Great rant Anayo. It reminds of something that
Jonathon Blow (creator of Braid) has recently identified as one of the fundamental dilemmas that videogame developers have to contend with: narrative and gameplay are often at odds with each other.
Too much dialogue and exposition and the gameplay begins to suffer. Too much gameplay, and the story has to be put on hold while you punch 200 people in the face, which also doesn't make a lot of sense in the story. It's not clear what the best solution is to this dilemma. Some have tried to merge the gameplay with the narrative to varying degrees of success. Most notably, the Half Life series changed the way a lot of people viewed story telling in games. The main characters ran beside you, talked with you during the action, and set up great backdrops where you could see what was going on in city 17 by little setups where you encounter the columbine pushing people around or you see announcements being broadcast on giant televisions. You never have to stop and watch the cutscene in Half Life games. This works pretty well. I agree with Gamerforlife though that the silent protagonist idea doesn't work very well. It's an interesting idea in theory, but it turns out that it's not really easy to graft your own personality onto your game avatar, especially when you have no way of talking to all the people talking to you.
Another game that did videogame storytelling really well in an unconventional way was Shadow of the Collossus. There is actually very little said in Shadow of the Colossus, but I consider it one of the best stories ever told through the videogame medium. Wander's true love is in a deathly slumber. Shadowy figures explain that she may wake again if Wander will topple the sixteen garagantuan colossi that inhabit the world. That, and a little twist at the end, is all there is to the basic plot. Everything else about the story is told through gameplay and atmosphere, and Shadow of the Colossus does this part extremely well. It is a grand sweeping adventure that does not need to be narrated, but experienced. You travel the large expanses of land through various terrain seeking out the colossi. Each one you encounter feels exciting. You've traveled for so long without seeing any signs of life, and then suddenly ove a hilltop you spy the top of the giant head of a colossus. They all appear ancient, primitive, and majestic with their own sort of grace. One can imagine there are long stories behind each colossi, but the game leaves that to your imagination. It's one of the shining examples of story being told THROUGH gameplay. There is a basic premise to set you on your way, and then you play out the adventure. Unlike Contra though, this game gets you to care about your enemies. They are the sole inhabitants of the landscape, so they appear to be of no harm to anyone, unless they killed off everyone, but that's never explained. Instead, you're left with this nagging feeling that maybe it's not your place to kill them, but since it is supposedly the only way to bring your love back to life, you carry on anyway. You feel emotion in this game and moral conflict. That is because the game is more than gameplay. It is gameplay with hints of story woven into it. It leaves you with the responsibility to figure out what is going on.
I think some of the key elements to telling a good story in a videogame have to do with how the gameplay affects emotion. Ack brought up Silent Hill 2. The control you have over your character is kind of awful in that game and in other early survival horror games like Resident Evil 1 & 2. Yet, the bad controls really play into the horror aspect. You have less control. You can't do a spinning jump and fire Contra style "S" shot in all directions to clear your path. You feel more helpless, which fits perfectly with a feeling of fear and dread, which is what Silent Hill 2 wants you to feel. They want you to dread that damn radio noise because it means another fight that you are ill equiped for is about to happen.
The focus on gameplay has emphasized being fun for a long time now. I think that fun factor just doesn't fit into a lot of storylines though. You can't be as graceful as a Street Fighter character when you are supposed to be an ordinary guy like in Silent Hill. You can't spend 10 hours collecting chickens for some old lady in the village while Ganon is busy raping princess Zelda and burning down the countryside. So many games just alternate between serious story and fun gameplay and that just doesn't create a cohesive experience. You play a little bit of a fun game, then you watch a little bit of a movie, then you play a little bit more, then you watch a little more movie. That was cool in Ninja Gaiden or Final Fantasy VII when we hadn't really seen games strive for anything so cinematic before, but for this medium to really grow up we've got to evolve past that to something where the game and the story are one cohesive whole that allows videogames to tell a story in a way that only a videogame can.
