Interesting trend in mod/game design... Thread

Has anyone noticed the latest trend when it comes to designing games? They fill the game with pages and pages of backstory, but there's very little actual, um, game storyline? They tell all about these grand wars and story leading up to the game, but when you get plopped in-game, it's all "Bad guys, uh-oh, comin for us, blow em-up". It used to be maybe a page or two of backstory, and then boom, you're playing through most of the storyline. Now you're reading it, not playing it.

Anyone agree/disagree?

I agree. Games like that should die. For example, in Half Life, you find out a little about Gordon, then thats it whammo you're slammed into the Black Mesa Complex with tons of monsters. Compared to other games when you hear all about the game, then bang, your finished.

I sure agree with you. I read all these stories that would make good books or plays or movies, but the gameplay is always in a revolution or war 50 years later and 20 paragraphs.

Its probably that people are less inclined to do something about a specific incident, and more about a whole war.

Its also Ironic when I read a huge story and then at the bottom," we r a multplyer m0d!" How will the story matter in multiplayer as much? Your fragging your friends, not reading about napeolean. Looks at Natural-Selection or Counter-Strike, in the Manual's of both you learn the team names, there is a story you can go into in NS, but its never mentioned in game.

Don't you just hate it when they say -> this is my story for my mod..blah...blah..blah. After reading 2 pages of text, they said, its planned to be a multiplayer mod. WTF!?!

i know a couple of mods out there which fall into the cathegory of uhm here we've got the big bad guy wanna destroy all and here the good guys... fill this with papers of twisted bg story and this and that... and the game itself is nothing but strafe-click-jump-run and the story is so predictable that you could fall asleep in front of the screen.

yes, i agree. this is a trend, and an annoying one. many stories would have potential but wasting it on the intro doesn't help much. you like watching hours of introduction movies just for a lame game later? not really. you want to explore the story while you play.

It depends. Like Xenosaga or Metal Gear Solid 2, there's a hell of a lot of story, but plenty of good gameplay to back it up. If other games were unable to accomplish this, then they'd buckle under their own weight.

Let's just say, developers should balance story with gameplay. That way, if we wanted to read a book, we would. We're trying to play a visually-appealing game most of the time

I think there needs to be an increase on Single Player mods. Too many mods are multiplayer and there isn't enough players and servers to go around for them all. That, or the multiplayer mods need to start implementing bots.

The Project Masamune mod is SP/MP. Well, more SP, but you get the idea

We got a 12 page story going, which is pretty good for a mod

ShortCutMan wrote: That, or the multiplayer mods need to start implementing bots.

That should always be a opition always anyway when doing a mod IMO.

'Plenty of gameplay to back it up'... uhh So if a game has a whack-load of backstory, but no actual story progression in the game (just shoot em up missions), but has good gameplay, it's good? Well, I'm sure some people would like that, but I think it's progressing storylines that make a singleplayer game interesting. Where events happen *during* gameplay, and you can see the changes in the game world, etc

Well, that's what you mean. Have you ever played Xenosaga? The Xeno series is always known for its great and epic stories

Or Zone of Enders? and I know you all might laugh but Kingdom hearts had a lot of good backstory elements as well.

Why laugh? If there wasn't a good backstory, it'd just be a bunch of Disney characters running around with Final Fantasy-looking characters, and that wouldn't helped it sell 10 million copies or cause it to become the third pillar of Square-Enix

- Edited By Karuto On Tue 21st, Sep 2004 @ 9:27:46pm

Basically, I think the reason people have a lot of backstory is so they can do something other than actually work on the project.
My mod has about maybe two pages of backstory, and about half a page of that is necessary. I think that's a suitable requirement. You can fit a lot into two pages, without deliving deeply into the "Great Galactic War of 2147".

Here's a tip to all newbie modders: Glance over the stuff that isn't truly necessary to understand the game, and focus only on what is. Don't waste your time creating an elaborate backstory, because no one will read more than two or three pages, unless it's either A) REALLY good, B) EVERYTHING relates to the game, or C) Both.