August 26, 2023
A huge peeve for me is that I generally haaaate seeing people talk disparingly of "story" in a lot of video games, namely in games where the story is not usually emphasized (so I should be clear that I'm not referring to games like Baldur's Gate 3), largely because from my experience a lot of people who say a story of that nature is bad or write it off are typically people who, from the outset, have already decided not to engage with the storytelling for some reason. maybe it doesn't have enough fully rigged cutscenes? Maybe there is no voice acting? Maybe there is voice acting? Maybe it isn't overt enough in feeding the player a narrative? Maybe it's too overt in feeding the player a narrative and the person who is playing has already decided they don't want one?
I always ask "well do you think the story really is bad or is it that you have already decided going into it that you won't care about the ideas it brings and the attempts to convey them to you?" and I find more often than not it's the latter... I find people who genuinely tried to engage with a game's story and didn't like it can typically point to tangible elements that they believe have failed them, in the same way that people can with things they dislike in story-centric mediums.
I can only assume this is because while the core of a game and the nature of gameplay kinda requires you to meet it at least halfway and engage with it on its own terms, and movies or music are somewhat similar, the story in a game is (often) ultimately auxiliary to the gameplay. Since it's not what people are literally coming to the medium for, you may have to work harder at creating a reason for a lot of people to care about storytelling in a video game - and this is just talking about the script, too, and ignoring the many ways presentation can factor into its appeal. And no matter how solid the stuff on paper is, if it doesn't move someone enough for them to think about it alongside or above the gameplay, then it might as well not exist.
I tend to have a pretty "glass half-full" approach about that kind of thing, personally - to me, if you don't need to tell something in your game, but you want to and try to anyway, then I owe it to myself to pay attention to it and engage with it. I think it'd be crazy to expect everyone to have that kind of approach, though - to view such a thing as a "bonus" rather than a "distraction" - but writing is important to me, so all writers who choose to write deserve their fair shake, especially in a medium that can make getting people to go along with what story you want to tell way more of a teeth-pulling kind of endeavor.
I love a crazy involved narrative full of cutscenes with people moving and shit like a movie! But I also love when the narrative doesn't show a single goddamn face! I love databases filled with extraneous lore! I love talking portraits! Emotive sprites! I love when a simple game with a simple concept goes hard in narratively contextualizing everything you play through even if no one asked! I love storytelling through the background! Lore pages! Quest text! Item flavor! Give me it all!!!
Idk, I just don't want people to stop writing, is all.