quote: Original post by Drooling Iguana
Just be careful about how often you yank control away from the player to show a cutscene to advance the story. People buy games so that thay can play them, not so that they can watch them. Idealy you want to be able to find a way to put as much story in there as you can while still leaving things under the player''s control for as long as possible.

Not me, I buy for the story. I think true RPG fans are like this. People who enjoy the games like Xenosaga, FFX, and MGS2. They''re truly interesting, deep, and entertaining. I like the idea of heavy stories cuz it makes you feel like you''re participating in a good movie.

well techno i have to say to me games need at least some kind of story if i am to find them interesting. with a story you have issues on morality,love,and personal struggle. as human beings we can relate to these things. than again i''m not a huge fan of quake arena and pac man.

,,,

lol. Sorry about that. I was trying to figure something out (to little avail, I might add)... Anyways, since I posted here, I figure I''ll make some use of it.

As usual, I''m going to bring up the old Lucas Arts games - the Dig, Full Throttle, in particular. The Dig (based off an excellent book) has a pretty darn good story that can actually get to you a little bit - which makes a good game much more interesting. Full Throttle, ignoring the demo derby and the biker fights, has a pretty cool story, if a bit odd at times (a minefield to blow up with... bunny rabbits?)...

So heavy stories tend to make an impression and often make a mediocre game good, a good game great, a great... well, I think you get the point.

Of course, a decent story in general can do this, but a heavy story is always good.

-geo
red eye is coming back (the old site is still around, albeit in a weird transitional form)

quote: Original post by MillaTime

quote: Original post by Drooling Iguana
Just be careful about how often you yank control away from the player to show a cutscene to advance the story. People buy games so that thay can play them, not so that they can watch them. Idealy you want to be able to find a way to put as much story in there as you can while still leaving things under the player''s control for as long as possible.

Not me, I buy for the story. I think true RPG fans are like this. People who enjoy the games like Xenosaga, FFX, and MGS2. They''re truly interesting, deep, and entertaining. I like the idea of heavy stories cuz it makes you feel like you''re participating in a good movie.

But MGS2 has excellent gameplay to enforce its cinematic feel. Good gameplay + good plot = Involving and fun game

Of course, making a game is a more intricite experience than that!

The little I played of MGS2:SoL on PS2 absolutely disgusted me. I spent most of the time watching cutscenes; I don''t skip cutscenes when I''ve not seen them before in case there''s useful information in them, but they dragged on and on... it was just boring.

I''m quite a fan of heavy stories, though perhaps not so much in games. I like long story arcs. I''m a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and anyone who has been watching the past couple of seasons can tell you that it got *incredibly* heavy and dark - Buffy herself was brought back from the dead, and we watched her go through the trama of coping with that - especially given that she believed she was in heaven before they brought her back.

I like Waverider''s idea of letting the player get more involved if they want to. It''s more of the passive storytelling we discussed in the other thread. Let the player overhear conversations, and given them the option to ask what is being talked about. And so on.

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates, and when he''s not doing that, runs The Binary Refinery.
Enginuity1 | Enginuity2 | Enginuity3

MGS2 was a fun game but I didn''t like the ending I though it just dragged on for to long without player invlovment. You play games to be invloved not whatch 30 hours speeches, on the nature of reality.

I guess that brings me to another point. how long should cutscenes be? My personal opion is to keep them under 5, in order to keep the player involved in the story.

quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
My personal opion is to keep them under 5

5? Eek. Maybe for the opening or closing scenes, or one single turning-point in the story... but your average, mid-game cutscene? I''d say no longer than 2 minutes. If it''s long enough for me to go make a cheese sandwich, it''s too long.

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates, and when he''s not doing that, runs The Binary Refinery.
Enginuity1 | Enginuity2 | Enginuity3