Playing games for the story

Does anyone else feel like they are turning into "story gamers", that is, caring more about the story, lore, atmosphere and world as opposed to things we typically consider "gameplay"? For some reason, as time goes on, the idea of playing a game just for the gameplay (physics, platforming, managing inventory etc.) just seems really boring to me. I find that I'm more interested in just doing the quests and getting immersed in the world.

If you ask "why not just watch TV/movies", well I guess it's just not the same, there's something about playing the game, and playing the role yourself, and doing the quests yourself, that makes it more immersive.

Yes, but don't say that on Sup Forums

It's full of underage.

No. I know you think you'll find this enclave of Neogaf immigrants who agree with you just because you began with the premise of "anyone else" but gameplay is the most important thing in videogames, and the foundation of videogames. Story has always been an afterthought.

You might actually be able to argue the opposite, in both the West and Japan, much of gaming history is about the game's priority being about the story or role playing. Take the history of text adventures in the West and JRPGs in Japan. PC gaming for most of the west's history was about D&D inspired type games and the like.

Why can't I ask for both? Shitty gameplay breaks my immersion and interest on the story because the game itself is simply not fun to play, and a shitty story doesn't emotionally invest me on the world and makes the gameplay feel pretty hollow and devoid of soul even if it's -fun-: it's pretty forgettable. It happened to me with Gothic II. I liked the gameplay but the story is so meh I just stopped playing. I want a decent gameplay and a decent story in RPGs. In other genres it depends because story or gameplay may take a bigger priority, such as in VNs, RTS or assfaggots.

I've always been a story dude, but then I started with tabletop RPG rather than like mario or whatever.
Can't talk about that here though because hurr durr

Gameplay is king.
Story is not irrelevant but an outstanding story can't make up for bad gameplay.
Outstanding gameplay can make up for a bad story.
Gameplay is king.

>Gameplay is king
Gameplay is a tool to make a good game. A tool can't be a "king."

While I agree that gameplay is the most important, just having that is not enough for me.

I need a good story, good characters, good world, bonus points for lore, stats, shitload of stuff I can research and obsess about.

The last games I finished, like a year ago, were the three new Shadowrun.

I've been wanting to dive deep into Morrowind for quite some time but I don't have much free time right now and my jobs kills my will to do anything.

Visual Novels are the best video games.

Who fucking cares about gameplay for the sake of gameplay?
People care about video games for the weaving of narrative and interaction.

Considering how laughable the stories are in the majority of games, I'd rather click through 150,000 pages of dialogue.

I'm honestly kind of the opposite. I used to value games mostly for a good story and setting, to the point of not touching any kind of multiplayer out of principle. But in the last few years, I've been leaning more and more towards the gameplay aspect, to the point when I know play mostly multiplayer stuff. I can still value a good story or setting, but it has hardly as strong capability of gripping me than it used to.

The older you get the more true this is(unless you stay forever a manchild).
Younger people are more goal oriented. They are not disillusioned with structures and their internal rules in life itself and it translates to their interests in games.

More seasoned players are different as humans. They are more cynical about life and progress, societal technological etc..
The yare looking for something beyond just structures and forms and rules, so ambiance, atmosphere, a feeling the world gives off...Thins that are less tangible, the context, the unapproachable inquantifiable things.

I can enjoy a game for gameplay or story. I loved Yume Nikki, but few games can get by on atmosphere and music alone.

Look around you. Do you see all the wildly different opinions? For that reason, saying what a game can be and can't be (including whether it's considered art) is entirely subjective.

Video games with zero game play other than selecting dialogue choices can be considered a video game. Sorry if you don't like it.

Video game is a broad term these days. Deal with it.

Oddly it's been the opposite for me, as I've gotten older I don't care about stories.

I play most of my games on mute now and skip cutscenes if I can. I'd much rather listen to a podcast or audiobook

There is no doubt that no game has ever come close to the best films or books..Not even close..
But give it a few more decades, its still a young medium.
Its also still very limited by hardware...I mean in terms of tactile interaction we are still interactiign with our game worlds using a device based on a pritnting tool.
The tactile interaction that we experience with the keyboard mouse and gamepads is still very primitive and lacking.
This means that the "feeling" of gameplay cant even feel good yet on the most rudimentary level because gameplay comes down to you pushing a few keys on a keyboard or moving your wrist haphazardly.

Happen to me the same, Morrowind and Daggerfall are still my favourites TES.

And I today I only play games focused in atmosfere and plot. Like Stalker or recently Rodina.

It's a common opinion for any over the age of 14 to hold.

This is a good post, and it helps explain why the obsession for "objectivie" game reviewing just misses the mark. The older I get the more I realize that the best parts of the game are more subjective and things you can't just quantify with numbers (i.e. this game has good weapon variety, this game is better technologically). It's why so much of game reviewing just seems to miss the mark because they are so focused on being objective their review barely plunge the surface.

I feel like every time I'm on Sup Forums, and explain what I like/dislike about the game, people accuse me of being too subjective. But I've honestly stopped caring, I don't care if my opinion reflects the "proper" objective standard (which is really just the dominant subjective view, but don't tell that to others...)

Would a film that's horribly shot, on like an early 00s handheld camcorder that shakes, everything's out of focus and just looks like shit and half the time it's filming something completely irrelevant from what's happening and the acting's just atrociously bad be considered a good film if the soundtrack was awesome? Or if the script itself was great?
What if the prose in a book was amazing but the actual plot was dogshit, would it be a good book?
What if song had an amazing music video but the song sucked, would it be a good song?

>make too much fun of the quest NPC
>poke NPC too many times with questions he's not comfortable with
>gets furious and refuses to talk to me now and quest has to be aborted
>troll a captor from a rescue quest into marrying his victim
>withhold vital information, because an internal shitstorm is brewing
>try to talk to orks, but only gibberish can be heard (read) so the negotiation attempt is thrown out the window
I like my small rpg games

No, the older I get, the less I care about such games. I don't have time and energy to get overly invested in game worlds and mostly prefer games that I can just hop in and out for a quick gameplay session without much care.

Part of it is feeling the favorite part of your hobby is being threatened. Story in games is plenty safe nowadays. AAA are practically dying to make movies and seemingly begrudgingly add gameplay. Engaging gameplay feels more endangered. Pressing buttons that arent qtes, needing to make moves that actually require a little bit of reflexive finesse or understanding of mechanics.

actually PC gaming's origins was simulators, not D&D crap, sims are all about the gameplay.

Man I'd love to, but I've never played a game I could say had great writing.

>What if the prose in a book was amazing but the actual plot was dogshit, would it be a good book?
Yeah. Take 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. There is apsolutely no plot in it other than an excuse for the author to describe machinery and underwater scenery.

>MGS V
>great gameplay
>shit story
>played it for 100 hours

>Witcher Senses 3
>fancy plot
>garbage gameplay
>played it for 10 hours

>Dark Souls/Bloodborne
>excellent story
>excellent gameplay
>played them for a combined 600 hours

no, fuck off

i play games for both, if i play RPGs i can forgive shitty gameplay only if the story and choices and consequences are great (Alpha Protocol).

If i am playing an action game, i can forgive a shitty story if the gameplay is amazing (Dragons Dogma).

A good game has a balance of both.

>>excellent gameplay
>Souls

Is that even true? I mean I feel like simulators are about role-playing immersion and not just pure gameplay. After all when you're playing a farm sim or restaurant sim you're sort of taking the role of the business owner and a big part of the appeal is how "realistic" (immersive) it is. Simulators are about a lot more than just pure gameplay

pleb.

He means flight simulators and the like.

no most sims are all about rules and mechanics and real win/lose conditions unlike these story """games""" where losing is only temporary and can be reverted by reloading a save.

Always play Fallout games on easiest difficulty

The combat is shit. Difficulty always just means "Your guns do less damage and everyone is a fucking bullet sponge" so I just play on Very Easy and go through the different quests feeling like a badass.

what

What kind of games do you enjoy user? Name 5 games, should be easy right?

thats a second phase
soon you will lose interest even in story and only apathy will be left, you will end with a feeling of a hole in your heart and you will try to fill it but nothing will be able to. games will be for ever boring.

Nice bait template. Saving it for future (you) hunting.

I feel you, though not to the point where I can't enjoy a story-lite game at all. But I definitely inf myself gravitating more towards games with an interesting and established sense of world and character.

I know what you mean, it looks so retarded when you're spraying a machine gun into a NPC's face and they just stand there shooting untill their HP depletes.
I normally play on normal and only wear clothing rather than armour, that way at least the playing field is more even without having near immortal damage sponges running round the game

I know that feel, too bad most games stories suck.
My recommendation is to try to get into reading fantasy / science fiction, though most people these days don't have the patience to invest themselves into a good book.

> he didn't play planescape torment

The concept of games not being able to tell stories as well as other mediums only really applies insofar as they try to tell stories that other mediums already COULD tell, or in the same manner. If you have a videogame that tells its story 100% through movie like cinematic cutscenes then there's no reason it couldn't be told better in a movie.

It's the type of stories or experiences that integrate the gameplay or player interaction into them that are really interesting, because that's something you can't tell in another medium.

Gameplay is always more important than story. When the story gets to take space than gameplay, it becomes less of a game. That's not saying it's bad but it literally is less of a game the less gameplay you have. Think of telltales The Walking Dead. I loved that game but it's more akin to a visual novel than a game.

You should just get into reading classical literature to be honest.

Leave games to fun gameplay.

>gameplayfags want this kind of game to only be what vidya is

I can understand that. Immersion in vidya is a very interesting experience.
But I actually have weird priorities. To me, character customization, world building and scenery porn are more important than the combat and the main story.

The whole journal idea and lack of fast travel is genius in Morrowind. Until you discover, that the paths are just fast travel tunnels, you have to walk through, that is. The world, like in all other Bethesda games, is a giant pain to traverse, and is extremely linear, no matter how unlinear it may look. The characters are pretty shit too and the layout of the cities is crap. Even the gameplay sucks. There is no reason to play this in 2017. If you want a story driven game play FF VII. Come at me nostalgia fags.

Video games used to be about fun, pacman and pong and all the other "classics" were designed to be fun to take your money.
But with the death of arcades and home consoles, video games have instead changed into a form of escapism. Seen how the "narrative experience" is such a huge part of a video game rather than dumb fun with zero aspects to draw you in. It's just how games are now.

>MGSV
>great gameplay

nice meme

Haven't linear paths between areas isn't a bad thing, when there are so many crisscrossing paths, destinations, and things alone the way. It did a lot to make Vvardenfell feel so large despite it actually being a pretty small area. If you levitate and walk from one end to the other you can get there in a few minutes. By having so many mountains, ruins, and other environmental obstacles you make traversal take time and effort, so that even going a relatively short distance feels like a journey.

gameplay is only bad if you use Quite, since she trivializes the game.

No. The gameplay is only bad because of the shit missions, resource grinding, and shit AI.

I would argue the gameplay is not shit, the dungeons are fun to explore, lots of factions and interesting quests, unique items to find, and the setting is good. The expansions were great as well and the game has a modding community unlike most games.

t. never played Morrowind
You can literally float over every fucking thing you want

>float
Just jump across the whole island

>and is extremely linear
i'd love to know an example of a nonlinear world.

>Haven't linear paths between areas isn't a bad thing, when there are so many crisscrossing paths, destinations, and things alone the way.
Maybe it was impressive at the time, but most of the "things along the way" are really just escort missions or short battles with no real rewards.

There is not really much to be found in the dungeons, though? I do agree that the setting is good, but if it just for the setting, you really could just watch a movie.

A FAIR bit into the game, mind you. And by then you just become OP as fuck. Absolute piss difficulty curve, as you start out slower and weaker than an earthworm.

Super Metroid, Super Mario 64, even fucking Minecraft. The reason why Bethesda games have so shit worlds, in my opinion, is because of all the bullshit invisible walls, that do nothing, but pad out the game, while managing to make it completely linear.

Dungeons in Morrowind could lead to quests or unique pieces of loot. Meanwhile in Oblivion or Skyrim you're guaranteed to get the same randomly generated leveled gear you would get in any other dungeon at your level.

>Super Metroid

Unless you know the game well enough to sequence break then you have to follow the actual sequence the game lays out for you in order to get the items you need to progress. You absolutely go through areas in a linear order

>SM64

You have a linear order to accessing the paintings gated by Star count, and what stars you can get in a painting is gated by selecting them from the painting start.

As for Super Metroid, sequence breaking can be achieved as soon as you learn the wall jump. At the very latest this will be your second playthrough...

And for Mario, I meant the levels themselves (not all of course, as Rainbow Ride and Tick Tock Clock for example are very much linear). A somewhat linear order to the stages themselves is just a necessary evil, if you want anything other than a completely static difficulty curve.

I always play Elder Scrolls with god mode. I honestly dont care about manging health and magick, I just want to experience the quests and world

>There is not really much to be found in the dungeons, though?
The dungeons themselves are interesting, many times you can find unique items and/or good gear, and a lot of the dungeons are pretty big which is a good excuse to engage in the good gameplay
>just for setting
My post pointed at far more than just the setting. Besides, movies are boring. It's fun to engage in a setting when the setting is good. It's fun exploring Morrowind because Morrowind is a good setting. Magic is also a blast which I some how left out of my initial post.

Here is what nobody wants to hear, but it is true: what people always wanted from video games was not necessarily gameplay, but rather, an interesting immersive experience. People want choice, roleplaying, immersion, and realism in their games over really tight mechanics. This is why GTA III was such a phenomenon when it came out, the idea you could do "anything" in the world was the kind of thing people wanted all along. In video games, people want stuff like dating, cooking, managing stuff and crafting stuff because it appeals to people's sense of doing realistic stuff in a game. I find it funny how in GTA, a lot of people when they're bored start following the traffic laws. I honestly think people would love it if the next GTA has turn signals and traffic that was fully immersive and you could realistically drive like a work commute.

But how you engage in that realism is gameplay, is it not? If the game doesn't give me the option to immerse myself in those things, it doesn't have them to begin with, if I have a means of properly roleplaying my character, it's through good gameplay.

How is it? Clunky but still playable?

I'm the opposite. As I've gotten older, the more interested I've become in mechanically driven games. I don't mind a good story, but it's not what I'm looking for in games anymore.

>"why not just watch TV/movies"
The idea of reading a book is something that has never crossed your mind?

If you have to play through the entire game once for it to become non-linear, then I don't think you can call it a non-linear game.

Same way a story is a tool to set up the gameplay.

I know exactly what you mean. I can't even sit back and enjoy the gameplay in games anymore. I seek out any games that look like they have an interesting narrative and nothing else.

What would YOU call an non-linear game then?

Funny thing is, is that despite Sup Forums's constant mantra of "gameplay is the only thing that matters" a good majority of Sup Forumscore is remembered almost exclusively because of the story/world, with the gameplay usually being fairly mediocre.

It’s due in part to a subconscious disappointment in the multiplayer focused side of the Industry. They little to no story but are loaded with boring grinds, cash grabs, and terrible community. Most single player games don’t have any of these three so appeal more over time as the industry continues its trend, the love of story and lore is a side effect. For example Overwatch and Destiny have a lot of lore potential, what little story they have is decent to great, but the have these practices that have soured our experience.

Depends on the genre, really.

If I'm playing single-player RPGs or games that are traditionally very narrative-heavy, then story/lore/atmosphere/internal consistency and other similar things are extremely important.

If I'm playing a multiplayer action/fps/hack-and-slash games in which the objective of the game is to play with other people cooperatively or competitively, then story is not nearly as important as gameplay. However, it can be a really nice bonus.

There's exceptions to both of these, as long-running game titles making drastic alterations to the quality of story and tone can be extremely disappointing as well (i.e. WoW, Diablo series).

It would be retarded if a game world had no linear paths especially with towns that have people traveling from one to the other for economic reasons. naturally people will have constructed roads and paths.

Gameplay is still king, but having a good universe/lore or an engaging story, a good writing and interesting characters is important too. I'm playig through the ME Trilogy for the first time (currently playing through 2) and I'm pleasantly surprised by the universe they crafted.

Its quite the oposite for me. I used to play games mainly for story, but lately i prefer pure gameplay, fucking mario is top for me. I guess its connected to my other hobby - books. Once you read some good classics, Crime an punisment, karamazov brothers, homer or any other good book, you will find game stories childish and ludicrous.

not the same without the gif version

>I would argue the gameplay is not shit

>gameplay = combat

You were talking about world design dummy, not gameplay

talking with NPCs and solving quests, exploring, trading, all that is gameplay. you silly billy. no go run and play while mommy drinks her funny juice.

>it's another episode of user using gameplay as a buzzword
look user, when people hear the word gameplay, they generally think about the combat aspect of a game, the obstacles your character must overcome, that which requires player skill

if you say that a literal walking simulator has "excellent gameplay" just because it's fun to interact around and meet people and see cool colors and stuff, people will get the wrong idea, that stuff is called world design, you gotta separate the categories

for example it's very fun to explore around in planescape torment but the combat is shit, this means that it's more sound to say the world design is great but the gameplay is bad

>when people hear the word gameplay, they generally think about the combat aspect of a game

That's because most people are fucking retarded and think an RPG is just an action game with numbers.