What is the worse AAA developer for story?

I know Activision are a publisher but I want to say them, they managed to sell me 3 different games that have the same story which I can't believe was just a coincidence. Although I can't tell if that makes them the worst or the best for somehow getting away with it.

When looking at the three games as a whole, I agree with you. Lightning Returns was such a travesty of a game if every regard aside from the combat (and even that got very frustrating after awhile), that when all three games are talked about together, it drags down the other two with its intrinsic awfulness. However, XIII on its own, made perfect sense and, to me, had a very interesting story that was not at all incoherent. XIII-2 added some unnecessary convolution, but it was still easy enough to understand and not nearly as big a mess as you would have it sound. Lightning Returns, on the other hand, is garbage. I really wish they had just stopped at XIII and started XIII-2 as a different spinoff game, because XIII, when looked at by itself, is a phenomenal game in almost every aspect.

Also, when did more information about backstory and characters become a bad thing? You never have to read anything in the database to understand the story as a whole. It's no different than if you found a bunch of notes laying around like in other RPGs that give you more lore about the world. It's just given to you in a much better way in XIII, at least in my opinion.

Oh well. This is just one of those example of "to each, his own", because I feel the exact opposite, at least about XIII by itself.

Blizzard takes it pretty handily between part 2 of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. Only because it seems like they're putting a lot of time into cinematics surrounding a story that rill rill clunky and poorly conceived.

You may be right, but from my experience there is also consistency in the quality of the stories made by some developers. I feel I can predict the quality of the plot in a Blizzard game, being it a shallow plot with shallow and uninteresting characters. About Naughty Dog I can expect good characters and interesting scenarios. Although that certainly has to do with working with the same writers.

And when you take that in consideration, there are developers that reveal consistency in the quality of the stories in their games, because of how much focus and importance they give them in development and the creativity of the people who make them.

Not really. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a solid read into pseudo-history and the values of China at the time. But that doesn't mean I can't turn the story to shit. I could take the best story ever written and make it seem like garbage if my execution is poor enough. Some might argue turning one of China's most well known tales into a wrestling match is the height of bad storytelling.

@bargainben: It's a loose adaptation, but that doesn't automatically render it garbage.

To be fair the games ability to create a story is pretty unparalleled in terms management sims. So much so the are entire books about peoples experiences with the game (assuming you're talking about the sports interactive games and not the ones that became Championship manager after SI got bought by Sega)

@bargainben said:

This. I like Blizzard games but hate Blizzard stories.

Epic, arguably the crowned ruler of AAA development, has some of the most asinine writing in their games.

I used to love Blizzard lore. But these past few years, they're so terrible. SO TERRIBLE.

I actually stopped playing Heart of the Swarm halfway through because of the awful story. And Starcraft/Brood War was the greatest story ever told! (shades of young Dan and MGS)

Glad to see I'm not the only one who weirdly got super invested in Starcraft. I always thought it was because they decided to involve the player as a character in that game. Probably why I was disappointed with how Wings of Liberty/Heart of the Swarm happened. Just feels like Warcraft 3 but, well, in spaaaaaace.

I'm also disappointed in how Diablo 3 is decidedly less Metal than Diablo or Diablo 2, but that's neither here nor there.

Probably almost every AAA dev at some point with some game. This thread just seems like a bickering generator. Not only is it incredibly subjective, most AAA games end up being touched by so many writers that the quality within a single game can be drastically varied, to say nothing of trying to categorize an entire development studio.

EDIT: Also all this Blizzard hate seems crazy. The only difference in writing between Blizzard games is how old you are when they come out.

@ghostytrickster: You apparently neither watch much anime nor play many Square Enix games.

This thread is nothing but pointless shitting on devs with little to no justification. It's embarrassing.

The only right answer to this is Blizzard.

Seriously, can anyone here say the story in Starcraft 2 and its expansion are good? Of course not, even people who LIKE it admit the story is stupid as hell. Deus ex Machina, a recycled plot, hardly any character development, and nonsensical plot twists are only a few of the multitude of horrendous things one can say about these awful stories. Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft also similarly have dumb stories, but nowhere near the idiocy that Starcraft 2 has.

@hailinel said:

Since when was it "embarrassing" to talk about things you don't like? User A asked a question (who has the worst stories in games?) and everyone else has answered with benign or even neutral comments. There's no reason to come threadshitting just because you disagree with a comment or the premise of the thread. I don't like anime, or JRPGs, and I don't go into those threads and shit all over the people in them, or the comments they leave.

For me it's without a doubt Quantic Dream. For games so focused on story to have such absolutely abysmal writing is simply baffling.

I'm also not big on Kojima. I feel like he and Quantic Dream have a similar issue, where everything around the writing is pretty excellent (except perhaps voice acting), but they drop the ball completely in the writing and execution of the story.

Even when they keep writers responsible for good stuff, they can flounder. I think at least one writer went from Bungie over to 343 didn't they? And man, the story in Halo 4 was hot trash. Which is a shame because the Cortana stuff was really solid.

Halo 4 was a mediocre game made by what was essentially a game development all-star team, at least in theory. So yeah, it's a little hard to judge.

But based on the one game they've released? 343. They are the only AAA dev I know to have tried to create a compelling story and to fail so miserably. And with a beloved franchise that I really enjoyed the fiction of prior to that point. So maybe I'm a bit, ya know, biased. But come on. Did anyone think that the story outside of the rampancy plot line was anything but nonsense and boring ass crap? I know I'm being harsh but I really disliked Halo 4.

Bioware might be another good one. They are excellent at short arcs and characters. Not so much with actual main plots.

That's a weird game to call out. The story is really just there to move you along to the next area. And Gearbox has done good stuff in spots where they actually focused more on the events of a game. Borderlands was just a silly universe to shoot the hell out of stuff in. I think they did a good job. All those weirdos that got super into the fiction seemed to enjoy the new story, and those who didn't give a fuck about it in the first game continued to just shoot stuff a bunch and have a good time in the sequel.

You can argue that any term is stupid and meaningless. AAA studios are large, successful, well funded studios. Do you really want us to say large, successful, well funded studios ever time we would otherwise just say AAA?

I don't get why people in this community/industry get so up in arms about reductive terminology. It's just a shortcut to simplify language. No one is harping on any other element of development by using the term AAA developer/studio or whatever. It doesn't hurt the industry to recognize that there are the big guys and the little guys and the in between guys. At the end of the day you have to reduce the complexity of a concept to some point, otherwise you end up with each studio being put into it's own individual bracket based on exact funding, success, staff size, growth, etc.

The only people that make stuff like "AAA" and "gamer" toxic are the people who attach toxicity or ignorance to them. No one implies that AAA studios are better just calling them AAA studios. Even what I believe to be the origin of the term doesn't imply quality of development or anything, but financial stability/success more than anything.

Your comment contributed nothing to the discussion of the thread, which I find sort of amusing :)

@iburningstar said:

Whoa man, that would include Shu Takumi stuff like Phoenix Wright and Ghost Trick. Those games have awesome stories.

Hmmm... I like that, but I would probably put it more like: "This thread, most other threads here, and most forums I've ever been a part of are nothing but people aimlessly shitting words from their mouths with little to no justification... It's embarrassing."

Not as succinct and direct, but it feels good.

I'd argue that this is the point where the comparison breaks down.

Come on guys, let's not forget that these guys did make the Brothers in Arms games many moons ago.

Aren't you happy positive folks?

It is a subjective thread like many others. People saying what they like or they don't. Like Oldirtybearon said. And there is justification, when I see consistency in the quality of the stories of certain developers. It begs the question, despite not being entirely faithful to the reality of the situation. But like jArmAhead said if you want to be completely truthful then we have to analyse each developer and consider them each by their own particular situation.

Well there hasn't been a main series FF game since 13 (every game since then has either been a 13 spinoff, HD version, fighting game, rhythm game or an MMO) so there's no real data to pull for that. However I highly doubt 15 will sell as well as 13, outside of Japan at least.

@vod_crack said:

Never played those so I'm going off of Borderlands and Duke Nukem

@brodehouse: I believe both Bravely Default and FFX HD each separately outsold FFXIII Lightning Returns, if that gives you any indication. In fact, opening sales of Lightning Returns were around a fifth of FFXIII proper. The last generation of FF games crippled that series' reputation.

No way that's happening. Maybe if it had been at E3 or was on the list for TGS but it wasn't. Witcher 3 will be that game.

@jeust: Not many people here are actually providing good arguments here. It's just shitting on things they don't personally enjoy. That's not constructive.

Nope not being sarcastic. I should've mentioned examples but they certainly have tried to make games with stories like Super Mario RPG and the LoZ's for example. Doesn't matter if the game is not there to tell a story or not. The fact that the story is there and is usually piss poor which warrants its inclusion in this discussion.

That is true, but you can't have good discussion without the reverse side of the coin.

Seemed to be going fine before you started telling other people they havent earned their opinion. Ghost hasn't put his 10,000 hours in on SE or anime so he can't commentate? We get it, you love both of those things and anyone who doesn't love them must not have put enough time in or they don't get it or they're ignorant. chill plz

@bargainben: I'm saying arguments need to be substantial and constructive. Ghostlytrickster's was neither.

It's probably not fair to judge them on only one game, but I really felt like 343 Industries missed the mark with Halo 4. It felt like someone read all the Halo novels and then sat down and wrote fan fiction that got turned into a game. The Halo series never had to most amazing story but Bungie where really good at telling it without letting it get to complex or to shallow.

I've only played the Borderlands games and some of Duke Nukem but the stories in those are not entertaining whatsoever. Specifically with Borderlands 2, it feels like they are trying too hard to be funny and I barely give a shit about any of the characters.

I had a feeling this would happen after someone mentioned Final Fantasy XIII. This outcome was inevitable.

For what it's worth at this point, I would maintain that even the term "AAA" is mostly meaningless at this point. If it's just being the top of the line budget, well, there are only a small handful of developers like Activision or EA that even fit into that, and due to their variety of studios, it can vary wildly on whether each studio under their wing is getting top of the line funding or promotion. Clearly people are swinging at "big" developers, but when you're that big, you're even more likely to waver in quality depending on your team and focus.

This may be easier to talk about if developer retention was high. Unfortunately, project to project, a lot of staff can change around, and you're talking about a somewhat different beast. A studio like Valve or Blizzard which values a set team is likely to be more consistent, but then, there aren't really many studios like them. Ultimately, individual series or individual writers may be an inherently better frame of reference for the potential quality of an upcoming game's story.

@truthtellah: Even then, it's a question of taste and preference.

XIII was the worst-selling mainseries game since before VII came out.

A friend of mine explained in great detail the story for Final Fantasy XIII beat by beat and I was literally laughing until my sides hurt from how idiotic it was. If Square's put out a game with a good story since Chrono Trigger, I am not aware of it. Still, I think if you can count Team Ninja as a "AAA" developer, they're even worse. The Ninja Gaiden games, while great, have some of the most skippable cutscenes of all time and I'll never forget the scorched-earth ruination of everything good about Metroid and Samus that was Metroid: Other M.

But it sounds like you're holding every video game story up to one singular standard. The storytelling in The Last of Us was trying to achieve different goals than something like Ocarina of Time. The Last of Us wants to be a captivating story about two specific characters surviving a terrible situation and Ocarina of Time is sort of a "one size fits all" gung-ho adventure with a blank slate character serving the gameplay, puzzles, and dungeons. They achieve their goals differently because they are two entirely different beasts. Ocarina of Time, or rather, ANY video game story can't be held up to the standards of books or movies for example. Games do different things with stories than any other medium.

Blizzard's recent writing has all been abysmal. There was something about it in like, Diablo 2, but sometime since then it all became shit. SC2 and Diablo 3 had terrible stories, and most of the character and dialogue writing was really bad too.

for the past 10 years? Capcom.

@jeust: Haha. Apologies for using your topic as my punching bag. I may have no place in my heart for happiness, but know that I don't count myself above it all. In the end, I'm just another speck in the cosmos!

Bethesda's plots and writing are pretty horrendous, post-Morrowind. Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim were all boilerplate generic fantasy (or post-apocolypse) garbage intended to make you feel like a badass without really having earned it.

Quantic Dream's games always reek of a lack of ideas, too. They start strong, but then fail to explain anything that's important in a satisfactory way. You're left with a bunch of supernatural junk and QTEs and wonder what happened in the last 10-15 hours.

@chrissedoff: How so, for any of that? This is the exact sort of non-argument that this thread was designed to cultivate.

Ubisoft seems like a solid pick for me. Gearbox is both better than Ubisoft (story-wise) and, I think, only accidentally got labeled AAA after the success of Borderlands. I don't think they'll stay there for long.