With my experience with Max Payne and Jedi Knight 2, it seems that a single player FPS consists of: turn a switch, quicksave, kill some people, quicksave, repeat. The levels are long, and I forget plot events and don''t care about them. In JKII: I don''t remember how Reelo Baruk fits into the murder of Jan Ors. And I don''t know why there are so many people trying to kill me (it was obvious with the empire''s storm troopers, but not now). I''m not saying that games necessarily need a deep plot, but maybe more plot events. You get a quick mission objective, go do it, watch a cutscene, complete another objective. If the player isn''t forced into constant quicksaving and quickloading, they will care more about the mission and plot. I find cutscenes quite entertaining simply because I''m marveling at hi-res models. Proceeding on a brutal rampage is the obvious choice.

Plot? in a first person shooter.


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It is very true that the plot lines in such games are "thin", but what you don''t want is a mass of plot lines, sub-plots and cut-scenes. If you have troube remembering what the hell your doing here now, more plots will not make anything better.

Maybe it was just that the plot sections just wern''t descriptive enough about what they were pointing to.




"Making it up! Why should I be making it up. Lifes bad enough as it is without wanting to invent more of it."

Deus Ex had a good and interesting plot.

If you make the cutscenes long enough, and the levels short enough, you end up with a film.

Personally, I tend to find cutscenes rather irritating. Is there any reason why you can''t develop the plot in the game itself?

I like the way Half-Life introduced the plot, and they way it devloped. I don''t want to ruin the plot, and don''t think I could do it justice, so I wont try. If you haven''t played through it, you should probably pick up a copy (without all the extra mods and stuff, they just add to the price and u can download them all free, legally, anyways). The plot isnt deep, and you don''t need to know it to beat the game, but it is presented in a way that adds to the game and I thought it was fairly interesting. It was the first fps I had played that had any kind of story that was developed in game (I had been playing id games before it) and I liked it =-) And the mod community is amazing too =-)

"The Requested Information Is Unknown Or Classified" -Anonymous

Have you played Halo?
That game has given me new hope for FPS games.

While I say yes, plot, story, juicy suspense through narrative means, I have to argue a bit. Cutscenes are generally parts of the game where there is no gameplay. Holding a controller that doesn''t do anything during these scenes can get fustrating. With an FPS, it''d probably make the most sense incorperating the two. Having a character talk while you get to move around and analyze the environment. With an RPG, the whole experience is menu driven anyways, so some text dialouge is okay, but even then, if it last too long, you yawn, you begin to skip chunks and roll the camera around if your allowed to.

So, yes, Xenogears like story is good.
But no, the presentation after budget cuts wasn''t good.

If anything, when the story kicks in and the player doesn''t get to interact, at least give them something to do in the meantime, have the unused buttons make characters fidgit, or let the player have control of the camera temporarily.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.