I did not ask for your input on this subject. I am still waiting in that other thread.
You're so incorrect in your understanding of what it means to hold and present thoughts that it's impossible for you to be correct or incorrect about anything else beyond that. Having realised this my posts are no longer for you. Like with the other retards I am speaking to the audience and using you as a backboard.
This is like an old microsoft troubleshooting wizard's idea of intellectual discourse.
This is irrelevant. Different ways of knowing or acquiring knowledge are not the cause of conflict here. You simply can't understand things people are saying to you.
What is the traditionalist word for not doing either process and instead using oblique references to Schuon?
First of all - stories came later (and by "stories" I mean something more complex than a line or two to give you an excuse to shoot at things). Very early on it was all about the technology and what you could do with it. Going from 2D into 3D was a BIG deal. When Doom 3 was developed it was SOLELY with lighting effects in mind, for example.
Why call it "slight measureable decline" though?
Eh, I would strike down the second and the third points. You can have them outside of an RPG. In fact, I would mutate the third point into "a player-driven story". Because the story - no matter the goal - revolves around how the player(s) approach the problem, not vice-versa. Which plays into the first point (what your in-game character is capable of doing). You can also mutate the second point into "an adventure/exploration that is extremely malleable and player-centric", similarly to the second point. After all, everything is a springboard for the player(s) to serve as an opportunity to interact with (with the GM trying to somehow loop the players back into his intended story or creating something new on-the-fly).
Because the games they're mimicking do have stories, as detailed in the OP.
In the OP I gave the factors I count as "story", including a clear premise, locations that feel like real places (or abstractions of such), a sense of progression in which the player experiences the plot unfolding and sees the character's journey, etc. Again, if you compare Heretic with Amid Evil, you can clearly see what I mean - Heretic details a journey through a relatively coherent world in which we know who we are, where we are, what we're doing, why we're doing it, who we're fighting, and we hit milestones in our journey that represent tangible progress. Meanwhile in Amid Evil you have no idea what's going on beyond the deliberately-vague one-line setup that you're "the champion" and are fighting "evil" - meaning killing enemies who deliberately don't look like anything in a location that also deliberately doesn't look like anything.
I am not buying that as a story. Part of the setting, sure, but not as a story itself.
Why not compare Heretic 1 with Heretic 2? Heretic 1 literally dumps you straight into the game Doom-style, without any explanation whatsoever. Heretic 2 gives you a proper intro (aside from what you can find in the manual). Also, the games such as Doom, Heretic, Quake and such are seen as the staple of 2D (or early 3D) shooters, so even if you can find examples of games that do have a proper story you shouldn't be surprised why there is no real story in modern boomer shooters.
What is a story in a videogame, if not events and locations that are depicted on-screen? Do you buy Half-Life as having a story?
Several of the examples I gave were highly notable, especially System Shock, Dark Forces, Unreal and Half-Life, and many of them are directly called back to by some of these throwback games - DUSK includes references to Half-Life, for example. But again, even if you take Doom, Heretic and Quake as your inspirations, two of those games have clear plot arcs, strong premises, and (generally) coherent locations, even if they're presented in a highly abstract way.
Locations alone are not enough (and I would like to hear from you what do you consider events). Remember three unities of a Greek drama (unity of action, unity of time and unity of place)? If you take the story out of Warcraft 2 (the intro and briefings) all you are left with is a bunch of disjointed maps. The story is what ties in them all into a coherent whole (and, in my opinion, elevates the whole game from being a bunch of skrimishes to having an actual campaign with realistic goals).
But that's the truth of the matter: I disagree with calling THAT a story. That's LARPing a story into existence, not having one. You want an FPS with a story? Try Strife (1996), also made on Doom engine.
I already mentioned Strife!
In the case of Heretic:
I missed that. Still, I am surprised you did mention Strife - knowing its actual story - yet argue for Doom having one.
I don't have the game, but here is what little I've found from the actual developer:
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/app/673130/discussions/0/4031350479978614778/
Doom does have a story with a clear setting and premise and plot arc, but I think we're going to go around in circles if I try to argue that point. Just out of interest, though, do you think Half-Life and Unreal have stories, or do they not meet the barrier for what you'd consider to be an "actual story"?
I remember the broad plot outline of the Champion going to fight "The Evil" to free the corrupted Ancients or Elders or w/e they were called, but sadly from what I remember the enemies, locations and weapons are all mostly meaningless, or have backstories that feel like generic fantasy without fitting together in the way Heretic does.
Both Half-Life and Unreal certainly do have stories.
Don't mistake me. I am not saying that Doom does not have a clear setting and a premise with a certain game-winning goal (same as Wolfenstein 3D, by the way). But I do not consider that alone to be a story. Again, you need something to make a difference between a set of various maps/levels (I already gave my Warcraft 2 and Diablo 1 examples, so I don't see the need to repeat myself here).
Can't talk about Unreal (never bothered playing it), but Half-Life has a story. In fact it is a linear game, compared to a bunch of maze-like maps. There are proper events happening in-game (instead of stuff you had to read in the game's manual in-between playing separate scenarios you can select from a menu that doesn't even look like a proper campaign), there are characters other than the player, etc.
This has honestly made me even less clear on what constitutes the distinction between your definitions of "story" and "not a story". Like, the episode selection screen; you're selecting the three acts of the plot, and must play them sequentially to see it unfold. The text crawl at the end of each epsiode explains how and why you're going to the next episode. You can't play the acts out of order without the plots (which exist!) not making sense.
What's the difference between Gordon being knocked out and thrown into a trash compactor versus Corvus' teleport being redirected as he's kidnapped and whisked away to the Dome of D'Sparil? One is conveyed via a cutscene and the other is conveyed via text but otherwise I don't see why one is a "proper event" and the other isn't. Similarly, what's the difference between the D'Sparil confrontation versus the Nihilanth showdown*, or traveling to Xen versus traveling to Hell's Maw, or retrieving a Tome of Power versus retrieving the Tau Cannon, or the HECU ambushing Gordon in the underground rail area versus the Disciples of D'Sparil ambushing Corvus in the cesspool?
The story is something that ties in everything together. On that point, I have to agree to a degree here with you. Heretic does have a story. Thing is, it is more an excuse to do the levels than a proper story. It is also badly done. You shouldn't be able to play the maps out of order (at least not before unlocking them) and the story introduction as such should be done in-game, even if in the form of the wall of text. Same thing with Doom.
Once more: swapping maps alone is not the plot nor what I consider story progress. You can swap maps without progressing a story (or having a story to begin with). You need something in-between so that swapping maps is meaningful.
And yet if we were to write it out alongside Half-Life's story, we'd find them to have a similar level of detail, and a similar span of plot beats (many of which could be summarised as "Gordon/Corvus navigates a dangerous area while threatened by hostile forces").
We could probably make a WAD that just prints the manual's backstory section as a text crawl when the player launches E1M1, if that'd make all the difference. I never had a problem just reading the manual (a lot of older games had novellas going on in the manuals, check out 1992's The Summoning for a great one) but it'd be pretty trivial to just have it show up in-game. But early 90s games expected you'd read the manual, it's a convention that I don't see any problem with.
