The BEST video game stories are better than MOST film and television. (Poll)

[fourfourfun]

I feel the interactivity of the medium takes gaming to a place that TV and film cannot go, and that is incredible. I got an absolute punch at the end of Untitled Goose Game and very few films I've watched have had that impact. Same with something like Journey.

At a pure narrative level, I would say 99.9% of games are lesser shadows of their TV/Film counterparts (at best, they are a middling fill the schedule Netflix series), while Visual Novels have the same standard applied when compared to written media. They just don't measure up, but they shouldn't have to. That level of exclusionary scrutiny to a game is unfair on the medium.

(Edit: basically an alternative way of stating the above quoted post! So I feel there is validity there.)

 

[Ailanthium]

Absolutely, and I don't think you even have to limit it to the very best examples. There are dozens of games that I honestly believe have better stories than the majority of film and television. There are certain advantages that are unique to video games that allow writers to emphasize certain things in the same way television allowed new avenues for artistic expression as compared to books. While player engagement can stifle the pacing of a linear story, it can also make the player better sympathize with the main character as someone who shares, in some small part, their struggles.

Spoiler: Red Dead Redemption 2 Spoilers

The death of your horse in Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, is especially moving for players who have relied on that horse for a vast majority of the game. However, player engagement also means that the horse that dies could just be some random horse you stole after your own horse jumped off a cliff. That uncertainty doesn't exist in other mediums!

Visual novels like Steins;Gate and other choice-based narratives like Telltale's The Walking Dead (which at the very least is better than several seasons of the show) succeed at something books and televisions have never quite managed: the choose-your-own-adventure. It's not that they don't exist in other works, but video games are a more fluid and adaptable format for them. Several of these works are better written-- or at the very least have better stories-- than the majority of film and television.

 

[jem]

It depends.

If you're comparing video games which try to tell a cinematic linear story then I'd say no.

At best video games which try to ape cinema have fairly average stories in comparison to TV/film. The inherent problems with pacing and dissonance between gameplay and story is too limiting.


If you're talking about games which actually harness the medium, such as allowing for interactivity in the actual story telling, then I'd say they can't really be compared. I've enjoyed video game stories just as much as TV/film, but they're very different experiences.

 

[Alaxend0l]

I mean, I agree that video games for the most part have worse stories than other mediums, but just because a video game is a video game doesn't mean it can't have a good story. In fact, there's plenty of great stories in video games. While I think the writing isn't as good as it could have been, the ideas a game like Virtue's Last Reward had show how video games could tell a story like no other medium. A story like Steins;Gate was adapted to the anime format and is widely considered to be one of the best anime ever, yet people still say that the VN is better. (I'm not saying anime is a good benchmark for good storytelling, hell no, it's just an example.) Or, if you want me to get off the topic of anime-like games, then 428 is a damn good live-action crime drama that makes use of its medium really well. I think people are close-minded about the potential video games have for storytelling.

 

[nanskee]

There are certainly good video games stories, but is it really a reasonable comparison? Video games, TV shows and films can all be different media for storytelling. The nature of the medium dictates, to a certain extent, the way the story is told. TV shows have the virtue of being able to spend more time with a story than a film can. Film has the virtue of being a singular expression, where the moving parts of the film can be considered holistically in a way that the moving parts of a TV show can't be (due to their episodic structure). There's a reason why Sátántangó is a film but Berlin Alexanderplatz isn't, you know?

Video games have a whole host of possibilities availed to them by their interactivity. In my opinion, the least exciting of these is to simply replicate the structures of film with a minimal layer of interaction - games like Heavy Rain, for example. I say that not a criticism of those games in their own right, but rather a criticism of them relative to possibility. Assuming that the story is one of the concerns of the developers, if the story isn't being told in a way that makes meaningful use of interactivity, why is it being told in a game at all?

I think in the final analysis the best video game stories are ones that make apt use of the medium. They aren't necessarily better or worse than those in film and TV, they're just different.

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Far better than my post, I agree

 

[Doomguy Fieri]

Sturgeon's law says yes.

There is nothing about video games that makes them inherently worse at telling stories than movies. So of course of the best of one will be better than the worst of others.

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Games are interactive, which means the player controls the pacing, and pacing is an integral part of storytelling. They are inherently incapable of telling a traditional narrative as effectively as movies, TV shows, books, or any other medium in which the audience only observes. The best game stories, the ones that elevate the medium, celebrate that interactivity and player choice. They tell a story that passive art is not able to match.

The most affecting moment in game storytelling in the last generation is the end of Nier: Automata, and it could only be done in an interactive medium.

If the story is just a TV show with combat in between talking sessions, it's an inferior experience to simply watching a TV show.

Games are worse at telling stories, but only in games do I get to help make the story, and that's pretty incredible.

 

[Blue Skies]

The Last of Us and Red Dead are the only two good game stories.

 

[Bing147]

On a purely narrative level, I feel like the very best stories in games rise to about the level of a slightly above average movie or TV show. Those are exceptions too, like a few dozen games in history.

That said as others have mentioned, gaming lets you be a part of the story in a way you don't get with other mediums. That can elevate a mediocre story to a much higher level.

 

[McNum]

I honestly respect a video game story more if it takes a simple premise, sets up what you'll be doing in the game, and then gets out of the way.

Which is why I consider DOOM one of the greatest video game stories this generation. The Doom Slayer never says a word, but everyone who plays DOOM has no doubts about what he's thinking. He's mad. He hates demons. He hates that the UAC let the demons out. He's a brutal man, who can be callous at times. And yet for brief moments, you see that he does have a playful side, and a sense of right. (When he has to delete the Vega AI, look exactly at what buttons he presses. He made a backup.) That, to me, is good video game story telling. Through gameplay and short animations alone, you get a good sense of your protagonist.

Everything else, well, if you want to know the background of the UAC, you can read it. If you want to know Hell's opinion on the Doom Slayer, find the ancient tablets with the Slayer's Testament on them and have the deep voiced demon read them to you. And if you don't? Well, the game did tell you to "rip and tear until it is done", so go do that.

Just for fun, imagine the exact gameplay of DOOM, with a more serious, grounded story. It just doesn't work. And yet this is what we get a lot of times. 10 minutes of serious adult drama, followed by an hour of shooting people. If you want to make a shooting game, make a shooting game with a shooting story. If you want to make a serious game about important social issues, make gameplay that matches that. But I don't even need to say that it's hard to do that. Video games are good at stuff where you change numbers, less so at just about anything else.

If you have a narrative, you cannot divorce if from gameplay. What happens, happens, be it in a cutscene or in game. Make more kinds of gameplay if you want to tell more kinds of stories.

 

[Nephilim]

Story is not only the bare plot for me. In addition to the plot/writing i see setting, lore, world, characters as huge pillars of the story of a tale in any medium.
Games have some of the best of those elements in any media, so yes i agree.

 

[Asbsand]

I'm willing to argue a reasonably big apocalyptic movie with mediocre reviews like Bird Box and is a lot closer in quality to The Last of Us in terms of writing than most here would like to believe. The Last of Us sticks out because of the performances and the attachment you gain to the characters due the interactivity inherent to videogames. The game masterfully makes use of the fact that it is an interactive story to elevate some of its most interesting beats, actually. But my guess is if you make a literal translation of The Last of Us to the big screen it won't be hailed by many critics as a masterpiece in the writing department.

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I think just generally speaking The Last of Us doesn't even have great prose and Neil Druckmann is even self-ironically admitting it in his bonus Remastered commentary, claiming he struggles to come up with the lines for characters and the ad-lib helps his writing look good.

I just think there are games like Metal Gear Solid (1 ~ 3), a lot of Japanese RPGs (because it's as if Japan don't have the same "art vs non-art" snobbery we have) certain shooters and even Zelda has great writing.

I think, of course, the problem is often that plot suffers from disjointedness of ludonarrative dissonance. It's hard to argue Half Life 2 hits movie-level storytelling when a movie would never spend half an hour uninterrupted showing the character go from A to B on a motorboat. Video games have to struggle with their own playable travelogues, that's more likened to books but typically games have large amount of play-time that tells absolutely no story at all, like when you're grinding for items.

It's in the writing of the actual game scenarios, the pre-written stuff, I think is actually very often on par with movies because movies have the exact same issues as games do with a lot of trash-filler releases where the idea is undermined by a horrible script, of horrible characters with horrible logic. I watched a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow the other night on TV, dunno what it was called, but it was about her abusive relationship with a real misogynistic guy... who she wanted to be with for completely unfathomable reasons and the movie ends with no resolution. An atrocious piece of writing, and the same can be said for Event Horizon, a lot of superhero movies and mediocre pop-releases like "Gravity" or Ad Astra, going from "worst" to "better".

Superhero comics also suffer from something similar to ludonarrative dissonance. Really, the Spider-Man canon is all kinds of awful with completely abrupt shifts in tone and direction, akin to something like Mass Effect - speaking of which, Mass Effect as a trilogy is no better or worse than The Matrix as a trilogy.

Really, we're on par. A lot of people can just not take games as seriously because of their biases. I think one bias is that people prefer the physical acting to uncanny animation with dubs or half-automated digital acting in cutscenes. I think, like The Last of Us and its Ad Lib, a lot of people are kind of fooled into believing a movie story is better than a game's story because the movie has an overt attempt at "realism" that games can't really hope to mimic. Really, prose, plot and characterization gets itself right in a video game about as often as movies do it, and people also make a lot of misconceptions of "Complexity = Depth", where a lot of games win out on story simply being being... well, simple (Good vs Evil, Hero's Journey, Friendship wins over Selfishness etc.)

 

[AllThingsPurple]

I only watch great movies and TV shows so I dunno what bad ones are like.

 

[Cycloneon]

Loads of games have better stories than most films today, which are mostly under par. I don't understand this point that video game stories are embarassing or something. It's not 1995.

But you have to look at games that are not like BL3 where that clearly doesn't matter and isn't the focus. The ones where it is they are just as good/bad as any other medium.

Most films have lots of problems with their story structure, characters, etc. Very few are great.

 

[kikuchiyo]

I don't think the way the question is asked or the answers given would accurately capture what people think, let alone any quantitative facts.

 

[Lady Gaia]

I was with you until you cited 99% of TV and movies as the comparative measure in the OP. I'm not so sure. There's a lot of dreadful stuff being churned out, from reality TV to sitcoms and worse, sure. I might be with you at 90%, but there's also something of a renaissance in quality television thanks to the rise of streaming and cable cutting. NetFlix, Amazon, HBO, and others have turned out a lot of content that is very much on par with or better than the best gaming stories and characters.

Interactivity lends a level of immersion that isn't possible in a passive medium, and branching stories can also help to draw players into stories in a way a static medium can't, but the best games are only just recently rising to the level of being comparable in terms of story and character. They have a way to go still to become clearly superior.

I have no idea what to pick in your poll. The question isn't really the same one you lay out in the OP, and the answers seem to reflect different questions yet again. It's soapboxing masquerading as a meaningful poll, which it is not.

 

[GamerJM]

If I'm taking the question to the most literal extent, yes because most movies that exist are garbage that don't make it to theaters. Statistically, most things created that could be considered to exist under the banner of "movies" are things made by people who aren't professionals that never get seen by a wide audience.

 

[Deleted member 12833]

I've never played a game that left an emotional or philosophical impact on my life the way some films have. I've also never played a game with character development as deep as some shows

 

[Mekanos]

I think my stance can basically be summed up as the top 10% "best" stories in video games are probably better than the bottom 40% of TV/film stories... at best.

 

[galv]

While I don't believe any video game is that good, storytelling-wise, I think at some point they will be. Certain cutscenes, and small sections of some games (Witcher 3 & Uncharted 4 in particular) have been really well directed this gen, so I have hope.

But when games like Order 1886 end with "gunshot fade-to-black", it really reminds me how cliched and tired storytelling in the large majority of video games actually is.

 

[DeoGame]

On paper, yes, by sheer virtue of interactivity and length. The number is pretty small though.

 

[dasu]

Fans tend to have very rose tinted glasses regarding the quality of storytelling in their favorite games. Elevating gaming stories over the more established mediums of film and television is naive and vaguely tribal (to put it gently).

I mean, I've heard people say that the (older) _God of War_ and the _Kingdom Hearts_ games have great stories. Love those games, but I would rather watch an average, junky reality-television show than be subjected to the cutscenes of either of the aforementioned franchises.

Okay, that was probably unfair. I do realize that some of this can be chalked up to the very nontraditional tastes of some gamers. However, I think it's always going to be an uphill battle as long as video game creators insist on trying to compete with television and film on their own turf (ie: the language of cinema).

 

[Eros]

My main issue about people speaking out against story in video games, is that the same energy isn't placed on other entertainment with stories. It's not like TV, film, or even book stories are 100% amazing. People have been bitching about the story/writing in Game of Thrones for 4 seasons, yet you won't see anyone say story/writing in a TV show is pointless and what's important is the VISUALS.

Not everyone needs to be interested in a cinematic storytelling video game, but it gets tiresome when people dunk on them.

 

[Unknownlight]

"Umineko and House in Fata Morgana are all leagues better than pretty much all movies and the trash on TV."

Alright fixed that for you, now that makes a good statement :p

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Umineko is an audiobook with pictures though (and I assume Fata Morgana is too, although I haven't read it). Using them as examples for this argument is testament to giving up at the starting line.

 

[Isayas]

Numero dos.

 

[Governergrimm]

The best? Sure but better than 99%? I don't agree with that. The problem I have is that most of the best video game stories are usually themselves derivative of books or movies.

 

[MaverickHunterAsh]

Absolutely, the best stories in games are better than the mountain of crap in TV/movies. The best stories in TV/movies are better than the mountain of crap in games, too. It goes both ways.

Video games aren't an inherently worse storytelling medium than other, more established forms of media. Perhaps games have tapped less of their potential, true, but they've also had far less time to explore that potential. Still, some of my favorite stories of all time come from games -- and other forms of media as well. I don't discriminate.

 

[jviggy43]

BWHAHAHAHAHAHA fuck no.

Watch better tv and movies. Its not even close.

 

[Rosa Lilium]

Games have certain things that make the average quality of story of games as whole trend downward. First, a game can still be good even if it's got a terrible story. A competitive multiplayer focused game doesn't have a lot of room to tell its story so its story will naturally suffer. Games can be too invested in the power fantasy aspect that the plot suffers.

However, there are certain things in terms of story that a game can do better than most other forms of media. Identifying with and empathizing with a protagonist will often be significantly higher in a game as you can control them as a player character. Games tend to be much better at telling stories in a nonlinear fashion.

All in all, I do think that the upper tier of game stories can compete with the the upper tier of other media.

Favourite games specifically for story (not including visual novels):
Life is Strange
Portal 2
Saints Row 3 & 4
Tales of Berseria
Undertale
Walking Dead (Season one only)

 

[Max A.]

Hell no. Personally, I find video game stories terrible, all of them. Some are better than others, but never have I finished a game and felt satisfied with the story, never have I thought during a game; "man, this is some good writing", "this is some good acting", never even once. I'll get hooked because of the immersion, the gameplay, the attention to details on a technical level, but never because of the story and that's alright, this is not something I expect from a game, that's what I expect when I start a book or watch a movie. For me games are only that, a virtual toy, pure interactive entertainment on a scale that no other medium can reach and that's all.

 

[Bossking]

These arguments never go anywhere because no matter what game you pick, some one will just go "NUH-UNH, GAME DUMB" and conveniently forget that 99% of all cinema isn't The Godfather 1 or 2.

 

[vastick]

The Last of Us is better than both Walking Dead shows, RDR2 is better than most spaghetti westerns or those singing cowboy westerns, KOTOR 1 and 2 are better than Attack of the Clones or any of the Disney Star Wars movies. The most popular movies right now are superhero movies and those have completely mediocre plots no better than their videogame counterparts. Suicide Squad or Justice League have stories as mediocre as the ones form the Arkham games. Also all videogame adaptations have a worse plot than the game they are adapting, all of them.

 

[Xeontech]

I watch lots of Chinese and Philippines tv along with Western stuff.

I will say, across the globe, 99% is probably right on. The shitshow that is on global television leaves much to be desired. Though there are jewels to be found here and there.

 

[serbootybottom]

Of course not.

Was Lost a videogame?

 

[Kurdel]

It's always such an arbitrary way of seeing things, movies and TV aren't standards games should reach for, they are capable of WAY more than those other 2 mediums, but in completely different ways.

That is why I don't like Naughty Dog games, trying to replicate cinema is like people trying to replicate Theatre for the first radio shows. A new media is always exciting, but really comes into it's own when it establishes it's own coding and norms, and stops trying to replicate previous froms of media.

Of course not.

Was Lost a videogame?

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It was a suffer sim

 

[Deleted member 59126]

It's always such an arbitrary way of seeing things, movies and TV aren't standards games should reach for, they are capable of WAY more than those other 2 mediums, but in completely different ways.

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I completely agree with you on this. I watched my friends play Edith Finch for the first time last night, and they found it so compelling that they finished it in a single sitting. It's a linear game and a simple story that is made better by the medium.

 

[Kurdel]

I completely agree with you on this. I watched my friends play Edith Finch for the first time last night, and they found it so compelling that they finished it in a single sitting. It's a linear game and a simple story that is made better by the medium.

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And like, that doesn't mean games are better than movies, it's just that games who use the full power of the medium are elevated for it.

Like the ending of Portal 2, I got chills when I realised I had to shoot that thing in the ending sequence. Like, that "Oh shit Ah ha!" moment felt like it was mine, figured out in a pinch, and I solved it all.

Of course that sequence of events is scripted, but when you are really in it, absolutely nothing gets me like that moment did.

 

[Bossking]

Honestly, arguing that video games are better than movies is like arguing that paintings are better than sculptures. They're completely different mediums of subjective quality with differing goals.

 

[Z-Beat]

The sheer volume of TV and films that get produced probably means yeah. For every IT or Gone Girl or Godfather there are 80 The Room's and Five Across the Eyes and Leprechaun in the Hood's.

And for every Breaking Bad there are 204 failed one-shot pilots, MTV reality shows, and CSI spinoffs

 

[nanskee]

Holy crap San Antonio needs to blow up that team, shit

 

[Another]

Find it weird that there's no "equals" option. Neither is better, frankly.

 

[Zelda]

No they really aren't. Christ, God of War was boring dreck. How can people really believe this shallow shit is good?

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How dare someone have a different opinion. God of War was boring dreck? Ok.

 

[Foxashel]

This thread is blowing my mind. The best video game stories do not compete with the best film/tv stories. Throw in acting and I can't believe this is a serious debate.

 

[Zelda]

99% of this thread is people not understanding that most does not mean the same as all.

 

[Soneji]

.

Okay, that was probably unfair. I do realize that some of this can be chalked up to the very nontraditional tastes of some gamers. However, I think it's always going to be an uphill battle as long as video game creators insist on trying to compete with television and film on their own turf (ie: the language of cinema).

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Sadly more people sing the praises of Naughty Dog, who use the language of cinema, over say Ueda's titles, which use the language of games. It's going to be a slow process towards true evolution.

 

[Artdayne]

People seem to often overlook that the strengths of a great narrative in video games is that you have agency in it, at least when we talk about RPGs.

 

[AzureFlame]

Video games experience is something movies can never be, so some stories are best fit for video games and they only work there imo.

 

[Deleted member 59126]

99% of this thread is people not understanding that most does not mean the same as all.

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Yes... apparently reading comprehension has the same statistic differential as Sturgeons Law.

 

[Zacmortar]

No movie or tv show has affected me like the Silent Hill series, Undertale, or Nier has.

 

[Flevance]

Umineko is an audiobook with pictures though (and I assume Fata Morgana is too, although I haven't read it). Using them as examples for this argument is testament to giving up at the starting line.

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That would be true if not for episode 8, after all, Video Games is all about interacting with a fictional world, it doesn't matter how, which is why Visual Novels are considered Video Games, the same can be said about Erica

 

[Unknownlight]

That would be true if not for episode 8, after all, Video Games is all about interacting with a fictional world, it doesn't matter how, which is why Visual Novels are considered Video Games, the same can be said about Erica

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Yeah, you know as well as I do that that's some extreme nit-picking. It's a small section of gameplay 70 hours in.

(That said, I did really enjoy the main gameplay section in Episode 8. It was the highlight of what was otherwise a disappointing episode. The author agrees I guess because he apparently made huge changes to the episode when he wrote the manga adaption. I suppose I should read that eventually...)