The best story in a video game ever - Page 9

On October 30 2010 00:04 NukeTheBunnys wrote:
I have to disagree with Krigwin, mostly on the point that a story is only as good as is villain. Yes conflict is the essence of drama, but conflict arises from more then just the protagonist-antagonist relationship. Granted it can be a great source of drama, and I love games with good villains, but in may cases its not even the main source of drama.
Take Enders Game, widely considered one of the best pieces of sci-fi out there, and it doesn't have production value and gameplay to fall back on so whatever you think about it comes only from the story. The main villains, "the buggers," are hardly talked about till the very end of the book, but there is still so much conflict between Ender and his siblings, the other students at battle school, the other teams at the school, and eventually with his own skill, then he finally actually starts facing the buggers. Throughout the book the source of conflict changes repeatedly.
The book is good because there is interesting conflict the whole way through, the characters develop, and because the details of the story are engaging. The main villain is vague, and nebulous in the exact same way the reapers are. You can say that the story has been done a million times before, if you want to get it as generic as possible you can just say its a special kid who is trained from childhood to fight an impossible and unknowable enemy. But you can do this with any story ever conceived. System shock= man creates machine, machine rebels, man has to fight machine. That one line description sounds pretty bad, but the characterization, the details of the plot make it a compelling story.
As for mass effect 2, I think it does has a good story, dispute having a pretty weak main villain. The reason the story is good is because the characters are distinct, and they evolve as the game progresses. There is a huge amount of details to get lost in, the history of the galaxy, the different races, all the different missions. The samara and jacob loyalty missions comes to mind as being particularity awesome. Now you can make them sound lame by saying one is a generic kid is evil, parent must punish, and the other is a son finds out father is a monster, but that really doesn't do them justice, the same way saying the lord of the rings is about some dude that walks really far then gets his finger bitten off.

On October 30 2010 04:32 NukeTheBunnys wrote:
I didn't miss the point, I disagreed with it.

Part of the disagreement is you are thinking of Mass Effect the trilogy as a whole, and I'm thinking of Mass Effect 2. The problem with thinking about the trilogy is that we don't have 1/3 of it yet. I REALLY hope they characterize the reapers more in the third game, and flesh them out more, and I think the thrid game is the place to do it.
In the first game they introduce everything to you, the universe, the races, the tech, the enemy, and your character. The second game is about seeing that your actions from the first game really did absolutely nothing, no one believes you other then Cerberus, and you ally yourself with someone who was an enemy, and is very morally dubious because they are the only help you can get. Its about building your team and fleshing out their characters. All this is setting the last game up to be a massive final conflict with the reapers.
I actually agree that the reapers are currently characterized very poorly, and that so far they make a rather weak main villain. They are currently a nebulous, unknowable threat, but I can name plenty of other stories, especially multi-part stories where this is the case. Enders Game, lord of the rings, The Posleen War series by John Ringo. In all of these the enemy starts out as something big and mysterious and eventually gets more fleshed out and characterized.

How I define a good story is
-Where the characters interesting and did they develop
-Did stuff happen - Has the status quo changed from the beginning

Now Im not saying ME2 has the best story of any game ever, I just think its better then you give it credit for.

As for your disappointment about it being a grand space opera,



you are flying through space fighting on lots of different planets, meeting and having sex with various alien species, dealing with the devil, dealing with interstellar politics, and fighting gigantic space robots that will destroy all life if you do not win, How much more space opera can you get.