I'm going to focus my rant on a single franchise, but the implications are meant to be wider than that.

I can understand why multiple-option multiple-ending stories are not that readily incorporated into games. I can also understand that/why many games in less comprehensive genres (shooters for instance) mostly rely on game-specific gimmicks and linearity - they simply make up for it by catering to people's primal need for carnage. Fair enough. What I cannot understand is why certain games that are literally born with storytelling in mind are not treated like they should be.

I'm talking about the Heroes Of Might And Magic franchise - in particular the latest addition, which once again fails to capitalize on a world chock full of monsters of varying breeds and concepts that are simply impossible to work into any kind of other setting as naturally as they are worked into this one: necromancy, magic, hell, heaven, macroeconomy, the three X-es and every single mythical monster there ever was together with every single connotation and option for making up the folliest things you can think of. On top of it all, not only is map editing for a game like HOMM comparatively trivial compared to an FPS, but the game just hit number six (well, five) in its sequel enumeration that have all failed to tap into anything more than the player's need to mass up and army and kill stuff. SC showed how to tell a story back in the day (true, simple times those were) and I was glad to see that SC2 really tried with complex cutscenes and almost decent writing/voicing. But HOMM literally bombs in this department.

Is it that people don't demand a good story and are content with the emptiest shell of an experience? Or is it that coming up with a half-decent story is really that hard for a large development team with an AAA budget?

On the most fundamental level: which comes first?

I don't think you should clump Graphics and Sound together. Good music or sound and Good visuals are entirely different, in my mind.
Also, you put 'aural ambiance'. While ambience is heavily driven by sound, more contributes to it then just that (think level design and, yes, visuals).

The most important thing to me is the world the developer places me in. That world is formed by it's ambience, and that ambience is shaped by the arcitecture and settings (space stations, forests, towns, mountains, deserts, etc...), the visuals, enviromental sounds, and the music.

However, checking the 'Graphics and Sounds' radio button makes me go 'ugh' thinking that it'll be taken to mean I care more about the lastest popular shader effects to render nostril hairs. This is not the case; my favorite games actually 3D games with very very poor graphics, and not because of nostalgia (though one or two are), but because of the game itself.

In your opinion, which of these matter the most for a strategy game (pick three)?
Strategy as in TBS and RTS genres? Gameplay, totally. I could care less if it was just colored rects flashing around onscreen. Infact, I'd enjoy that alot, especially if it had cool music playing. But the music isn't a requirement.

If we are talking about strategy games, though, strategy games are more about challenge and battling against/alongside other humans (In my opinion). So in the case of stategy games, scratch off what I said above, which is directed toward single-player or coop experiences from a first person perspective (whether action RPGs or FPSs).

Should a game of any genre that isn't built on one-off puzzles always strive to have a story?
No. If the main focus of the game is the story, then it better have a good one. If the focus of the game is the gameplay, then it better have good gameplay. If the game has good gameplay, but also has a story, fine by me, I don't care if it's good or not, as long as it isn't outright horrible. If it is horrible, but the gameplay is good, I might still play it anyway, as long as the game doesn't force it's horrible story down my throat through, say, unskippable cut-scenes, or hour-long 'plot building' chapters where you don't actually play the game but just run back and forth talking to NPCs.
Susan: "Go talk to Sam to get permission to leave the compound." -> Sam: "Oh, go talk to Bob first." -> Bob: "I'd love to help, but I've been ordered by Captain Viridian to not let anybody out. Why don't you go ask the liuetant where the captian is?" etc...

Should a game story feel similar to watching movie or reading a book if present?
Reading a book and watching a movie are two different experiences. Even though both have linear plots, a movie's 1 1/2 hours of film with 25 minutes of plot development mingled throughout isn't the same as a 5-10 hour purely-plot-driven and detail-filled book. I wish games were *more* like books, stoking your imagination and immersing you more by suggestion then just showing visually. Right now games are more like movies. 5-10 hours of gameplay, with 30 minutes of plot scattered throughout.

But I agree when others say games shouldn't feel like either movies or books, but be their own thing. However, since you are specifically talking about plot, then I feel games ought to take more after books when it comes to plot, because I think books do plot and story better then movies or games, currently. Oftentimes, they even do atmosphere better then most games (proving that visuals and sound alone don't make atmosphere, but mental visuals and sounds can create atmoshphere as well), but games (and movies) have greater potential in that regard (because of actual visuals and sounds), so when a good game has good atmosphere, it blows word-bound atmospheres out of their inky waters.

Double post.

About Heroes of Might & Magic: I've never played number 6, but I own the 1st and 5th ones. I agree, they have a rich and beautiful world that they need to take advantage of. I don't really care about it in a TBS game, though. Maybe their single player RPG "Might and Magic" series of games do a better job of it? I don't know, I've never played those either. But the point of a TBS game (in my opinion) is to battle against or alongside someone, as I already mentioned.

It's like saying, "Man, the plot of Chess really bombs! I mean, I got a king who needs defending, valiant horsemen who can make or break a battle, suicidal pawns, even religious bishops, fortified castles, a powerful queen who wields more power then the king himself, but Chess does a crappy job of filling in the gaps. Why is that bishop defending the king? Or is he really defending the queen, trying to use her position to further his own goals? Who are those amazing horsemen, rushing into the thick of battle and escaping unscathed? Who trained them? What lords rule those castles under the king? They seem faithful not to abandon him in his hour of need. What political propaganda led those peasant pawns to take up arms? Who are the invading force?"

While those are all valid questions, it's missing the real point of chess. It's not, "What's the story of these pieces?", It's, "What's going through the mind of my opponent?" and "How can I use my own mind to beat his?". In tactical games, you have to inch your eyes up off the board about 24 inches, to look across the board at your opponent. The plastic pieces are merely foggy windows into the mind of your friend. The same is true with boardgames like Risk, and other board games and video games that involve real tactics and real thought.

Heroes of Might and Magic and other TBS games are trying to be like Chess; most of the time they do crappy jobs of actually requiring real tactics and thought, but sometimes a game does an excellent job at it.

Certain games share a similarity with high art in that they are often created to be what the creator wished them to be; the perception and (possible lack of) enjoyment of the creation by the patron is incidental at best.

I'm going to let you finish, but Dark Messiah was the best Heroes of Might and Magic game.

Regarding multiple endings most games lack the replayability to make complex multiple endings work. For instance, I personally won't play a game again when I hit the end. Give me one linear story and I'm fine. The gameplay can still be generally sandboxed while still having one ending. When you want to do multiple endings the lazy way you end up with Deus Ex: HR.

Coming up with a non-predictable plot I think is the challenging part and making gameplay that is entertaining to go along with it. I find most games have a bunch of random places they want to put into the game then they work a plot around it. Works okay usually. I'm not a big plot fan really when it comes to games. Bioshock 1 for instance tried with a quick plot and atmosphere and did a generally okay job at working one into the game. Sounds like the new game Infinite really did that on a huge level. They started with what they wanted the player to see the wove a plot into the world.

Anyway gameplay is more important to me than a plot. Take Rage for instance. Very simple plot that I didn't even pay attention to. Fun gameplay and world.

In that same respect look at like Skyrim or the Elder Scrolls in general. Does the plot in those games ever matter? No not at all. The world and gameplay are a hundred times more important. That is the general atmosphere in the game. That seems to be what a game is usually building. (Deus Ex, Bioshock, and other FPS/RPG games).

Just reminded me. Go play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and tell me what the plot was. Atmosphere++.

I'm going to let you finish, but Dark Messiah was the best Heroes of Might and Magic game.

Regarding multiple endings most games lack the replayability to make complex multiple endings work. For instance, I personally won't play a game again when I hit the end. Give me one linear story and I'm fine. The gameplay can still be generally sandboxed while still having one ending. When you want to do multiple endings the lazy way you end up with Deus Ex: HR.

Coming up with a non-predictable plot I think is the challenging part and making gameplay that is entertaining to go along with it. I find most games have a bunch of random places they want to put into the game then they work a plot around it. Works okay usually. I'm not a big plot fan really when it comes to games. Bioshock 1 for instance tried with a quick plot and atmosphere and did a generally okay job at working one into the game. Sounds like the new game Infinite really did that on a huge level. They started with what they wanted the player to see the wove a plot into the world.

Anyway gameplay is more important to me than a plot. Take Rage for instance. Very simple plot that I didn't even pay attention to. Fun gameplay and world.

In that same respect look at like Skyrim or the Elder Scrolls in general. Does the plot in those games ever matter? No not at all. The world and gameplay are a hundred times more important. That is the general atmosphere in the game. That seems to be what a game is usually building. (Deus Ex, Bioshock, and other FPS/RPG games).

Just reminded me. Go play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and tell me what the plot was. Atmosphere++.

While I'm glad that seem to be far easier to please than myself, I respectfully disagree with you. I want to play Mass Effect 1+2 again, because I want to experience a different protagonist, different choices and different options - while I also like the game world and how the game plays, it's all secondary to me next to how characters and the game world respond to my decisions.

In an entirely different regard, Bioshock, IMO, managed to pull off something utterly unique, at least as far as my gaming experience goes. Don't get me wrong: this was already the norm back in the days of Doom and Quake where the player's optional task was to locate all of the secrets, but what BS did in a major and novel way was to get the player invest their time and effort in actually walking up to every single cash register and trash can in order to look through it without using any gimmicks or ruses. At least on Hard difficulty. I respect that. And I do realize that a good part of this is actually balance and not story or gameplay per se. Incidentally, I'm so looking forward to BS:I.


Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes its ending formula from the original: it's a relatively mediocre game that, as you elegantly put it, pulls a cheap one. DX:HR, to me, was a relatively poor game and part of its mediocrity is its lack of coherence on a more global level (the plot) while it doesn't make up for it in any meaningful way in the gameplay - level by level, it's disjointed and random and keeps repeating itself. It's boring. In the end it's like WoW without the auction house or raiding - it's just grinding, and even if it's a lot more sophisticated and involved, the principles will ultimately become worn out and the game is bound to fail after a relatively small number of hours of gameplay (15-20 for me).

Incidentally, Bioshock actually had a pretty decent story (I'm in the middle of BS2, but haven't finished it yet so I can't comment on that). However, it failed in a most horrible way against the most sacred tenet of storytelling: it gave the player a passive protagonist (not only the player themselves, but also the main character and their actions over which the player had no control!). When you watch a good movie or read a good book, you'll notice that it won't take you long before you get bored when the protagonist doesn't make any sensible and meaningful decisions. In that, Bioshock, failed. As did HL2. This doesn't even have so much to do with linearity as it does with simple logic.

My qualm in this thread is that in a game like HOMM you can have any form of a plot with any level of depth and intricacy and none of this potential has ever been tapped into. At the end of the day I still enjoy playing HOMM with a friend, but the single player campaign just makes me sad. Give me open objectives. Give me multiple victory conditions. Give an option to participate in the decisions that the few campaign levels take. Don't just use single player to prepare me for multiplayer (hello, SC2!).

My feelings towards story in games tends to range from apathy to active dislike. At risk of repeating a tired cliché, if I want to be told a story I'll read a book or watch a film. Both are better media for storytelling.

If I'm enjoying the gameplay, I don't want my experience to be interrupted with narrative sequences with little or no interactivity or gameplay value. Any such sequences will provoke an irritable hammering of the 'skip' button, and if no such button exists, annoyance and a reduction of my enjoyment of the game. Note that the story could be the most incredible, thrilling and profound epic ever written, I probably wouldn't notice if it interrupts gameplay, because I would skip it. Furthermore, I want to enjoy the game so long as the gameplay continues to interest me, where possible. I rarely replay story based games, because I am put off by the prospect of having to trudge through the same set pieces again and again. Branching storylines don't help; doing different parts of the story in a different order, or getting a couple of different dialog sequences at various intervals, does not make the story fresh enough to want to play again.

If I'm not enjoying the gameplay - then I don't care what the story is like, because I will probably never finish it, preferring to spend my gaming time playing something that I do enjoy playing.

I particularly disagree that a game like HoMM 6 is 'literally born with storytelling in mind'. It's a strategy game, and I like my strategy games to be strategic - give me Dawn of War: Dark Crusade's strategic metamap over Dawn of War Vanilla's daft story campaign any day. Stories in strategy games are generally awkward and clumsy affairs, consisting of a combination of annoying cut scenes, even more annoying in-game scripted sequences, and the occasional painfully bad gimmick map thrown in. I hated SC 1's single player campaign, and never completed it. SC 2's was better - the 'gimmick maps' where actually enjoyable for the most part. That said, it's been over a year now and I still haven't completed it...

Story in games exists to give context to the gameplay, but never to interfere with it.


Oh and finally, if you like games with lots of mythical monsters, try out Dominions 3. It looks like arse, and is a bit overpriced for a game of it's age and general visual quality, but with something in the region of 2000 units, many/most of which are inspired by real - world history or mythology, it probably has more than all of the HoMM games put together.