i hate game writing
i can maybe count on one hand the number of games i’ve played that i would consider to be “well written”.
this is a byproduct (i think) of the fact that most artistic mediums are STORY FIRST. a book is the most obvious example of being pure narrative. without the narrative, there is no book. a film leans less on the narrative but is still—for the most part—STORY FIRST in that someone will sit down and write the full script (narrative/dialogue) and then the film will be built from that. other narrative mediums like comics and animation have a focus on telling a story through art and utilising the medium to enhance the story (think of the way storytellers in comics use the space between frames as a narrative effect).
yet, games are often GAME FIRST and then a story is shoehorned in after the fact. the whole game will be built on mechanical ideas, gameplay loops, interfaces, whatever, and then—if there is time and budget left—a story will be tacked on
even games that should theoretically be built entirely around a story (rpgs) tend to suck in the writing department. they fail to crystallise anything more than a mechanical experience where the words are forced into the box
there was some okay stuff in the early days of the crpg, but those were stories written by programmers who were focused on programming a game and then in their spare time putting in unpolished ideas because there was either no writer on staff or they just wanted to do it themselves. the reason doesn’t matter, but the point is
games just fail to use the medium to do anything important with the writing and it ends up feeling subpar to any other medium of storytelling. is there a game that even remotely comes close to meeting the standard of storytelling in the best books ever written? what about matching the best films?
the games i can count on one hand that i think use the medium to tell a good story:
shadow of the colossus return of the obra dinn chrono trigger dark souls
videl wrote (edited )
have thought the same thing. the souls games were the ones that made me realize games generally don't utilize the medium to tell a story in a way that only games can.
death stranding comes to mind. the gameplay itself says some things if you think about it.