Maybe Square will turn around and start churning out great yarns this year with FF13... oh wait, that's coming out in 2010, my bad.

Storytelling? Pure storytelling is done best by a movie. In a videogame, you're playing it and supposed to have fun. While it may be convey a nice story, I wouldn't say it's better than a movie. Of course unless the video game is purely a medium which it's nothing but to convey the story (God forbid art games, especially that game of an old woman walking in a park, forgot the name of the game.)

This probably would have carried more weight coming from Square or Enix a decade ago.

Agreed. The potential exists, the talent currently does not.

To be fair, Star ocean 4 does have some decent story moments to it.

The thing is, it also had some bad plot holes occasionally, and I still cant get my head around why 90% of the message boards I've sene are absolutely pissed off that edge actually feels bad after certain events in the game and has a period of self-loathing and low confidence rather than just laughing it off and raping reimi in front of the entire crew for a laugh.

In some ways, i think we don't see better plots in games because when a believable character moment like that happens, where a character feels actual remorse for an action, a lot of gamers these days write them off as being emo tards who should "suck it up"

The potential is there but the games industry is still waiting for its Citizen Kane.

After everything released after Square-Enix merged, there's not a whole lot backing up that statement. Incorporating the same crap into every game IS the problem here. You would think they would treat their better-known franchises with more respect, but Star Ocean: The Last Hope is aptly named.

Square-Enix has really dropped the ball and Atlus seems to be aiming to pick it back up. Persona 3 and 4 together are better than all the crap that Square-Enix has released since Dirge of Craperus.

This would seem like a lot of Square-Enix bashin' time, but I'm just another disappointed fan that has stopped supporting this corporate beast when their games just don't cut it anymore.

Nah, every medium has there own strengths and weaknesses. Video games can't recreate the human emotion you get out of actors, and film doesn't have the interactivity. No one is objectively better than the other.

That being said, I wish videogames would stop trying to be movies.

I should be fair: The talent could very well be there already (maybe even working at Square Enix) but it would take several small miracles to get around upper-level decision makers who favor the bottom line over quality narratives. These are the people that wouldn't know a good story even if focus groups and the marketing department joined forces and made a pretty flowchart.

It'll happen someday, but I don't expect it for a while. Video games are currently in the late high school/early college phase of life--fleeting moments of depth and maturity drowning in tits and pretentiousness.

Man. Final Fantasy 12 was ace. But they've pretty much been churning out crap since then. They need to get back on their signature series!

Nothing good since FF12, it was beautiful.

I want Mischief Makes on DS ffs. Well Treasure was way more involved but still.

Romancing SaGa and SMT: Nocturne say sup.

RPG stories are generic garbage 90% of the time. Anyone that disagrees probably doesn't read many novels. Not that the potential isn't there, but as of now? No. Not even close to truly well written.

Same for shooters, action, dating sims, etc.

Oh right, Square, your completely linear deviantArt-worthy stories are such better stories than any movie.

Its been done, just not by Square.

And it probably won't happen since Square is perfectly happy to keep making the same shitty, cookie cutter drivel they always make because it sells so much.

@ Midget

Did we play a different Star Ocean 4? The story in that game was just awful.

I think its possible, but no-ones done it correctly yet. And while i love Squares games and the stories within them (ONLY exception is FF X-2), i agree with Jim that a truly ground-breaking storytelling isnt gonna come from them, because they do it wrong.

Nearly everyone so far has separated the story from the game. The story, no matter how good, is an excuse to play the game. You watch the intro, you need to do something because of it. You come across another cutscene, you go do something else. The FF games are the perfect example of this.

Of course, Im not sure how to do it right (hence im not an award winning game developer... yet :P).

i think storytelling goes in the following order: books -> videogames -> movies... what movie can rival the stories in some of the older final fantasy games? movies with brilliant stories aren't too common, i feel, yet the same goes for videogames nowadays. i feel like it's true that videogames really draw you in... even something like zone of the enders has a better more engaging story than most movies. of course most videogames have shit and/or no storylines, but i do feel like the fact that you can have 30-40 hours of gameplay in a videogame makes it so much easier to have a much more complicated story than you can in a 2 hour movie.

Honestly, I don't think videogames can ever best movies or even books at telling a compelling story efficiently. Most people cite the interactivity of videogames as a plus for telling a story, but the truth is that that aspect is what takes you out of a story. It's hard to feel for a character that is not in control of his own actions. A few brief cutscenes is all we see of the characters independence from the player, and that simply isn't enough. People need characters that are entirely their own; living, breathing, and making decisions entirely of their own free will.

Another thing is that video games require far more effort from the viewer than any other medium. Movies require that you only sit and watch, books require that you make time to read (a mountainous effort for some I suppose...), while games will PUNISH you before you can see what happens to the characters. That is not conducive to telling a story. The best stories are the most accessible ones.

Infinite Undiscovery is like the exact opposite of Final Fantasy title-wise. First you got Infinite versus Final, which is pretty obvious. Then you have Undiscovery versus Fantasy. An undiscovery is like the opposite of fantasy, because when you discover something, it's like an adventure, like a fantasy. When you undiscover something, it's like the opposite of that. The end.

Crisis Core, Kingdom Hearts series, and TWEWY are the best things have done this decade. Not much else.

There are still good RPGs like Lost Odyssey, Tales of Vesperia, Mother 3, Persona 4 and other SMT games.

I think it all depends on the person, really. I prefer video games to movies because I like having the control of the story at my own pace. But I'm not much of a movie person, anyways.

@ Midgetsnowman : Because people are stupid and totally missed WHY he was acting that way. A good character acts that way when he really feels bad. Blowing up the world.. seriously. Who wouldn't fucking get the way he did? It isn't like he stayed that way the entire time. People just have to bitch and whine about everything.

One of the main reasons games have more potential for story is they're length. While movies are generally panned for having the excessive length required for a deep story, video games are often praised for their lengths of 50+ hours. It's much easier to tell a great story when you have more than tenfold the time allowed for films.

@Kyo, No, I just felt it did have some good plot elements that were not strung together very well or even were downright cut down by other plot elements. It had the potential to be a good story, if they had just stopped making illogical decisions. Case in point, the fact that Edge at least reacted sensibly to fucking up majorly as opposed to how the rest of the crew were able to laugh off 6 fucking BILLION deaths in the span of a couple of minutes. And then act indignant that edge would have the gall to lash out, be emotionally unstable or otherwise emotionally dead after what happened.

Further exacerbated by fanboy tards screaming about how they hate edge for being an emo.

It's all preference, we've all tasted of bad movies, books and games. And we (most of us) have tasted of excellent movies, books and games. I prefer a good video game over any other form of media for story telling. I just finished Crisis Core a few weeks ago. Thought it was a great story with great characters, development, excellent soundtrack (this is huge for me) that totally drew me in. The game moved me emotionally, the game play wasn't the best I've played but it didn't frustrate me nor push me away from continuing the game, I think a game like this proved Yoshinori Yamagishi's point, however, it's all personal preference. If I want to play a game for gameplay I'll play me some Street Fighter IV. It is funny though, games are either game play driven with a story to keep the game play going, or story driven with game play to keep the story going. Unfortunately 98% of the time one of the two suffers.

Someday videogames WILL exceed movies, because the player is literally a part of the game world; your decisions have an effect. The hard part is to break down that barrier, between the player and character on screen, and to embrace the COLLABORATIVE nature of the game itself. It will happen, but so often the actual game elements are what actually get in the way. I also think that, believe it or not, the length of video games work against them sometimes. Time =/= emotional investment; why do movies usually move us more than television seris? At some point the punchiness of a two hour movie is more accessible than a 40 hour slog through a video game, and that IS a big factor in emotional investment.

movies are great, but the 40 hour "slog" is amazing for character development. A "great movie" you don't want to end, but a "great game" doesn't have to end (as soon)... I prefer the slog, and if most people tried the "slog" on a "Great game" they'd probably enjoy it.

Square also has publicly admitted that they have a set formula for creating their main characters.

"I'll resist the urge to laugh at the idea of effective storytelling coming from somebody involved with a tri-Ace game."

I'll admit, tri-Ace's only real effective storytelling comes from the Star Ocean series (Infinite Undiscovery, from what I hear is crap), however, each new Star Ocean becomes progressively better in Story Telling by utilizing cutscenes better and character interactions as well. Character interactions is a major part of story telling besides the protagonist, antagonist, and the climax. Also, it can lead to a more complex climax. However, this is just my opinion.

@Sakuchan,

I agree. I must admit, it felt like he was dragging it on, but Edge was like that for a reason and after awhile I understood more why he was acting all down and out. Which Edge's attitude adversely affects the game. I.E. Reimei's soon-to-be-problem and the character's reactions.

If I cared about Star Ocean in any way, I'd probably be pissed at people publicly discussing exploding planets and whatnot. Just sayin'.

As for video game storytelling, the biggest problem is pretty simple: devs are usually so focused on making the game a "good" experience for the player that they feel compelled to take fewer risks with storytelling. As a result, you get a lot of cliches that could be easily subverted but aren't, and very few genuinely surprising moments of real emotion. As long as developers confuse positive emotions with real emotions, we won't see nearly as many truly great stories in games as we see in other mediums. Think about, for example, how you felt when Aeris died. Now imagine that you could have saved her, but didn't make it in time. Oh, and it autosaves as soon as she dies. I submit that that moment would have been substantially more affecting. It would not, however, be a moment most devs would dare put into their games, because that would "negatively affect the player experience."

Not that gamers aren't to blame as well; the Star Ocean example is a good one. Equally important is the example of a game like Dead Spsce; I was often amused to see reviewers mention that Isaac felt "like a glorified repairman" at certain points, completely missing the fact that Isaac's job is that of - shock horror! - a repairman. But because the game didn't go out of its way to "make you feel like a badass," it was criticized.

So yes, this idea that the player is entitled to "feeling good" throughout a game is messing up otherwise interesting stories, and I won't stand for it any more.

[rousingspeech]Now who's with me!?[/rousingspeech]

Call me in twenty years once someone makes a video game story that's not a juvenile power fantasy in a AAA title.

Sakuchan, calm down. People can have their own opinions about something without being wrong.

Yeah, it's kinda weird hearing this come from SE, a company that hasn't been able to release an RPG as great as FF10 (FF12 was good as a game, but definitely not as an FF game. The characters were shit, and there was barely any good dialogue (kinda like SO4 lol)).

Edit: I meant them not being able to release a great game since FF10. Blah.

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