitely a NO for me. I am somewhat ADD so it's very hard for me to follow storylines, especially if the game is long (like, longer than 40 hours there is no chance in hell that I'll remember what happened at the start of the game). I do identify with characters though, like in Suikoden 3 I really loved the characters there, and when the game was nearing its end I almost didn't want to finish it, as I would miss those characters.
 

ithehappy

Senior member
Oct 13, 2013
540
4
81
Not any more, but I used to. I got emotional with the story of AC II etc., characters like Ezio and all. Now I just don't give a shite!
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
Story line most important aspect in any game. Shooters must have some sort of justification for killing (people) or I will not play at all.( i.e. games like the GTA games disgust me). Story is especially crucial in RPG's and preferred in "shooters". However, I notice that many of the "young" crowd ignore story lines and side quests and romp through a game just to reach the end. Sadly, they miss much of the complexity of a game with that style of play.

the Wife


I agree with this, especially now that I'm older. I've heard so many times that "It's an FPS, the story doesn't matter." I couldn't disagree more.

Playing games like HL2 and F.E.A.R. is what initially swayed my preferences, but it was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that really changed the way I viewed FPS in general. The characters and writing are not stand-out in any way, but the overall story and theme I found compelling.

As odd as it seems, I find it much harder now to find an RPG with a story I have any interest in. Even though the genre lends itself to deep, complex stories and character interaction, I find the writing in most to be abhorably cliche. Just because a game has tons of dialog and lore books laying around everywhere doesn't make any of that worth reading (cough...Skyrim).

I think good writing and interesting character development is one of the greatest untapped frontiers in gaming. Unfortunately, so many times it seems to be treated as an afterthought.
 

TheSlamma

Diamond Member
Sep 6, 2005
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I watch movies to get into a story, give me Dark Souls, Castlevania 1-4, Megamans etc with a little bit of dialog but then on with the interaction and the gaming.

I don't really get the whole immersion thing people are trying to move into with video games. Honestly that just rings the "you need to go outside" alarm bells with me.
 

TheSlamma

Diamond Member
Sep 6, 2005
7,625
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I think good writing and interesting character development is one of the greatest untapped frontiers in gaming. Unfortunately, so many times it seems to be treated as an afterthought.
Just play some JRPG's then.. all those guys seem to want to do is make a movie where you have to just click through dialog.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,672
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It depends on how good the game is. For something like Undying and Doom 3 for example, I definitely read all of the journal entries to get more immersed in the story.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
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I don't really get the whole immersion thing people are trying to move into with video games. Honestly that just rings the "you need to go outside" alarm bells with me.

People who make blanket statements based on their myopic view of topics rings alarm bells with me.

Just play some JRPG's then.. all those guys seem to want to do is make a movie where you have to just click through dialog.

The amount of dialog a game has doesn't have anything to do with whether or not it has a good story or interesting characters.

Try reading a good short story sometime. You don't need 500 pages to say something meaningful.
 
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EDUSAN

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Apr 4, 2012
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i try to follow the story of all the games that i play... because, with some exception genres like tower defense, puzzle or multiplayer games, i play for the story.

but some games dont do that too well and i lose interest half way into the story and well... i end up finishing the games but dont giving a shit about what happens.

in the case of bioshock infinite, its a really hard game to follow, because you need to find all the little audios to make anything out of it.

But games like Mass Effect ... i actually read all the codex of them
 

Sulaco

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2003
3,860
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I watch movies to get into a story, give me Dark Souls, Castlevania 1-4, Megamans etc with a little bit of dialog but then on with the interaction and the gaming.

I don't really get the whole immersion thing people are trying to move into with video games. Honestly that just rings the "you need to go outside" alarm bells with me.

Wait, so...people who get immersed in good stories and characters in games "ring 'go outside' alarm bells" with you, but folks who get really into serial TV shows and popcorn movies are fine?

Please explain why getting into a movie or TV show's story is acceptable, but a video game's is not?

Honestly, you just sound monumentally ignorant.
 

exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
8,518
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Definitely, but it can be different types of 'stories'. Sometimes the immersion is more in the world (history/lore/etc.), rather than the characters. Examples of this are the Elder Scrolls series, and they do this pretty much peerlessly...

I also enjoy more character-based story immersion. Some great examples of this are KOTOR, BG1/2, and DA:O. Although not strictly PC, the 'older' Final Fantasy games such as FF1-7 and FFX really had characters you liked to learn more about. The Xenosaga/Xenogears games also were like this for me. The lore and characters were really interesting and you enjoyed all the subplot and subquests around their histories and so forth.
 

Lorne

Senior member
Feb 5, 2001
874
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I really get into the stories, Its like reading a good book and playing it out along with them, Hearing the voices and personality behind the character.

In my observation of friends and other game players that don't like or care for a storyline are firefight fans and use little to no tactics (IE. CS players) because it involves overthinking beyond reaching for the hotpocket sitting next to the keyboard, Always had a hard time getting them to play Rainbow Six.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
We have always been as societies people who have stories and heroes.

In more authoritarian societies, those have tended to glorify the history of the leaders and their history and the land.

Look at how Japan literally worshipped their emperor, with the story of his origin back 5000 years of uninterrupted divine rule.

Look at the story of the origin of Rome when it was the most powerful society on Earth, and again the mythology around their emperors.

America has been a bit different to that - with our mythology around the 'founding fathers' who rescued us from tyranny to make us free. Paul Revere, Liberty Bell, etc.

But we have especially become the greatest 'popular hero' creator. We're the global leader in movies with stories and heroes the world enjoys.

And of course that's evolved from 'heroes' of Westerns with guys who kill bad guys to anti-heroes of film noir and other more nuanced stories.

But we're somewhat conflicted about heroes. We sort of want them - look at the current tv lineup for no shortage of stars who play some sort of 'hero' with 'bad guys' they defeat.

But we're against actually worshipping any hero that's too heroic, and especially against promoting real people as such, partly with a correct recognition of how wrong that can be.

The US President was long seen as a sort of mysterious hero and 'great man' everyone was expected to show deference to over the office if not the person - that has largely waned since the exposures around Watergate, the press finding a market for stories that expose weaknesses, and billions spent to attack the candidates. The idea of politician as 'hero' has largely disappeared. And not really been replaced.

We even now have almost caricatures as would-be 'heroes', the Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul types.

So, we look to fiction for 'heroes'.

This might help show why a 'fantasy' world could be popular, where there can be 'heroes' and bad guys to defeat much more simply than in the real world.

Games offer more. Movies and books are stories of a hero, but a game lets the player play something exciting and heroic. Your character kills a thousand bad guys.

You can watch James Bond, or you can name and design a character in a game story who defeats evil around the game world.

One of the real world 'heroes' who has stood out more is Martin Luther King, Jr., because of fighting for and playing an important role in increasing civil rights.

But we haven't figured out how to turn that into an entertaining game. They finally did a better movie - the just-out Selma - but playing a game where you fight for civil rights?

Limits on story seem to have almost sunk to cliché much of the time, with the game less about story than about the 'fun' mechanics, but with story a supporting role.

But I have seen games be powerful tools at exploring people's experiences - bringing out things from their helping others (in Everquest, for example, spending days to help a stranger obtain a powerful item), to bringing out 'griefing' where players indulge in nasty desires to hurt others.

Some of the American mythology has largely fallen apart. The idea of things like the 'town hall' where people get together and discuss issues. When does that really happen now? Society has largely become cocooned - don't mix work and romance, travel in privacy whether alone in a car or sitting next to strangers not to talk to on public transit, watching movies and tv - message forums like this something of an exception to that cocooning, but pretty minor.

However log into a game and you can interact with hundreds of people, handed things to do together, co-operatively.

It's no wonder people who spend months or more in a game world care about the 'story' of the game. Some people. Others, as discussed, having different interests - big booms.

I've often described the 'inflation' effect in story media.

It applies in all kinds of stories, but perhaps is especially clear in pornography. A century ago, an exposed angle aroused viewers. With the 1920's came more burlesque. WWII soldiers took pinups for remembering the opposite sex. Playboy in the 1950's revolutionized the material with topless photos, paving the way through the 1970's to full nudity and then increasingly explicit 'action' images, then leading to pornography, and then that to where porn becomes 'boring' and has to be made more and more 'edgy'.

What was once hugely powerful - a 1950 man would have lost his mind at the idea of the products available today - becomes rather 'tired'. Have to make it exciting somehow.

The same applies to things like action movies - which had to escalate to stay exciting, and after saving the world, what next?

It's seen again and again - the 'ticking bomb' the hero disarms just before it explodes has become cliché. The exciting car chase has become cliché. The shootout - cliché.

Computer games ask a lot. Even a huge book only takes so many hours to read, even a movie series only so many two-hour installments. So to many, story is quite important.

But with all the clichés, no wonder so many games use 'stock' stories as background and don't worry too much about it. Just use the clichés 'you're a hero, save the world'.

It's an interesting analogy with war - the further people are from a war the more they tend to romanticize it and care about the importance of the victory and the principles involved, but talk to the people who fought the war and most say they had no thought about the principles and so on and it was about survival and protecting their comrades.

So a famous 'story' about war for entertainment will tend to build up the 'other side is bad' picture for the audience to find it emotionally rewarding for them to b defeated, and to find something heroic to cheer rather than the basic fact of being there being awfully dramatic in real war, to the point it can be obviously distorted for entertainment, such as with the heroism of our side and evil of their side in 'Saving Private Ryan'. More suitable for 'entertainment' than the simple cold facts of the war.

And so in gaming, war was easy to make with 'wargaming' as strategy, hex maps, and big booms with explosions and shooting providing entertainment. But then people wanted more than repeating 'oh it's a gunfight', and there had to be narrative and story to keep people entertained - entertained by what is pretty nasty in real life.

No wonder tv shows have tended to become more gimmicky - The Mentalist, Monk, Sherlock Holmes, and so on with unusual things to keep them entertaining. CSI crime labs where the science becomes the gimmick. '24' sure found the 'inflation' problem - starting out with an assassination plot, what do you do after you have assassinated one president, another that's corrupt, had a nuclear bomb go off and prevented larger nuclear war, and killed the hero's wife? Not a lot left.

Having said all that, it's an art that games can keep entertaining. It's pretty amazing how they make good new games, and no wonder how much new things are copied.
 
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mizzou

Diamond Member
Jan 2, 2008
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Mentally, I'm more involved in games that have a less rigid structure and less script. For instance, COD games are very fun for me, but I am not involved in any way because the game happens on rails and I feel like I'm watching a movie vs. being a part of it.

In games like Skyrim or Mount & Blade, I create my own avatar and feel like I shape the world and my interactions with people with my own vision. I see a NPC and I already think "Hmm...another subject to crush" or "Hmm..another possible ally to recruit" and it is much more engaging in an involvement perspective.
 

runzwithsizorz

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2002
3,500
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I watch movies to get into a story, give me Dark Souls, Castlevania 1-4, Megamans etc with a little bit of dialog but then on with the interaction and the gaming. I don't really get the whole immersion thing people are trying to move into with video games. Honestly that just rings the "you need to go outside" alarm bells with me.

Different strokes...etc
I am more or less "immersed" in many forms of entertainment, number one being reading and writing fiction
2. Would be some games and a close 3 is movies TV dramas. Games are similar to fiction, except in games one can control many outcomes, build a variety of characters and to a limited extent write your own endings. (Especially RPG's, of course). Years ago, I played D and D. You would be surprised how many people felt emotionally involved with their characters...today the same thing can be said of closely identifying withe the character you have built in a game. Plus the worlds created are fascinating to explore thus immersing yourself for a time in an alternate reality.

The Wife