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[Neonivek]

Now before I begin I am going to say I am excluding games with heavy narrative focus as well as RPGs in this. It isn't so much that they don't have good stories, it is that they often do but in a way that is pretty difficult to ignore. You can talk about them, but for the most part they don't contribute to the issue.

Instead we are looking at games where typically the stories are often lampooned as universally terrible such as Fighting games, Platformers, Action, strategy games and what have you.

The question is really can a story be considered good not "for a 'game of that type'" but rather be good because it is built for that exact genre?

---

One genre of game I keep hearing over and over again as being "universally bad at story" are fighting games. Yet whenever I think of an interesting story my mind often goes right to fighting games.

Sure the story is usually dirt simple but it is every single character's individual plots, motivations, and history that usually bring them together.

I don't think the fact that fighting games MUST constrain themselves to that format makes their story bad. No more then a painting is bad because it is contained to a canvas. The story does exactly what its job is to do.

Just because it doesn't lend itself to a good novel or a good movie it doesn't mean it is invalid.

Strategy games show this in spades. If you were to convey the Command and Conquer games to a movie format they would be downright boring. Yet in terms of drawing you into each battlefield with an idea of the scope and importance of every mission it succeeds.

[~Neri]

A story and lore can be made to fit any game and any world. However.

Most of the time when they are bad, it is one of the following:

-The writers suck or aren't coordinated by the designer, resulting in a clusterfuck.
-It's something the designers or coders tossed on at the last moment and hence minimal effort.
-The game switches to a different team partway through.
-They decide to focus on gameplay and mechanics over lore and writing.
-The game isn't intended to have a story but the player comes up with a story as they go as an unintended side effect of the environment, resulting in dissatisfaction when they reach the end and receive no gratification for the story they thought was subtly being built.

Arguably the C&C games could be done quite well in a movie format. It entirely depends on how you went about it. In my view it would work better as a continuous episodic thing. Maybe from the viewpoints of cameras and recording devices. Sorta like that movie Chronicle but with more viewpoints.

[Neonivek]

The issue is that they would always do CnC the same way in movie format... make us follow a soldier

And while Tanya is amazing... The key is that the series aren't about the adventures of individual soldiers. Something that is rarely put to film as the audience always wants to stick a face to everything.

[~Neri]

Would they though? Can you honestly say, that if every storywriter and director on the planet wrote their own script for a C&C video media, that they would All, each and every one of them. That they would all do it in the exact same way?

I say no. They would not. I can think of fifty ways to do it off the top of my head that would be completely different. There's a hell of a lot of stuff to play around with lorewise, and you can do all sorts of things with it. Hell, could even do a horror movie where the protagonists are a group of civvies trying to escape a city overrun by the Scrin.

[Chiefwaffles]

If a game has any story, then it can easily be seen as just another method to display that medium.

You can have books and movies and games all excel in one story. The key similarity in all these succeeding multimedia stories is that the different mediums use their own way of looking at a story. When you get movie tie-in games that have you be the main character while having to follow the movie's storyline, this is where it fails.

Look at KOTOR and Star Wars versus any "cheap movie tie-in" game that pops into your mind.

[Frumple]

It... depends on the game. Obviously enough? Story can be built for the medium or just plain good depending on the writers involved. There's not really anything stopping anyone from making an action game or whatev' with a decent plot -- look at some of the (newer) castlevanias, ferex. Plenty of the newer beat-'em-ups (Devil May Cry series and similar such material) try for a plot, as another example, and from what I understand (not actually playing them, not having the system or the specs to experience most), some of 'em even do pretty alright.

Kevak mostly nailed the normal issues, though. Combine normal sturgeon's stuff with th'fact that most of the people involved are often not exactly what you'd call good writers, mix in coordination issues, and most of the material in question is going to be pretty shoddy, even relative to your normal revelation ratio. Not anything particularly unusual 'bout that, heh.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Now before I begin I am going to say I am excluding games with heavy narrative focus as well as RPGs in this. It isn't so much that they don't have good stories, it is that they often do but in a way that is pretty difficult to ignore. You can talk about them, but for the most part they don't contribute to the issue.

Instead we are looking at games where typically the stories are often lampooned as universally terrible such as Fighting games, Platformers, Action, strategy games and what have you.

The question is really can a story be considered good not "for a 'game of that type'" but rather be good because it is built for that exact genre?

---

One genre of game I keep hearing over and over again as being "universally bad at story" are fighting games. Yet whenever I think of an interesting story my mind often goes right to fighting games.

Sure the story is usually dirt simple but it is every single character's individual plots, motivations, and history that usually bring them together.

I don't think the fact that fighting games MUST constrain themselves to that format makes their story bad. No more then a painting is bad because it is contained to a canvas. The story does exactly what its job is to do.

Just because it doesn't lend itself to a good novel or a good movie it doesn't mean it is invalid.

Strategy games show this in spades. If you were to convey the Command and Conquer games to a movie format they would be downright boring. Yet in terms of drawing you into each battlefield with an idea of the scope and importance of every mission it succeeds.

Alright, first of all, you can't ask whether or not video game stories are good and then say, "but don't look at the genre with the best stories." That's BS man.

Secondly, terrible stories are ALMOST universally due to production budget rather than writing. Get your hands on the scripts, many of them are top-notch. Now to follow that up with a genre-by-genre analysis, i'll point out that even "story-driven" games, RPGs, and MMOs can have bad stories. In fact, i'd argue that the TES series in general has rather lackluster storytelling on the whole. Alternatively, games like WoW can have really kickass stories. I'll agree with you on fighting games, but then we don't really play them for story. In fact, many of them fall under the sports game category where the point is arguably to create your own story so really, that just leaves games like street fighter and mortal kombat. When it comes to platformers you're dead wrong... DEAD. WRONG. Castlevania, Metroid, and Shadow of The Colossus come to mind. EVEN MORE IMPRESSIVE is that those series' wholes are greater than the sum of their parts, where they've managed to create pretty engrossing worlds and universes. Action is hit-and-miss, and the main genre where you find excellent stories ruined by budget. COD is a great example, especially MW, WAW, MW2, BO, and Ghosts... The writing is good... It just doesn't always make it in to the finished product. Look at Halo, that shit is amazing. Are you kidding me!?!? i'd actually cut my legs off if it meant I could be in the writer's room for Halo. Even 4. Guardians looks beastly, and the series as a whole is another example of a totally engrossing universe. It's beautiful. Also Batman: Arkham Knight is incredible, and the story is A+++. Finally, i'll give you strategy games... Especially during the early 2000s the trend was either minimalistic story or full-on camp. Lookin' at you NOD. That trend is starting to change, but strategy just isn't as big of a market as it once was. Halo Wars comes to mind, but much of the best fluff was cut (Mechanics too, you fuckers, I wanted my warthogs to jump cliffs solo badly.)

"can a story be considered good not "for a 'game of that type'" but rather be good because it is built for that exact genre?" ssssssssss, dude. No. There are stories, like them or don't. Also, every genre has not been explored or exploited to its fullest extent so it's kind of hard ask that question, and on a game-to-game level, there are "bad" games with great stories. Mass Effect, Advent Rising, Telltale stuff in general... The list is long. Good stories can save a lot of mediocre games. In short, other than time and budget, there's not a huge correlation between story and genre for me.

Back to fighting games... That's tough, and a genre that really blends in to many other genres. Toribash, street fighter, mortal kombat, UFC, Boxing, etc. Those are games I think universally considered to be JUST fighting games. None of them have an appreciable stories as far as i'm concerned.

I'll say that not all games which are fighting based have to be similar to the above format... There's the jedi Knight series, where once you get your lightsaber it basically becomes a fighting game with all the finesse and movement that can go into maneuver and attack. There's also the Arkham series, where fighting and action are blended. Both amazing games in terms of mechanics and story. I say, you're right in that the format of the game doesn't make the game bad, but it does make the story bad. The game is the canvas, and story is only one of the colors. Any story that's just doing "what's its job is to do" is a bad story. Story in games should drive gameplay and interest, and at times frustrate the player. The same is to be said of plot. Story should never just LEAD YOU to the next encounter. It should make you seek it out in either desperation or interest.

While i'll agree that video games are a different medium entirely and don't always lend themselves well to the pen or screen, story as a tool never works well. Stories are LIFE. You create them, and they go off and evolve, they invoke response and emotion, and most importantly they MEAN SOMETHING TO YOU whether you're the writer or the reader, and if that isn't the case something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

*sigh* Strategy games are the worst represented in the good-story area, and C&C is the worst of them. Honestly, gameplay has always been fun in C&C games, but the stories are just.... just awful.

tl;dr Stories are love, stories are life, get storied.

[Funk]

Fighting games can have good storeys,
Ever played the warriors on xbox it had a great story not because it was based on a film but because it built on the film's world.

A UFC, Boxing game can have a good story you just need a way to frame the story, have it come out as documentary of the fighter.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Actually curious, are there any EA Sports UFC or Boxing something similar that has a good story??? I do remember The Warriors game actually... was that open world???

[Neonivek]

Alright, first of all, you can't ask whether or not video game stories are good and then say, "but don't look at the genre with the best stories." That's BS man

Because I am looking at games where the story is VERY focused through the conventions of a game.

A Fighting game for example usually cannot have a epic storyline, mortal kombat being a huge exception, because not only do you effect what actually occurs but because a fighting game can't overwhelmingly play favorites.

While a strategy game cannot just play single units (Warcraft 3 being an exception... but coincidentally its story is bad... at least if you cared about the first two games) it is a story about warring countries or groups.

Not a game that has no real limitations on story that coincidentally can have a good story.

[Ghills]

Were early movies good? No

Were early epics good? No

Art forms take time to grow.  Designers are still working out how to effectively convey stories in a video game.  Like others said, often the scripts themselves are good but the execution is bad due to either lacking institutional knowledge of how to convey stories or production budgets focusing on gameplay and not story or worldbuilding.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Because I am looking at games where the story is VERY focused through the conventions of a game.

That's all games though. There are strategy games with good stories, in fact i'd say Warcraft 3 has one of the better stories when it comes to strat. Also, a little gem I forgot about, World in Conflict had a good story too. WiC is a good example of a game where story and mechanics mesh rather well, and you really feel the desperation as you try and defend America from a surprise Soviet invasion (spoilers, peeps, sorry.) Warcraft more manages to have a good story despite its mechanics, though it's a fun game regardless.

... But all video game stories are confined by the game mechanics to some extent, really. Even in "story driven" games, how do you stop people from acting out of character, and making combat or interaction feel like its the reactions and decisions of the characters without making the players feel like they lack control? It's carefully balanced.

Really though, your question confuses me greatly. In the original post it's whether a good story is good for the "type" of game it's a part of or whether it's good relative to other games in the genre, which to me is unclear in the extreme. Then you change that to stories which are only focused through "conventions of a game." Which is even less clear to me. Every game has limitations on story, and likewise all stories are in some manner effected by the mechanics of the game. You eschew RPGs in your discussion, but I don't think you realize how much game mechanics have an effect on how the players enjoy the story. I'll point back to my TES example and give you a hypothetical situation where Witcher 3 has Skyrim combat... I mean, it just wouldn't make sense would it? and you'd feel kind of jipped too, because frankly it doesn't tie in to what you're SUPPOSED to be. Does that make sense?

So, since we're both familiar with W3, imagine if you will, the same game and same graphics, but with the gameplay of COH... It just doesn't work. It doesn't feel, for a lack of a better term, Warcrafty. The mechanics, art design, and scale come together with the story to really make it believable. The story  in itself is a very high-level design issue, the tone has to be set in the way game handles for the story to be meaningful.

EDIT: W3 mechanics are 50-50 for me, they're clunky and it kind of lends itself to the game world, but it's more of a coincidence than a design decision. IMO

For example, W3 does it right. You FEEL like it's Warcraft, the individual units, cartoony yet dark art, and smaller scale really allows you to FEEL the sense of faded glory in the Warcraft universe, and in that context the story works beautifully as you follow a number of leaders and warlords in a desperate struggle to reunite or destroy what's left of the world. A game that gets it wrong was, to some extent anyways, Mass Effect. Yes, the story is good. Yes, the universe is actually pretty deep. BUT. The mechanics are NOT always there to back it up. Really it's a story of desperation and struggle, and while the game does a good job of making things seem grim. You never really feel like there was a problem you couldn't solve.

I don't think you're asking a BAD question, but I don't think genre is an indicator of good story so much as other factors like time, money, good writing, and good mechanics are.

[Neonivek]

It isn't about relativism. It is whether or not one can consider a game's story good because it is well built for the medium (AKA the game)

OR if a story that doesn't succeed at conventional storytelling is bad or at least weak.

And I am excluding games with a very conventional story focus that isn't really interfered with by the aspect of the game. Final Fantasy 6 isn't generally harmed by being an RPG and while Mortal Kombat 10 is harmed by being a fighting game it is more that the story was inept and couldn't overcome the fact that it needed so many characters.

Because a lot of games if you unpacked their stories are long and convoluted. Yet if you actually experienced them in game or piece by piece, as intended, it seems relatively fine.

Yet does that mean it is a bad story that is hidden by the game? Or rather that it is a good story that takes advantage of the medium it was constructed for to best effect?

Does a story that if laid down on paper is bad... make it bad? in otherwords. Or is there something more to story telling then simply being good on paper but rather being good in the medium it was made for? and not in a "For a whatever" way but rather genuinely good.

This isn't a discussion about whether lousy stories are lousy

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Can you give some examples?