What is the worse AAA developer for story?

What is the worse AAA developer for story to you?

Keep it civil, and remember that everyone has the right to their opinion.

PopCap.

Seriously, plants can't fight anything, and zombies aren't real. Step up your shit already.

So, is this really just a "bag on developers a lot of people probably like" thread? heh.

I suppose Lionhead's Fable games have always seemed weak to me story-wise. And Tecmo Koei's Omega Force, if you'd consider them AAA.

I've never been a big fan of the GTA stories, so I kinda want to say Rockstar, they have too much padding in the middle of their games too, that kills the momentum of the story (see large parts of Mexico in Red Dead Redemption for example). I really like GTAV despite that and Red Dead Redemption's ending is masterfully done.

So... uh, Rockstar?

Or you can be honest and think about the games you felt the story sucked and name the developer that made them. It would actually be helpful to know which developers are bad at plots, so people who play games in part to enjoy a good story will know which to be wary of.

Personally I think I never saw a worse story than in Watch Dogs. It has so many inconsistencies that, unlike other plots that hardly get noticed as they are forgetable or have some incongruences, it stands out for how bad it is. So Ubisoft for now is in list of bad story tellers.

@jeust: Though don't developers tend to waver game to game? Some series have good writers, but different games often have different lead writers or different focuses. So, it seems a bit reductive to judge story to specific developers outside of "somewhat inconsistent" or "lacking". Individual games are far easier to consider lacking in their stories.

Ubisoft has had decent stories and crappy ones, often dependent more on the writers and lead developers than on them as a wider studio. So, I'd say, "Watch Dogs has a weak story," or, "The writer of Watch Dogs did a poor job", but I wouldn't go so far as to say, "Ubisoft has the worst stories" because that varies quite a bit.

You could perhaps say a specific developer like Lionhead seems to have weak story, as I would, but that's mainly because their primary series is most of what they put out that has story. So, it may be more telling for me to say, "I think the story is weak in the Fable series." Obviously, even individual games in series can vary quite a bit in story, and that muddles it further.

I suppose I'd say it would be more useful or telling to say "Games written by this writer" or "Games in this series" tend to have weak stories than "Games by this developer", because games by a specific developer can widely vary in storytelling depending on their focus, series, and chosen staff.

Capcom. Capcom games have either a terrible story or a totally idiotic story.

Not that I don't like them but Nintendo are probably the worst AAA developer at stories. I mean I don't ever remember playing a Nintendo game and going "Wow that was a great story/great plot twist."

Sorry Nintendo...

I mean, Blizzard, by a pretty wide margin?

The writing and atmosphere in Starcraft and Diablo were leagues better before SC2 and D3. Warcraft's writing was always kind of dumb, but it went from "really simplistic fantasy" writing to "super safe, Disney fantasy" writing, around the same time they decided to move their art style away from all the badass Warcraft 1 and 2 concept art to the super glossy, clean characters you see all over Warcraft 3 and WoW.

Have to admit, Nintendo's great strength is gameplay. I don't think I ever played one of their first party games for its story. Blizzard, I like your lore, but your plots leave something to be desired.

Also, gotta drop a Square-Enix mention, even though it's really a team by team basis. But Kingdom Hearts and the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy just confuse the heck out of me.

Gearbox - not a Borderlands fan.

After the travesty that is the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, I have to go with Square-Enix. FF games had been becoming more and more metaphysical and less grounded for years, but XIII and its sequels just threw any pretense of coherence out the window and opted for trying-really-hard-to-be-deep, yet-ultimately-meaningless jargon-babble with a side smattering of bullshit, feel-good pap. I could overlook all that if they would just tell the fucking story in some way other than repeatedly plowing me over the head with exposition. Oh, and immediately after said exposition, you'll be prompted to look up the point just exposited in your database where you'll find further exposition. It's like the writers read every point in the 'how to write effectively' book and did the opposite.

Ubisoft has some of the biggest gaps between ambition and execution.

@bwheeeler said:

I was just thinking that. Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed 3 come to mind especially... Far Cry 3's story was also pretty vapid (while pretending to be meaningful). Ubisoft have told some great stories and had some great characters too though... so perhaps labeling them as the worst is a bit harsh... inconsistent might be a better way of putting it.

I agree with this.

Call of Duty, after 4, is pretty vapid jingoistic crap mostly. It takes a rare talent to make something silly and infuriatingly tone deaf.

This. So much this.

I feel like I should throw Kingdom Hearts in there as another shining example of Square Enix's lack of ability to tell a story that isn't completely up it's own ass at this point.

Rovio... ? PopCap... ? Mojang... ? King, possibly?

Seriously, as much as I don't think highly of stories like Zelda, Call of Duty, or the last Final Fantasy, they are literal geniuses in comparison with people in the mobile and casual market...

EA Sports.

YOU ARE A MONSTER.

No but really, you make your own story! IT IS THE BEST. (I may play too many sports management sims though)

Capcom.

Nintendo aren't ineffective storytellers, they just don't really tell traditional or complex stories. At the very least, what writing they do have is almost always good.

My vote's gonna have to go to EA/Bioware, personally. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, they all have the same problem for me; the concept sounds really good, but then I jump into the games and the character/plot development is just awful and boring. The romance options are the worst, since their presence means that most of the characters are always looking to jump your bones at the slightest hint that you might like them. Plus that Mass Effect 3 ending, I mean, come on.

What?

If this is just bagging on the Warriors games, the stories in them are quite good given that they largely produce arcade-style adaptations of existing story material.

Capcom, sadly...

Whatever Capcom studio made the Dead Rising games and the later Megaman X games. The gameplay in them is great but the story is garbage.

Thus the OPs 'AAA' qualifier. Rovio, Popcap, Mojang and King are pretty much the opposite of triple A developers.

You know, it's a really hard question to answer but I suppose every sports fan reckons they can do a better job than the coach. Because we're all obnoxious wanks. And games like Football Manager, Pro Cycling Manager, Out of the Park Baseball (which I own despite not knowing anything about baseball!) & others (I've got a NCAA football coaching game on the PC somewhere though I don't remember the name, & there's MMA promotion sims like WMMA) are very good at recreating the sport you watch. They aren't skilled games, they are the sort of games you can play at a sedate pace which I quite appreciate. But then like other turn based games they can really quickly into "just one more turn" games as well, and before you know it it's 4am & you have to get up in 2 hours so you may as well just stay awake & play a few more matches.

I haven't actually answered the question, but it's just so similar to following a sports team, but with the added bonus that the success in game is truly yours. Obviously not for everyone, but I've spent god only knows how many thousands of hours in the Championship Manager/Football Manager since I first got into them around 97 or 98.

All of them? Okay, that's a little harsh. I think in terms of ambition in storytelling versus actual execution, Ubisoft has done quite poorly over the past few years between Assassin's Creed 3, Watch Dogs and Far Cry 3.

Also, I'll speak in Square-Enix's defense here by saying that the story of Final Fantasy XIII is far more coherent than I was lead to believe by the internet. It's not the best written or the best told story I've seen in a Japanese RPG, but it has a definable arc with a distinct beginning, middle and end, characters with understandable (albiet simplistic) motivations and dialogue that is a lot less overwrought than I was expecting. I cannot speak for XIII-2 or Lightning Returns because I haven't gotten very far in them yet.

If we go by games that actually try to present a story (thus excluding sports games and the likes) I'd probably say Blizzard. Infinity Ward is of course up there too.

I'm not fond of Rockstar's games either, but I think the writing tends to be at the very least alright in those, the issue with their games is that the actual game and the story presented in them don't mesh at all.

XIII-2 is dumb as hell but is coherent. Lightning Returns makes no sense at all, it is just batshit insanity the entire way through, and not the fun kind.

@rebel_scum: I dont think that's fair to say unless you're being sarcastic? Nintendo doesn't attempt to build any real stories that really resonate as stories. The "stories" heavily serve the fun gameplay.

This is why I get a little annoyed when people pretend the Zelda series has this vast expansive tolkien-esque lore. Its there yes, but these video games are not there to tell a story first and foremost. You experience an adventure in game form.

So what you're saying is I should make finishing XIII-2 a priority so I can get to the good stuff.

If your definition of the good stuff is characters that you have no knowledge about expositing at you with words that they just made up and don't explain then yes.

Alright, I'm down. Expect my Lightning Returns blog in 2 months.

I've heard people talk down Blizzard games and Mass Effect only considering the overall plot. "Mass Effect 2's story is only a gearing up for an executing on a suicide mission" or "World of Warcraft: cultists did it." Plot is the least interesting aspect of storytelling, most things are just some variation on the Hero's Journey anyway. Plot is just a hanger for the world, characters and smaller events that make up that plot that make a story unique.

The many small character based stories are the meat that make up ME2. World of Warcraft is full of small stories, not everything is great, but there are gems to be found.

I'm too sensitive for this world, topics like this hurt my feeling and I never even released a game yet.

AAA Developer is a bit broad. AAA game at least makes some sense to me.

I would deny that any AAA developer has consistently released enough garbage stories to be The Bad Storyteller, unless we're talking about games where the story is effectively irrelevant anyways.

I beg to differ. The main bad guy Caius' entire motivation for releasing the chaos and destroying all of space and time is to prevent Yeul's cycle of death and rebirth from continuing, but by the time he does anything about it, there are literally two people left alive in the entire fucking world: Noel and Caius. Unless either Noel or Caius are packing some female hardware and into each other, Yeul's never going to be reborn, nor die again. Humanity is ending and Caius wants to destroy all of space and time to prevent something from happening that can never happen again? His motivations make no sense whatsoever, like the vast majority of the moment to moment time travel bullshit. Not to mention the completely bewildering and unnecessary retconning of the end of the first XIII in order to provide Serah with the McGuffin of her sister turned god and transported to the end of time or some shit also entirely retconned in Lightning Returns for fucking batshit insane reasons incomprehensible to anyone whose name isn't Toriyama (whose massive hard-on for his 'rose' colored hair, stiffly written and acted, waifu protagonist clearly got in the way of his common sense.) Seriously, Youtube the post-credits scene from Lightning Returns and be prepared to be thoroughly creeped the fuck out. I honestly cannot think of a worse-written or presented story off the top of my head, and I've read a Gor book...

Oh definitely, if you think about it too hard it all falls apart, but overall it's a plot you can follow, even if it's dumb and nobody's actions make any sense.

Reminder that "AAA" is a stupid, meaningless term.

I'd say Ubisoft in general, but DICE has been putting out some stinkers recently. I have problems with Rockstar as well, mainly because all of their stories seem to be the same and suffer from the "reluctant Rockstar protagonist syndrome", but if you can get past that stuff, Rockstar does do some....interesting.....things.

Gearbox easily

Ubisoft

How did I not think of that. Gearbox is the worst. They aren't funny or interesting, just boring and frustratingly low effort.

@sinusoidal said:

Ok. Some of them are pretty big, but I guess none of their products qualifies like AAA.

It was sort of a cop out answer, so here is another: EA Sports...

No? Ok, ok... seriously now. Probably Capcom. The closest they have of an engrossing narrative in AAA market is Resident Evil, and that went downhill a long time ago.

@corruptedevil said:

Yup, playing through Borderlands 2, literally have no idea what I'm doing except got to the diamond on the map and shot whatever is there. Perfect for listening to Bombcasts or watching GI Joe, which is why I'm playing Borderlands 2.

For what EA did to the divine trilogy with Dantes Inferno I really want to say it's EA, but they've made other games that I've enjoyed. So I'd have to say... idk... iD?

EA isn't a developer, they are a publisher. They don't make games they just fund them and put their name on them.

@corruptedevil: fair enough