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

[Sulaco]

I'm glad you can name under 10 games with decent stories, for someone like myself who has been gaming since Atari 2600 and Commodore 64, I'm going to say that games with strong stories are the anomaly and not the norm.

Most of us have been playing games for just as long, if not longer, and have just as much experience (if not more), so let's come off the "I've been playing games since..." every post to try and further your argument. It doesn't.

Second, yes, obviously, as stated a year ago now, the simple story games far outweigh the engrossing, engaging story games. That's just...obvious. That paradigm exists in any form of entertainment. Why should video games be any different? Vapid movies, books, and television shows far outweigh the transcendent masterpieces of storytelling.
The point is not that there aren't a crapload of simple, vapid games, but that there's a very nice catalog of excellent games with deep, rich storylines and superb character development.
Yeah, sorry, I only named 10 off the top of my head from glancing at my shelf. That's hardly a comprehensive guide.
The point is, there's plenty there if you want them. If you want to stay ignorant, though, you're welcome to.

 

[futurefields]

That's why I'm more into game play and strategy than story. For example a great racing game with car tuning you can always go back to. Or a fighting game or physics based games. Or games with real strategy like X-Com.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Its rare but I do. I generally prefer shooter & rts games thus minimal stories but I did have favorite soldiers in the original and remake xcom. I also was a little sad when the two starter guys died in State of Decay in the final battle. They were such can do guys.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Yeah I really get into the story the developers are trying to tell. A bad story can ruin a decent game.

 

[Harrod]

The last game that I felt was really immersive was Call of Duty 4 Modern War, to me I felt that had an excellence single player experience.

 

[BSim500]

I'm glad you can name under 10 games with decent stories, for someone like myself who has been gaming since Atari 2600 and Commodore 64, I'm going to say that games with strong stories are the anomaly and not the norm.

I agree about the last part, but there have certainly been far more than just "10" mildly immersive story PC games since 1984 out there. The whole Point & Click Adventure & RPG genres have had some pretty good, unique or otherwise interesting games over the past +25 years (too many to list) whilst more popular selling games will have weaker plots simply due to the nature of the genre. I grew up with ZX Spectrum's and Commodore 64's too, and whilst there were a few story-driven gems, many other 64-128kb games were fairly simply platformer / beat-em-up / "beat the clock" puzzle stuff. The "plots" on hundreds of 720, BMX Simulator, Boulder Dash, Bruce Lee, Dangerous Dave, Double Dragon, Frogger, Fruit Machine, Gauntlet, Lemmings, Outrun, PacMan, Paperboy, Predator, Rambo, Robocop, Space Invaders, Terminator, Tetris, Way of the Exploding Fist, sports / racing / early flight sim games, etc, weren't exactly outnumbered by towering creative intellectual heavyweights back then either...

A game doesn't need to leave you a quivering emotional train-wreck or win literary awards to have an enjoyable / immersive story. Aside from being a "powerful heavyweight" or "having a message", a plot can also be funny, light-hearted, memorable / nostalgic, heart-warming, dark, scary, quirky, moody, zany, or simply be of a theme you personally enjoy (Cyberpunk, Steampunk, Sci-Fi, Dark Fantasy, etc), and still be enjoyable / immersive in different ways even for "averagy" plots. Not only does "This plot is bad" vary from person to person, it varies based on mood. One man's "[Sobs] This walking simulator was so deep I cried for 6 hours straight. [sniffs and blows nose]. It changed my life" is another man's "We LOL'd at the overly pretentious cheap emotional manipulation attempt" (as seen in many strongly conflicting reviews of "walking simulators" which with no real gameplay to "back it up", are almost entirely dependent on having an immersive plot).

 

[SMOGZINN]

No game has ever fulfilled the promise of making me feeling like I am apart of the story and have agency within the universe.

The truth is we are a really long way off from this. We are going to need games to have something pretty close to AI for this to happen. The next closest thing is going to be games where there is a GM that runs the story, in a Neverwinter Nights style, but even those are limited by the tools at the GM's disposal and the GM's ability to use them in real time.

Games are too artificial. It all breaks down when a dialog choice doesn't include the option that I would actually do in reality. ... Games that don't pretend to give you "endless possibilities" typically provide a better story line in-line with books and movies.

Games are a lot like books in this regard. Some have a laser focus on the story. It follows the main character exclusively and wastes not a single sentence on anything that does not move the plot forward. Others wander around showing us concepts and worlds that only exists within the creater's imagination and the plot is a device to show us how this world works. Some books fall in-between these two with differencing degrees of success.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Funny, I have the opposite experience.

To me, open world games have less engrossing narratives because the pacing is off and the characters are usually bland and undefined, especially games like Skyrim and Dragon Age, where the main protagonist is a blank slate and there's never any interesting interactions between the main protagonist and other characters because he/she is so undefined.

The story in on-rails games like Bioshock, Gears of War and Last of Us is far more engrossing for me, since the protagonist can't be redefined by the player, making the main character more interesting than a blank paper doll without any personality. Plus the pacing of the plot is better since there's no accounting for the player running off and collecting flowers or exploring a random cave for 2 hours before moving on with the story.

I am glad you mentioned Gears, I enjoyed the story. Right off I was wondering why this guy was in jail, and what was going on that it was abandoned, and he was left for dead. The early cut scene when Carmine is awed he is the famous fighter from Aspho fields and says "cool!" And Marcus replies a bit quietly and reflectively "Not really" I liked the character already.

But the blank paper doll can drive a good story too. As Gordon Freeman, we say nothing, and are always being driven forward by others. But, through their eyes, we get to know Gordon anyways. And we are drawn into a compelling mystery. And I am bent we may never know what happens in the end. Unless they novelize HL3?

 

[TheSlamma]

Most of us have been playing games for just as long, if not longer, and have just as much experience (if not more), so let's come off the "I've been playing games since..." every post to try and further your argument. It doesn't.

Second, yes, obviously, as stated a year ago now, the simple story games far outweigh the engrossing, engaging story games. That's just...obvious. That paradigm exists in any form of entertainment. Why should video games be any different? Vapid movies, books, and television shows far outweigh the transcendent masterpieces of storytelling.
The point is not that there aren't a crapload of simple, vapid games, but that there's a very nice catalog of excellent games with deep, rich storylines and superb character development.
Yeah, sorry, I only named 10 off the top of my head from glancing at my shelf. That's hardly a comprehensive guide.
The point is, there's plenty there if you want them. If you want to stay ignorant, though, you're welcome to.

You keep blaming my "ignorance" so you got the exact response you deserved and then you are made about it. What an idiot.

 

[TeknoBug]

No, the last single player I finished was Battlefield Bad Company 2, otherwise everytime I get a new game like Call of Duty I last maybe 10 minutes in single player. Return to Castle Wolfenstein had a fun single player though and was fairly replayable.

 

[JoJoman88]

Most of the time there is not much of a story to games today. More like the set up for the game than a story. Come to think of it, only a hand full of stories really gripped me with the story. Dark Forces, Freespace 2, Knights of the Old Republic, the Mass Effect series and to a smaller degree the first few C&C's. That's about it.