I am writing a story which involves the army, the government, renegades, scientists, natural disasters, man-made disasters, unknown species, the infected, mutants, dinosaurs, etc. I am just wondering if it will all be too much for one story, or will it all depend on how I write it?

I can't pretty much promise you it'll be too much, among other things.

well, stories should have some unity. Those elements may all fit together in some unified way in your story, but if they don't make sense together then yes it will be too much.

That doesn't sound so bad, I guess it's a conspiracy-style story? I think most stories in that genre tend to have lists just as long, if not longer.

If you need reassurance, play a Metal Gear Solid game and count how many topics they cover :)

I imagine there is a difference about the story being ABOUT these things, versus simply INCLUDING them. For example, I can't imagine the story is about all of those elements, but it may include them in the atmosphere, or description of the world. Right?

If you think you're doing too much, look at Futurama -- there is a varied set of worlds! Dionsaurs, mutantts, "infected", unknown species, everything you named is in that show at some point :-P

Generally speaking, most games involving conspiracy plots bite off much more than they can chew. With nearly any well made story, the ending is in sight by roughly one-third of the way through (meaning, a desirable end result). However, by incorporating countless different elements into the story, it becomes much harder to balance them all together. Let's look at Spider-Man 3. Preceded by two wonderful films, Spider-Man 3 turned into a dud once it started to involve too many elements (Venom, Sandman, New Goblin, Gwen Stacy). It just was too much to handle. Now, it is possible to juggle a lot at the same time (Batman Begins, for comic-book movie reference), but it is very hard.

Being a fan of simplicity, I'll just say that it sounds like you're working way too much in. I think you need to narrow your focus down, because right now I simply read the list and think there's no way in hell all these can be tied together with a cohesive story.

There's also a South Park episode that makes fun of this; the Okama Gamesphere one satirizes game stories being overcrowded.

Quote: Original post by Sulphix
There's also a South Park episode that makes fun of this; the Okama Gamesphere one satirizes game stories being overcrowded.

Heh, I thought that episode was making fun of the fact that, even when the real world is exciting and full of adventure, kids would rather ignore it and play video games.

Quote: Original post by xitwenty20ix
Can you ever do too much?

Yes.

Nikola Tesla isn't somehow brought into the mix is he?

I still hope to be the first person to give Tesla a prominent role in fiction.

Even though I am new to this site, I just wanted to say to you that you should avoid any conspiracy type games. Because they have been done time and time again. In fact they are done to death. All the game designers of today whether they are known or not should avoid using conspiracy in their games. If you truly want to make a good game, I would suggest trying to think of some thing new. But then again most of todays games and movies are rip offs or remakes of an earlier work. So you want to do some research before trying to make your game. I just thought I would mention this to you. But with all the the things you want to use would be fine, that is if you avoid conspiracy theories.