Gameplay vs Story

[Drasiana]

Copypasta'ing so I don't TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY DERAIL ANOTHER TOPIC LIKE A DICK, I thought it was an interesting point of discussion in response to this,

Star Fox isn't "a shambles" because its stories have sucked. it's "a shambles" because its games have sucked. shitty stories are just a symptom of shitty games. and i should think the absolute first concern of people making a video game should be making a good game. if you can't even make your game fun to play, why the hell should i care about the story?

Uno has a good point but I also don't think it's so black-and-white, especially with the continually evolving state of the game industry and what it produces. This is basically my take on the matter, and feel free to offer your input as well:

The tie between gameplay and story as explained to me in one of the game design classes that I took is the reward system; caring about the characters and the outcome of the story will theoretically compell you to complete it. Of course a game with really shitty gameplay isn't worth an alright story, but the only reason I bothered completing, say, Star Fox Command, was resigning myself to just wanting to see how the story ended (was it worth it? No, not really, but it's no far stretch to assume it human nature to want resolution to these things). Then there's the fact that plot is a heavy factor in most of the "groundbreaking" games that have been released recently; it's become an expectation.

It's also more difficult to determine what makes "good gameplay", aside from basic technical evaluations (ie. does the control scheme work, is the game buggy). A lot of people can admit Star Fox Adventures had a goofy, messed-up story, but they will often still defend the game from the stance that they found it fun to play. I think the weakest aspect of the Star Fox gameplay has been repetition, and interestingly, fixing this ties wholly into the story. Example:

Star Fox 64's individual missions varied in goal, thus the gameplay for each stage was slightly different. The goals included "fly through stage and beat the boss", "fight Star Wolf and disarm the bomb", "defend the Great Fox from missiles", "destroy the Venomian supply train", "find and save Slippy" and "figure out the source of pollution on Aquas". All were quite varied from one another, and each stage accomplished something different. They didn't require a butt-ton of script to do so, but the story of each level is what gave them distinguished and non-repetative (mostly) purpose.

Meanwhile, Star Fox Adventures relied on tediously tracking down objects to accomplish minute goals, and was most interesting when the gameplay defied this (eg. the Speeder chases, helping the dinosaurs escape Dragon Rock). Assault usually defected to "shoot all the hatchers to win", with very little escalation in between, and some of the most interesting plot sequences happened off-screen or during cutscenes. When I say escalation I refer to the driving up the stakes within a single level, and I don't feel that Assault adequately accomplished that; rather, the stages played at an even plane of difficulty and severity until the boss stage was reached (for the most part; there are exceptions, and there is the fact that Assault had way fewer stages than 64). 64 also followed a more episodic story structure as opposed to Assault's three acts, so it is a little more difficult to contrast them in that respect, but that was just my impression. However, Assault's structure did work to a disadvantage here because it seemed like it wanted to be a movie; the gameplay was padding, when it should have been a necessity.

Now, these story goals alone were not what made Star Fox 64 fun; the level design, control system, music, enemies and etcetera definitely were main contributors to the entire experience. However the way I see it is that the story goals are the springboards from which you mould the gameplay into something interesting.

Of course, not every game needs a good story (ie. Team Fortress 2 or anything with Mario in it) but those games are presented in a format that don't necessitate a story (even though TF2 kind of sprouted one with the comics). Star Fox always kind of has required a story, albeit a simplistic one (though despite the simplicity of the SNES game, the corresponding comics went far more in-depth). It doesn't have to be overly complicated to work, though, which is something people seem to generally forget.

tl;dr aka DRAS SHUT UP ALREADY: Games like Star Fox that are set up to facilitate a narrative are at their best when the gameplay and story compliment each other (SF64), rather than conflict with one another (Command and Assault).

[Harlow]

It really depends of the experience you want. There are some people that want a more intricate, deep story, like a virtual book. And other who just want great fun. I think I'm on the gameplay's side, but a incoherent story will substract overall points.

[Drasiana]

Yeah. It again just depends on the style of game you're looking for. I mean, I can play Robot Unicorn Attack forever and that doesn't exactly require any depth...:V

My problem with Star Fox is that it tries to have a super srs deepe storee and it just falls flat on its face and causes friction with the gameplay.

[Redeemer]

If gameplay is repetitive, I get bored and pissed off. I like variety, and the occasional challenge. Story is very important, especially seen as I love game series such as Zelda, Legacy of Kain and Grandia. I love Dragon Age (so so so much), but mostly for its story. The gameplay tends to get a bit monotonous, and sometimes this makes me see certain levels as chores.

[Drasiana]

I got that impression of Dragon Age, too. I only rented it, so I couldn't complete it ($12/rental, no money, aaa), but I found listening to Alistair and Morrigan (sp?) bicker in the background was way more interesting than the actual gameplay.

[Redeemer]

Oh yeah, I love listening to the characters. Plus I'm an Alistair fangirl but that's not the point.

But Dragon Age is definately something for story-lovers. It's epic on so many levels. Just expect to see similar levels and combat. But in my opinion it's worth it. :3

[Drasiana]

It's a good example of why story is increasingly important in games. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, L.A. Noire, Assassin's Creed...most of the biggest names in games right now are noted for their stories. Even Skyrim had a much tighter bunch of stories than Oblivion did (but is also fun to just dick around in on its own right, being that it's a style of game that facilitates that).

Story can't really be ignored in games anymore, with a handful of genre-excused exceptions.

[Harlow]

Story's now as an essential part of a game, but it depends on the creator of the game how important it really is.

Do they want an intricate, book-like game? Or you just want your fun, fun game not being stumbled by a cruddy story? Or you want to play Pac-Man?

[CrypticQuery]

Speaking of the story-vs-gameplay argument, a good game to bring up is Heavy Rain. There is almost no gameplay whatsoever in Heavy Rain, but the story and minimal inputs allow the player to be sucked in and taken for a wild ride. I would come to the conclusion that a balance of deep storytelling with compelling gameplay is ideal, but one side can be emphasized more with potentially impressive results.

[Mr-Chris]

Gameplay > Story any day. Look at FF XIII for example (no offence to fans of that game , at least I think it's that one)

However, a good story won't go amiss. I love games like Zelda, Metroid and just about any RPG! Good stories help immerse yourself into the game too.

[Drasiana]

That's an example of a bad story, though, not story in general. A lot of people liked neither the story nor gameplay in that game.

[Redeemer]

Gameplay > Story any day. Look at FF XIII for example (no offence to fans of that game , at least I think it's that one)

However, a good story won't go amiss. I love games like Zelda, Metroid and just about any RPG! Good stories help immerse yourself into the game too.

FF XIII was just a shit game.

[Fluxy]

XIII wasn't as good as the previous Final Fantasies, sure, even I can admit that, but it definitely was not a 'Shit Game'.

And I also have to agree on the Heavy Rain comment. Got that game the week after it came out, loved it completely and thought the story was amazing. Would I rather have spent money on a game like that then FF XIII? You bet, because the focus was just so much better, in my opinion, on Heavy Rain and what it was going for, compared to a game like XIII where it tried doing quite a few new things, and not fully able to pull off many of them.

Both are good games. Just because one is obviously higher rated and loved though doesn't make the lesser a bad game. Just not as well done.

[unoservix]

Uno has a good point but I also don't think it's so black-and-white, especially with the continually evolving state of the game industry and what it produces.

of course, if i'm too busy swearing at your game because of a wonky camera, or nonsensical controls, or having to go on yet another insipid fetchquest, or you decided that for extra realism's sake you were going to make my weapon jam in the middle of combat, or if i want reinforcements i have to contort my fingers into unnatural positions to enter an MC Escher-esque code meant to simulate the bureaucratic red tape and levels of authorization through which i would have to wade in the real world, or you wanted the price of potatoes in Latvia to somehow cripple my RTS game army's ability to construct additional pylons, or so on, then i'm not going to be immersed in your story anyways.

so in other words, if you're going to go worrying about the story, you'd better have got the gameplay at least done competently enough to be unnoticable in the course of playing the game.

[Vy'drach]

It really depends what type of game and how it's handled.

Let me tell you of a game called Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.

Quite a successful game, got five sequels. Eight if you count the Gameboy games that went by the same names (different game/story though). Odd thing about this game, is that outside of the instruction manual, there was no story. At all. it plopped you in the middle of the jungle with a knife and a bow, let you run amok as you killed dinosaurs, large insects, poachers (or whatever those humans are), voodoo tribes, deer, monkeys, wild boar, and all that good stuff. You collected keys that you had no idea what they did beyond the message of "X world key found, Y keys left to find" or however it was worded. Randomly, portals to another dimension or something would open, and you'd go into a challenge area that usually consisted of a gauntlet of traps to avoid, but doing so led to some nice items. That was basically the whole game. The who/what/when/where/why wasn't explained in-game. Turok 2: Seeds of Evil came out and added an in-game story to the amazing gameplay, and is generally considered the best of the Turok line.

On the flip-side, there's games out there with stories so deep and compelling that they draw people in against the odds. One such game, for me, is Warcraft 3. I do not typically care for RTS games, but because I knew the story and characters of Warcraft, I came to play and love Warcraft 3, not for the gameplay, but the story. The Warcraft story, up until Burning Crusade in WoW, was fantastic. How each faction was connected with eachother, despite how peculiar it seems that they would be at all. How Orcs, Tauren, Undead, Trolls, Humans, Dwarves, Night Elves, Gnomes, Blood Elves High Elves, Goblins, Worgen, Dragons, Furbolgs, Elementals, Elder Gods, Demons, Titans, and all other manner of creature relate to one another.

Without that story, I wouldn't of played Warcraft 3. Without that story, I would of quit World of Warcraft long ago. Only reason I even played the Frozen Throne expansion was because Queen Alexstrasza, the Life-Binder, She Who is Life, Dragon Aspect of life, leader of the Red Dragonflight, was in it and a friendly NPC and the leader of a faction. And less importantly than that, to interact with the Lich King.

[Drasiana]

of course, if i'm too busy swearing at your game because of a wonky camera, or nonsensical controls, or having to go on yet another insipid fetchquest, or you decided that for extra realism's sake you were going to make my weapon jam in the middle of combat, or if i want reinforcements i have to contort my fingers into unnatural positions to enter an MC Escher-esque code meant to simulate the bureaucratic red tape and levels of authorization through which i would have to wade in the real world, or you wanted the price of potatoes in Latvia to somehow cripple my RTS game army's ability to construct additional pylons, or so on, then i'm not going to be immersed in your story anyways.

Hence why I mentioned cut-and-dry technical issues (controls, camera, repetition).

Have you ever actually played a game like the rest of what you mentioned, though? IF so, ouch.

[unoservix]

but that's not just cut-and-try technical issues. it goes to level design, weapons balance, enemy programming, controls...it's at least half of your game.

case in point: how much would you really have cared about Star Fox 64's story if it had had Adventures' gameplay from the Arwing sections? same purpley asteroids everywhere, same enemies, same objective, sluggish controls, lack of dynamism in the whole thing? would you have played through the game long enough to discern the story if the gameplay had been that bad? would you have cared about that story long enough to keep thinking about it even though you were done with the game?

[Drasiana]

Now, these story goals alone were not what made Star Fox 64 fun; the level design, control system, music, enemies and etcetera definitely were main contributors to the entire experience. However the way I see it is that the story goals are the springboards from which you mould the gameplay into something interesting.

cough

Part of where Adventures' flight levels failed, however, is where one of my previously-stated reasonings for the story as contributing to the level dynamics of 64:

Star Fox 64's individual missions varied in goal, thus the gameplay for each stage was slightly different. The goals included "fly through stage and beat the boss", "fight Star Wolf and disarm the bomb", "defend the Great Fox from missiles", "destroy the Venomian supply train", "find and save Slippy" and "figure out the source of pollution on Aquas". All were quite varied from one another, and each stage accomplished something different. They didn't require a butt-ton of script to do so, but the story of each level is what gave them distinguished and non-repetative (mostly) purpose.

The flight levels in Adventures boiled down to "fly to the next area because we need Arwings in here to get away with calling this a Star Fox game"; they suffered entirely from lack of imagination (well and the laser effect was kind of shitty).

Regardless, though, didn't you play Adventures to the end? What compelled you to do so?

I've very rarely encountered a game where the technical aspects were so broken that it made the game unplayable, regardless of story. Though Superman 64 comes to mind. It really is a no-brainer that a game should, in fact, work properly just as it's a no-brainer that you should be able to see the picture and hear the soundtrack in a movie.

[unoservix]

you're missing the point. i'm not talking about the requirement that the game should function. i'm talking about the requirement that the game should be fun to play. the story is, at best, only part of that issue. your game with cumbersome controls and nonsense objectives might function perfectly and still not be fun to play--like, say, Adventures--and if that's the case, then how is your story going to immerse with a distraction like that?

case in point: the criticisms of Duke Nukem Forever were more or less evenly spaced between the gameplay and the story, and in some cases the lines between them were fuzzy. you can't write off good gameplay as "a no-brainer." it is not; it is, in fact, what makes video games different from other forms of art.

posing this as a question of "gameplay vs story" thus isn't very useful. in essence, a video game is an interactive experience, and the gameplay is what gets at that. the story is there to help, and if your story sucks, that'll probably influence whether or not the gameplay sucks--but if the gameplay sucks, then the whole game has bigger problems than its story, whether or not the story works.

so either way, i don't think trying to separate gameplay and story makes any sense anyways. the story of a video game (or at least those video games that involve stories) serves the interactivity by giving the player a reason to play--but the essence of the video game is its interactivity. take away the story and you've still got a video game; take away the interactivity and you no longer have a video game.

[chaos_Leader]

My final answer would be "It depends."

Just like Uno said, story is a piece of the gameplay experience, a component. While it is utterly fantastic when all the components work effectively with eachother and deliver a highly satisfying gameplay experience, sometimes some of the components fall short. Depending on the style of game, and the tastes of the player, sometimes these shortfalls can be overlooked, and other times they make the player's gameplay experience intollerable at which point any number of irate ragequit scenarios may ensue, pick your favorite.

To use the Adventures example: I thought the story premise was completley goofy and nonsensical, but I found myself compelled to play it nonetheless. The game presented me with a series of challenges throughout, which I enjoy solving and overcoming. I was okay with overlooking the nonsense story in order to pursue the action-adventure "Zelda-like" challenges set in front of me. That's just me though, other people have their own opinons. Some people for example can't ignore the stupid poorly made nonsense story. That's okay, I've had many moments like that of my own, I can understand...

Yeah, it depends.

I wish I could give a more concrete standing on where I am about this topic, but short of listing every game I've played and giving a personal review of each one (nobody wants that), that's pretty much what I can give.

[Drasiana]

you're missing the point. i'm not talking about the requirement that the game should function. i'm talking about the requirement that the game should be fun to play. the story is, at best, only part of that issue. your game with cumbersome controls and nonsense objectives might function perfectly and still not be fun to play--like, say, Adventures--and if that's the case, then how is your story going to immerse with a distraction like that?

The problem is that besides technical issues what constitutes fun is annoyingly subjective. As I pointed out some people will defend Adventures for the very reason you dislike it so much, that being the gameplay, which many people enjoyed. I honestly didn't think the gameplay was that bad myself; repetative and without replay value, yes, but I never thought it was bad (except for the Arwing levels, mind you).

I hate most military-style FPS gameplay but I can't, objectively, deem such styles of play as "bad", even though they can't hold my interest for a minute.

And still, again, even though you hated Adventures so much, why did you ever bother completing it?

you can't write off good gameplay as "a no-brainer." it is not; it is, in fact, what makes video games different from other forms of art.

Well, that's not what I said; I said it should work

posing this as a question of "gameplay vs story" thus isn't very useful. in essence, a video game is an interactive experience, and the gameplay is what gets at that. the story is there to help, and if your story sucks, that'll probably influence whether or not the gameplay sucks--but if the gameplay sucks, then the whole game has bigger problems than its story, whether or not the story works.

This is all basically true, yes.

The OP, however, generally assumes the game functions and is of an average state of playability, and whether games in the style of Star Fox would have the same sense of engrossment without a story to accompany it; whether story hinders or helps a game. Not to debate what makes in of itself interesting gameplay. My bad if that wasn't clear, though, the topic itself is sort of ambiguous due to the variety within the medium.

[unoservix]

what constitutes "a fun game to play" is highly subjective, but the expectation that you have "a fun game to play," or at least "a game that does not turn out to be un-fun to play," seems pretty universal.

but now this is turning into a big loaded question. "in games where there's a story and the gameplay doesn't matter, does the story matter?" well, yes, obviously. but that doesn't really tell us anything.

and i finished Adventures because it was a Star Fox game and i felt obligated to finish it--or in other words, because i was stupid. and yet, ironically, taken on its own Adventures didn't really have a particularly terrible story. it only turns that way when you look at it next to the other games and when you look at it from the perspective of a hardcore Star Fox fan who wants narrative continuity between the games.

[Thu'um]

Actually some of the best games i have ever played have really basic game play but make it up with a wonderful story. At that point it doesn't even matter how shitty your game play is, you will be entertained by the story. However, i am not gonna kick game play out of the equation. it certainly is quite important. But what game play "is" becomes deluded and even further so when comparing different game types. Many would say that the game play of Minecraft is mind blowing, but is it really? it has no fantastic graphics or super creative aspects to it. But what it does have is an original and fun idea that is entertaining. However would the same specifics work in a game oh....like battle field 3. game play in battle field 3 is highly based around its high graphics and realism. Is the game play between them anything alike?

To address the star fox series, Game play for 64 was not sort of revolutionary and top notch of its time. where as the game play for assault was poor for the year it came out and seemed like it was poorly invested in. Now to be honest.... i liked 64, but its game play wasn't what made me love the game, but rather its characters and playing as fox in his struggle to save laylat and avenge his father. in Assualt i didn't feel the same importance of completing the game. i was simply fighting the Apariods because it was what i had to do and didn't feel near the satisfaction of achieving that goal.

Adventures is a whole other topic and i don't feel right saying "it wasn't a good game because it wasn't star fox" and don't see it as fair to compare the too.

[Drasiana]

and i finished Adventures because it was a Star Fox game and i felt obligated to finish it--or in other words, because i was stupid. and yet, ironically, taken on its own Adventures didn't really have a particularly terrible story. it only turns that way when you look at it next to the other games and when you look at it from the perspective of a hardcore Star Fox fan who wants narrative continuity between the game's franchises.

Maybe not "terrible", but certainly on the lower end of mediocre. It had very little semblance of cause and effect, character arc was inconsequential to the physical procession of the story, and other events didn't line up the way they probably should have. That isn't from a Star Fox fan perspective, just an actual story perspective; additional gripes come to the forefront as it's examined as part of a series but on its own it's still very weak.

Game play for 64 was not sort of revolutionary and top notch of its time.

Er...are you saying it was or wasn't revolutionary? Because if you're saying it wasn't, I disagree; it introduced the Rumble Pak and was one of the first big titles to include full voice acting.

But I agree with the rest of your post.

[Harlow]

I do think 64's was one of the most culture-impacting games of it's time and of the console itself. Try naming 5 N64 games, SF64 most likely be one, next to Super Mario or Ocarina of Time or... f***, I want to play 64. I want to play Super Nintendo too

I liked Adventures. Even if I found it tedious sometimes and it really pains me that we don't get to fight Scales, It was one fo the few games fo that kind I found myself playing multiple times.

Game it's like food. You can whine about some parts not being great and let that ruin your experience... or you can just STFU and enjoy it :D