Elden ring has 3 endings, all of which have different achievements. Elden lord has 20%, the age of stars ending has 26% and the lord of the frenzied flame has 14%. So the best way to see how many people completed the game is through the "Hoarah Loux, Warrior" achievement, of which 38.8% of players have gotten. As he is the second last boss, this means the actual completion rate is around 38%, which is quite good for a 50+ hour title.
*bonks myself* Yeah forget what I said in terms of the completion rate for elden ring lol. That is actually really impressive for a game that's so difficult!
yeah i also think that in general a game like elden ring has a much higher bar to completion just from the sheer difficulty, but that's the game style, so having a completion rate that high is more of a testimant to its quality than tlou completion rate is. (tlou is like my favorite game btw)
@@Kitsisuri I agree with you but in general, I would say that the Issue with Elden Ring (and other FromSoft titles in my experience) is that the game isn't straightforward like Spider-Man or TLOU2. In those games, it's easy to know where to progress while Elden Ring and Soulsborne games want you to explore and figure it out yourself. It's just more accessible to complete those games than Elden Ring for example.
I can understand where you are coming from. But i have a completely different opinion on this. There are great games with literally no story but fun gameplay mechanics. That you can play for hours. If you have a great story with no or bad gameplay then why is it even a game? Just tell the story as a movie, a tv series or write a book. There is also a difference between minimalistic gameplay and bad gameplay imo. The game can be a cinematic experience and still have good nuanced gameplay. So fo me it is: Gameplay > Story > Graphics.
You make great points. A game should have "gameplay" or else it's just a movie. And there definitely are games where a story is not needed to be enjoyable. But me personally, if I plan on buying a game where it has a single player campaign, and it's clear from the beginning that it has a story to tell, then I expect it to captivate me in some sort of manner. I don't need it to be ground breaking or emotional. I just need it to give me a reason to move on to the next mission or level. When I tried playing both Doom and Doom: Eternal, I thought the music was kick ass along with the gameplay. The variety of enemies and weapons kept the action fresh, but as I proceeded through the campaign, I just didn't care about what I was doing, which effected how I felt about my overall experience. I fell out of gaming a couple of years ago, and what's brought me back was the gradual shift of bringing cinematic story telling into gaming medium. So for me, Story will always be the number one thing I look at before buying a game, but I understand I'm in the minority. Since the beginning, gaming has always been about the gameplay, and without it, there is no game.
@strictlymediocre Gameplay focused games like Ocarina of Time and Dark Souls have been remembered for much longer (and will continue to be that way) than story based games like TLOU and Uncharted. Story based games are a one trick pony experience and are very unreplayable. Meanwhile, games like Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild are highly replayable because of the possibilities in the variation of playstyles and the depth of their gameplay. When the trend of story based games fades away (and it will fade away hard), barely anyone will remember them because the kind of people that play story based games are not real gamers, and these non-gamers will likely move on to some other hobby after cinematic games die out. So, agree to disagree.
@@WildDogGamerBoy In Regards to Ocarina Of Time, the game has been out decades longer and is a groundbreaking title that revolutionized gaming during the time it was released, so it has many reasons as to why it’s still remembered. It also has a very engaging story with a great set of characters that you get attached to. *SPOILERS* it’s a very dark story where you travel back and forth in time. You know what’s bound to happen to Hyrule and the friends that you meet, so the mission is to stop Ganon from reaching his goal. I was personally invested in the story of that game, and it’s what made me enjoy completing all the dungeons as I fought to reach the end. The gameplay was great, and so was the story. I can’t speak on replay-ability with games since I don’t replay games anymore. I 100% completed breath of the wild (that’s without finding all the korok seeds. Fuck that lol) and the thought of replaying it is just daunting since it’s such a massive game. Don’t get me wrong, I love that game, but I would rather spend that time playing something new. The Last of Us was released about a decade ago, so who knows if it will be remembered later on, along with every other story driven game. But it did start a trend like you said, and since the release of that title, and the amount of games that are story driven and are being nominated for awards in recent years, it doesn’t seem like it’s a trend that will die soon. Time will only tell though. I respect your opinion though man :) Agree to disagree.
@@WildDogGamerBoy I don't think the cinematic style of games will just fade away, it's a thing that has been around since the late 2000s, and it still going nowadays, there's certainly a broad appeal But it'll definitely slow down since people are already getting fatigued of stuff like, forced walk sections, nightmares/hallucinations sequences, minute to minute cutscenes with dialogues that could've been shown in gameplay, etc.
@@StrictlyMediocrethe simplest example of a game without any real story is *Vampire Survivors* . I gave this as an example, because it was able to compete in GOTY against many good titles
So basically, if a game focuses more on an experience with a strong beginning and an end with a clear path between them players are more likely to finish the games. But I don't think completion rates are a good indication of how good a game is. I mean, open world games are completely different. There are people with hundreds of hours in Breath of the Wild or Fallout 4 but have never actually completed the story. I think story is only important to a player if that player thinks story is important. It's such a personal value.
And story focused games, even if they do have excellent gameplay, tend to be much easier than gameplay focused games. Most likely because, similar to what you said, the developer puts a lot of value in gamers finishing the games and being able to take part of the entire story.
@@PeteyPirahna77 So it's less of a QTE and more of a "press button to continue"? If you don't want the players to fail and have to restart then atleast make the hero fail in a funny way that still continues the plot.
Isn't it logically that short cinematic games have a higher completion rate than longer open world games? Also Elden Ring is a bad example for me. It is a very difficult game. The completion rate of Souls game is always bad.
It most certainly is. I meant to address the main story rather than 100% a game (completing side quests, collecting items etc.) But I feel like there's a glaring issue with long open world games: It's that no one wants to finish the game. CDPR actually addressed that The Witcher 3 had an incredibly low completion rate, which led to them making the story shorter in Cyberpunk 2077 (from what I heard, they actually cut a big chunk of the game because it ruined the pacing of the story.) So it's safe to say that game devs also see the issue. Just because it has more content, doesn't make it a better game. Now what ended up being the result of Cyberpunk 2077 is subjective. But what ended up happening in terms of rates was cyberpunk had higher completion rates than Witcher 3. More people were willing to finish the game, which I think is what game devs want when they pour their hard work into something for years. I wish I addressed this in the video instead of elden ring, but oh well lol. The main reason I used Elden ring as an example was because it was nominated for best narrative at the game awards. I have no real problems with the game, and I understand that the combat is an extreme challenge that will turn off many players, but I found it interesting that the story is never really mentioned in discussions on the game. So the more I looked into what people thought of it, I started to see a general consensus that the main story wasn't all that compelling for most players, that they just cared about the fights. Which is to be expected from a studio like fromsoftware. But I feel like Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order did it right. It's not AS challenging as Elden Ring or Dark Souls, but it still proves to be difficult, all while having an engaging story and a decent completion rate because of it.
@@StrictlyMediocre I have one issue with the idea that the point of a game is to complete the game. I played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 a lot as a kid. I mean "every day after school for years" a lot. I love that game, even today, but I never beat it. The worst part is that I got stuck on the last boss. But I don't mind. I love games for their gameplay, for how they work. Story is good, and if a game tells a good story along the way, that's great, but it isn't necessary. For me, good story is like a good soundtrack: yes, it's often the thing that separates good video games from great video games (Mega Man 2, Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Super Mario Brothers, Doom, Skyrim, Street Fighter 2, and more are all known for their iconic soundtracks), but if I said that a game's soundtrack mattered more than gameplay did, I would be laughed at, rightly.
Bro I bet you'd LOVE this game. Well it's not really a game, more like a system. Best part is, it's completely mobile, doesn't need any latest gen device, doesn't need electricity, doesn't need anything except light. In this system, you can have any story you want, at any time, in any place, and the gameplay doesn't get in the way of the narrative. They're tailor made to let the player have a complete end-to-end story experience with no hiccups, side quests or visual flair. They're called "books" and they're perfect for when you want a story without any of the story potential being wasted by having to be developed alongside game engines, mechanics, graphics, audio, music, voice acting etc... In some places, you can get them for free so long as you return them to their place of origin on time and as agreed but when you do, you get even more of them! In terms of efficiency, from a cost and player-effort perspective, they're the best around!
The reason why God of War, The Last of Us and Spider-Man are so highly rated is because as well as a great narrative, the game delivers fun and functional mechanics. The gameplay is solid. A game that’s narratively focused with little gameplay is Soma. How many people played Soma all the way through vs The Witcher? You need a balance, it can’t be more one than the other
"The reason why God of War, The Last of Us and Spider-Man are so highly rated is because..." They're triple A slop with a millionaire marketing campaign behind them. Also, narratively speaking, they're just mediocre movies that get a good name around them because they're competing in the video game market rather than actual movies. Any Doom, Devil May Cry and countless indies casually crush this commercial garbage quality wise.
For people that want what is essentially a gimmicky version of movies, than I guess narrative is more crucial. But for people who want to play actual games, gameplay is king. Generally, games with a heavy focus on gameplay tend to be more difficult than movie games, which tends to filter out game journos and casuals pretty quickly. In other words, it makes sense that a game like Elden Ring would have a lower completion percentage than a movie game like TLOU because Elden Ring actually has a skill ceiling required to complete it. A skill ceiling that many casuals are unwilling to invest the time and patience needed to reach it, whereas TLOU practically plays itself for them. This is a key factor as to why gaming has gotten worse the past few years, because movie games move away from the core of gaming, to the point now where Spider-Man 2 has QTEs that you can't even fail. I get that there are people who prefer these "narrative over gameplay" games and that's fine, but I do have to wonder when they will realize what a waste it is to spend $70 plus DLC on these types of games (not to mention the multiple hundreds of dollars to buy the console they're exclusive to) when they can just watch a walkthrough of it on TH-cam for free. They might enjoy it more that way too.
You raise a lot of really good points but I disagree that a good story will always make a game more memorable. Story and gameplay are compliments where when it’s exceptional on one side it can make up for it when it’s lackluster on the other. A good example of story carrying game is The Last of Us, which had very mediocre gameplay but a story so good that the gameplay was easy to look past. On the other side games that are incredible gameplay wise can leave just as big of an impact despite a lack of story. Super Mario, Sonic, and Pokémon are all games that millions have very found memories of despite the fact that the story is almost nonexistent. There are also games that’s story is defined by the gameplay itself. Games like Crusader Kings II & III and X-Com. Most people never finish those games, but it’s not the end but the story the player creates with their decisions that define their experience. The best games are those that can weave both together at an exceptional level. Games like God of War, Neir Automita, Persona 5, and Spider-Man. I agree these games do leave a or more of an impact on those who play them, but it’s the marriage of above average story and gameplay that elevate each other to make them so memorable. Love your content by the way, just thought you lacked addressing the opposition in this one.
Love this comment! You got me on Super Mario and other games in that vein. It’s something I completely forgot but now that you mention it, games like those really don’t need a story to be as great as they are. I personally thought the gameplay of The Last of Us was decent enough (Part II is much better though) but I can also see your point. It wasn’t complex in any way. I do think, personal bias aside, games should aim for that balance like you said. It’s what I consider to be the perfect gaming experience. The more days that pass, the more I wish I made this a longer video to address things in further detail, but I was just going for something short. I’ll definitely get back into this topic soon. Thanks for watching though man! Appreciate love and the discussion!
Stop reading at "The Last of Us, which had very mediocre gameplay". You could argue that TLoU never tried to reinvent the wheel with its core gameplay mechanics because it's the truth. But regarding what it proposed to make, it's an absolute masterclass of refinement, even the first one at the time. Both from the technical point of view and the execution. And I say that as a game dev myself. There's no single-player TPS game as refined as TLoU2 yet, not even close...
"Why Narrative is Crucial (And Gameplay isn't)" I tend to think the contrary. As the time passes and I get to know my self, the games that I most like are the ones with good gameplay and inovative mechanics. That is, I actually agree with John Carmack when he suposidly said that "history in games is like history in a porn movie: it is there, but it does not matter".
@@StrictlyMediocre Then don't pay 70$ dollars for AAA cinematic trash. Now seriously. There is more ways to tell a story then a cinamatic narration. But more important is that games *CAN CREATE A NEW ONE* Trough usage of gameplay. They focus on your personal experince, because all done in the gameplay is *yours* Action Choices Mistakes Goals Done by your hands A experince thats belongs only to you. Thats art.
@@danieladamczyk4024 I think there are plenty of Triple A titles that have a strong equal balance of quality with Narrative and Gameplay. It can certainly be done. I do agree with your point on creating the story for yourself though. I haven't played a lot of games where I felt that way, but the most recent one that comes into mind is Journey. My experience with the game still feels fresh in my mind and its one I don't think I'll ever forget.
@@StrictlyMediocre True that is possible to create game with strong narration and gameplay. However thats are two goals at once. "More goals you have then is easier to fail" So dev should focus on one and double down on it. Just like indie games do. This will demand from you to seek out experince you want, instead default fits all 70$ solution. Personaly AAA games are dead end of gaming for me.
@@danieladamczyk4024I 100% agree on indie titles. I’ve found that I’ve enjoyed gaming more through these types of titles. Though I must point out that there are indie titles that pull off great stories that match the great gameplay. Ori and the Blind Forest for example is an addictive platform game with a very heart warming story. The combination of the two made for such a memorable experience. The game isn’t focused on the story, but when the story ever comes into play, it hits hard and is emotional. The ending to the game is absolutely thrilling from a story and gameplay point of view. A perfect balance.
Gameplay>Story If you want to play a game just for the story, go watch a playthrough or a movie. "Games" that puts priority in the story at the expense of gameplay are meant for non-gaming individuals that want the game to play for itself.
I understand that sentiment. As much as I like interactive story games, I definitely get why people would rather watch a play through of it. For me, I enjoy experiencing it for myself rather than watching someone else play it. A game can still feature a great amount of gameplay, but blend it into the story. Not every story needs to have character arcs. It can be as simple as the story told in Shadow of Colossus.
@strictlymediocre It wasn't my intention to come out with such hostility, although the title of your video seems to be biased towards the story at the expense of bashing gameplay. But what I don't like is when people who clearly don't care about video games in the first place start coming after games I care about and try to change them beyond recognition. For example, when all those developers, "journalists" and audiences bashed Elden Ring in such a petty manner and started making demands to From software. They started complaining about the difficulty and the "lack of story." Thankfully, the director Hidetaka Miyasaki told them to go touch some grass. There seems to be a push by non-gamers to turn every single videogame into The Last of Us. Games filled to the brim with accessibility options that add nothing to the game, barely no gameplay to begin with, incredibly linear experience, and no sense of reward at all. And I am sick of it. An example of this can be found in GoW Ragnarok. Did we really need 2 hours of Atreus going around collecting fruits slowly on horseback in order to progress the story? All I wanted to do was slash away with the blades of chaos the entire time. Even one of my all-time favorite franchises started catering to non-gamers and people like you who only want a good story, Final Fantasy. FF16 literally added accessories that make the character automatically attack, dodge, and do combos for you, just so you can sit back and enjoy the story. What is even the point in playing the game if all you gotta do is press one button to win every single fight? This is the current state of video games. Just instant reward with zero effort or challenge required from the player. I am totally okay with some people just wanting to sit back and enjoy interactive movies, but don't go around trying to turn the entire industry into that by making videos like these. P.S. The fact that you said Doom Eternal (an outstanding game) didn't grab you because of the story was just criminal. The whole point of the game was just saving mankind by ripping and tearing demons. There is no need for a deep story about a saddened Doomslayer that lost his bunny to demons.
@@WildDogGamerBoyokay, when you put it like that, it makes sense and I agree with most of what you said. I was gonna say it's your opinion and I can respect it, but yeah, I agree with you about catering to people who never cared about video games. All you said is exactly why I didn't enjoy DMC5 and why I do my best to finish hard games like any FromSoftware game.
@@IAmTheEagleHTM I actually enjoyed DMC5. It had enough story without sacrificing the gameplay and combat. I don't mind when games have a story, just don't do it at the expense of my enjoyment.
this is so true, i see people always complain on how red dead 2s gameplay isnt the best, but the story is so good that it heavily outways the gameplay making it so good
i disagree immensely. this is simply not true in an absolute sense! Nobody dances to a song with Mindblowng lyrics and an awefull beat. Gameplay always should be the focus of games not the story! because games are meant to be played! i like a good Story as much as everyone but they are not necessary for games. We have Books, Series and Movies for that. of course a combination of both is ideal! but given the choice gameplay is more important! No Story will keep my interested for more than its duration. Once it is over i am done with the game if the gameplay cannot hold up I am so glad that Zelda TOTK had a good story compared to BOTW but even without that i would have played the crap out of it!! because the gameplay is fantastic!! movies / Series / Books = Story Music = Beat and Rythm Games = Gameplay
I respect your argument man :) I guess I just go into games for different reasons. If I know a game is focused on gameplay, my argument is invalid. Superhot and Ultrakill aren't games that need a story as the main purpose of it is the gameplay. My argument is more geared towards games that have stories but don't utilize it to the game's advantage. Much like the Zelda games you mentioned along with Ocarina of Time, I would say all three of them have good to fantastic stories. In BOTW, I remember trying to explore the map to find all the memory locations because I wanted to know the history of Hyrule and how things were before Gannon came along. Each memory you uncover is filled with dread as you know what happens to them later on. Learning those memories gives the temples you complete more weight and depth to it. You know what is at stake when you're trying to fight the bosses that bring uneasiness to the towns. I know some people like to replay games, but me personally, even if the game is ridiculously fun and the story is great, I can never replay it. I personally think about the next game to play as time is short and replaying the same thing over and over is a waste when I can play something completely new. Agree to disagree!
@@StrictlyMediocre interresting. if nothing new came out in the next 30 years i would be fine. i have like 15 games i can cycle through on repeat because they are so damn good. Hollow knight, Zelda TOTK, Horizon FW, Lufia 2 (snes game), Sifu, Dead Space, Zelda ALTTP, Terranigma, Fallout 4, Cyberpunk 2.0, FF X 2 (seriously!) Unsighted, Sakuna, Ruins of tasos, Ghost of Tsushima, Stardew valley, Octopath 1&2, Subnautica, Elden Ring, Bloodborne,Sekiro, time you enjoy wasting is never wasted!
I heavily disagree. Gameplay is and should be more important than story. It's a video game after all. Sonic The Hedgehog 1 didn't have a story and many people still remember it. Classic Doom barely had a story either and a ton of people remember it. The Super Mario series is gameplay focused, and it's hailed as a legendary franchise.
Bro tries to explain why games shouldnt focus on the thing that is unique to the genre, and telling to focus on narative instead. If we wanted a story specificaly we wuld read a book or wach a movie.💀💀💀
they are both. You do not need to repeat his bad take but from the other side of the spectrum, games are a lot of things! from visual novels to shooters to puzzles to racing to educational... they all have a place.
I'm not taking sides on any front but... some people are fans of pure stress enducing rage. If you're a huge story person, a little known developer named Tell Tale Games is right up your alley. 😃
I will never understand how people can put themselves through games that have guaranteed rage. I'm pretty sure if I tried, my controller would end up broken after an hour lol.
@@StrictlyMediocre me either, I'm not a rager but I like watching the compilation vids of others like Dr Disrespect. Addmitingly my controllers develop stick drift sooner than they probably should. Damn Ninja Gaiden franchise.😆
Story told through gameplay is more important than just story or gameplay. Easy to follow stories obviously have more completion rates but games like disco elysium, hollow knight, outer wilds have a lot more meaningful stories than any of the Sony blockbusters mentioned in this video. Its like comparing hollywood blockbusters to art house movies. They can both be great, but cannot be for mass audience consumption
Good points. Another game that I think does the story and game play balance well is the Pokemon Myster Dungeon series. First game I cried at when I was younger.
Resident Evil games have in my opinion the ideal gameplay/story ratio. You make many meaningful choices during pure gameplay sections that are in a way small stories themselves in how you survive in your own unique way.
The comments about Elden ring is on point. My first "souls-like" game was Jedi fallen order, and I tore through that one because of both the gameplay and narrative. Elden ribg is more the gameplay and that's ok, but I'm much less likely to finish it
Tell that to almost every mainline Super Mario game then Immersive atmosphere, great music, memorable characters, the feel of a real journey, and fun gameplay will always be what makes a classic
@@ayrtonjogaYou do realize there are things called “outliers” right. Mario is the golden standard for gameplay, barely any other games meet these standards for graphics, gameplay, music and overall narrative. Narrative and story can carry the absolute fuck out of games with mid mechanics.
@@YungFozz Mario isn't an outlier, it's the most obvious counter point to this video, look at other famous franchises, be it from all ages like Pokemon and Sonic, to R-rated stuff like Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil They usually has simple stories, but the gameplay, music, characters, and lore (Narrative and lore aren't the same thing), are what makes the fans come back for more
and Half Life, Quake, Mega Man, Mario, Sonic, Metroid, Castlevania, Smash Bros, Street Fighter, Pokemon, Xcom, Jagged Alliance, Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Empires, Statcraft, FreeSpace, Master of Orion, Thief, Tomb Raider, Diablo... the classic games from these series are still being played by millions today, many with active modding/hacking and new fan made content being created.
Bad take, there's no such thing as 'Story Vs Gameplay', different games do different things, gaming is the most broad medium, from walking simulators to strategy games to platformers to simulation and so on... they all have a place. I for example, swing between different types of games depending on my mood, sometimes i want story, others i want a particular type of gameplay and sometimes i just want weird/unique stuff.
I loved this video, especially your video game examples. Personally, God of War, Omori, Undertale, Celeste and Ghost of Tsushima will always be my top 5 favorite games, all ironically revolve in story. I also liked your music choice, teared me up tbh. (Please tell me the music names ;~;) Got a new sub, I hope you grow your channel and for the algorithm will bless you!
Thank you!!! I'm glad you enjoyed it! Celeste is definitely another game I have to get to. I gotchu though! It's in the order that it plays in the video. Ardie Son - Hot Summer Air Charlie Ryan - Delicate Displace DaniHaDani - Bait Doug Kaufkman - Songbird
@@StrictlyMediocreThank you so much! Will listen to these, your music choice and video format is beyond the average, truly an underrated channel! I pray that God bless you and have a good day!
there is a problem in your arguement . yes completion rates are high in games with great stories but if a game has bad gameplay then it just becomes a slideshow of emotional cutscenes. Take god of war for example the story is great but its gameplay is exceptional. A story of a game matters a great amount but if it does not complement the gameplay then the game just feels distant and doesnt work well together. A game is great because of the atmosphere it build. Gameplay and story plays a major role in the atmosphere. But nevertheless the video goes way too hard and the editing is top notch
I agree 100%. God of War and the Last of Us nailed that perfect blend of story telling and gameplay. They both need to work with one another to create that amazing game experience. A lot of times you'll have fun combat and exploration, but if the missions you're being sent on feel bland or like there's a lack of effort, it harms the gameplay. Fallout 4 had improvements to its gameplay, but the missions were quite dull compared to Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Fallout 3 and New Vegas both have stiff combat, but its the world and the stories you experience in those games that are what make it so enjoyable, and actually heighten the gameplay (for me at least.) Thank you for the kind words on the video though!!! :p
i personally think the high completion rates comes from the accessibility of the game and how engaging the story is gamers dont out weigh the massive amount of non gamers so for games to have high completion or sales its usually because of marketing story and the ease of playing many successful games such as Fortnite or cod are hated amongst most gamers but they survive due to casuals good video i would just take population size into account and how reviews or completion rates would be effected by that
Video games started as only gameplay and only years later the started implementing a cutscenes to connect gameplay loops and setting changes. Video games where you barely do anything yourself are not good games. For example I loved watching videos of Telltale games, the stories are often very beautiful. But I feel like it is not worth paying for it like an actual game. A game is supposed to be replayable and give you a good amount of agency. Modern cinematic games are often dropped after playing them once or maybe twice at most. How many people played the new God of War game more than twice? On the other hand you can play games like Ratchet and Clank, Sly, Jak and Daxter and similar old school games over and over again. Gameplay is the CORE of a video game. Story is like a complementary wine or drink to your meal (gameplay). If you take story out of a video game, you still have a game. If you take gameplay out of a video game, you have a movie or TV show. I rather buy a video game where there is barely any story, but the gameplay itself is very fun (Counter Strike is a good example), than one where 50% are cutscenes and half of the other 50% you only press x or square in a quick time event.
My argument isn't necessarily targeted at games that feature no story. It's more so targeted at the ones that do have a story but focus more on the gameplay and less on story. The only defense I can make with Telltale games and others in that vein is that the reason to play them is to make the decisions you want to make rather than someone else. I find it frustrating when I watch someone else play and they make a choice I don't align with. It makes me want to purchase the game instead of watching them play. But then there's the replayable factor that kills it. They're not replayable at all, unless the story branches are very complex like in Detroit: Become Human. Those games feature very little gameplay though, so I fully understand the criticism. Out of the games you mentioned, the only franchise I've played and have fond memories of playing is Rachet and Clank: A Crack in Time. The gameplay was stupid fun but it also had a good story to go with it. The story for me made the missions all the more enjoyable. A bad story hurts a game experience for me, even if the gameplay is good. Dying Light 2 is a good example of a game with great parkour and other cool game mechanics that makes for fun gameplay, but the story is just god awful that I had no desire to continue on with it. So many story beats that are frustrating and make no sense.
@@StrictlyMediocre "they make a choice I don't align with." But then you learn the hard way that those choices barely have any impact on the story. The real agency you have in Telltale games is very shallow. I learned the hard way. Bought two games at once and both played out almost exactly the same way after playing them twice and choosing differently. A Crack in Time is one of the "newer" games where gameplay was already sacrificed for story. If you loved the gameplay of that game, you should have played Going Commando or Up Your Arsenal. Those games were SO MUCH better than ACiT and obviously had less story. The best example is the newest game Rift Apart. It looks beautiful, it aims to have lots of story, but its so boring compared to the older games. Its literally the first Ratchet and Clank game I dropped before completing it. Story is often used to stretch out games with lacking content. At least these days. Why does the story actually matter if you want to play a game that is fun? I dont know what Dying Light is about, but if playing it is very fun as you say, the story would not really interfere with that part, would it? A friend of mine bought a game that is super political or "woke" if you wanna call it that and he is actually very heavily against that kinda of stuff and yet he bought it. Do you know why? He said "the swinging is so much fun". He was talking about the newest Spider Man game. He bought a full price game just because he played it at a friends' house once. Only swinging through the city, basically doing nothing. I think maybe you are not seeking a good video game to play, but a good story in general. Because you know your opinion is not shared by many. For most people playing games is about having total (or at least a lot of) control over a fictional environment.
Great editing and quality, but can’t agree on the point. I fully completed Spider man, God of war (2018) and TLOU, those are good media products, but not games for me. I just can’t feel that my choices matter. I feel like kratos for the first hour, but after I remember that I am a player with no narrative agency. Wondering between cutscenes in mostly disconnected from story gameplay makes me bored. Games let me express my self, get my own story and experience - that’s why I play them. A small black hole in Tetris tower makes me worried because it’s my mistake and no Spider-Man would ever make it or solve it. The Joy of finding out a new magic interaction in Noita can’t be replaced by any story or character arc. And all of these moments make a something you can only get from game, something very personal. Sadly many can’t acknowledge this, simply putting it like: “I like murdering demons and I skip the cutscenes”. But gameplay is much more than entertainment in need a narrative purpose, it is language as deep as a narrative, if not deeper. P.S. no offense for interactive story games, those have tight connection between story and gameplay, they offer you a real narrative agency. Detroit really made feel connected with characters, because my choices had an impact and mistakes didn’t lead to gameover, great experience
I really loved the way you described your view on Gameplay. It certainly helps me look at the topic I presented in another light. Though I'm not sure I can agree on your takes on the games you mentioned in the beginning, I totally get why you feel that way. Thanks for the well thought out comment!
Both narrative and gameplay are "crucial" in its purest definition to the average game, I would argue. However, I think there's something to be said about classic arcade and early console/PC games maintaining a strong cultural relevance to this day despite having practically no stories. Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Galaga, Tetris, Pong, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Rogue, Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros.... these games are timeless because they're fun and engaging. They're endlessly replayable because it's rewarding to get better and complete a level faster or get a higher score. It's addictive, one might argue. Even a fun game with a bad story can still be replayed and enjoyed by skipping cutscenes (which most players do on repeats, anyway). A cinematic game with shallow mechanics that span a 10+ hour campaign may have an unforgettable first experience, but there's often very little to gain out of a replay other than experiencing the story again. There's little room for growth, to get better and feel a sense of accomplishment for outperforming yourself - a factor that's been the core of games since the beginning. Not even just video games; any kind of competitive game, be it on the playground or something as prestigious as the Olympics. Stripping that away, I believe, defeats the entire purpose of a game's existence. It gets even worse when a game with a great story is miserable to actually play. Games like The Witcher 1, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Morrowind, Alan Wake, Death Stranding, Xenogears... these are tough to revisit because the mechanics are frustrating and often end up turn players off on a first playthrough. If a game can have an amazing story AND engaging mechanics with room for growth, then that's fantastic. I'd argue this is what most games should strive for (depending on the focus and target audience). Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Majora's Mask, Hollow Knight, Metal Gear Solid 3, Fallout New Vegas, Knights of the Old Republic, and Baldur's Gate 3 are all examples of this, and among what I'd argue to be the golden standard. All that said, I have nothing against a story-focused game existing and don't discourage them being made. They certainly have their place in offering a specific type of experience, and some players prefer this experience over a traditional one. It's all going to come down to player preference and director's vision. One of the most beautiful things about video games is the vast amount of variety in their experiences, more so than any other medium can offer because of their ability to combine player input with scripted storytelling. Again, I think both story and gameplay are crucial, and equally so, not just because having both be excellent can be seen as desirable, but also because the amount of focus on either will determine the overall experience. Hope I was able to provide interesting feedback.
I fully agree with the more cinematic games containing no replay value. Unless you're a completionist for achievements, there's zero reason to ever go back to em unless you want to play the game at a higher difficulty level. But even then there's no point because there's no sense of excitement since you already know how the game goes. With games like Cyberpunk, New Vegas and KOTOR there most certainly is. Though for me personally, I'm not a fan of replaying a game unless I can change it up in the second playthrough. I want to be able to make different choices that change the narrative that will give me a different playthrough compared to the first. That's another reason as to why games like Devil May Cry or Doom: Eternal just don't work for me. You definitely did though man! I always appreciate different opinions. Thanks for taking time to comment! :)
@StrictlyMediocre And DMC and Doom are exactly the kind of short games I like to play because of their replay value! They're like modern versions of classic arcade and NES games; they focus on the gameplay like them, but have more involved stories with full cinematics. New Game+ on higher difficulties also makes replays more than a standard revisit. DMC5 I'd actually say could be considered an ideal balance of story and gameplay with its ocean-level depth of mechanics in conjunction with iconic characters with strong themes (which people often don't give enough credit). The combat is enhanced by the sense of connection to the characters you play as and their struggles, which in turn is enhanced by the fantastic presentation and boss fights. I have enjoyed games like The Last of Us and Insomniac's Spider-Man, but I never buy them at full price because I know I'm not going to feel like I got my money's worth only playing the campaign once or twice. I think these games could benefit from offering more rewarding higher difficulties (something beyond simply more enemy damage & health) and NG+ (which Spider-Man did get in an update) like DMC. That'd make them at least _somewhat_ more appealing to players like me without compromising the experience for the target audience.
And people wonder why gaming is so shitty now. Secondaries want fucking movies to watch and genuinely believe gameplay is less important than story in a fucking INTERACTIVE media. No wonder almost all older game mogs the newer AAA shit, even recent indie and middleware games full of jank, but that at least are gameplay focused are mogging all the AAA garbage. All the games you listed are worse than even the most average game released in the 6th generation and below. Gameplay>>>>>>>>>>>>Story, ALWAYS.
Your similarities lie in your abilities to create thought-provoking and cinematic essays, from your choice of music and shots, to the tonal changes in your voice, to knowing when and where to apply comedy, it's just great. Thank you for taking all the time create and share these videos with us; your passion and efforts are plainly evident.
@@niklausvenzendtDude your comment had me smiling hard haha. It’s really nice to know that people notice and appreciate the small details I add. I’m really grateful to you for subscribing. More content to come :)
my good friend, its not because of narrative that 20-30h game have a bigger finish % compared to 50-80h such as elden ring and hogwart legacy(furthermore, elden ring is a soul like) also; i don't thing story will leave as much of a mark as good gameplay will, i'll always remember my first time fighting minos prime in ultrakill or godfrey in elden ring but i will not remember baldur from god of war, because the gameplay was boring also also: half life IS the perfect balance between gameplay and story because the story never interrupt the gameplay
Games can be memorable without a gripping story. Many people have a strong love for Black Ops zombies and it's not because of any narrative. I myself have fond memories of several LEGO games that didn't have dialogue at all. Prototype was a franchise built around the power fantasy that the game provided, and it's beloved and missed to this day. I could go on, but I hope this gets the point across.
When I play a game that has a story to play through, the gameplay has to be enjoyable enough to care. I'm not gonna play a game for the story if I can't get behind the gameplay. Personally, I care more about gameplay than the story. That's not to say I don't enjoy a good story. I still want my gameplay to have some meaning. Games like Minecraft fail to grab me, even though they're more gameplay than story.
As someone that's a die hard rpg fan I do absolutely agree with this, but Elden Ring and even games of the ARPG genre (like PoE, Diable etc) do have their own appeal that generally falls outside of the need to complete them - while still being very compelling experiences. Granted, I do understand that you're not implicitly arguing otherwise. Path of Exile, technically has a story and deep accompanying lore (same as any Fromsoft title), but even with 7k hours in that game, I'll be honest - I know far less than I should about any of it. I think for some, gameplay can definitely trump story, for others - like me, you sort of get comfortable with what the experience is promoting. In that case, I'd say while a good story can permit a game with lackluster gameplay, a game that has a bare bones ( or difficult to parse) narrative absolutely needs stellar gameplay (or bare minimum a VERY addictive gameplay loop). Ultimately, I do agree with this video wholeheartedly. One of my favorite games I've played recently was Disco Elysium and that game was intensely light on what someone would consider ''gameplay'' and yet still, it stuck with me. Deeply. Frankly, I think it's one of the best games I've ever played and I never even got to infinitely juggle an enemy a la DMC. So, despite any push back I would have, yea, I do think narrative does trump gameplay - at least it does for me. PS:Great essay. I subbed after coming across your video on why being evil in video games is hard. So I'm going through the backlog lol.
You raise a lot of good points that I agree with. Not every game needs a story. I don't get something like Pikmin 4 for it. I get it for the exploration and gameplay. I think it's like you said: It all depends on what the game is more focused on being. I just think a good narrative makes the experience all the more memorable. But thank you! I hope you've enjoyed the content. Happy to have you as a subscriber :)
"I know what you're probably thinking, can we really use the validity of completion rates to determine how engaging a game is?" I was thinking was that you picked two examples. One of which was mired in controversies which drew attention largely due to that. The other of which is a game which is notoriously difficult to complete. I was thinking that the portion of people completing any game on steam tends to be less than 30% and that Elden Ring's completion rate was about the expected slice for a reasonably large game with challenging gameplay. If anything, I was expecting a little lower due to how much people would be expected to struggle with it. I was thinking that you started this video saying that the only games which will be remembered are those with compelling stories. This ignoring some of the biggest single player titles in gaming history such as Super Mario Bros, Minecraft, Super Meatboy and Dwarf Fortress. I was thinking of how reductive this entire statement was in the first place, ignoring the multitude of different experiences games can and do offer players. Which people enjoy in different ways. And yes, I was thinking of the validity of completion rates in isolation of every other factor to determine how engaging a game is.
I think it strictly depends on the experience someone is looking for when buying a game. I personally prefer playing fighting games competitievly, and more than once I ignored the story just to play online, or offline with friends (I went as far as playing Guilty Gear Strive for a year without even touching the story mode). But I can understand that playing a difficult game at a competitive level requires time and commitment, so playing a single player game at your own pace while enjoying the story is much easier and way more appealing to most people.
I can see where you're coming from, but I have to disagree on this. For these things, I believe we should focus more on the best selling games of all time such as Minecraft, Mario, PUBG and whatnot. If you look at the top 20 list, I believe around 70% of the games listed either have barely any story, or no story at all. And the ones with a story usually had some VERY good gameplay such as GTA V, RDR2, and The Witcher 3. Even if we go even lower to the top 30s and more, the majority of the list still consist of games with little to no story. The ones you mentioned in this video are very few and between, and even then, a lot of those like Spiderman and God of War have some really good gameplay (Spiderman's gameplay is literally so addictive). There are definitely games like TLOU that need its story to survive. You're going to get plenty of games where its story is the main highlight, and for those, story is pretty much crucial in them. You mentioned games such as Elden Ring where its gameplay is definitely not for everyone, which is very much true. Its difficulty makes it hard for most to finish, or even attempt them out of intimidation. So instead they may just watch others play it and rage. Hogwarts Legacy was massively controversial because of its connections to the HP franchises author J. K. Rowling, who is universally hated by most. If you count people's avoidance of the game because of that, along with so many people severely bullying anyone who played it, especially streamers, its player base is expected to avoid the game out of literal fear of being attacked. Modern day games made by big corporations often seem to try and do 1 of 2 things: Make a single player game with a story that can either range from bad to very compelling OR Make an online multiplayer game with a big risk of it flopping to effectively fall under the current trend. You get bad ones of both all the time, but the single player route is way more safe than the online route. My issue with this video is that it doesn't really tackle the top hitters. Why are most of the top games ever succeeding so much if they don't or barely have a story? Are the few top games with an actual story so successful because of their story? Or is it because their gameplay is just so darn good? Or maybe it's both? These are the type of games that need to be talked about here to decide on whether story or gameplay is more crucial to a video game. I do understand your points and can see a good argument for games created in recent years, but I can't agree with you in this because the highest ranking games primarily prove that gameplay far outweighs story for video games overall.
I don’t think the last of us needs a story to survive. The multiplayer is still kept alive today and people consider it to be a great multiplayer. God I wish an updated factions would come out. That community is starving for a new multiplayer!
@@B.Love88 That is very true about the multiplayer being so live and great. As amazing as it is though, I do believe that if we just got its multiplayer without the story, then it wouldn't had lasted as long since the story is where its main popularity comes from. Also, playing the multiplayer without knowing about its setting and the crucial story elements within its world would massively break the immersion. The multiplayer is great, but I believe the knowledge of the story is what truly makes it feel alive and hooks its players more. This is just an opinion without any clear evidence though, but I do believe TLOU needed its story to survive.
@@mainboysmusic6985 yea I guess the story is integral to the last of us! I just think the gameplay is what people love about the multiplayer. I think people really want to write of the last of us as a movie game when the action is really good! The second game’s gameplay was awesome. There are some criticisms towards the gameplay for sure. However, it was super polished. The people ended up hating for the story at the end of the day.
I think the early FF games are a great example of this concept. Sure they have good gameplay if you love jrpg turn based combat but the real emphasis is on the story. Playing final fantasy feels like experiencing a grand epic story.
@@StrictlyMediocre it depends honestly if you’re a fan of old school PS1 games I recommend starting with FF7 it has one of the best stories of the whole series. If you prefer newer games but don’t mind PS2 era graphics FF10 is another great game to start with. If you really need to have AAA modern graphics and gameplay though FF7 remake is the game for you. And every numbered game has a completely self contained story line not related to the other games so regardless where you decide to start you won’t have to miss any of the story.
I recently got into the Yakuza franchise. In those games, the gameplay is an extension of the narrative/story. For me, this is the best way of constructing a compelling game and characters, let me explain why: Everything you are able to do as the player is something that the protagonist himself would do. You can't commit crime, you don't drive cars, you only fight in self-defense. However, you are able to sing karaoke, go racing with toy cars, play games in the arcade, help people in the city in tons and tons of side stories, dance on the disco, and so on. This means that the player's actions are in line with the routine of the protagonist, which in return makes the player care for the character even before progressing through the dramatic parts of the story. We see his hobbies, his most obscure fantasies, kinks and the way he behaves when no-one is watching, just by engaging in exploration and minigames. Many open word games ask us to care deeply for a grieving protagonist after we, as the player, ran around the map causing mayhem and massacres (like in GTA games). The thing is, you never really feel the character's thoughts because our actions are disconnected from the reality of the plot. In Yakuza, there's no such thing. You are free to do what you want, but only something that your character would do, and that makes his grief and struggles hit much more deeper. I would really like to see a video of yours talking about this topic, the fusion between player actions and narrative.
You can have a game with good gameplay and no story. But you can’t have a game with no gameplay and a good story, that would be cinema. Also you say that you get more attached to games with a good story than ones with little story. Then you are not there to play a fun game instead you watch a movie with gameplay parts in it. Instead we should strive for games that tell their stories from the gameplay like Undertale. Or just create fun games to play…
Hogwarts legacy has a bad story AND bad gameplay, the only reason this game sold well is because of harry potter. In the topic of story>gameplay i couldnt disagree more, in my opinion games are made to be played not watched, if possible i always skip cutscenes, thats why i never played ghost of tsushima. But in the end i think what matter the most in gaming is the journey, for me the journey is the gameplay and for you its the story! Sorry if my english is bad
Even though I do prefer gameplay over story, it was so hard for me to finish GoW: Ragnarök. Yeah the combat was fantastic yet the story was so bad that I couldn't find the same motivation I got from GoW 2018 to finish it right away. No matter how fun your gameplay is with bad writing it can ruin the whole thing same as having a great story but boring gameplay.
I never got to play Ragnarök so I can't really comment on that :/ I can definitely see how it can be the opposite though and can agree. If the story isn't good in a game that features missions based off the narrative, the gameplay suffers too. Often times you'll see very little variety in the types of missions you complete because of this. So if one aspect suffers, the other also does.
@@clevernamerighthere9240 Ironwood was straight up horrible and made me quit the game for few days. Not only writing but the presentation of the Gow 2018 was gone too so nothing particularly incredible or epic happened until the end except for the doulbe valkyrie boss fight and the whole ''Ragnarök'' part was disappointing as well. I think Ragnarök had the second best combat in the whole series but the whole story was either mid or garbage to the point that made me not enjoy it that much. I still replay Gow 2018 time to time despite having inferiour combat but not even the new patch made me replay Ragnarök simply because of it's story.
but what if the gameplay *is* the narrative? like with how radiant silvergun and ikaruga's timeloop being entirely contextualized in the many retries players go through to attain a 1 credit clear, or with kingdom hearts establishing a rivalry with an optional boss fight that keeps tally, or with how DMC players get to see more personality out of a character the better they play, or with missile command
I generally agree. I mean, I played God of War Ragnarok for the conversations between fights rather than the fights themselves! But there was something magical about fighting Rennala blind in Elden Ring. There’s so much implied story about her in a relatively short time, and it’s a tragedy told entirely through gameplay. I do wonder how well Elden Ring will stick with me in the future, and man it’s a massive game, but I haven’t seen stories told primarily through gameplay all that often.
The few games that I can think of are Shadow of the Colossus and the Metroid Prime Trilogy. Each boss you fight in Shadow of the colossus *SPOILER* ... you grow this feeling where you're not sure if what you're doing is right, as each boss you fight, you see demonic physical changes in your character. Your character's goal is just, but what you're doing to achieve it isn't.
So you're saying that games like elden ring and hogwarts get completed less because they don't have good stories? some big flaws in logic there, the first being that you don't understand the numbers you're quoting, i don't doubt the previously mentioned games have lower completion rates than the likes of the last of us, god of war, and spider-man. but it's not because of their 'stronger' narratives; it's based on a bunch of different factors you don't even mention. things like length, difficulty, and accessibility can all attribute to that statistic; which raises a another good point: how can you even prove there's a correlation between good narratives and completion rates when the likelier factor is that narrative focused games are shorter on average compared to others? even if we disregarded all of that you're still cherry picking based on you comparing god of war, last of us, and spider-man, three playstation exclusives, to elden ring and hogwarts (two non exclusives). this is dumb for the simple fact that a game not restricted to one console will sale way more than a game that is. so when the number of players rise, it would make perfect sense for the completion rate to plummet. I could go on, but you get the point. Look if this was just an opinion you had, i wouldn't be annoyed by this video, hell i might even agree with you to some extent; but don't try and justify it with some bullshit statistic that most people in the gaming industry don't care about. That's it. rant over.
Yeah like I stated in some of the other comments, looking back at this video months later I wish I approached the topic / video differently. My opinion on Narrative being more important to me than gameplay still stands, but the argument I use revolving completion rates definitely should’ve either (a.) been more developed or (b.) should’ve been omitted entirely. Like you said, there’s definitely a lot more to the rates besides the quality of the story. I’ve thought about taking this video down simply because some of my arguments I think have flaws and holes to them, but I still believe the core message of the video is valid to me, which is there should at least be a balance in the two.
I don’t know what is going on now. I remember everyone was worried that games with stories were becoming less of a thing, and now things have changed where people are complaining about games with stories now. What happened? I’m really confused.
While I do understand where your coming from on some level I feel this video puts too much of a blanket statement on gaming as a whole. For example, games like Rain World or This War Of Mine (the ladder of which is the only game to make me cry as silly as it sounds) use gameplay to tell their story. I’m not saying that story isn’t an important aspect, but they both need to work together (the failure of this is why I personally didn’t care for Spider-Man PS4). I think the TH-camr Mark Brown has some good videos on “emergent Gameplay” to showcase this. Sorry if my dumbass worded this poorly.
I would like to offer a counter opinion on this: story driven games have less replay value without a solid gameplay. In that lense, gameplay is crucial, and story isn't. It's not a wild take, I know, but recently I have been noticing this small trend in games trying to be more spectacle than they need to be. Let's take the God of War reboots as an example. The classic games had a compelling narrative, but it was clearly focused on the gameplay. Meanwhile, GoW and Ragnarok have what I like to call Hollywood aspiration. It really wants to be as cinematic as possible, and that's in detriment of the gameplay, which is much simpler and streamlined, a huge departure from the classics. It goes all the way back to games like Heavy Rain. The Last Of Us and Detroit: Become Human also have that cinematic direction to them, and the gameplay is pretty barebones. This creates a low skill entry level so that more people (read casuals) can enjoy the game and the compelling narrative that was created, but at the same time, once you complete the story, there isn't much else to do, unless we're talking about games with multiple endinds like Fallout. People keep replaying Fallout: New Vegas because they want to explore the other endings, and the mods allow you to thread the story in different ways every time. That's not to say games can't be "cinematic" or story driven. The success of that style clearly shows there's a market for it and people seem to enjoy it a lot when you look at all the discussion around those titles. My concern is that games shift from the focus on gameplay more and more. Realistically speaking, it's much easier to code a simple gameplay that allows you to watch an interactive movie. But this is more an extension of a logical conclusion. We do have games that strike a balance between the two, like Doom: Eternal. It really added a story for the main character, and the gameplay is engaging enough to keep bringing people back, because it is fun.
I still have to get to RdR2. I remember loving the first couple of hours but I sold it with my console. I'm gonna have to wait for a steam sale to pick it up!
This makes so much sense. Horizon Zero Dawn really falls foul of this. The build up is great but the payoff and the manner of which it ends is just weird and feels very Mary-sue-ish. And in fact I spent the overwhelming majority of my play time just exploring because the story really didn’t grip me past the halfway point. By the time I completed the final quest I was max level. The final quest is like level 30 something. Only reason I ended up platinuming it was because I was already 87% of the way there when I checked completion percentage. It took me five years to complete my first and only run through of that game. A total of 50 hours. (I earned my first trophy for it in about March of 2018, i finished it in October this year.) Where as I completed fallout 3 within about a week of starting it. Albeit not 100% completion as I still have DLCs to dive into but I put so much more consecutive time than I did HZD. Another example is Borderlands where I love the writing of 1 and 2 even if it’s a classic series of large tunnels. I have well over 300 hours in them. Tbf I can still run around exploring them as well. I mostly play single player games for the story, and when the story fails I go off exploring. I think partly why I enjoyed Bethesda RPGs so much is that the game’s main narratives tend to encourage you to go exploring. While still having some pretty solid writing to them. Their survival modes being something I enjoy greatly because it removes fast travel from the cards for the most part which is retrospect actually decreases my enjoyment of games now that I think about it. I barely ever play them on top difficulty, not because I can’t, but because I find it distracts me from what I actually want to do which is enjoy the story, lore, and just exploring. For me Combat and gameplay will always take a back seat to exploring and story.
Narrative without gameplay is just a movie. Gameplay without narrative is literally just mashing buttons to get pleasing lights and sounds. To divorce story and gameplay as two separate entities instead of two halves of a singular experience is the inherent design flaw in most modern Sony games and why we've seen such a regression in what made them special during the PS1-PS3 days. Story isn't just what's in the cutscenes or when a dialogue speaks. Everything, from the art direction to the stiffness/fluidity of the controls is fundamental to telling a story like only games can. And while completion rates can say things, you don't want to ignore gameplay centric experiences that have also achieved high rates, such as Resident Evil 3 Remake, which follows the same gameplay loop and escalating progression as any other Resident Evil title, just in a microcosm and with the right rough edges polished to ease players along. That's also not to mention the typically fairly low rates of completion for other narrative heavy titles, like several of Telltale's projects.
"[...] Lore does not equal story. Lore gives background to the world around you whereas the story provides a plot that gives meaning to everything you do. It's rather disappointing since the game (Elden Ring) had the works of George R. R. Martin attached to it. With such a detailed world, it's a shame that only a thin story was the result." I understand where you are coming from, there are many people out there who would agree with you on the main point you drive with this portion I quoted from your video and I personally enjoy when someone else brings a perspective different from mine into the world of possibilities - which is why I want to ask; why do you believe that Elden Ring has a thin story?
Elden Ring I think has some VERY good segments where it shines in story. Particularly the backstories surrounding some of the boss fights. But in terms of overarching story, it wasn't compelling enough for me to finish it. For the duration that I played the game, I had no idea what was going on. It was only until after I gave up on it where I learned that there was a bunch of lore that aided in the story experience. But every lore / story video I've watched, I found myself more and more lost and disinterested. I asked all my friends who completed the game (and loved it unlike me) what the story of the game was, and they couldn't give me any responses that were favoring of it. They loved the gameplay, but they talked about how they didn't care for the story and were there for just the gameplay. While it's a very different game, I find myself comparing it to Shadow of Colossus. That game to me did it right in terms of story execution. The boss fights were great and the story you uncover as you beat each one becomes more and more haunting. I guess I went into Elden Ring expecting the story structure to play out similarly, so I found myself more disappointed that way.
@@StrictlyMediocre Yes, sadly most people do not elaborate on the story of the characters around them and focus more on the lore of the place they are in, which is also adding to the story, but does not seem to be the main focus of most lore-hunters out there. The story itself is profound and captivating, to me at least. If you are interested in knowing about it, I wouldn't mind elaborating on my hyperfixation with you. But I do understand what you mean, although I believe it stems from a personal preference over the narrative style of story-telling in this case. Please, correct me if I'm wrong and thank you for answering ^^
Lol all From Soft games prove you objectively wrong. Gameplay and level design mean infinitely more to a game than story. It's why all the biggest games in the world have nothing to do with story. It's why visual novels don't sell. I just checked the top 10 games on steam charts and only one game is story based. Baldur's gate 3.
I kinda desagree with your entire point of your video, I find gameplay foccused games and games that uses "show don't tell" a lot more engaging, i feel like i'm just another one in that world, instead of "i am the savior of the world", in the end i think that the completion rates are different because story games tend to be more easier and target a more casual audience than gameplay games
The problem I have with soul games like Elden Ring is that their story telling rely heavily on ambiguity, if you don't have a lot of free time sitting in front of your monitor and a game nerd, you can't really get into the 'story'. And the highly praised combat isn't even that fun to play at. I'd say fs soul games has the most cringed and boring combat mechanic among all the games made by Japanese studios
Story was never important, nor should it ever be, because of the medium they deal with. A “game” is something that is played. A “movie” is something that is watched. The focus of a “videoGAME” is on its last part, the “game”. Stories are always bound to the current zeitgeist. Who claims today that Half Life 1 still has the best story and characters? Or is Mass Effect still the pinnacle of storytelling? How often do you REALLY play a game JUST for its story? On the other hand, good gameplay lasts forever. And thise games will be played forever: UT, LoL, PoE, WoW, etc... That's why the story was, never will and should never be anywhere as important as the gameplay. Else you might just go to the cinema.
Not sure I can agree with this one. I can understand somebody liking story better, but I'm not convinced that it's "crucial" at all in a general sense. Many of the games that I keep coming back to (e.g., Super Mario World with all its ROMhacks) have little to no story. And even when I go back to a game with story (e.g., Final Fantasy VI), it's usually to play the game in a different way, and I actively fast-forward through the story sections. Even when it comes to newish games that I really enjoyed (Monster Sanctuary is probably the best example), story just isn't a huge component of that. On top of that, I don't watch movies or TV at all TBH. Regardless of whatever the completion rates say, on a personal level, gameplay is crucial and story is a nice-to-have. Obviously it's best to have both and appeal to everybody though.
I don’t buy the argument that completion rate has anything to do with how much people enjoyed the game. It’s a measure of how much people wanted to see the ending, which is of course going to have a strong bias in favor of games that have something to end.
Rdr2 is light years better than all the "narrative games" you mentioned and has a lower completion percentage than all of them, all this nonsense about narrative over gameplay is just a way to keep AAA companies complacent in doing the minimum in gameplay by limiting themselves to create "sad character simulator" as a form of "elevated narrative". And did you use a scene from Detroit as an example or did you insinuate that that trash game is good?
Rdr2 is an interesting one. It's got a lot of content. And I mean A LOT. So much that it makes sense that players will choose to diverge from the story to do other things. And while I'm not hating on the story at all when I say this (It's definitely up there with some of the best in the video game medium imo) it's very long. Not everyone wants that. It's like when someone picks up a potential book to read. If they see it has 1000 pages, for most people it can be quite intimidating and challenging to get through. Same thing can be said for shows. "I don't want to watch One piece because it has over 1000 episodes." It takes a certainly level of planning to masterfully combine both narrative and gameplay. When it's done right, that's peak game design imo. When it's not, you'll find people with your belief developing issues and people like me with my belief having issues. And although I personally enjoyed Detroit Become Human, I simply used the scene for the video because I thought it fit with the transition / edit.
@@StrictlyMediocre RDR2 seems like it would be a terrible example for the arguments people are making here. DIFFICULTY. The main story is not hard in RDR2, the challenges are hard (except for the gambler challenges which are bullshit) but the story missions are mostly just cover shooting with a pretty forgiving amount of health and dead eye to bail you out if you are ever in any real trouble. WALKING SIM. Almost every every mission in RDR2 begins and ends with you holding down a button to keep up with the other horses. SAD CHARACTER SIMULATOR. Sir have you played the game? (also you're definitely just mad about TLOU2)
@@danieldykstra3079 a lot of insinuations being made eh If you think tlou2 is the most complex thing in the world, go for it, you're the one, but the damage that this game did is undeniable, people who think that a game that boil down to a compilation of cutscenes is what should be done in this medium are pathetic
You're not comparing apples to apples, if you look at the TLOU1 on Steam it also has well under 50% completion for the main campaign. And it has nothing to do with the gameplay or the story, the issue is the consumer base. Steam's marketplace has been significantly broader than pretty much every other console for a long time, so the playerbase isn't as monolithic. For example, I mainly play Platformers, JRPG's, and 2D Fighting Games. Despite this, I own games like Deus Ex and Watch Dogs on Steam. When players buy a game they normally wouldn't on a whim (or because it's on sale) they dilute the playerbase. A good chunk of these players won't even be skilled or invested enough beat these games. And that's to say nothing of the players that use Steam to double-dip. For another personal example, I own Sonic Frontiers on Steam and PS4, but I finished it on PS4 first, and only went back to the Steam version after the updates. None of these are outcomes are possible with the examples you used. All these games released as Sony exclusives with Sony backing, of course they outperform other games on their home platform.
hello! before anything id like you to hear me out and see my comment all the way through because i am genuinely trying to get you interested in something amazing i found your channel through an omori essay video. i just wanted to let you know that since you liked omori so much you should definitely try deltarune AS IT IS EXTREMELY SIMILAR TO OMORI. now wether or not youve heard of this game is something i dont know , but i sure as hell know i wouldnt be writing this if the game was bad. something you should know is that this game is by the same developer of UNDERTALE (a game i assume you hate for whatever reason) basically, since deltarune is a parallel universe to undertale (and ive told everyone this) id highly recommend you push yourself through a pacifist run of undertale JUST FOR THE SAKE OF THE CONTEXT. deltarune is its own game with a story extremely similar to omoris and the creator actually knows omocat and theyve been working on projects together. again, DELTARUNE IS NOT UNDERTALE, its community is much more chill and you should definitely not let this game go under your ass. as of right now, deltarune only has 2 chapters out of 7 , each chapter is huge and has atleast 4-5 hours of playtime, you can get it as a demo on steam like i said, UNDERTALE pacifist run for context, then both chapters of deltarune. the story is still going as we are speaking and its insanely similar to omori, DO NOT LET THIS GO. trust me on that. just about anyone whos played omori has also played deltarune
Holy. Because you wrote such a long comment, I’ll download it tonight and give it a go. I actually remember hearing about this game awhile ago when I finished Omori. How frequent are the chapters being released?
@@StrictlyMediocre like i said, a finished pacifist run of undertale is essential for the context of deltarune, so id recommend u push yourself through that first somehow before anything, as for how frequently the chapters release, we have no idea, but we do know that chapter 3 , 4 and 5 are all gonna drop at the same time either this or next year.
For 1:32-1:45, the games are “What Remains of Edith Finch” and “Dying Light 2” 6:47-6:53 TitanFall 2 (HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Game constantly goes on sale for three or four bucks on steam. The story and missions are fantastic.
If a game has a good story but the gameplay is mid I’m not playing it. If I wanted to watch a movie I’d watch a movie. A game like ER a game I’ve replayed many times totalling a whopping 400 hours of playtime, gameplay and mastering the combat was the only reason I replayed it so much, and have enjoyed it too it’s fullest. A game like god of war has so much Walking and talking sections that are designed to keep your hands busy, listening to these people I don’t care about talk about thing I don’t care about, look game I just wanna kill monsters as Kratos let me play the fkn game. The older games did it better. I think spider man did the story and gameplay well enough to make me play it multiple times to platinum it, but god of war just pisses me off. Replay-ability is very important to me that I bought lies of p instead of spider man 2, if you value story more that’s cool but games are meant to be played not listened/watched.
I can agree with that. Choice focused “games” like Detroit Become human are interesting cases. You COULD watch someone play it, but watching someone play it could be frustrating if they make a choice you don’t want to happen. Which in turn is the reason for buying it if you want to see the story play out yourself. Replay-ability wise they’re not the best since you’d have to sit through the game again without really “playing” it. I’m surprised by your take on GOW though. I guess certain stories work differently for everyone. If the story doesn’t interest you, I can see a game like that not sitting well. I do still firmly believe about games needing an equal balance, or at least focus in both aspects of a game. I want the gameplay to be good just like everyone else, but if there’s no good story in a game that literally has a game mode called “story mode” it brings the game down for me.
@@StrictlyMediocre the story of god of war 2018 was good it was just annoying walking around listening to people speak, the older games were more about the gameplay, I kinda wish they just made all the talking sections into cutscenes that I can skip, people who like GOW 2018 literally have save files to skip these sections because of how boring they are.
@@StrictlyMediocre one thing I agree with you on is if a game has a story it should be a good one. One example is the story of Malania and Rhadan from ER, fighting them knowing their story is so good it gives me emotional investment and deepens my love for ER. I think the souls games that fromsoft makes do video game story really well using games to tell stories unique only to games which is why I love the story and the bosses so much. The Nioh games have similar gameplay to the souls games, but the story that they have are so bad that I can’t complete them, without having a friend laughing at how bad the story is with me.
@@makia3 Sorry to jump in this conversation but I just wanted to say that I love GOW 2018 and I enjoy the walking and talking sections. You might not enjoy it (which I respect) but others do. So please don't generalize the fans. Also correct me if I'm wrong but you can skip cutscenes in New Game Plus and I think you can mute character voices in GOW: Ragnarök. So that might help with your dislikes.
@@_Nonnez_ you like replaying walking sections? There good the first time but on subsequent play throughs they are a chore that should have the option to be skipped.
Sorry but no. Just no. The games you mentioned , especially Sony's blockbusters, are exactly what's wrong in the AAA industry right now: an extreme focus on being cinematic coupled with bog-standard, borderline useless mechanics and systems (like loot in the new GOW). Game completion rate is a completely meaningless metric, especially when talking about AAA lowest common denominator titles that are going for the largest possible audience. Video games elevate themselves as art by focusing on their inherent strengths, rather than aping other forms of art like cinema. The best games ever are those that marry the mechanics and the narrative and weave them together seamlessly in a way only games can (Outer Wilds, Portal, etc.), not those AAA titles that use cutscenes as a crutch and end up separating the story from the gameplay.
@clvr51 Pointing out real problems in the gaming industry isn't a strawman. Narrative focused games are not an issue. Learn what words mean before you spew them to try and sound smart.
@@firepeaman2440 dude stop, this is all in your head. I never mentioned anything like that so why would you point them out? Can you please stick to my points and criticelize those or do you just wanna be an asshole spouting strawmen? Cause I'm getting kinda mad to be honest.
@@firepeaman2440 I know and I agree those are huge problems, but what does any of that have to do with the discussion at hand and why do you have to be so passive aggressive about it?
I sorta agree and disagree. A lot of times stories that you might find to be "simple" in story have gameplay and narrative design as part of the storytelling. I'd argue Jak 2 is one of Naughty Dog's best titles because of how well gameplay and narrative is interwoven. I do like narrative driven games and prefer them, I rarely play single player games with no real campaign, however I don't prefer one or the other. My example of this is The Last Guardian. You could argue it's a "beautiful and moving story" but I stopped playing it because the gameplay was fucking abysmal and felt like the game was actively shitting on me and mocking me with the narration (I uninstalled the game when the protagonist claimed that me and Trico had developed a "stronger bond of communication"). I like Soma quite a bit but I'm not eager to revisit it because of how linear and basic the gameplay loop is. The Last Of Us is great but half the game is walking and exploring. I've beaten these games, but I revisit ones with a strong harmony with narrative and gameplay. Dishonored is another great example. Deceptively simple morality tale that uses emergent gameplay as storybeats to form the experience. I find people often have a reductive look at storytelling in games, as if the lack of hours of cutscenes points to zero storytelling. People often get hung up on the presentation of a game and don't look deeper at the game itself and what it's trying to say, and how it conveys the themes and storytelling. Another game that I love and replay a little too much is Dead Space 2. The longest cutscene in that game barely scratches two minutes because the experience is focused on immersion. I'm of the opinion that Dead Space 2 is the most underrated single player title from a narrative design standpoint due to how seamless it is in using gameplay to facilitate the storytelling. There is a ton of character building, story beats, and window dressing that happens on a constant rate throughout the game. I want more games like Dead Space 2
As someone who personally prefers story over gameplay, I don't think your video quite hit the point you were probably trying to make. Story is often important for games, but for different reasons and not inherently superior to gameplay. There are types of games that are more gameplay-focused such as Mario, Call of Duty or Soulslikes where the story mostly acts as a supplementary setting that creates reasons for the gameplay to happen. On the other hand, there are types of games where the story is the center and the gameplay is more on the sidelines. Examples would be all of Final Fantasy, visual novels, many JRPGs, Life is Strange and so on. These games aren't worse for being story-focused nor is their gameplay unimportant. Even visual novels still have a need for engaging gameplay which can be shown by my experience with Pyschedelica of the Ashen Hawk which gave me so little agency and opportunities to actually play the game that it bored me to tears. Most visual novels manage to strike this balance, however, and it shows that a game very much needs both story and gameplay to be good. The problems is the inherent subjectivity of the experience of playing a game. Most people who vastly prefer gameplay over story aren't going to be bothered much by a bad story while bad gameplay will be their dealbreaker. On the other side, story-focused players will be massively disapponted by a bad story while not minding bad gameplay as much. In the end, both aspects are still important for most games, no matter their inherent focus on one. People aren't wrong for criticizing a game's story or gameplay and shouldn't be told to simply "read a book" or "go play Fortnite" instead. Both points of view matter and I'm sick of people invalidating each other over their differences.
I like it better when us players unravel the story and lore through gameplay more than boring movie games. Stop being those types of " I quality storytelling", everyone is different on how they like their games.
I can't say I agree with this video. I agree that a good narrative could elevate a game, but all this video shows is what does well in a casual audience. It doesn't prove that narrative driven games are better than non-narritve ones, especially with the examples given. Compare and contrast the last of us 2 and Elden ring, both game of the year winners, but very different receptions for the wider audience. TLOU2 has a very divisive audience, and alot of people trash and hate on that game, while Elden ring has a very grand fan base, and is considered by many to be one of the best video games of all time. TLOU2 might have a higher story completion rate, but that doesn't make it a better game, just a more casual friendly one. Even God of War which has a very positive on the game audience is still considered beaten out by Elden ring, at least in terms of review score, which in itself doesn't mean much, that comparison is practically the same as comparing complete percentages. These arguments don't go into what makes a game good though, since that's purely subjective. Devil may cry 5 might not have the best story, and it might be a niche/smaller title when compared to God of war and Spider-Man, but Id argue that DMCV is a better game than both of them. Its definitely the best in it's genre, but even then, it doesn't replace those games in it's genre, people still love Devil may cry 3. These games have great gameplay, but they dont get replaced when a new version with better gameplay comes out, that just doesn't happen. Would you consider fighting games in its entirety to be bad video games that are super replaceable? People still play Smash melee, and Street fighter 3 third strike is still considered by many to be the best fighting game of all time. None of those games have amazing story's, and most of them aren't casual friendly, but that doesn't stop them from being better than these casual friendly, narrative focused games.
Really great points. With this being my first sort of argumentative piece, I will admit that I failed to speak both sides of the argument. Looking back at this video, I shouldn't have tried to give "factual" reasons as to why one is better than the other. It's purely subjective, so I should have presented it more in that way. There are parts of me that want to take this video down, or give it a different title, but at the end, I still personally believe that story has a bit more of importance than gameplay. At least to me. The video is merely just a way for me to show my love to games with great stories, and how the narratives enhance the gaming experience. I appreciate you giving your thoughts and hearing out mine :)
@@StrictlyMediocre I'm honestly amazed that I got a response to my comment, so I appreciate my thoughts being listened to a lot. When it came to the video itself, it's about a topic that I think about alot. I love narrative driven games, and as I said, I think a good narrative can really elevate any type of game, that's why this video really spoke to me, and it helped me put my thoughts on the subject into words. I hear the same thing all the time about how gameplay is king, and the story doesn't matter since your playing it, but Id say that's a very false and limited idea of what video games are. While I still disagree with you, there are all types of games, and saying that the narrative driven ones are the overall superior ones is something I could never get behind, but I appreciate hearing your thoughts, and being able to see this video, it shows to me that not everyone is into video game to get the some call of duty kills, but to also appreciate a good story. Thank you for your time and thoughts, again I do appreciate not just being a drowned out voice in the crowd here.
@@cheapturbo6439Of course! I understand not everyone will agree with me, and I’ll defend my opinion when I can, but I also believe that listening to others opinions is important too. I want to read both sides of the argument, because it allows me to also understand where I might be wrong on somethings. I’m glad my video was able to give you some insight to the other side of the argument! And I appreciate your insight as it allows me to look at my own opinion differently. I appreciate anyone who takes time out of their day to give a response to something I said. So the thanks should go to you :)
Elden ring has 3 endings, all of which have different achievements. Elden lord has 20%, the age of stars ending has 26% and the lord of the frenzied flame has 14%. So the best way to see how many people completed the game is through the "Hoarah Loux, Warrior" achievement, of which 38.8% of players have gotten. As he is the second last boss, this means the actual completion rate is around 38%, which is quite good for a 50+ hour title.
This is actually just as high as the last of us part 1 now that I look at it, pretty neat.
*bonks myself*
Yeah forget what I said in terms of the completion rate for elden ring lol. That is actually really impressive for a game that's so difficult!
50 hours is selling it wayyyy short lmao. Took me 130 hours and from what I hear thats about average
yeah i also think that in general a game like elden ring has a much higher bar to completion just from the sheer difficulty, but that's the game style, so having a completion rate that high is more of a testimant to its quality than tlou completion rate is. (tlou is like my favorite game btw)
@@Kitsisuri I agree with you but in general, I would say that the Issue with Elden Ring (and other FromSoft titles in my experience) is that the game isn't straightforward like Spider-Man or TLOU2. In those games, it's easy to know where to progress while Elden Ring and Soulsborne games want you to explore and figure it out yourself. It's just more accessible to complete those games than Elden Ring for example.
I can understand where you are coming from. But i have a completely different opinion on this. There are great games with literally no story but fun gameplay mechanics. That you can play for hours. If you have a great story with no or bad gameplay then why is it even a game? Just tell the story as a movie, a tv series or write a book. There is also a difference between minimalistic gameplay and bad gameplay imo. The game can be a cinematic experience and still have good nuanced gameplay. So fo me it is:
Gameplay > Story > Graphics.
You make great points.
A game should have "gameplay" or else it's just a movie. And there definitely are games where a story is not needed to be enjoyable. But me personally, if I plan on buying a game where it has a single player campaign, and it's clear from the beginning that it has a story to tell, then I expect it to captivate me in some sort of manner. I don't need it to be ground breaking or emotional. I just need it to give me a reason to move on to the next mission or level. When I tried playing both Doom and Doom: Eternal, I thought the music was kick ass along with the gameplay. The variety of enemies and weapons kept the action fresh, but as I proceeded through the campaign, I just didn't care about what I was doing, which effected how I felt about my overall experience.
I fell out of gaming a couple of years ago, and what's brought me back was the gradual shift of bringing cinematic story telling into gaming medium. So for me, Story will always be the number one thing I look at before buying a game, but I understand I'm in the minority. Since the beginning, gaming has always been about the gameplay, and without it, there is no game.
@strictlymediocre Gameplay focused games like Ocarina of Time and Dark Souls have been remembered for much longer (and will continue to be that way) than story based games like TLOU and Uncharted. Story based games are a one trick pony experience and are very unreplayable. Meanwhile, games like Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild are highly replayable because of the possibilities in the variation of playstyles and the depth of their gameplay. When the trend of story based games fades away (and it will fade away hard), barely anyone will remember them because the kind of people that play story based games are not real gamers, and these non-gamers will likely move on to some other hobby after cinematic games die out. So, agree to disagree.
@@WildDogGamerBoy In Regards to Ocarina Of Time, the game has been out decades longer and is a groundbreaking title that revolutionized gaming during the time it was released, so it has many reasons as to why it’s still remembered. It also has a very engaging story with a great set of characters that you get attached to. *SPOILERS* it’s a very dark story where you travel back and forth in time. You know what’s bound to happen to Hyrule and the friends that you meet, so the mission is to stop Ganon from reaching his goal. I was personally invested in the story of that game, and it’s what made me enjoy completing all the dungeons as I fought to reach the end. The gameplay was great, and so was the story.
I can’t speak on replay-ability with games since I don’t replay games anymore. I 100% completed breath of the wild (that’s without finding all the korok seeds. Fuck that lol) and the thought of replaying it is just daunting since it’s such a massive game. Don’t get me wrong, I love that game, but I would rather spend that time playing something new.
The Last of Us was released about a decade ago, so who knows if it will be remembered later on, along with every other story driven game. But it did start a trend like you said, and since the release of that title, and the amount of games that are story driven and are being nominated for awards in recent years, it doesn’t seem like it’s a trend that will die soon. Time will only tell though.
I respect your opinion though man :) Agree to disagree.
@@WildDogGamerBoy I don't think the cinematic style of games will just fade away, it's a thing that has been around since the late 2000s, and it still going nowadays, there's certainly a broad appeal
But it'll definitely slow down since people are already getting fatigued of stuff like, forced walk sections, nightmares/hallucinations sequences, minute to minute cutscenes with dialogues that could've been shown in gameplay, etc.
@@StrictlyMediocrethe simplest example of a game without any real story is *Vampire Survivors* .
I gave this as an example, because it was able to compete in GOTY against many good titles
So basically, if a game focuses more on an experience with a strong beginning and an end with a clear path between them players are more likely to finish the games. But I don't think completion rates are a good indication of how good a game is. I mean, open world games are completely different. There are people with hundreds of hours in Breath of the Wild or Fallout 4 but have never actually completed the story.
I think story is only important to a player if that player thinks story is important. It's such a personal value.
i have a friend who as 800h in fallout 4 but never finished it lol
the reason that non-games have a higher completion rate is that they won't allow the player to fail
And story focused games, even if they do have excellent gameplay, tend to be much easier than gameplay focused games. Most likely because, similar to what you said, the developer puts a lot of value in gamers finishing the games and being able to take part of the entire story.
Yup. Spider-Man 2 has QTE's that you can't even fail lol.
@@PeteyPirahna77 So it's less of a QTE and more of a "press button to continue"?
If you don't want the players to fail and have to restart then atleast make the hero fail in a funny way that still continues the plot.
Isn't it logically that short cinematic games have a higher completion rate than longer open world games? Also Elden Ring is a bad example for me. It is a very difficult game. The completion rate of Souls game is always bad.
It most certainly is.
I meant to address the main story rather than 100% a game (completing side quests, collecting items etc.) But I feel like there's a glaring issue with long open world games: It's that no one wants to finish the game. CDPR actually addressed that The Witcher 3 had an incredibly low completion rate, which led to them making the story shorter in Cyberpunk 2077 (from what I heard, they actually cut a big chunk of the game because it ruined the pacing of the story.) So it's safe to say that game devs also see the issue. Just because it has more content, doesn't make it a better game. Now what ended up being the result of Cyberpunk 2077 is subjective. But what ended up happening in terms of rates was cyberpunk had higher completion rates than Witcher 3. More people were willing to finish the game, which I think is what game devs want when they pour their hard work into something for years.
I wish I addressed this in the video instead of elden ring, but oh well lol.
The main reason I used Elden ring as an example was because it was nominated for best narrative at the game awards. I have no real problems with the game, and I understand that the combat is an extreme challenge that will turn off many players, but I found it interesting that the story is never really mentioned in discussions on the game. So the more I looked into what people thought of it, I started to see a general consensus that the main story wasn't all that compelling for most players, that they just cared about the fights. Which is to be expected from a studio like fromsoftware. But I feel like Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order did it right. It's not AS challenging as Elden Ring or Dark Souls, but it still proves to be difficult, all while having an engaging story and a decent completion rate because of it.
@@StrictlyMediocre I have one issue with the idea that the point of a game is to complete the game. I played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 a lot as a kid. I mean "every day after school for years" a lot. I love that game, even today, but I never beat it. The worst part is that I got stuck on the last boss. But I don't mind. I love games for their gameplay, for how they work.
Story is good, and if a game tells a good story along the way, that's great, but it isn't necessary. For me, good story is like a good soundtrack: yes, it's often the thing that separates good video games from great video games (Mega Man 2, Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Super Mario Brothers, Doom, Skyrim, Street Fighter 2, and more are all known for their iconic soundtracks), but if I said that a game's soundtrack mattered more than gameplay did, I would be laughed at, rightly.
Bro I bet you'd LOVE this game. Well it's not really a game, more like a system. Best part is, it's completely mobile, doesn't need any latest gen device, doesn't need electricity, doesn't need anything except light. In this system, you can have any story you want, at any time, in any place, and the gameplay doesn't get in the way of the narrative. They're tailor made to let the player have a complete end-to-end story experience with no hiccups, side quests or visual flair. They're called "books" and they're perfect for when you want a story without any of the story potential being wasted by having to be developed alongside game engines, mechanics, graphics, audio, music, voice acting etc... In some places, you can get them for free so long as you return them to their place of origin on time and as agreed but when you do, you get even more of them! In terms of efficiency, from a cost and player-effort perspective, they're the best around!
The reason why God of War, The Last of Us and Spider-Man are so highly rated is because as well as a great narrative, the game delivers fun and functional mechanics. The gameplay is solid. A game that’s narratively focused with little gameplay is Soma. How many people played Soma all the way through vs The Witcher?
You need a balance, it can’t be more one than the other
"The reason why God of War, The Last of Us and Spider-Man are so highly rated is because..."
They're triple A slop with a millionaire marketing campaign behind them.
Also, narratively speaking, they're just mediocre movies that get a good name around them because they're competing in the video game market rather than actual movies.
Any Doom, Devil May Cry and countless indies casually crush this commercial garbage quality wise.
Homie, The Last Of Us has an imdb score of 8.8 competing against other shows.
@@cammyshill3099You care to explain why?
@@firepeaman2440 I think I already explained enough.
@cammyshill3099 No you didn't. How are they mediocre? How are they slop?
For people that want what is essentially a gimmicky version of movies, than I guess narrative is more crucial. But for people who want to play actual games, gameplay is king. Generally, games with a heavy focus on gameplay tend to be more difficult than movie games, which tends to filter out game journos and casuals pretty quickly. In other words, it makes sense that a game like Elden Ring would have a lower completion percentage than a movie game like TLOU because Elden Ring actually has a skill ceiling required to complete it. A skill ceiling that many casuals are unwilling to invest the time and patience needed to reach it, whereas TLOU practically plays itself for them. This is a key factor as to why gaming has gotten worse the past few years, because movie games move away from the core of gaming, to the point now where Spider-Man 2 has QTEs that you can't even fail. I get that there are people who prefer these "narrative over gameplay" games and that's fine, but I do have to wonder when they will realize what a waste it is to spend $70 plus DLC on these types of games (not to mention the multiple hundreds of dollars to buy the console they're exclusive to) when they can just watch a walkthrough of it on TH-cam for free. They might enjoy it more that way too.
You raise a lot of really good points but I disagree that a good story will always make a game more memorable. Story and gameplay are compliments where when it’s exceptional on one side it can make up for it when it’s lackluster on the other.
A good example of story carrying game is The Last of Us, which had very mediocre gameplay but a story so good that the gameplay was easy to look past.
On the other side games that are incredible gameplay wise can leave just as big of an impact despite a lack of story. Super Mario, Sonic, and Pokémon are all games that millions have very found memories of despite the fact that the story is almost nonexistent. There are also games that’s story is defined by the gameplay itself. Games like Crusader Kings II & III and X-Com. Most people never finish those games, but it’s not the end but the story the player creates with their decisions that define their experience.
The best games are those that can weave both together at an exceptional level. Games like God of War, Neir Automita, Persona 5, and Spider-Man. I agree these games do leave a or more of an impact on those who play them, but it’s the marriage of above average story and gameplay that elevate each other to make them so memorable.
Love your content by the way, just thought you lacked addressing the opposition in this one.
Love this comment!
You got me on Super Mario and other games in that vein. It’s something I completely forgot but now that you mention it, games like those really don’t need a story to be as great as they are.
I personally thought the gameplay of The Last of Us was decent enough (Part II is much better though) but I can also see your point. It wasn’t complex in any way.
I do think, personal bias aside, games should aim for that balance like you said. It’s what I consider to be the perfect gaming experience.
The more days that pass, the more I wish I made this a longer video to address things in further detail, but I was just going for something short. I’ll definitely get back into this topic soon.
Thanks for watching though man! Appreciate love and the discussion!
Stop reading at "The Last of Us, which had very mediocre gameplay". You could argue that TLoU never tried to reinvent the wheel with its core gameplay mechanics because it's the truth. But regarding what it proposed to make, it's an absolute masterclass of refinement, even the first one at the time. Both from the technical point of view and the execution. And I say that as a game dev myself. There's no single-player TPS game as refined as TLoU2 yet, not even close...
"Why Narrative is Crucial (And Gameplay isn't)"
I tend to think the contrary. As the time passes and I get to know my self, the games that I most like are the ones with good gameplay and inovative mechanics. That is, I actually agree with John Carmack when he suposidly said that "history in games is like history in a porn movie: it is there, but it does not matter".
"Games should be movies hurr durr"
If you don't like games, don't play them - watch a movie. How hard is that, fucking Snoy?
Sadly too hard.
CP2077, TLOU, New GOW, ect. ... are all "good" games. As long as ylu ignore the gameplay and only focus on characters and the story!
@@RealCodreX With this approach CP2077 would be deemed "perfect" at launch already, LMAO
So you wants films instead a game. Roger that.
If I’m paying $70 for a game that has a story, both the gameplay and story should be good.
@@StrictlyMediocre Then don't pay 70$ dollars for AAA cinematic trash.
Now seriously.
There is more ways to tell a story then a cinamatic narration.
But more important is that games *CAN CREATE A NEW ONE*
Trough usage of gameplay. They focus on your personal experince, because
all done in the gameplay is
*yours*
Action
Choices
Mistakes
Goals
Done by your hands
A experince thats belongs only to you.
Thats art.
@@danieladamczyk4024 I think there are plenty of Triple A titles that have a strong equal balance of quality with Narrative and Gameplay. It can certainly be done.
I do agree with your point on creating the story for yourself though. I haven't played a lot of games where I felt that way, but the most recent one that comes into mind is Journey. My experience with the game still feels fresh in my mind and its one I don't think I'll ever forget.
@@StrictlyMediocre True that is possible to create game with strong narration and gameplay. However thats are two goals at once.
"More goals you have then is easier to fail"
So dev should focus on one and double down on it. Just like indie games do.
This will demand from you to seek out experince you want, instead default fits all 70$ solution.
Personaly AAA games are dead end of gaming for me.
@@danieladamczyk4024I 100% agree on indie titles. I’ve found that I’ve enjoyed gaming more through these types of titles. Though I must point out that there are indie titles that pull off great stories that match the great gameplay. Ori and the Blind Forest for example is an addictive platform game with a very heart warming story. The combination of the two made for such a memorable experience.
The game isn’t focused on the story, but when the story ever comes into play, it hits hard and is emotional. The ending to the game is absolutely thrilling from a story and gameplay point of view. A perfect balance.
Gameplay>Story
If you want to play a game just for the story, go watch a playthrough or a movie.
"Games" that puts priority in the story at the expense of gameplay are meant for non-gaming individuals that want the game to play for itself.
I understand that sentiment.
As much as I like interactive story games, I definitely get why people would rather watch a play through of it. For me, I enjoy experiencing it for myself rather than watching someone else play it.
A game can still feature a great amount of gameplay, but blend it into the story. Not every story needs to have character arcs. It can be as simple as the story told in Shadow of Colossus.
@strictlymediocre It wasn't my intention to come out with such hostility, although the title of your video seems to be biased towards the story at the expense of bashing gameplay. But what I don't like is when people who clearly don't care about video games in the first place start coming after games I care about and try to change them beyond recognition.
For example, when all those developers, "journalists" and audiences bashed Elden Ring in such a petty manner and started making demands to From software. They started complaining about the difficulty and the "lack of story." Thankfully, the director Hidetaka Miyasaki told them to go touch some grass.
There seems to be a push by non-gamers to turn every single videogame into The Last of Us. Games filled to the brim with accessibility options that add nothing to the game, barely no gameplay to begin with, incredibly linear experience, and no sense of reward at all. And I am sick of it. An example of this can be found in GoW Ragnarok. Did we really need 2 hours of Atreus going around collecting fruits slowly on horseback in order to progress the story? All I wanted to do was slash away with the blades of chaos the entire time.
Even one of my all-time favorite franchises started catering to non-gamers and people like you who only want a good story, Final Fantasy. FF16 literally added accessories that make the character automatically attack, dodge, and do combos for you, just so you can sit back and enjoy the story. What is even the point in playing the game if all you gotta do is press one button to win every single fight?
This is the current state of video games. Just instant reward with zero effort or challenge required from the player. I am totally okay with some people just wanting to sit back and enjoy interactive movies, but don't go around trying to turn the entire industry into that by making videos like these.
P.S. The fact that you said Doom Eternal (an outstanding game) didn't grab you because of the story was just criminal. The whole point of the game was just saving mankind by ripping and tearing demons. There is no need for a deep story about a saddened Doomslayer that lost his bunny to demons.
@@WildDogGamerBoyokay, when you put it like that, it makes sense and I agree with most of what you said. I was gonna say it's your opinion and I can respect it, but yeah, I agree with you about catering to people who never cared about video games. All you said is exactly why I didn't enjoy DMC5 and why I do my best to finish hard games like any FromSoftware game.
@@IAmTheEagleHTM I actually enjoyed DMC5. It had enough story without sacrificing the gameplay and combat. I don't mind when games have a story, just don't do it at the expense of my enjoyment.
this is so true, i see people always complain on how red dead 2s gameplay isnt the best, but the story is so good that it heavily outways the gameplay making it so good
No it doesn't RDR2 is one of the middest games i played in my life.
i disagree immensely. this is simply not true in an absolute sense!
Nobody dances to a song with Mindblowng lyrics and an awefull beat.
Gameplay always should be the focus of games not the story!
because games are meant to be played!
i like a good Story as much as everyone but they are not necessary for games.
We have Books, Series and Movies for that.
of course a combination of both is ideal!
but given the choice gameplay is more important!
No Story will keep my interested for more than its duration. Once it is over i am done with the game if the gameplay cannot hold up
I am so glad that Zelda TOTK had a good story compared to BOTW but even without that i would have played the crap out of it!! because the gameplay is fantastic!!
movies / Series / Books = Story
Music = Beat and Rythm
Games = Gameplay
I respect your argument man :)
I guess I just go into games for different reasons. If I know a game is focused on gameplay, my argument is invalid. Superhot and Ultrakill aren't games that need a story as the main purpose of it is the gameplay. My argument is more geared towards games that have stories but don't utilize it to the game's advantage. Much like the Zelda games you mentioned along with Ocarina of Time, I would say all three of them have good to fantastic stories. In BOTW, I remember trying to explore the map to find all the memory locations because I wanted to know the history of Hyrule and how things were before Gannon came along. Each memory you uncover is filled with dread as you know what happens to them later on. Learning those memories gives the temples you complete more weight and depth to it. You know what is at stake when you're trying to fight the bosses that bring uneasiness to the towns.
I know some people like to replay games, but me personally, even if the game is ridiculously fun and the story is great, I can never replay it. I personally think about the next game to play as time is short and replaying the same thing over and over is a waste when I can play something completely new.
Agree to disagree!
@@StrictlyMediocre interresting.
if nothing new came out in the next 30 years i would be fine.
i have like 15 games i can cycle through on repeat because they are so damn good.
Hollow knight, Zelda TOTK, Horizon FW, Lufia 2 (snes game), Sifu, Dead Space, Zelda ALTTP, Terranigma, Fallout 4, Cyberpunk 2.0, FF X 2 (seriously!)
Unsighted, Sakuna, Ruins of tasos, Ghost of Tsushima, Stardew valley, Octopath 1&2,
Subnautica, Elden Ring, Bloodborne,Sekiro,
time you enjoy wasting is never wasted!
@@sion7651completely agree with your opinion, and the games you listed for how replay-able they are.
I heavily disagree. Gameplay is and should be more important than story. It's a video game after all. Sonic The Hedgehog 1 didn't have a story and many people still remember it. Classic Doom barely had a story either and a ton of people remember it. The Super Mario series is gameplay focused, and it's hailed as a legendary franchise.
Bro tries to explain why games shouldnt focus on the thing that is unique to the genre, and telling to focus on narative instead. If we wanted a story specificaly we wuld read a book or wach a movie.💀💀💀
Theyre called GAMES not interactive dramas
they are both. You do not need to repeat his bad take but from the other side of the spectrum, games are a lot of things! from visual novels to shooters to puzzles to racing to educational... they all have a place.
I'm not taking sides on any front but... some people are fans of pure stress enducing rage. If you're a huge story person, a little known developer named Tell Tale Games is right up your alley. 😃
I will never understand how people can put themselves through games that have guaranteed rage. I'm pretty sure if I tried, my controller would end up broken after an hour lol.
@@StrictlyMediocre me either, I'm not a rager but I like watching the compilation vids of others like Dr Disrespect. Addmitingly my controllers develop stick drift sooner than they probably should.
Damn Ninja Gaiden franchise.😆
Story told through gameplay is more important than just story or gameplay. Easy to follow stories obviously have more completion rates but games like disco elysium, hollow knight, outer wilds have a lot more meaningful stories than any of the Sony blockbusters mentioned in this video. Its like comparing hollywood blockbusters to art house movies. They can both be great, but cannot be for mass audience consumption
By the title alone I hope this is a trolling channel.
Haha it’s definitely one of my most wildest takes when it comes to games.
Good points. Another game that I think does the story and game play balance well is the Pokemon Myster Dungeon series. First game I cried at when I was younger.
Resident Evil games have in my opinion the ideal gameplay/story ratio.
You make many meaningful choices during pure gameplay sections that are in a way small stories themselves in how you survive in your own unique way.
The comments about Elden ring is on point. My first "souls-like" game was Jedi fallen order, and I tore through that one because of both the gameplay and narrative. Elden ribg is more the gameplay and that's ok, but I'm much less likely to finish it
Great gameplay you’ll remember for a while but a great story you’ll remember forever.
This
Tell that to almost every mainline Super Mario game then
Immersive atmosphere, great music, memorable characters, the feel of a real journey, and fun gameplay will always be what makes a classic
@@ayrtonjogaYou do realize there are things called “outliers” right. Mario is the golden standard for gameplay, barely any other games meet these standards for graphics, gameplay, music and overall narrative. Narrative and story can carry the absolute fuck out of games with mid mechanics.
@@YungFozz Mario isn't an outlier, it's the most obvious counter point to this video, look at other famous franchises, be it from all ages like Pokemon and Sonic, to R-rated stuff like Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil
They usually has simple stories, but the gameplay, music, characters, and lore (Narrative and lore aren't the same thing), are what makes the fans come back for more
I’ll rmr Devil may cry 5 forever 💀
Amazing video please never quite!
A single player game will never be remembered without a good story? Doom would like a word with you
and Half Life, Quake, Mega Man, Mario, Sonic, Metroid, Castlevania, Smash Bros, Street Fighter, Pokemon, Xcom, Jagged Alliance, Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Empires, Statcraft, FreeSpace, Master of Orion, Thief, Tomb Raider, Diablo... the classic games from these series are still being played by millions today, many with active modding/hacking and new fan made content being created.
Elden ring? You could just say it has a lower completion because it was too hard more most.
True. I didn't really consider that new players that never played a souls game would pick it up due to hype around it.
Bad take on my part.
Bad take, there's no such thing as 'Story Vs Gameplay', different games do different things, gaming is the most broad medium, from walking simulators to strategy games to platformers to simulation and so on... they all have a place. I for example, swing between different types of games depending on my mood, sometimes i want story, others i want a particular type of gameplay and sometimes i just want weird/unique stuff.
Why dont you play visual novel a type of game that is full story instead of cinmatic movie games
I loved this video, especially your video game examples. Personally, God of War, Omori, Undertale, Celeste and Ghost of Tsushima will always be my top 5 favorite games, all ironically revolve in story. I also liked your music choice, teared me up tbh. (Please tell me the music names ;~;) Got a new sub, I hope you grow your channel and for the algorithm will bless you!
Thank you!!! I'm glad you enjoyed it! Celeste is definitely another game I have to get to.
I gotchu though! It's in the order that it plays in the video.
Ardie Son - Hot Summer Air
Charlie Ryan - Delicate Displace
DaniHaDani - Bait
Doug Kaufkman - Songbird
@@StrictlyMediocreThank you so much! Will listen to these, your music choice and video format is beyond the average, truly an underrated channel! I pray that God bless you and have a good day!
there is a problem in your arguement . yes completion rates are high in games with great stories but if a game has bad gameplay then it just becomes a slideshow of emotional cutscenes. Take god of war for example the story is great but its gameplay is exceptional. A story of a game matters a great amount but if it does not complement the gameplay then the game just feels distant and doesnt work well together. A game is great because of the atmosphere it build. Gameplay and story plays a major role in the atmosphere. But nevertheless the video goes way too hard and the editing is top notch
I agree 100%.
God of War and the Last of Us nailed that perfect blend of story telling and gameplay. They both need to work with one another to create that amazing game experience. A lot of times you'll have fun combat and exploration, but if the missions you're being sent on feel bland or like there's a lack of effort, it harms the gameplay. Fallout 4 had improvements to its gameplay, but the missions were quite dull compared to Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Fallout 3 and New Vegas both have stiff combat, but its the world and the stories you experience in those games that are what make it so enjoyable, and actually heighten the gameplay (for me at least.)
Thank you for the kind words on the video though!!! :p
i personally think the high completion rates comes from the accessibility of the game and how engaging the story is gamers dont out weigh the massive amount of non gamers so for games to have high completion or sales its usually because of marketing story and the ease of playing many successful games such as Fortnite or cod are hated amongst most gamers but they survive due to casuals good video i would just take population size into account and how reviews or completion rates would be effected by that
fantastic channel can’t believe i just found you
Ayyyy thank you for giving my channel a chance man! :p
Video games started as only gameplay and only years later the started implementing a cutscenes to connect gameplay loops and setting changes. Video games where you barely do anything yourself are not good games.
For example I loved watching videos of Telltale games, the stories are often very beautiful. But I feel like it is not worth paying for it like an actual game. A game is supposed to be replayable and give you a good amount of agency. Modern cinematic games are often dropped after playing them once or maybe twice at most. How many people played the new God of War game more than twice? On the other hand you can play games like Ratchet and Clank, Sly, Jak and Daxter and similar old school games over and over again.
Gameplay is the CORE of a video game. Story is like a complementary wine or drink to your meal (gameplay). If you take story out of a video game, you still have a game. If you take gameplay out of a video game, you have a movie or TV show.
I rather buy a video game where there is barely any story, but the gameplay itself is very fun (Counter Strike is a good example), than one where 50% are cutscenes and half of the other 50% you only press x or square in a quick time event.
My argument isn't necessarily targeted at games that feature no story. It's more so targeted at the ones that do have a story but focus more on the gameplay and less on story.
The only defense I can make with Telltale games and others in that vein is that the reason to play them is to make the decisions you want to make rather than someone else. I find it frustrating when I watch someone else play and they make a choice I don't align with. It makes me want to purchase the game instead of watching them play. But then there's the replayable factor that kills it. They're not replayable at all, unless the story branches are very complex like in Detroit: Become Human. Those games feature very little gameplay though, so I fully understand the criticism.
Out of the games you mentioned, the only franchise I've played and have fond memories of playing is Rachet and Clank: A Crack in Time. The gameplay was stupid fun but it also had a good story to go with it. The story for me made the missions all the more enjoyable.
A bad story hurts a game experience for me, even if the gameplay is good. Dying Light 2 is a good example of a game with great parkour and other cool game mechanics that makes for fun gameplay, but the story is just god awful that I had no desire to continue on with it. So many story beats that are frustrating and make no sense.
@@StrictlyMediocre "they make a choice I don't align with." But then you learn the hard way that those choices barely have any impact on the story. The real agency you have in Telltale games is very shallow. I learned the hard way. Bought two games at once and both played out almost exactly the same way after playing them twice and choosing differently.
A Crack in Time is one of the "newer" games where gameplay was already sacrificed for story. If you loved the gameplay of that game, you should have played Going Commando or Up Your Arsenal. Those games were SO MUCH better than ACiT and obviously had less story. The best example is the newest game Rift Apart. It looks beautiful, it aims to have lots of story, but its so boring compared to the older games. Its literally the first Ratchet and Clank game I dropped before completing it.
Story is often used to stretch out games with lacking content. At least these days.
Why does the story actually matter if you want to play a game that is fun? I dont know what Dying Light is about, but if playing it is very fun as you say, the story would not really interfere with that part, would it?
A friend of mine bought a game that is super political or "woke" if you wanna call it that and he is actually very heavily against that kinda of stuff and yet he bought it. Do you know why? He said "the swinging is so much fun". He was talking about the newest Spider Man game. He bought a full price game just because he played it at a friends' house once. Only swinging through the city, basically doing nothing.
I think maybe you are not seeking a good video game to play, but a good story in general. Because you know your opinion is not shared by many. For most people playing games is about having total (or at least a lot of) control over a fictional environment.
Great editing and quality, but can’t agree on the point. I fully completed Spider man, God of war (2018) and TLOU, those are good media products, but not games for me. I just can’t feel that my choices matter. I feel like kratos for the first hour, but after I remember that I am a player with no narrative agency. Wondering between cutscenes in mostly disconnected from story gameplay makes me bored. Games let me express my self, get my own story and experience - that’s why I play them. A small black hole in Tetris tower makes me worried because it’s my mistake and no Spider-Man would ever make it or solve it. The Joy of finding out a new magic interaction in Noita can’t be replaced by any story or character arc. And all of these moments make a something you can only get from game, something very personal. Sadly many can’t acknowledge this, simply putting it like: “I like murdering demons and I skip the cutscenes”. But gameplay is much more than entertainment in need a narrative purpose, it is language as deep as a narrative, if not deeper.
P.S. no offense for interactive story games, those have tight connection between story and gameplay, they offer you a real narrative agency. Detroit really made feel connected with characters, because my choices had an impact and mistakes didn’t lead to gameover, great experience
I really loved the way you described your view on Gameplay. It certainly helps me look at the topic I presented in another light. Though I'm not sure I can agree on your takes on the games you mentioned in the beginning, I totally get why you feel that way.
Thanks for the well thought out comment!
Really great video! you really hit the spot with the music and clips (made my eyeball sweat come out).
Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
Thank you though ❤️
Both narrative and gameplay are "crucial" in its purest definition to the average game, I would argue. However, I think there's something to be said about classic arcade and early console/PC games maintaining a strong cultural relevance to this day despite having practically no stories. Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Galaga, Tetris, Pong, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Rogue, Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros.... these games are timeless because they're fun and engaging. They're endlessly replayable because it's rewarding to get better and complete a level faster or get a higher score. It's addictive, one might argue. Even a fun game with a bad story can still be replayed and enjoyed by skipping cutscenes (which most players do on repeats, anyway).
A cinematic game with shallow mechanics that span a 10+ hour campaign may have an unforgettable first experience, but there's often very little to gain out of a replay other than experiencing the story again. There's little room for growth, to get better and feel a sense of accomplishment for outperforming yourself - a factor that's been the core of games since the beginning. Not even just video games; any kind of competitive game, be it on the playground or something as prestigious as the Olympics. Stripping that away, I believe, defeats the entire purpose of a game's existence.
It gets even worse when a game with a great story is miserable to actually play. Games like The Witcher 1, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Morrowind, Alan Wake, Death Stranding, Xenogears... these are tough to revisit because the mechanics are frustrating and often end up turn players off on a first playthrough.
If a game can have an amazing story AND engaging mechanics with room for growth, then that's fantastic. I'd argue this is what most games should strive for (depending on the focus and target audience). Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Majora's Mask, Hollow Knight, Metal Gear Solid 3, Fallout New Vegas, Knights of the Old Republic, and Baldur's Gate 3 are all examples of this, and among what I'd argue to be the golden standard.
All that said, I have nothing against a story-focused game existing and don't discourage them being made. They certainly have their place in offering a specific type of experience, and some players prefer this experience over a traditional one. It's all going to come down to player preference and director's vision. One of the most beautiful things about video games is the vast amount of variety in their experiences, more so than any other medium can offer because of their ability to combine player input with scripted storytelling. Again, I think both story and gameplay are crucial, and equally so, not just because having both be excellent can be seen as desirable, but also because the amount of focus on either will determine the overall experience.
Hope I was able to provide interesting feedback.
I fully agree with the more cinematic games containing no replay value. Unless you're a completionist for achievements, there's zero reason to ever go back to em unless you want to play the game at a higher difficulty level. But even then there's no point because there's no sense of excitement since you already know how the game goes. With games like Cyberpunk, New Vegas and KOTOR there most certainly is.
Though for me personally, I'm not a fan of replaying a game unless I can change it up in the second playthrough. I want to be able to make different choices that change the narrative that will give me a different playthrough compared to the first. That's another reason as to why games like Devil May Cry or Doom: Eternal just don't work for me.
You definitely did though man! I always appreciate different opinions. Thanks for taking time to comment! :)
@StrictlyMediocre And DMC and Doom are exactly the kind of short games I like to play because of their replay value! They're like modern versions of classic arcade and NES games; they focus on the gameplay like them, but have more involved stories with full cinematics. New Game+ on higher difficulties also makes replays more than a standard revisit. DMC5 I'd actually say could be considered an ideal balance of story and gameplay with its ocean-level depth of mechanics in conjunction with iconic characters with strong themes (which people often don't give enough credit). The combat is enhanced by the sense of connection to the characters you play as and their struggles, which in turn is enhanced by the fantastic presentation and boss fights.
I have enjoyed games like The Last of Us and Insomniac's Spider-Man, but I never buy them at full price because I know I'm not going to feel like I got my money's worth only playing the campaign once or twice. I think these games could benefit from offering more rewarding higher difficulties (something beyond simply more enemy damage & health) and NG+ (which Spider-Man did get in an update) like DMC. That'd make them at least _somewhat_ more appealing to players like me without compromising the experience for the target audience.
And people wonder why gaming is so shitty now. Secondaries want fucking movies to watch and genuinely believe gameplay is less important than story in a fucking INTERACTIVE media. No wonder almost all older game mogs the newer AAA shit, even recent indie and middleware games full of jank, but that at least are gameplay focused are mogging all the AAA garbage. All the games you listed are worse than even the most average game released in the 6th generation and below. Gameplay>>>>>>>>>>>>Story, ALWAYS.
Wow, dude you are a top notch essayist.
Reminiscent of Jacob Geller and the like, subscribed without a thought.
woah thank you! That's high praise! :p
I appreciate you for clicking on the video and subscribing
Your similarities lie in your abilities to create thought-provoking and cinematic essays, from your choice of music and shots, to the tonal changes in your voice, to knowing when and where to apply comedy, it's just great.
Thank you for taking all the time create and share these videos with us; your passion and efforts are plainly evident.
@@niklausvenzendtDude your comment had me smiling hard haha.
It’s really nice to know that people notice and appreciate the small details I add. I’m really grateful to you for subscribing. More content to come :)
@@StrictlyMediocre looking forward to it (:
my good friend, its not because of narrative that 20-30h game have a bigger finish % compared to 50-80h such as elden ring and hogwart legacy(furthermore, elden ring is a soul like)
also; i don't thing story will leave as much of a mark as good gameplay will, i'll always remember my first time fighting minos prime in ultrakill or godfrey in elden ring but i will not remember baldur from god of war, because the gameplay was boring
also also: half life IS the perfect balance between gameplay and story because the story never interrupt the gameplay
I have never finished the main quest in Skyrim, you can be damn sure I did everything else though.
Games can be memorable without a gripping story. Many people have a strong love for Black Ops zombies and it's not because of any narrative. I myself have fond memories of several LEGO games that didn't have dialogue at all. Prototype was a franchise built around the power fantasy that the game provided, and it's beloved and missed to this day. I could go on, but I hope this gets the point across.
When I play a game that has a story to play through, the gameplay has to be enjoyable enough to care. I'm not gonna play a game for the story if I can't get behind the gameplay. Personally, I care more about gameplay than the story. That's not to say I don't enjoy a good story. I still want my gameplay to have some meaning. Games like Minecraft fail to grab me, even though they're more gameplay than story.
If you're engaged in the story, you're physically trying to punch the characters.
As someone that's a die hard rpg fan I do absolutely agree with this, but Elden Ring and even games of the ARPG genre (like PoE, Diable etc) do have their own appeal that generally falls outside of the need to complete them - while still being very compelling experiences. Granted, I do understand that you're not implicitly arguing otherwise.
Path of Exile, technically has a story and deep accompanying lore (same as any Fromsoft title), but even with 7k hours in that game, I'll be honest - I know far less than I should about any of it. I think for some, gameplay can definitely trump story, for others - like me, you sort of get comfortable with what the experience is promoting. In that case, I'd say while a good story can permit a game with lackluster gameplay, a game that has a bare bones ( or difficult to parse) narrative absolutely needs stellar gameplay (or bare minimum a VERY addictive gameplay loop).
Ultimately, I do agree with this video wholeheartedly. One of my favorite games I've played recently was Disco Elysium and that game was intensely light on what someone would consider ''gameplay'' and yet still, it stuck with me. Deeply. Frankly, I think it's one of the best games I've ever played and I never even got to infinitely juggle an enemy a la DMC. So, despite any push back I would have, yea, I do think narrative does trump gameplay - at least it does for me.
PS:Great essay. I subbed after coming across your video on why being evil in video games is hard. So I'm going through the backlog lol.
You raise a lot of good points that I agree with.
Not every game needs a story. I don't get something like Pikmin 4 for it. I get it for the exploration and gameplay. I think it's like you said: It all depends on what the game is more focused on being. I just think a good narrative makes the experience all the more memorable.
But thank you! I hope you've enjoyed the content. Happy to have you as a subscriber :)
"I know what you're probably thinking, can we really use the validity of completion rates to determine how engaging a game is?"
I was thinking was that you picked two examples. One of which was mired in controversies which drew attention largely due to that. The other of which is a game which is notoriously difficult to complete.
I was thinking that the portion of people completing any game on steam tends to be less than 30% and that Elden Ring's completion rate was about the expected slice for a reasonably large game with challenging gameplay. If anything, I was expecting a little lower due to how much people would be expected to struggle with it.
I was thinking that you started this video saying that the only games which will be remembered are those with compelling stories. This ignoring some of the biggest single player titles in gaming history such as Super Mario Bros, Minecraft, Super Meatboy and Dwarf Fortress.
I was thinking of how reductive this entire statement was in the first place, ignoring the multitude of different experiences games can and do offer players. Which people enjoy in different ways.
And yes, I was thinking of the validity of completion rates in isolation of every other factor to determine how engaging a game is.
I think it strictly depends on the experience someone is looking for when buying a game. I personally prefer playing fighting games competitievly, and more than once I ignored the story just to play online, or offline with friends (I went as far as playing Guilty Gear Strive for a year without even touching the story mode). But I can understand that playing a difficult game at a competitive level requires time and commitment, so playing a single player game at your own pace while enjoying the story is much easier and way more appealing to most people.
A really well made video brother.
I can see where you're coming from, but I have to disagree on this. For these things, I believe we should focus more on the best selling games of all time such as Minecraft, Mario, PUBG and whatnot. If you look at the top 20 list, I believe around 70% of the games listed either have barely any story, or no story at all. And the ones with a story usually had some VERY good gameplay such as GTA V, RDR2, and The Witcher 3. Even if we go even lower to the top 30s and more, the majority of the list still consist of games with little to no story. The ones you mentioned in this video are very few and between, and even then, a lot of those like Spiderman and God of War have some really good gameplay (Spiderman's gameplay is literally so addictive).
There are definitely games like TLOU that need its story to survive. You're going to get plenty of games where its story is the main highlight, and for those, story is pretty much crucial in them. You mentioned games such as Elden Ring where its gameplay is definitely not for everyone, which is very much true. Its difficulty makes it hard for most to finish, or even attempt them out of intimidation. So instead they may just watch others play it and rage. Hogwarts Legacy was massively controversial because of its connections to the HP franchises author J. K. Rowling, who is universally hated by most. If you count people's avoidance of the game because of that, along with so many people severely bullying anyone who played it, especially streamers, its player base is expected to avoid the game out of literal fear of being attacked.
Modern day games made by big corporations often seem to try and do 1 of 2 things: Make a single player game with a story that can either range from bad to very compelling OR Make an online multiplayer game with a big risk of it flopping to effectively fall under the current trend. You get bad ones of both all the time, but the single player route is way more safe than the online route. My issue with this video is that it doesn't really tackle the top hitters. Why are most of the top games ever succeeding so much if they don't or barely have a story? Are the few top games with an actual story so successful because of their story? Or is it because their gameplay is just so darn good? Or maybe it's both? These are the type of games that need to be talked about here to decide on whether story or gameplay is more crucial to a video game. I do understand your points and can see a good argument for games created in recent years, but I can't agree with you in this because the highest ranking games primarily prove that gameplay far outweighs story for video games overall.
I don’t think the last of us needs a story to survive. The multiplayer is still kept alive today and people consider it to be a great multiplayer. God I wish an updated factions would come out. That community is starving for a new multiplayer!
@@B.Love88 That is very true about the multiplayer being so live and great. As amazing as it is though, I do believe that if we just got its multiplayer without the story, then it wouldn't had lasted as long since the story is where its main popularity comes from. Also, playing the multiplayer without knowing about its setting and the crucial story elements within its world would massively break the immersion. The multiplayer is great, but I believe the knowledge of the story is what truly makes it feel alive and hooks its players more. This is just an opinion without any clear evidence though, but I do believe TLOU needed its story to survive.
@@mainboysmusic6985 yea I guess the story is integral to the last of us! I just think the gameplay is what people love about the multiplayer. I think people really want to write of the last of us as a movie game when the action is really good! The second game’s gameplay was awesome. There are some criticisms towards the gameplay for sure. However, it was super polished. The people ended up hating for the story at the end of the day.
I think the early FF games are a great example of this concept. Sure they have good gameplay if you love jrpg turn based combat but the real emphasis is on the story. Playing final fantasy feels like experiencing a grand epic story.
That's a game franchise I've always wanted to get into. Where do you recommend I start?
@@StrictlyMediocre it depends honestly if you’re a fan of old school PS1 games I recommend starting with FF7 it has one of the best stories of the whole series. If you prefer newer games but don’t mind PS2 era graphics FF10 is another great game to start with. If you really need to have AAA modern graphics and gameplay though FF7 remake is the game for you. And every numbered game has a completely self contained story line not related to the other games so regardless where you decide to start you won’t have to miss any of the story.
bro you had me tearing up in the first minute of the video wtfff
I recently got into the Yakuza franchise. In those games, the gameplay is an extension of the narrative/story. For me, this is the best way of constructing a compelling game and characters, let me explain why:
Everything you are able to do as the player is something that the protagonist himself would do. You can't commit crime, you don't drive cars, you only fight in self-defense. However, you are able to sing karaoke, go racing with toy cars, play games in the arcade, help people in the city in tons and tons of side stories, dance on the disco, and so on.
This means that the player's actions are in line with the routine of the protagonist, which in return makes the player care for the character even before progressing through the dramatic parts of the story. We see his hobbies, his most obscure fantasies, kinks and the way he behaves when no-one is watching, just by engaging in exploration and minigames.
Many open word games ask us to care deeply for a grieving protagonist after we, as the player, ran around the map causing mayhem and massacres (like in GTA games). The thing is, you never really feel the character's thoughts because our actions are disconnected from the reality of the plot. In Yakuza, there's no such thing. You are free to do what you want, but only something that your character would do, and that makes his grief and struggles hit much more deeper.
I would really like to see a video of yours talking about this topic, the fusion between player actions and narrative.
You can have a game with good gameplay and no story. But you can’t have a game with no gameplay and a good story, that would be cinema.
Also you say that you get more attached to games with a good story than ones with little story. Then you are not there to play a fun game instead you watch a movie with gameplay parts in it.
Instead we should strive for games that tell their stories from the gameplay like Undertale. Or just create fun games to play…
Hogwarts legacy has a bad story AND bad gameplay, the only reason this game sold well is because of harry potter.
In the topic of story>gameplay i couldnt disagree more, in my opinion games are made to be played not watched, if possible i always skip cutscenes, thats why i never played ghost of tsushima.
But in the end i think what matter the most in gaming is the journey, for me the journey is the gameplay and for you its the story!
Sorry if my english is bad
Beautiful video! There's a lack of RDR2 but that's okay :D
Thank you!!!!! I never really got to play it xd
It's moved up on my list though!
Even though I do prefer gameplay over story, it was so hard for me to finish GoW: Ragnarök. Yeah the combat was fantastic yet the story was so bad that I couldn't find the same motivation I got from GoW 2018 to finish it right away. No matter how fun your gameplay is with bad writing it can ruin the whole thing same as having a great story but boring gameplay.
I never got to play Ragnarök so I can't really comment on that :/ I can definitely see how it can be the opposite though and can agree. If the story isn't good in a game that features missions based off the narrative, the gameplay suffers too. Often times you'll see very little variety in the types of missions you complete because of this. So if one aspect suffers, the other also does.
I thought it was passable at least what was first thing that turned you off from it?
@@clevernamerighthere9240 Ironwood was straight up horrible and made me quit the game for few days. Not only writing but the presentation of the Gow 2018 was gone too so nothing particularly incredible or epic happened until the end except for the doulbe valkyrie boss fight and the whole ''Ragnarök'' part was disappointing as well.
I think Ragnarök had the second best combat in the whole series but the whole story was either mid or garbage to the point that made me not enjoy it that much. I still replay Gow 2018 time to time despite having inferiour combat but not even the new patch made me replay Ragnarök simply because of it's story.
but what if the gameplay *is* the narrative?
like with how radiant silvergun and ikaruga's timeloop being entirely contextualized in the many retries players go through to attain a 1 credit clear, or with kingdom hearts establishing a rivalry with an optional boss fight that keeps tally, or with how DMC players get to see more personality out of a character the better they play, or with missile command
I generally agree. I mean, I played God of War Ragnarok for the conversations between fights rather than the fights themselves!
But there was something magical about fighting Rennala blind in Elden Ring. There’s so much implied story about her in a relatively short time, and it’s a tragedy told entirely through gameplay.
I do wonder how well Elden Ring will stick with me in the future, and man it’s a massive game, but I haven’t seen stories told primarily through gameplay all that often.
The few games that I can think of are Shadow of the Colossus and the Metroid Prime Trilogy. Each boss you fight in Shadow of the colossus *SPOILER* ... you grow this feeling where you're not sure if what you're doing is right, as each boss you fight, you see demonic physical changes in your character. Your character's goal is just, but what you're doing to achieve it isn't.
@@StrictlyMediocre Ah, Shadow of the Colossus is a great example!
It was very difficult to get into another game after playing GOW.
So glad i found your brilliant channel
So you're saying that games like elden ring and hogwarts get completed less because they don't have good stories? some big flaws in logic there, the first being that you don't understand the numbers you're quoting, i don't doubt the previously mentioned games have lower completion rates than the likes of the last of us, god of war, and spider-man. but it's not because of their 'stronger' narratives; it's based on a bunch of different factors you don't even mention. things like length, difficulty, and accessibility can all attribute to that statistic; which raises a another good point: how can you even prove there's a correlation between good narratives and completion rates when the likelier factor is that narrative focused games are shorter on average compared to others?
even if we disregarded all of that you're still cherry picking based on you comparing god of war, last of us, and spider-man, three playstation exclusives, to elden ring and hogwarts (two non exclusives). this is dumb for the simple fact that a game not restricted to one console will sale way more than a game that is. so when the number of players rise, it would make perfect sense for the completion rate to plummet. I could go on, but you get the point.
Look if this was just an opinion you had, i wouldn't be annoyed by this video, hell i might even agree with you to some extent; but don't try and justify it with some bullshit statistic that most people in the gaming industry don't care about.
That's it. rant over.
Yeah like I stated in some of the other comments, looking back at this video months later I wish I approached the topic / video differently. My opinion on Narrative being more important to me than gameplay still stands, but the argument I use revolving completion rates definitely should’ve either (a.) been more developed or (b.) should’ve been omitted entirely. Like you said, there’s definitely a lot more to the rates besides the quality of the story.
I’ve thought about taking this video down simply because some of my arguments I think have flaws and holes to them, but I still believe the core message of the video is valid to me, which is there should at least be a balance in the two.
I don’t know what is going on now.
I remember everyone was worried that games with stories were becoming less of a thing, and now things have changed where people are complaining about games with stories now.
What happened? I’m really confused.
While I do understand where your coming from on some level I feel this video puts too much of a blanket statement on gaming as a whole. For example, games like Rain World or This War Of Mine (the ladder of which is the only game to make me cry as silly as it sounds) use gameplay to tell their story. I’m not saying that story isn’t an important aspect, but they both need to work together (the failure of this is why I personally didn’t care for Spider-Man PS4). I think the TH-camr Mark Brown has some good videos on “emergent Gameplay” to showcase this. Sorry if my dumbass worded this poorly.
Mario and tetris games have either no story or little story yet are considered some of the best in the medium
I would like to offer a counter opinion on this: story driven games have less replay value without a solid gameplay. In that lense, gameplay is crucial, and story isn't.
It's not a wild take, I know, but recently I have been noticing this small trend in games trying to be more spectacle than they need to be. Let's take the God of War reboots as an example. The classic games had a compelling narrative, but it was clearly focused on the gameplay. Meanwhile, GoW and Ragnarok have what I like to call Hollywood aspiration. It really wants to be as cinematic as possible, and that's in detriment of the gameplay, which is much simpler and streamlined, a huge departure from the classics. It goes all the way back to games like Heavy Rain. The Last Of Us and Detroit: Become Human also have that cinematic direction to them, and the gameplay is pretty barebones. This creates a low skill entry level so that more people (read casuals) can enjoy the game and the compelling narrative that was created, but at the same time, once you complete the story, there isn't much else to do, unless we're talking about games with multiple endinds like Fallout. People keep replaying Fallout: New Vegas because they want to explore the other endings, and the mods allow you to thread the story in different ways every time.
That's not to say games can't be "cinematic" or story driven. The success of that style clearly shows there's a market for it and people seem to enjoy it a lot when you look at all the discussion around those titles. My concern is that games shift from the focus on gameplay more and more. Realistically speaking, it's much easier to code a simple gameplay that allows you to watch an interactive movie. But this is more an extension of a logical conclusion. We do have games that strike a balance between the two, like Doom: Eternal. It really added a story for the main character, and the gameplay is engaging enough to keep bringing people back, because it is fun.
4:47 probably cuz people are so bad at that game, I love that game, also RdR2 which u didnt mention, that game the best story ever in my opinion
I still have to get to RdR2. I remember loving the first couple of hours but I sold it with my console. I'm gonna have to wait for a steam sale to pick it up!
@@StrictlyMediocre Yeah, its on sale often. Definitely pick it up! :)
This makes so much sense. Horizon Zero Dawn really falls foul of this. The build up is great but the payoff and the manner of which it ends is just weird and feels very Mary-sue-ish. And in fact I spent the overwhelming majority of my play time just exploring because the story really didn’t grip me past the halfway point. By the time I completed the final quest I was max level. The final quest is like level 30 something.
Only reason I ended up platinuming it was because I was already 87% of the way there when I checked completion percentage.
It took me five years to complete my first and only run through of that game. A total of 50 hours. (I earned my first trophy for it in about March of 2018, i finished it in October this year.)
Where as I completed fallout 3 within about a week of starting it. Albeit not 100% completion as I still have DLCs to dive into but I put so much more consecutive time than I did HZD.
Another example is Borderlands where I love the writing of 1 and 2 even if it’s a classic series of large tunnels. I have well over 300 hours in them. Tbf I can still run around exploring them as well.
I mostly play single player games for the story, and when the story fails I go off exploring.
I think partly why I enjoyed Bethesda RPGs so much is that the game’s main narratives tend to encourage you to go exploring. While still having some pretty solid writing to them. Their survival modes being something I enjoy greatly because it removes fast travel from the cards for the most part which is retrospect actually decreases my enjoyment of games now that I think about it. I barely ever play them on top difficulty, not because I can’t, but because I find it distracts me from what I actually want to do which is enjoy the story, lore, and just exploring.
For me Combat and gameplay will always take a back seat to exploring and story.
Narrative without gameplay is just a movie. Gameplay without narrative is literally just mashing buttons to get pleasing lights and sounds. To divorce story and gameplay as two separate entities instead of two halves of a singular experience is the inherent design flaw in most modern Sony games and why we've seen such a regression in what made them special during the PS1-PS3 days. Story isn't just what's in the cutscenes or when a dialogue speaks. Everything, from the art direction to the stiffness/fluidity of the controls is fundamental to telling a story like only games can.
And while completion rates can say things, you don't want to ignore gameplay centric experiences that have also achieved high rates, such as Resident Evil 3 Remake, which follows the same gameplay loop and escalating progression as any other Resident Evil title, just in a microcosm and with the right rough edges polished to ease players along. That's also not to mention the typically fairly low rates of completion for other narrative heavy titles, like several of Telltale's projects.
It only depends on the game's goal. If its goal is replayability, then narrative is utterly useless.
"[...] Lore does not equal story. Lore gives background to the world around you whereas the story provides a plot that gives meaning to everything you do. It's rather disappointing since the game (Elden Ring) had the works of George R. R. Martin attached to it. With such a detailed world, it's a shame that only a thin story was the result."
I understand where you are coming from, there are many people out there who would agree with you on the main point you drive with this portion I quoted from your video and I personally enjoy when someone else brings a perspective different from mine into the world of possibilities - which is why I want to ask; why do you believe that Elden Ring has a thin story?
Elden Ring I think has some VERY good segments where it shines in story. Particularly the backstories surrounding some of the boss fights. But in terms of overarching story, it wasn't compelling enough for me to finish it. For the duration that I played the game, I had no idea what was going on. It was only until after I gave up on it where I learned that there was a bunch of lore that aided in the story experience. But every lore / story video I've watched, I found myself more and more lost and disinterested. I asked all my friends who completed the game (and loved it unlike me) what the story of the game was, and they couldn't give me any responses that were favoring of it. They loved the gameplay, but they talked about how they didn't care for the story and were there for just the gameplay.
While it's a very different game, I find myself comparing it to Shadow of Colossus. That game to me did it right in terms of story execution. The boss fights were great and the story you uncover as you beat each one becomes more and more haunting. I guess I went into Elden Ring expecting the story structure to play out similarly, so I found myself more disappointed that way.
@@StrictlyMediocre Yes, sadly most people do not elaborate on the story of the characters around them and focus more on the lore of the place they are in, which is also adding to the story, but does not seem to be the main focus of most lore-hunters out there.
The story itself is profound and captivating, to me at least. If you are interested in knowing about it, I wouldn't mind elaborating on my hyperfixation with you. But I do understand what you mean, although I believe it stems from a personal preference over the narrative style of story-telling in this case.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong and thank you for answering ^^
Lol all From Soft games prove you objectively wrong. Gameplay and level design mean infinitely more to a game than story. It's why all the biggest games in the world have nothing to do with story. It's why visual novels don't sell. I just checked the top 10 games on steam charts and only one game is story based. Baldur's gate 3.
I kinda desagree with your entire point of your video, I find gameplay foccused games and games that uses "show don't tell" a lot more engaging, i feel like i'm just another one in that world, instead of "i am the savior of the world", in the end i think that the completion rates are different because story games tend to be more easier and target a more casual audience than gameplay games
The problem I have with soul games like Elden Ring is that their story telling rely heavily on ambiguity, if you don't have a lot of free time sitting in front of your monitor and a game nerd, you can't really get into the 'story'. And the highly praised combat isn't even that fun to play at. I'd say fs soul games has the most cringed and boring combat mechanic among all the games made by Japanese studios
But then again I do prefer games that has good combat mechanic over games with 'good' story telling
Story was never important, nor should it ever be, because of the medium they deal with.
A “game” is something that is played. A “movie” is something that is watched.
The focus of a “videoGAME” is on its last part, the “game”.
Stories are always bound to the current zeitgeist. Who claims today that Half Life 1 still has the best story and characters? Or is Mass Effect still the pinnacle of storytelling? How often do you REALLY play a game JUST for its story?
On the other hand, good gameplay lasts forever. And thise games will be played forever: UT, LoL, PoE, WoW, etc...
That's why the story was, never will and should never be anywhere as important as the gameplay.
Else you might just go to the cinema.
Not sure I can agree with this one. I can understand somebody liking story better, but I'm not convinced that it's "crucial" at all in a general sense. Many of the games that I keep coming back to (e.g., Super Mario World with all its ROMhacks) have little to no story. And even when I go back to a game with story (e.g., Final Fantasy VI), it's usually to play the game in a different way, and I actively fast-forward through the story sections. Even when it comes to newish games that I really enjoyed (Monster Sanctuary is probably the best example), story just isn't a huge component of that.
On top of that, I don't watch movies or TV at all TBH. Regardless of whatever the completion rates say, on a personal level, gameplay is crucial and story is a nice-to-have. Obviously it's best to have both and appeal to everybody though.
I don’t buy the argument that completion rate has anything to do with how much people enjoyed the game. It’s a measure of how much people wanted to see the ending, which is of course going to have a strong bias in favor of games that have something to end.
Rdr2 is light years better than all the "narrative games" you mentioned and has a lower completion percentage than all of them, all this nonsense about narrative over gameplay is just a way to keep AAA companies complacent in doing the minimum in gameplay by limiting themselves to create "sad character simulator" as a form of "elevated narrative". And did you use a scene from Detroit as an example or did you insinuate that that trash game is good?
Rdr2 is an interesting one. It's got a lot of content. And I mean A LOT. So much that it makes sense that players will choose to diverge from the story to do other things. And while I'm not hating on the story at all when I say this (It's definitely up there with some of the best in the video game medium imo) it's very long. Not everyone wants that. It's like when someone picks up a potential book to read. If they see it has 1000 pages, for most people it can be quite intimidating and challenging to get through. Same thing can be said for shows. "I don't want to watch One piece because it has over 1000 episodes."
It takes a certainly level of planning to masterfully combine both narrative and gameplay. When it's done right, that's peak game design imo. When it's not, you'll find people with your belief developing issues and people like me with my belief having issues.
And although I personally enjoyed Detroit Become Human, I simply used the scene for the video because I thought it fit with the transition / edit.
@@StrictlyMediocre RDR2 seems like it would be a terrible example for the arguments people are making here.
DIFFICULTY. The main story is not hard in RDR2, the challenges are hard (except for the gambler challenges which are bullshit) but the story missions are mostly just cover shooting with a pretty forgiving amount of health and dead eye to bail you out if you are ever in any real trouble.
WALKING SIM. Almost every every mission in RDR2 begins and ends with you holding down a button to keep up with the other horses.
SAD CHARACTER SIMULATOR. Sir have you played the game? (also you're definitely just mad about TLOU2)
@@danieldykstra3079 a lot of insinuations being made eh
If you think tlou2 is the most complex thing in the world, go for it, you're the one, but the damage that this game did is undeniable, people who think that a game that boil down to a compilation of cutscenes is what should be done in this medium are pathetic
@@IchiOne. So I called that one...
three words: what about tsushima?
An embarrassing lack of Red Dead Redemption 2 in this video. Arguably the best Video Game story and the best gaming prequel ever made
Yeah but terrible gameplay.
What about Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and Sonic? Those franchises have lackluster stories, but their popularity comes from their gameplay.
Hey I have just discovered your channel you are so cool
You're not comparing apples to apples, if you look at the TLOU1 on Steam it also has well under 50% completion for the main campaign. And it has nothing to do with the gameplay or the story, the issue is the consumer base. Steam's marketplace has been significantly broader than pretty much every other console for a long time, so the playerbase isn't as monolithic.
For example, I mainly play Platformers, JRPG's, and 2D Fighting Games. Despite this, I own games like Deus Ex and Watch Dogs on Steam. When players buy a game they normally wouldn't on a whim (or because it's on sale) they dilute the playerbase. A good chunk of these players won't even be skilled or invested enough beat these games. And that's to say nothing of the players that use Steam to double-dip. For another personal example, I own Sonic Frontiers on Steam and PS4, but I finished it on PS4 first, and only went back to the Steam version after the updates.
None of these are outcomes are possible with the examples you used. All these games released as Sony exclusives with Sony backing, of course they outperform other games on their home platform.
The Telos of games is to be a game. If you don't want to game but want story we already have something for you: Books. Read them.
I don't think Ping pong and Tennis for Two were created so the developers can push a narrative.
0:58
..................Are you sure about that?
hello! before anything id like you to hear me out and see my comment all the way through because i am genuinely trying to get you interested in something amazing
i found your channel through an omori essay video. i just wanted to let you know that since you liked omori so much you should definitely try deltarune AS IT IS EXTREMELY SIMILAR TO OMORI.
now wether or not youve heard of this game is something i dont know , but i sure as hell know i wouldnt be writing this if the game was bad.
something you should know is that this game is by the same developer of UNDERTALE (a game i assume you hate for whatever reason)
basically, since deltarune is a parallel universe to undertale (and ive told everyone this) id highly recommend you push yourself through a pacifist run of undertale JUST FOR THE SAKE OF THE CONTEXT. deltarune is its own game with a story extremely similar to omoris and the creator actually knows omocat and theyve been working on projects together.
again, DELTARUNE IS NOT UNDERTALE, its community is much more chill and you should definitely not let this game go under your ass.
as of right now, deltarune only has 2 chapters out of 7 , each chapter is huge and has atleast 4-5 hours of playtime, you can get it as a demo on steam
like i said, UNDERTALE pacifist run for context, then both chapters of deltarune. the story is still going as we are speaking and its insanely similar to omori, DO NOT LET THIS GO. trust me on that. just about anyone whos played omori has also played deltarune
Holy. Because you wrote such a long comment, I’ll download it tonight and give it a go. I actually remember hearing about this game awhile ago when I finished Omori. How frequent are the chapters being released?
@@StrictlyMediocre like i said, a finished pacifist run of undertale is essential for the context of deltarune, so id recommend u push yourself through that first somehow before anything, as for how frequently the chapters release, we have no idea, but we do know that chapter 3 , 4 and 5 are all gonna drop at the same time either this or next year.
1:32 to 1:45 and 6:47 to 6:53 which games are these ?
For 1:32-1:45, the games are “What Remains of Edith Finch” and “Dying Light 2”
6:47-6:53 TitanFall 2 (HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Game constantly goes on sale for three or four bucks on steam. The story and missions are fantastic.
If a game has a good story but the gameplay is mid I’m not playing it.
If I wanted to watch a movie I’d watch a movie.
A game like ER a game I’ve replayed many times totalling a whopping 400 hours of playtime, gameplay and mastering the combat was the only reason I replayed it so much, and have enjoyed it too it’s fullest.
A game like god of war has so much Walking and talking sections that are designed to keep your hands busy, listening to these people I don’t care about talk about thing I don’t care about, look game I just wanna kill monsters as Kratos let me play the fkn game. The older games did it better.
I think spider man did the story and gameplay well enough to make me play it multiple times to platinum it, but god of war just pisses me off.
Replay-ability is very important to me that I bought lies of p instead of spider man 2, if you value story more that’s cool but games are meant to be played not listened/watched.
I can agree with that.
Choice focused “games” like Detroit Become human are interesting cases. You COULD watch someone play it, but watching someone play it could be frustrating if they make a choice you don’t want to happen. Which in turn is the reason for buying it if you want to see the story play out yourself. Replay-ability wise they’re not the best since you’d have to sit through the game again without really “playing” it.
I’m surprised by your take on GOW though. I guess certain stories work differently for everyone. If the story doesn’t interest you, I can see a game like that not sitting well.
I do still firmly believe about games needing an equal balance, or at least focus in both aspects of a game. I want the gameplay to be good just like everyone else, but if there’s no good story in a game that literally has a game mode called “story mode” it brings the game down for me.
@@StrictlyMediocre the story of god of war 2018 was good it was just annoying walking around listening to people speak, the older games were more about the gameplay, I kinda wish they just made all the talking sections into cutscenes that I can skip, people who like GOW 2018 literally have save files to skip these sections because of how boring they are.
@@StrictlyMediocre one thing I agree with you on is if a game has a story it should be a good one.
One example is the story of Malania and Rhadan from ER, fighting them knowing their story is so good it gives me emotional investment and deepens my love for ER.
I think the souls games that fromsoft makes do video game story really well using games to tell stories unique only to games which is why I love the story and the bosses so much.
The Nioh games have similar gameplay to the souls games, but the story that they have are so bad that I can’t complete them, without having a friend laughing at how bad the story is with me.
@@makia3 Sorry to jump in this conversation but I just wanted to say that I love GOW 2018 and I enjoy the walking and talking sections. You might not enjoy it (which I respect) but others do. So please don't generalize the fans. Also correct me if I'm wrong but you can skip cutscenes in New Game Plus and I think you can mute character voices in GOW: Ragnarök. So that might help with your dislikes.
@@_Nonnez_ you like replaying walking sections? There good the first time but on subsequent play throughs they are a chore that should have the option to be skipped.
Such a good video. Subscribed.
AY!
Thank you!!!
Im suprised you never mentioned RDR2
Yeah the guy would probably enjoy it. Braindead gameplay and a story that doesn't take advantage of the medium.
This guy gets it.
Told you Before your eyes was great! Hehehehe.
Also amazing video, i 100% agree.
You were right. It was sooo good. I hope to make a video on it soon!
Glad you enjoyed the video!
Sorry but no. Just no.
The games you mentioned , especially Sony's blockbusters, are exactly what's wrong in the AAA industry right now: an extreme focus on being cinematic coupled with bog-standard, borderline useless mechanics and systems (like loot in the new GOW).
Game completion rate is a completely meaningless metric, especially when talking about AAA lowest common denominator titles that are going for the largest possible audience.
Video games elevate themselves as art by focusing on their inherent strengths, rather than aping other forms of art like cinema.
The best games ever are those that marry the mechanics and the narrative and weave them together seamlessly in a way only games can (Outer Wilds, Portal, etc.), not those AAA titles that use cutscenes as a crutch and end up separating the story from the gameplay.
Yes, stories are what's wrong with gaming. Not microtransactions, corruption, layoffs. It's those dang narratives!
@@firepeaman2440 nice straw man if I ever saw one, you must be patting yourself on the back
@clvr51 Pointing out real problems in the gaming industry isn't a strawman. Narrative focused games are not an issue.
Learn what words mean before you spew them to try and sound smart.
@@firepeaman2440 dude stop, this is all in your head. I never mentioned anything like that so why would you point them out? Can you please stick to my points and criticelize those or do you just wanna be an asshole spouting strawmen? Cause I'm getting kinda mad to be honest.
@@firepeaman2440 I know and I agree those are huge problems, but what does any of that have to do with the discussion at hand and why do you have to be so passive aggressive about it?
I sorta agree and disagree. A lot of times stories that you might find to be "simple" in story have gameplay and narrative design as part of the storytelling. I'd argue Jak 2 is one of Naughty Dog's best titles because of how well gameplay and narrative is interwoven. I do like narrative driven games and prefer them, I rarely play single player games with no real campaign, however I don't prefer one or the other. My example of this is The Last Guardian. You could argue it's a "beautiful and moving story" but I stopped playing it because the gameplay was fucking abysmal and felt like the game was actively shitting on me and mocking me with the narration (I uninstalled the game when the protagonist claimed that me and Trico had developed a "stronger bond of communication"). I like Soma quite a bit but I'm not eager to revisit it because of how linear and basic the gameplay loop is. The Last Of Us is great but half the game is walking and exploring. I've beaten these games, but I revisit ones with a strong harmony with narrative and gameplay. Dishonored is another great example. Deceptively simple morality tale that uses emergent gameplay as storybeats to form the experience. I find people often have a reductive look at storytelling in games, as if the lack of hours of cutscenes points to zero storytelling. People often get hung up on the presentation of a game and don't look deeper at the game itself and what it's trying to say, and how it conveys the themes and storytelling. Another game that I love and replay a little too much is Dead Space 2. The longest cutscene in that game barely scratches two minutes because the experience is focused on immersion. I'm of the opinion that Dead Space 2 is the most underrated single player title from a narrative design standpoint due to how seamless it is in using gameplay to facilitate the storytelling. There is a ton of character building, story beats, and window dressing that happens on a constant rate throughout the game. I want more games like Dead Space 2
As someone who personally prefers story over gameplay, I don't think your video quite hit the point you were probably trying to make. Story is often important for games, but for different reasons and not inherently superior to gameplay. There are types of games that are more gameplay-focused such as Mario, Call of Duty or Soulslikes where the story mostly acts as a supplementary setting that creates reasons for the gameplay to happen.
On the other hand, there are types of games where the story is the center and the gameplay is more on the sidelines. Examples would be all of Final Fantasy, visual novels, many JRPGs, Life is Strange and so on. These games aren't worse for being story-focused nor is their gameplay unimportant. Even visual novels still have a need for engaging gameplay which can be shown by my experience with Pyschedelica of the Ashen Hawk which gave me so little agency and opportunities to actually play the game that it bored me to tears. Most visual novels manage to strike this balance, however, and it shows that a game very much needs both story and gameplay to be good.
The problems is the inherent subjectivity of the experience of playing a game. Most people who vastly prefer gameplay over story aren't going to be bothered much by a bad story while bad gameplay will be their dealbreaker. On the other side, story-focused players will be massively disapponted by a bad story while not minding bad gameplay as much.
In the end, both aspects are still important for most games, no matter their inherent focus on one. People aren't wrong for criticizing a game's story or gameplay and shouldn't be told to simply "read a book" or "go play Fortnite" instead. Both points of view matter and I'm sick of people invalidating each other over their differences.
I like it better when us players unravel the story and lore through gameplay more than boring movie games. Stop being those types of " I quality storytelling", everyone is different on how they like their games.
I prefer gameplay
I can't say I agree with this video. I agree that a good narrative could elevate a game, but all this video shows is what does well in a casual audience. It doesn't prove that narrative driven games are better than non-narritve ones, especially with the examples given. Compare and contrast the last of us 2 and Elden ring, both game of the year winners, but very different receptions for the wider audience. TLOU2 has a very divisive audience, and alot of people trash and hate on that game, while Elden ring has a very grand fan base, and is considered by many to be one of the best video games of all time. TLOU2 might have a higher story completion rate, but that doesn't make it a better game, just a more casual friendly one. Even God of War which has a very positive on the game audience is still considered beaten out by Elden ring, at least in terms of review score, which in itself doesn't mean much, that comparison is practically the same as comparing complete percentages. These arguments don't go into what makes a game good though, since that's purely subjective.
Devil may cry 5 might not have the best story, and it might be a niche/smaller title when compared to God of war and Spider-Man, but Id argue that DMCV is a better game than both of them. Its definitely the best in it's genre, but even then, it doesn't replace those games in it's genre, people still love Devil may cry 3. These games have great gameplay, but they dont get replaced when a new version with better gameplay comes out, that just doesn't happen. Would you consider fighting games in its entirety to be bad video games that are super replaceable? People still play Smash melee, and Street fighter 3 third strike is still considered by many to be the best fighting game of all time.
None of those games have amazing story's, and most of them aren't casual friendly, but that doesn't stop them from being better than these casual friendly, narrative focused games.
Really great points.
With this being my first sort of argumentative piece, I will admit that I failed to speak both sides of the argument. Looking back at this video, I shouldn't have tried to give "factual" reasons as to why one is better than the other. It's purely subjective, so I should have presented it more in that way.
There are parts of me that want to take this video down, or give it a different title, but at the end, I still personally believe that story has a bit more of importance than gameplay. At least to me. The video is merely just a way for me to show my love to games with great stories, and how the narratives enhance the gaming experience.
I appreciate you giving your thoughts and hearing out mine :)
@@StrictlyMediocre I'm honestly amazed that I got a response to my comment, so I appreciate my thoughts being listened to a lot. When it came to the video itself, it's about a topic that I think about alot. I love narrative driven games, and as I said, I think a good narrative can really elevate any type of game, that's why this video really spoke to me, and it helped me put my thoughts on the subject into words. I hear the same thing all the time about how gameplay is king, and the story doesn't matter since your playing it, but Id say that's a very false and limited idea of what video games are.
While I still disagree with you, there are all types of games, and saying that the narrative driven ones are the overall superior ones is something I could never get behind, but I appreciate hearing your thoughts, and being able to see this video, it shows to me that not everyone is into video game to get the some call of duty kills, but to also appreciate a good story.
Thank you for your time and thoughts, again I do appreciate not just being a drowned out voice in the crowd here.
@@cheapturbo6439Of course!
I understand not everyone will agree with me, and I’ll defend my opinion when I can, but I also believe that listening to others opinions is important too. I want to read both sides of the argument, because it allows me to also understand where I might be wrong on somethings. I’m glad my video was able to give you some insight to the other side of the argument! And I appreciate your insight as it allows me to look at my own opinion differently.
I appreciate anyone who takes time out of their day to give a response to something I said. So the thanks should go to you :)
Fluff>Crunch