Does Story really matter in games??

I've been gaming for a long time, 25+ years give or take I'm 32 now..... I've never really needed a story to play a game, in the NES or TI-99 days of me playing games I wasn't the greatest reader in the world so a lot of times I never read the text on the screen that started the games I've played and some just didn't have a ton or none of that at all.... In the Sega Genesis days I read the booklets and screen text but didn't really care what Shinobi had did what to who or why to enjoy the action on the screen.... Perfect Dark had a cool story that I remember being into and by the time I got to half-life and max payne I was more into the story of what was going on screen, but even still to this day I'm not as invested into the storylines of game (and I love the bioware games btw) when it comes to my favorite TV, cartoons/anime series or film I feel that medium is far more enjoyable to tell a great story on a screen....

The reason I ask is that when I talk to people about games I like that have come out this 2014 season, they give a big meh and boo! to a lot of the titles ex. Watch_dogs, Destiny, Titanfall, etc..... and the main reason its seems for their lack of enthusiasm is story.... and while I'll grant them that the stories don't top the stories of the GTA, Bio-Shock or Mass Effect series (my personal high point of gaming storytelling) that the games are solid great playing games that is overshadowed by great story in games from the pass.... So should story be a big factor when talking about a game? does gameplay matter above all else? I've skipped games because of gameplay or lack of like Gone Home or Last of Us(I hate stealth based or elements of in games)........

What are your thoughts?

It really depends if it grabs me or not.

Bioshiock Infinite was a game where I was absolutely glued to the story. But when I play Borderlands, I dont even pay attention to it. If there is a cutscene, I will make a sandwich (LET ME SKIP THEM FOR GODS SAKE!!). I am playing the pre-sequel now and I honestly couldn't tell you what is happening, and I am on my second play through.

I find it to be the most important part of the game for me, 90% of the time.

Depends on the game.

I wouldnt be playing so many JRPGs if it wasnt.

The older I get, the more I care about story and characters and the less I care about mechanics and systems. This is weird to me because I always expected it to evolve the other way around.

Depends on the game. Red Dead has some interesting mechanics and a well designed world. But without that story I wouldn't have played for 30+ hours.

Overall games are very bad at telling stories. Rarely do you play the story, it sorta happens around you or to you. Few games have you interact and retain control through a story moment. Most have you searching for the next boss fight (where a cut scene or exposition will explain story) or the next story important item.

Since we're so used to cut scenes and audio logs we usually ignore them when we don't want anything to do with them.

To me it does.

Like most other things, it's a balance. Great gameplay is nice to have, but personally I find games that rely entirely on gameplay mechanics without at least a serviceable story get real repetitive, real fast. Take Destiny for example. Granted, the shooting feels really good in that game, but that's pretty much all there is. The "main" story is nearly incomprehensible, and the side missions are little more than wet tissue paper covering up the fact that ultimately, all you do is shoot stuff over and over in a small handful of areas. If the game had contained a good narrative that got me invested in the universe and made me care a little bit about what I was doing, I probably wouldn't mind so much about the repetition, but given that the narrative is almost non-existent, there isn't anything to take my mind off it.

On the flip side, a really good story can keep me playing when the gameplay might be mediocre to flat out bad. The original Mass Effect is a perfect example of this. Going back and playing that game now - I mean man, even by the standards of that time period, the graphics are chunky as hell and the shooting is really not very good. However, particularly the first time I played through it, the story grabbed me in such way that all the game's issues just sort of fell away and I didn't really think about them.

yep

Most of my favorite games have little to no story at all (Dark souls, the Civ series, Mount & Blade) or story I totally ignore (Skyrim). However some of my other favorite games have fantastic stories as well (Chrono Trigger, FFVI, The walking Dea). So no it isn't at all necessary, but it can be a great addition.

The big difference is that those games make the effort to have a story, and often force you to engage with it. So if it's uninteresting, it's unavoidable, and will therefore mar your overall impression of the game. I still haven't played it, but in one of the Destiny QLs a "mission" was to wait a long time for a load to watch a long-ass cutscene, and then wait for another load just to dump you back in the hub world. Even if you love the shooting and movement, that's going to bum you out.

With a game like The Revenge of Shinobi, as you mention, all of that is completely secondary, skippable, and you only really experience the story if you choose to. (not to mention that's a game that takes place in 19XX where you fight Spider-man and Godzilla, so I don't think a cohesive story was ever the focus there anyway.) ;)

Basically, if someone complains that a game's story sucks, when it wasn't meant to be engaging in the first place, their criticism is invalid. But when a game hides its great gameplay behind a less so great story, the story is to blame, and the experience is overall worse off for it.

This is the correct answer. The story in Mega Man doesn't really matter. To me, at least. I very much care about the story in Silent Hill. The games are doing different things and are trying to be different things.

I find that the story really does matter in a game where it is suited. When i was playing through a game like the last of us i was there for the story and the gameplay second, but now that im playing borderlands, or recently played through metal gear rising revengeance, i couldn't tell you what the"story" was because i was too busy just spamming the button to cut fools and the people in the background talking were the least of my worries. Ill take a good story game over a game where there is a crappy or drowned out one any day.

@splodge: In Borderlands 2 I felt the same way the Tiny Tina DLC was entertaining but overall I pretty much blanked out on the story, I might pick up the pre-squeal when the price goes down, I wasn't interested in hearing more handsome jack in my ear for hours...

@finaldasa Red Dead did have a great story and the ending has to be one of the most awesome movie like finishes to a game ever that I can remember.... I'd say if you replaced that final scene ME3 of the old man talking to the little kid about the "Shepherd" with the final scene to Red Dead people wouldn't complain about that ending to that series at all...

Maybe a good story is something that adds to the whole of what a game is? A poorly told story always seems to stick out and ruin either immersion or just make me feel like I'm participating in something ridiculous. Battlefield 4 was probably the last game where I would say the really awful story actually took away significantly from the the game as a whole, while Black Ops II's interesting escalation and player "choice" did the opposite. Either way, those games are very competent gameplay-wise but it was how they really put those shooting bits together was the thing to either make or break the game.

Gameplay is most important to me but I'd be lying if I said that story hasn't elevated my opinion of some games before.

During the talk about people who don't finish games on the most recent Bombcast, I kinda realized I don't care all that much about the main storyline in games. I think I rather tend to grab on to some subplot and follow that to it's completion, but the main story lines never seem to engage me enough to want me to see the conclusion of that.

Got particularly evident in Skyrim, where after finishing the civil war quest line, I just stopped playing the game and felt no need to go back to it again. And I really liked Skyrim.

Part of that was probably because you had much more agency over what happened over the course of those missions than in the actual main story missions, and that generally seems to be the case in most games.

It matters in so much that certain games really feel lacking when they have bad stories, and some games inject stories where they should not. While watching the QL for Fantasia I couldn't help but wonder why they bothered tacking a story onto that at all. Just play the damn songs, that's presumably why you'd play a game like that in the first place. So to answer your question, yes story does matter but I don't want it in all my games.

Matters to me.

I'm getting old now, and can no longer compete with these young, upcoming whipper-snappers with their working eyes and nimble fingers. I've always enjoyed story in games, and if the story hits me the right way, I'll often forgive alot of shonky gameplay. I'd say it's more important than mechanics, really. But I can totally see the other side of the coin.

Usually the story is the main thing I look for in games. Even if the gameplay is good I won't bother playing a game if the story isn't good. That said I got hooked on Shadow Of Mordor even though the story and dialogue wasn't very good because the gameplay was so good, so I guess that contradicts what I just said.

Depends on the game.

Walking Dead would be a fucking atrocity if the story was shit, but I still couldn't really tell you what UMvC3 is about and it's one of my favorite games ever.

FFT has an amazing story and incredible gameplay, making it my favorite game ever.

It's got its place. Spelunky and Rogue Legacy are great. So are Mass Effect and GTA V. If it's trying to have a story, it matters. If it's like Spelunky or Rogue Legacy and isn't really trying for a story, then it doesn't matter.

Depends on the game, like many have already said. I liked Destiny's gameplay, but fuck that story. If it would've been even half-decent, I'd probably still play that game.

Depends on the game obviously, but in most cases, it's an absolute yes for me. Story can and often helps add a sense of purpose. I'm working my way through Drakengard 3 right now and I'm like half having fun and half completely miserable because, so far, the story is practically non-existent. I'm not sure why I should care about anyone or anything in that world and it feels like I'm just cutting down people for the hell of it.

It really depends on the game.

For Instance, I'm big into Dota 2 and that game is all about the action. There is no story, at all. Valve has done a good job creating lore for the characters/world, but there is no requirement to read and/or understand any of it to actually enjoy the game. There are character interactions which all fall to the wayside if you don't care about the lore.

There are also games without any story that are great, Nidhogg being a great recent example.

We get into other games where it's more of a grey area. For instance, if you've played XCOM then you essentially know you're commanding from a tactical point of view, human soldiers against an alien invasion. The remake of the series by Firaxis, added a bunch of fluff to the game that you can totally skip. It's absolutely unnecessary, but its there. It tries to tell a story, but everyone knows the gist of the game is to defend earth from aliens. You look at your objectives and complete them, and that's all there is to the gameplay.

There are games out there, where if they tell you the objective, the need for story element is null. Many side-scrollers hinge on that, which is why those games don't really have much story: get to the end of the level, collect all these things, get as many coin as possible, etc... or metroidvania games where there is a story, but it's all a matter of them telling you the objectives, solving puzzles or just flat out exploring the castle until you stumble into encounters.

There are games, though, that are completely story focused. Those games require a story or they fall on their face because the gameplay isn't that great. Those are the only games that actually require it, because without it, the game is just so bland.

If it grabs me or I feel like I wanna hear dialog then yeah it matters. However, if I think it is bad or I don't care, I will usually have the bombcast on while I play.

I don't give a fuck. Any game that isn't fun without it's story is probably not something I will go through with. As with all things there are exceptions, they are just very few.

But you should realize that not everyone think the same, and some people do actually care. Actually, MOST people seem to care. So it doesn't really matter that we don't.

If it's a story based game then yes of course it does. If it's not then no of course it doesn't.

I love stories in games. Even ones that the majority of people don't care about, I still get super into.

I´d say that for me (as a person who has played the same amount of years ... 1982 folks FTW!!!!) story is now 80-90% reasons why I play some videogames .... lets remember that on the intellevision-atari era of games score was really the only thing to play for and Im glad we are past that point nowadays , and now both gameplay and story must be taken into account , specially if your game is going to have some sort of sci fi aesthetic or war torn/post apocalyptic era , you just can´t asume that people will only play those games just for the mechanics , specially if you are AAA.

Engrossing story. Innovative gameplay. As long as a game can deliver one, it doesn't have to have both.

Not for me. If I'm playing a Fire Emblem game and someone dies, I'll restart...not because I give a rat's ass about whatever character happened to bite it, but because my strategy was sub-optimal and I refuse to play through games with such glaring mistakes. Even if that character is utterly worthless and I'm only keeping them alive in that mission to bench them for the rest of the game, I won't let anybody die. This mentality also means there's a lot of reloading in my XCOM games as well, but whatever. It's how I play the game, I couldn't do it any other way.

I disliked Mass Effect 2 and 3 (but not 1, because it wasn't an overblown mess of drama at that point). Actually, just chalk up every Bioware game in the "sure this seems alright but it isn't the game I want it to be" column. Put Bioshock Infinite in there too.

I tend not to play any games that are purely story-oriented, like Telltale games or any point-and-click stuff. I bought L.A. Noire based purely on review scores, and that was a biiiiig mistake for me. Got me to stop paying attention to reviews in general, actually.

It depends on the game of course but for me the story is the main reason if i enjoy a game or not. And if there is not so much a story then the world in which the game takes place is a big factor. I would say that story and 'feel' in a game are the most important factors in a game for me.

At this point in my life, I care way more about story than gameplay.

Not too long ago I was very much a "story guy". However, as I get older, I find myself caring less and less about the story. I don't have patience for that shit, I just want to have fun.

Gameplay ALWAYS trumps story on the highest levels (which is why Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, and Super Metroid are amongst the best games ever made); however there's plenty of games that just have a good story and mediocre or poor gameplay that are worth playing (Deadly Premonition, Xenosaga 2); and there's games with top notch gameplay and top notch storytelling like Vagrant Story out there as well. Story matters if your game isn't near perfect basically, so yes it matters. Very few games have utilized it yet but video games are a very good medium to tell a story that could evolve further in the distant future, The Last of Us is sort of a glimpse of that and you have random games in the past that have achieved that as well such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Front Mission 3. The absence of a story in the Souls games is a bit of an issue, it doesn't necessarily have to have a narrative drive but maybe like a prologue/tutorial that takes place during Gwyn's downfall period or something, even a single 30-40 minute section would do wonders for setting the stage.

If you're trying to sell me on the concept of a game that is solely about storytelling then it better be 20+ hours in length and be really insane like VLR/999; a 4 hour game that's nothing but storytelling just isn't appealing at all unless it's free on PS+ or something. If I want a short story that's really damn good I could just watch a movie.

I don't know if I've ever come across a media that's more alternating than games. Sometimes it's the gameplay that hooks me in (mostly), sometimes it's the characters, the story, the mood, the music etc.

Gone Home is one of the best games I've played because the subject slapped... sorry, kicked me in the head. There's maybe books or movies that does it better, but hey, I play games.

Its more rare for me to play a game without story, than a game just for the gameplay itself. So yes, story matters for me. And story doesn't just have to be the narrative. Lore also counts as story. Any game that has an immersive world with well thought out history that is presented in game is something I like.

Some games are better with a story, and some games aren't. The problem comes when a game tries to incorporate a story, but the story is poor. Something likes Watch Dogs is trying to tell a story. Long stretches of time are devoted to characters and plot. It wants you to care about the characters and what happens to them. It doesn't do a good job of it, so it gets criticized for it. Rightfully so, as every time it fails in delivering its story, it takes away from the overall experience.

Whether or not a game has a story isn't what matters. What matters is if a game is telling a story, it should be good.

I think the answer is obvious:

Every game is unique.

Different people are looking for different things out of games, so there is no definitive answer as to whether or not story matters. For some people it does, for others it doesn't. For some games it does, others not so much.

There is no right or wrong answer to this question, it simply depends on what the game is aiming to offer and/or what any given individual is looking for out of a game. You may not be interested in games like Gone Home or The Last of Us and that's totally fine, other people are interested in those types of experiences and that's totally fine too.

Yeah, story is a big deal for me. I'll play a game without a story only if its game play is novel enough to keep me hooked. And even then, I doubt I would spend that much time with it. I also think there are too many games coming out these days that have great story and game play so that when a game comes out missing one or the other it is somehow much more jarring.

Not a very interesting question to ask, honestly.

"Depends on the game" for the 30th time in this thread. It's just the correct answer.

Story is a big part of the role-playing aspect of the game. It keeps you involved and interested in the world that the game takes place in. For some games the mechanics shine over the top of it and the story isn't as important, but it is still there. Normally. Destiny kind of breaks the rules on that, but then again the game wasn't very good. A good game will have enough story to keep you intrigued, and some games like Persona utilize the story entirely to make a basis for their game.

@maddman60620: I'm about a year older than you and even back in the SMS/NES days I cared about the story. Kinda makes me laugh now when I think about it but I was heavily invested in the Sonic 2 story on the SMS how Sonic was trying to rescue Tails from Dr. Robotnik. That ending when you don't rescue him was torture lol.

But still it depends on the game as to whether I care heaps about the story.

I feel it is mostly irrelevant to my enjoyment of a game. I have fairly diverse set of hobbies, so when I sit down to spend my limited free time on a game I want to play the game. If I wanted a good story I would have read a book, watched a movie, TV show, etc. Those are more natural mediums for telling a story and even when I see games succeed in storytelling it is just using other mediums instead of gameplay. Metal Gears cutscenes might as well be a movie, text prompts in RPG's might as well be a comic book / manga, and the audio diaries of Bioshock are nothing more than radio plays. I mean, just try and play Planescape: Torment and try telling me that it is more than just an extremely long novel, only you read it on your computer instead of a book.

My favourite forms of stories in games are actually the emergent tales that show up in games like Civilization.

More often than not I am going to enjoy a game because of the story. Either because it is a great story told in a great way (Bioshock Infinite), a story told in a subtle way (Dark Souls) or a story I completely make myself (Dwarf Fortress). I can enjoy games that are nothing but mechanics and graphics, but I'm a story guy. I also love to read books, which I feel influence what I think about games as well. And to me it makes me look for good stories, even in games. I feel Dark Souls did a great job with the way it told its story. If you don't care about story at all, you can still enjoy the game a lot. But if you do care, you pick up so many clues and hints, where you eventually piece together the story of the world. Love it.

I feel it is mostly irrelevant to my enjoyment of a game. I have fairly diverse set of hobbies, so when I sit down to spend my limited free time on a game I want to play the game. If I wanted a good story I would have read a book, watched a movie or TV show, because I feel that those are more natural mediums for telling a story. Even when I see games succeed in storytelling it is just using other mediums instead of gameplay (ie, cut scenes might as well be a movie, text prompts in RPG might as well be a comic book / novel. I mean, just try and play Planescape: Torment and try telling me that it is more than just an extremely long novel, only you read it on your computer instead of a book.

I truly hate cut scenes though.

I think "story" is used both too specifically and loosly in regards to games.

Since the dawn of the medium games have created incredible worlds, but the plots are often standard fare.

For me, the world matters most.