PorkyThePaladin
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2013
- Messages
- 5,193
So typically story faggotry in RPGs is portrayed as the preference for engaging, well written stories that entertain the player with the quality of their writing, often presumably at the cost of gameplay. But I think this is a bit deceiving because it sets up a sort of false dichotomy between outstanding writing on one hand, and gameplay on the other.
I think in actuality, gameplay and writing are much more closely linked. Writing is what provides both the context and meaning to gameplay. As such, it doesn't have to be outstanding in order to be effective, it just has to pass a certain threshold of being good enough. By that, I mean that it has to take itself seriously on some level (humor is fine, but only if coupled with serious themes on some level), and provide the player with a meaningful goal and background.
Games like Gothic, System Shock 2, or Expeditions: Viking are perfect examples of this. None of them would ever be accused of having great writing, but they contain serious, logical worlds, meaningful goals, and intelligent if not overly impressive dialogue. As such, they provide the player with exactly what they need from the writing side of things, even if they could never match a P:ST.
On the other hand, games like Divinity: Original Sin or Pillars of Eternity or Dragon Age: Origins utterly fail at writing, imho. D:OS just goes all in on bad humor, and fails to take itself seriously at all, while PoE and DA:O go the overly pretentious route, and fill their dialogue with tons of needless exposition and terrible writing. In both cases, the player is faced with either a meaningless world (D:OS), forcing them to question why they are playing the game, regardless of your opinion on the rest of it, or a really boring and dull one (PoE, DA:O), causing burn-out. Another example would be something like Mount & Blade: Warband, which has a lot of good gameplay, but due to an almost complete lack of overarching writing (or equivalent procedural elements), quickly gets bogged down in meaningless gameplay by mid-game, as you are just stuck doing castle sieges over and over, without much in the way of meaning.
Thoughts?
I think in actuality, gameplay and writing are much more closely linked. Writing is what provides both the context and meaning to gameplay. As such, it doesn't have to be outstanding in order to be effective, it just has to pass a certain threshold of being good enough. By that, I mean that it has to take itself seriously on some level (humor is fine, but only if coupled with serious themes on some level), and provide the player with a meaningful goal and background.
Games like Gothic, System Shock 2, or Expeditions: Viking are perfect examples of this. None of them would ever be accused of having great writing, but they contain serious, logical worlds, meaningful goals, and intelligent if not overly impressive dialogue. As such, they provide the player with exactly what they need from the writing side of things, even if they could never match a P:ST.
On the other hand, games like Divinity: Original Sin or Pillars of Eternity or Dragon Age: Origins utterly fail at writing, imho. D:OS just goes all in on bad humor, and fails to take itself seriously at all, while PoE and DA:O go the overly pretentious route, and fill their dialogue with tons of needless exposition and terrible writing. In both cases, the player is faced with either a meaningless world (D:OS), forcing them to question why they are playing the game, regardless of your opinion on the rest of it, or a really boring and dull one (PoE, DA:O), causing burn-out. Another example would be something like Mount & Blade: Warband, which has a lot of good gameplay, but due to an almost complete lack of overarching writing (or equivalent procedural elements), quickly gets bogged down in meaningless gameplay by mid-game, as you are just stuck doing castle sieges over and over, without much in the way of meaning.
Thoughts?