Why the obsession with story and characters?

[eskil]

I lost interest.

[ZenErik]

For my RPG experience story, characters, gameplay, music, and to a lesser extent, graphics all matter. Mini games too. An RPG needs balance. I can finish a mediocre RPG that's just engaging enough in every aspect. And I might not finish an RPG with fantastic everything except a boring and tedious battle system that requires dozens of hours of grinding.

[Hatta]

Really, did anyone care about Tex Avery's characters?

[Anayo]

Story is when you take characters and turn them lose in pursuit of a goal. They experience setbacks in the pursuit of this goal. This is why The Hobbit is so interesting. The characters experience a series of trials and perilous adventures before they reach the summit. The audience worries about and roots for a cast occupying a world that doesn't really exist, it's just words on a page cleverly arranged to inspire those feelings.

Characters are characters when they exhibit a reaction that's familiar. For instance Woody would react to a given situation differently than Buzz Lightyear. The two characters even walk and stand differently; you can recognize who they are based solely on their silhouette and mannerisms. Characters are strong when you can recognize them, when you can laugh and say, “Yeah, that's exactly how so-and-so would act in that situation.”

Stat-grinding RPG's are fun to me when they involve some 'rock paper scissors' dynamic where a David could theoretically take down a Goliath if the player sufficiently understands the rules of the game. For instance, I get more of a kick out of watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKfoSz7Nb88 rather than someone who spent lots of time grinding a level 100 mewtwo.

Some RPG's are awful because they have no intricate rules facilitating any strategy, they just boil down to you unleashing one set of numbers against another set of numbers, and the guy with the higher numbers inevitably wins. I disliked Panzer Dragoon Saga for this reason.

The thrill of understanding the rules ties into another dynamic games offer which linear stories don't, namely 'risk vs. reward'. For example I experience a thrill when playing Pac-Man and I risk my neck to let all the ghosts get close to me before I nab the power pill, then I devour all the ghosts to score big points.

Video games also make it possible to manipulate things just for the fun of it. For instance it isn't practical to shoot your friends or blow up buildings or set expensive things on fire, but some games let you do this. People have often laughed at me for throwing items off of shelves and watching them scatter on the floor in Fallout 3, or watching in fascination as Nathan Drake's clothes get wet and dry out again when walking through water in Uncharted.

I think there's four criteria here: characters, story, competition, and the sheer fun of manipulating virtual things. Some video games excel at one or two of these criteria at the expense of others. I think the only games I've played that had truly good characters were the 3D Legend of Zelda games and games by Valve (namely Portal, Half Life 2, and Left for Dead.) Many games are awesome at letting you compete and manipulate virtual things, but they harbor the delusion that they're supposed to have a story when the writers don't really know what the heck they're doing (like Turok and Crysis).

So, basically I agree with the author of this topic. I think modern games either need to tell better stories, or stop taking themselves so seriously and not bother in the first place.

[Erik_Twice]

^Nice post.

To me, it means: sure, the story is good enough to keep me interested but that there is a big design flaw (maybe in the length of the game or the gameplay is too repetitive). I think that is what Norris is getting at basically - and with that I agree.

Yes, yes, I am. Nicely said

It's simply like, woha, what does this bad part of the game acomplish? I'm reminded of Persona 3, which is probably the best JRPG I have played and I can't help but think most of it is just filler. Every game day you have to go to a tower to grind for no reason at all. You could have cut down that part of the game and have only the dungeons around, which are more fun to play but alas, they didn't.


@Hatta

It's no wonder how many threads go down in the drain when you go through the problem of posting pictures instead of simply saying, hey, didn't Tex create Bugs and Daffy Duck? It seems like you actually think that I don't know who Tex Avery is or what shorts he directed instead of simply thinking that all the characters you posted are shallow. Why so passive-aggresive? If you think I'm full of shit, say it to my face, man, I won't hit you.

Droopy and all the MGM characters are shallow. All of them and I'm not even covering only Tex's creations here. They are unidimensional to keep the action as clear and controlled as possible. You can't even get a paragraph written over the personality of any of them.

Daffy and Bugs did not see their personality developed under Tex Avery's reign, they were generic trickster characters. Porky and Elmer aren't characters anymore than Buddy is, either, they were all later developed by other directors like Freleng or Jones in their own cartoons long after Tex left the studio.

He also did not create Bugs Bunny, it was a collaborative effort among several artists and no single person is responsible for his creation.

So no, nobody cares about Tex's characters. Not even himself, you can dig up his own words if you care!

[jfrost]

For what's worth, not even books need plot or characters (Saramago's books come to mind). They can be enhanced dramatically by them, though.

I think games have great potential to have great stories, plots, characters. This potential just seems (generally) to not have been fully realized yet (maybe because of the changes in technology, which alter too much the structure of games, compared to, say, movies or books, where evolutions in technology don't change too much what constitutes them).

[Hatta]

Why so passive-aggresive? If you think I'm full of shit, say it to my face, man, I won't hit you.

If you took my post as some sort of insult, that's entirely your own doing.

Droopy and all the MGM characters are shallow. All of them and I'm not even covering only Tex's creations here. They are unidimensional to keep the action as clear and controlled as possible. You can't even get a paragraph written over the personality of any of them.

And yet, none of the jokes would work without that dry, emotionless character. You could not put Screwey Squirrel in a Droopy cartoon, or vice versa. You don't need to have pages of backstory for characters to be important.

[Zing]

I think problems can arise when the developers are using the video game to tell a story, as opposed to using the story to make a better game.

Xenosaga, anyone?

[chalo 07]

Oh, I didn't say that Fantasia has no plot, rather, that the opening sequence (Toccata and Fugue in D minor) has none but is nice on it's own as said on the film itself.

Anyways, I'm not arguing that you don't often need a plot, rather, I argue than you don't need a good or compelling plot nor interesting characters to make an amazing piece of art but many people think so! Tex Avery could not get a cartoon done with the thinking we have today and that's a shame.

I think the way you posed the question invites my response. Specifically, you were talking about Role Playing games, and I would still contend that you DO need interesting characters and a good plot to be elevated to some sort of "high art" status within the genre. You weren't talking about Pac-man, but Final Fantasy.

"Art," as it is traditionally considered, is selective. So if we are selecting the RPGs that are works of art, as opposed to works of pop culture, we can be choosy about what games we include. It seems to me that the role playing genre does require a good story and memorable characters to be regarded as "Art." Why are people obsessed with the story in RPGs? Well, it seems to just be natural, which I understand is a frustrating contention to work with. But the evidence suggests that the best RPGs have the most memorable characters and story. Be honest, you haven't forgot about Sephiroth. And it wasn't simply FF7s materia system that drove millions to like it so much.

Oh, it doesn't have a monopoly but if you only care about story, it's probably the best medium for it, since you can distill there better than you can do if you spend millions on crappy animation that is not going to be important anyways.

I simply disagree with this. If the novel was the singular best medium to convey a movie, other entertainment forms wouldn't be so much more popular. Perhaps people have become more concerned with other elements of stories, like imagery, that other mediums do better.

[Erik_Twice]

I think problems can arise when the developers are using the video game to tell a story, as opposed to using the story to make a better game.

Xenosaga, anyone?

Here, thanks!

I think the way you posed the question invites my response. Specifically, you were talking about Role Playing games, and I would still contend that you DO need interesting characters and a good plot to be elevated to some sort of "high art" status within the genre. You weren't talking about Pac-man, but Final Fantasy.

I talked of Final Fantasy but only to say it's not a roleplaying game, I think it's a strategy game. A roleplaying game needs characters by definition because you can't rolepaly if there isn't a character.

In Final Fnatasy or Etrian Odyssey or other JRPGs you can't roleplay so they aren't roleplaying games, they are strategy games. Strategy games do not need characters or plot to be good.

"Art," as it is traditionally considered, is selective. So if we are selecting the RPGs that are works of art, as opposed to works of pop culture, we can be choosy about what games we include. It seems to me that the role playing genre does require a good story and memorable characters to be regarded as "Art."

Haha, I have always argued that to define what's art is like defining biweekly or electricity, there are so many opposing definitions that it's pointless and inherently confusing to do so =p

I think a roleplaying game, like the ones you can have with Vampire and GURPS, is going to need good characters because that's one of the defining traits of the medium. Like animation needs good animation, roleplaying needs good things to roleplay.

The problem I have is that people ask story over gameplay in a game and that's bad for the medium.

I simply disagree with this. If the novel was the singular best medium to convey a movie, other entertainment forms wouldn't be so much more popular. Perhaps people have become more concerned with other elements of stories, like imagery, that other mediums do better.

Err, think we are getting into semantics here. Using "story" as "series of events", I doubt anything is a beter medium than print. In a movie you would have to worry about composition and acting and all this stuff. Which is fine, it's good stuff to worry about, the thing is that if you don't care about it, well, why put it in?

Imagine you don't care at all about anything but this happens and then this happens. What would be the best medium for this? It must be print because it can be the most minimalistic, it simply has less things to worry about than the rest. Hell, if you take it to the extreme it wont even be a novel, it would be an article or timeline.

I'm explaining pretty poorly here so bear with me =P

If you took my post as some sort of insult, that's entirely your own doing.

Sorry then.

And yet, none of the jokes would work without that dry, emotionless character. You could not put Screwey Squirrel in a Droopy cartoon, or vice versa. You don't need to have pages of backstory for characters to be important.

Indeed. Tex's characters are functional. Well, everything about him is. They are not interesting, what it's interesting are the gags and how they are stringed together. They are important, sure, but they are not interesting because they are unidimensional.

I also think that one of the greatest things about Tex is how great his hierarchy is. The characters obey the gags, they don't create them like they do in a Chuck Jones cartoon, their whole existence can be built from the gag, while the inverse isn't true.