Good ol' Abandonware

[invertin]

There should be a game.

Where you are a time traveler.

And you jump in the way of the bullet.

But there's ragdoll physics.

So you always mess up the jump and JFK gets killed anyway.

If you win you destroy the universe with a time paradox.

[Freshbite]

You know... that's actually more satisfying than killing Nazis.

I am for it!

[zoidberg rules]

They will make games about nearly everything. At this point, I refer you to a game which I believe was called "murderer", in which the main character was a brutal murderer, there was no real story, and no real goal, besides killing innocent people.

My point here is, if somebody wants to male a game about JFK's assassination,they will.

[Endoperez]

There are shocker games such as Postals. Your description is generic enough to describe whole genres of mainstream games. Killing people (=murder)? With a wrench (=brutally)? No plot?

Speaking of plots, isn't it weird that an average game plot is worse than a two-part episode of a generic TV series? "She's a cop with a mysterious past! She's investigating a murder, and it turns out it's linked to her past! Oh my god she's really a queen! Wow congrats youo'res sos coolzzors, pls buy our next game too!"

So, can you think of games with good plots? Something well-written when compared to something you could find in a short story or a short film, instead of, well, "bad aliens/empire/men/war/elves/boss is bad, kill stuff to kill it!" And since this is abandonware thread, lets make it something you haven't played in the last few years.

Planescape: Torment didn't feel that special then, but I've come to realize I haven't come across anything written that well.
Adventure point-n-clicks have been the strongest out of old games I've played. Some King's Quest plots were decent, for instance.

[Renegade_Turner]

I'm not sure what you were on about with the two-part episode of a TV series bit. That made no sense to me. What an odd comparison to make.

I'm not sure if you were saying Planescape: Torment was an adventure game or whether you just decided to throw in the bit about adventure games in the same paragraph.

Games with good writing? Marathon was pretty neat, the setting of Marathon is just about the only thing I enjoyed about the game that much. And the combat was kind of neat. Portal and Bioshock are obvious choices, but since this is for older games I won't go into those. Fallout and Fallout 2, the dark humour that's been ever-present in the series is one of the reasons the old games hold some sort of spark even today. The dialogue choices etc. made the game lots of fun, I think that was the first time something like that had been tried but I'm not sure.

[Endoperez]

I'm not sure what you were on about with the two-part episode of a TV series bit. That made no sense to me. What an odd comparison to make.

Well, games are not close enough to books or movies to be comparable. The best games written don't come close to good movies or books. I believe they come close to short stories - those that give you a glimpse of something weird but don't really get to go that much into detail in there.
I was trying to come up with something that's to movies what short stories are to proper novels. TV series isn't (a single episode of Friends or Lost or Simpsons is trash alone).

Perhaps "a tv miniseries" would have worked better? Something with 3-5 episodes instead of 12 or so.

[invertin]

I never really played games for the story. I do now, and I have for a while, but if you're talking about older games, I never played them for the story. So I wouldn't really know. I never payed attention.

The only game I can remember that even had a plot was Age Of Mythology. *shrug*

[Renegade_Turner]

I'm not sure what you were on about with the two-part episode of a TV series bit. That made no sense to me. What an odd comparison to make.

Well, games are not close enough to books or movies to be comparable. The best games written don't come close to good movies or books. I believe they come close to short stories - those that give you a glimpse of something weird but don't really get to go that much into detail in there.
I was trying to come up with something that's to movies what short stories are to proper novels. TV series isn't (a single episode of Friends or Lost or Simpsons is trash alone).

Perhaps "a tv miniseries" would have worked better? Something with 3-5 episodes instead of 12 or so.

So, in other words, a story can only be good if it's long? I'm not sure what your point is.

It always puzzles me, regardless of me going to the point of inserting bold and purple into my posts, that other people take it out when quoting me. To this end, I've bolded and purpled your text.

[Endoperez]

So, in other words, a story can only be good if it's long? I'm not sure what your point is.

No, my point is that some stories suck, and stories written for games suck more often than not.

Games don't get to go into detail about their plots. The playing distracts from that. The latest Metal Gear Solid tried to spend time telling a story, but that meant the cutscene-gameplay ratio got weird. Most games don't go there, so most games are similar to short stories or something.

[invertin]

RPGs are the exception. Being 90% plot and 10% gameplay.

[zoidberg rules]

Mass Effe-...

Sorry, I almost said it again, I'll try harder to restrain myself in the future...

But if a game is set out and done well enough, there won't be too many cutscenes, but you will still get a pretty good story. At this point I refer you to Modern Warfare (THE FIRST ONE! WHICH ACTUALLY HAD A DECENT LENGTH TO IT'S STORY!) and the Halo series, which, let's admit it here, had a great story, and not too much time was spent watching cutscenes, at least not what I can remember (Halo 3 is the only one I ever really paid much attention to, the first two I only ever played close to, or after, midnight, and ODST never really pulled me in with the story, so my playing of that one mostly consisted of "SHOOT DA MUVERFARKIN ALIENZ!!!!". So yeah...

I sort of started ranting there...ummm...If anybody here can work out what I was meant to be saying, then carry on from that point, if not, I'll be crying in the corner if anybody wants me to look at it again and work it out myself.

[Endoperez]

RPGs are the exception. Being 90% plot and 10% gameplay.

I can't think of a single rpg with less time spent fighting than in plot. Most RPGs are 10% plot and 90% fighting... Or 5% plot, 45% fighting and 45% traveling.

In some JRPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics, if you're good enough you can only fight the plot-related fights and overworld travel is near instant, so you get some plot or story information at the beginning of every fight.

[invertin]

Mass Effe-

TPS-RPG hybrid.

When I said RPG I meant like Final Fantasy. Chrono Cross. Stuff like that.

I believe the original topic of conversation was Abandonware. Let's go back to that.