Or perhaps, as they say, the best is yet to come.

By Dan on 04.10.08 11:07 am

I agree that it takes forever for the story in KOTR to begin, and the branching elements of it are fairly pathetic. Mostly it’s just notable for one hell of a twist in the narrative.

As far as other games worth mentioning for their stories, I would like to throw out Killer 7 on the Gamecube. It is however one that prizes story over gameplay (which isn’t terribly interesting, or even very good for that matter).

By Jeremy on 04.10.08 11:07 am

Figuring I would never get past my bias against turn-based combat, I once asked someone what the big twist was in KOTOR, so basically there is no surprise left for me.

Also: I am finding the game really, really choppy. The dialog keeps stuttering, and nearly every time I enter a new room, the camera angle changes completely so I suddenly have no idea where I’m facing. Is this a common problem, an issue with playing on the 360, or an issue with a used game?

By Jason on 04.10.08 11:13 am

I haven’t yet had the chance to play any of the games you mention except SW:KotOR. I generally have a hard time playing through a game completely and when I sat down with KotOR a few years ago I very quickly found myself glued to my seat, playing for far too long in a single stretch.

But maybe this was just because I wanted so badly to live in the Star Wars universe and KotOR was the best thing I had come across. I’m hopeless (apparently).

Trying to think back on the story (or any other elements of the game) I can’t really figure out what made it good. So I’ll assume my enjoyment came entirely out of the immersion aspect, entirely separate from the story.

Running around, attacking, manipulating the UI were all poorly-done but it was still enough for me. Maybe people like me were what the game was banking on.

By Bryce on 04.10.08 1:01 pm

I guess that’s possible, Bryce, but I think another aspect of it is that this was a few years ago you’re talking about. I think gamers are willing to let a lot slide for the sake of novelty.

I was just talking to someone tonight about how it sometimes takes a few seconds in Mass Effect for the textures to catch up with the models. He called that unforgivable (or something to that effect). I was perfectly willing to forgive it just because the rest of the game was head and shoulders above what other game stories have been like—but then again, I suspect that I’ll have a lot less patience for that in five years, when that kind of thing has hopefully become more scarce (and game stories are even more super awesome).

Also, I just started Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth tonight, and I’m finding it really great.

By Jason on 04.11.08 3:06 am

A slightly different direction that what you have been playing (which seem primarily a mash-up of RPG and/or FPS), but the Phoenix Wright series for the DS have solid stories, both in the individual cases and arcing over the individual games – and between them, and are lots of fun to play.

By Evan on 04.11.08 4:11 pm

Hm, thanks for the tip, Evan. I tend not to think about my DS when I’m thinking about games with stories, but I should probably get some more use out of the thing.

Also, in case anybody else is interested, I figured I might as well share my Amazon wish list so you know what I meant when I said there was a “deluge of promising releases” this fall:

Too Human (Aug 12) Star Wars: Force Unleashed (Sep 16) Fallout 3 (Sep 28) Left 4 Dead (Sep 30) Resident Evil 5 (Oct 1) Prototype (Oct 28) Fable 2 (Oct 30) Bionic Commando (Oct 31) Splinter Cell: Conviction (Nov 11) Gears of War 2 (Nov 30)

Hopefully I will get a lot of videogames for Christmas again this year.

By Jason on 04.11.08 8:45 pm

I may have mentioned this to you, but I have a secret fear that if I went back to play my favorite games from the 90s that I’d be sorely disappointed.

Right now, I’m convinced that developers threw the ‘story’ part of games under the bus at some point. They made them a lot longer without letting the story elements get any more compelling. A lot of the “length” of RPGs seems to come from tedious leveling, tedious side quests, and tedious plot (leveling, side quests, and plot can all be good things, as long as they are not tedious).

Jason – I’d be interested to see what you think of the first 6 or so hours of chrono trigger (via emulator, I suppose).

By Jordan on 04.20.08 3:41 pm

@Jeremy: so predictable, I knew you’d recommend that before I finished reading the post.

As for games w/ story, I can only recommend ps2 games, so let’s say Disgaea and even Phantom Brave (which does suffer from poor gameplay)

Disgaea is off the wall and great to play through, suffers from some level crunch, but overall for a gameplay that’s tried and true (but perhaps outdated), it’s still the game I can easily go back to again and again (new game + helps)

For Phantom Brave, it suffers from failed mechanics in gameplay, level crunching, and an unbalanced system. Despite that, I still played to the final stage because of the story that actually made me care slightly for a cartoon character and was colorfully presented.

By Chris on 04.20.08 11:36 pm

i will have to agree with the post concerning “old 80′s and 90′s” games. i had recently gotten my hands on the S/NES and Sega emulators. i found that most of the games were really really lame. even some of the ones i used to gush over were just dull. now, perhaps there wasn’t any need to beat the games again that was driving my affection from early childhood. but, i did spend 10 hours yesterday rolling through Zelda: A Link to the Past.

so, is it the game that sucks or just the mentality of the gamer? i think it might have a lot more to do with the gamer than it does with the game itself.

By flummox on 05.05.08 4:46 pm

so, is it the game that sucks or just the mentality of the gamer?

I think you could ask the same thing about any piece of art/entertainment that falls from a celebrated status—does this movie just suck, or did the mentality of the audience change? What about this book? And so on. Or, in other words, I think that there’s no such thing as a product that exists in a vacuum; whether it’s “good” or “sucky” is a function of how relevant audiences and critics find it.

If the majority of the audience at large thinks it sucks, it’s no longer a popular favorite. If the majority of critics and experts think it sucks, it’s no longer a critical success. The best you can say for it then is that it was a “formative” or “seminal” work, like a book that nobody reads anymore but everyone credits for having been the first of its kind.

By Jason on 05.06.08 12:20 pm