What is the worse AAA developer for story?

I liked Indigo Prophecy's (or Fahrenheit as it's called where I'm from) story up until the latter part of the game. And Heavy Rain also had some really great moments throughout. I felt really invested at several points.

The story of the Halo games have never made any sense to me, or seemed at all interesting. But that is just a personal thing, and it seems quite popular so there is probably something there that people latch onto. I think they are all very fun games in co op though.

Capcom, because there is a fine line between charming Ed Wood schlock and Uwe Boll awfullness that they just lept across.

My initial post regarding FFXIII and its sequels was indeed in relation to the subject of this thread. Subsequent posts were just backing up that. Squeenix are certainly amongst the worst of story tellers making AAA games for many of the reasons I listed several posts ago.

Retconning your plot mid-trilogy is bad story telling. Gaping plots holes in character motivation is bad story telling. Repeatedly telling you what's going on and rarely showing you is bad story telling. The FFXIII trilogy's story - whether you find the subject matter compelling or not - is objectively told badly.

Keep telling yourself that. Bad elements of storytelling doesn't necessarily mean that the storytelling as a whole is bad.

And as for your first post:

Again, it's just shitting on FFXIII. Second post:

Again, focused entirely on the XIII series. Your third post on, I've already rebutted. My point is, all you're doing is repeatedly screaming about one game series that you don't like. One game series out of numerous games that Square Enix has produced over the past generation and generations. That is absolutely nothing in terms of an argument or evidence. I have a much easier time accepting the idea that others have levied that Quantic Dream is the worst AAA storyteller simply because, of all the games they've produced since Indigo Prophecy, all have suffered from poor storytelling mechanics and terrible writing. It occurred with Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, and Beyond: Two Souls. And those three games have been their sum creative output for two console generations.

So maybe when you have something to say that isn't just shitting on Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels in regards to this particular argument, I'll find what you have to say more substantial.

The whole point of this thread is to shit on bad writing. I don't recall anyone specifying that they had to be consistently bad.

At least a dozen other people in this thread have also listed Square Enix and FFXIII as possibly being the worst with little to no validation. At least I'm backing my opinion up. Why not call them out and leave me alone?

@chrissedoff: I felt a little bad for not really going into detail about why I thought Quantic Dreams and Kojima were bad, but you pretty much nailed all my thoughts on Kojima.

With regards to Quantic Dreams, people like to point to Heavy Rain's plot holes and the overall aggressive bullshit of Indigo Prophecy (which can still be appreciated for comedy value), but the thing that really sealed it for me was Beyond: Two Souls. It made me realize something about David Cage: He has pretty good taste in movies. The problem is that when he goes to create his own "movies", he doesn't have an original bone in his body and the end result looks like someone took the Asylum rip offs of several different, great films (the most obvious example is Aliens) and pasted them together like some kind of non copyright infringing clip show. It's not that he's merely terrible, but that he copies great things and still makes absolute drivel.

The point of this thread is to identify the worst AAA storyteller. Not to shit on individual games for their storytelling. Citing bad examples of storytelling can contribute to that point, but you've only been beating one example like a drum while ignoring the actual point. And as much as I'd like to debate with some of the others, many of those posts tend to be statements of presumed fact devoid of proper reasoning or argument, and I've already expressed my frustrations in that regard.

It's three games and it's Square Enix's most recognized IP by a wide margin.

I wouldn't shit on the XIII trilogy so much if it weren't so incredibly terrible in the face of what Square has done before. FFs IV, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X and XII all told better stories more effectively. Yes, they told their stories through lots of words, but also actions, lots and lots of meaningful action! I'll never forget the impact of VII's CG (entirely dialog-less) cutscenes! Kefka cackling madly while he tears the world apart halfway though VI!! The Whale erupting from the waves off the coast by Mysidia!!! Vivi silently and poignantly (thank gawd for silently) realizing he's going to die someday!!!! Terra finally coming to terms with who and what she is and saving my ass from Humbaba!!!!! Even Aerith's bloody death in a world of Phoenix Downs and Life spells. Nothing in any of the XIII games even comes remotely close to reproducing the best the FF series has to offer in terms of emotional, effective storytelling. Lightning and co. do virtually nothing of import across 3 games and something like 1300 years aside from being tossed around by Toriyama's incomprehensibly random story beats.

@sinusoidal: To you, Final Fantasy XIII didn't match previous entries, but to others, it did. It certainly did for me, with numerous character moments I enjoy, from the silly to the dramatic. I enjoy the battle system it uses, and the challenging fights that were born from it. I enjoyed just about everything in it, and in its sequels.

Then there are the Kingdom Hearts games, which I enjoy for their more simplistic romps through Disney world's and for their original characters. Square Enix has also produced games like Nier, the Drakengard series, and put their backing behind a Tomb Raider reboot and a new Deus Ex. They gave Sleeping Dogs, a game with surprisingly good story and characters, new life.

Square Enix is much more than Final Fantasy XIII, as both developer and publisher. To judge them entirely by a subset of that output is absurd.

This is about Square Enix as a developer though, not as a publisher. He didn't say Square Enix and every studio they've ever worked with. In my opinion SE hasn't MADE a good game since TWEWY, but they've certainly funded a lot of great ones.

@corruptedevil: Be that as it may, even as a developer, they're more than Final Fantasy XIII and Sinusoidal's apparent mortal enemy Toriyama.

They only published most of those though, not developed. And I haven't heard much good about Kingdom Hearts' story either, though I haven't played it, so I'll refrain from further comment.

You're certainly allowed to enjoy the XIII trilogy all you want. Just don't try and tell me the storytelling is any good because I played through each of them, and it's verifiably not. Nothing wrong with that! I enjoy a lot of stuff that's verifiably shitty as well. Just not XIII. Especially in light of what Squeenix is capable of when their heads aren't so far up their own asses they're seeing the backs of their teeth.

Probably First Party Nintendo games. Nintendo seems to put little, if any, effort into their stories (And when they do put effort in - the main work seems to go into a couple key points in each game rather than a cohesive narrative).

I should also point out that there are a couple exceptions, and I also don't mean this for teams that simply work exclusively with Nintendo (such as Monolith Soft). I'm just talking about the couple studios within Nintendo itself.

@sinusoidal: And there are shades of quality between excellent and aggressively, unredeemably terrible. Your criticism doesn't allow for much gray area.

Whoa there! You need to go back and replay Final Fantasy VIII and X before you praise their stories or the execution thereof. Remember the orphanage twist in Final Fantasy VIII? Can you figure out the motivation for the big bad in that game? And Final Fantasy X, think about the fact that the protagonist spends the whole game insisting that "This is my story!" even though he's largely irrelevant. Think about the laughing scene. Think about how many times they go back to having to rescue Yuna in order to give the player something to do. Bad writing is a series tradition.

You know how opinions work? Its not done by committee? You seem to be running people around in circles for no good reason. Take a break. Nobody owes you a justification in an opinion thread, especially when you're so immoveable on your end. Stop trolling people dude.

@bargainben: If I'm "running in circles", it's only to get actual conversation out of a topic people are using to just take dumps on whatever they don't like. That's not conversation. That's vapid, empty expression of contempt for the sake if contempt. My desire to see this thread not be that is not trolling.

The FF XIII story flame war rages on.

Are you guys on about writers or developers, because Motomu "I want to marry Lightning" Toriyama is second, third, or maybe even fourth to the steaming diarrhoea dump Bioware gave us with Mass Effect 3.

id software, gearbox, most things japanese in terms of absolute idiocy

Blizzard are probably the most disappointing because they've built so much lore for nothing.

It feels almost impossible to pick because there are so many devs out there who feel like they're at that level of their story just being something to give context and purpose to your actions rather than anything they've put a lot of effort into making engaging.

Hey hey now. Careful.

I would tie it with Nintendo and Irrational/Ken Levine for me. The Irrational titles (namely Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite) felt like they spent a ton of time crafting a world and setting, but the origins to that setting made no sense or weren't really justified (In Infinite, they say the Comstock built Columbia "using his powers in Congress". WTF? Also, how did ONE MAN manage to engineer all the tech needed? It's a little hokey).

With Nintendo, I'd mainly say Zelda. I know they have the "official timeline" set now, and I own the Historia and have read it plenty of times, but it doesn't feel like they meant for any of that to transpire the way it did. It looks like they just tied some fan-created timelines together and fill in some gaps with the Historia. It lacks fluidity and still leaves a lot of questions.

I was gonna say something off the top of my head but someone mentioned Quantic Dreams. Jesus christ yes, fuck Quantic Dreams. They couldn't write something good even if their lives depended on it.

Rockstar, GTA4 and 5 were the lowest points in games especially it's heavy emphasis on cinematics and audio dialog. It became more about story then actual dumb fun the games were so famous for. And what story there was wasn't very well written or developed. They wanted to the video game generation's Catcher in the Rye, but instead became this mess of "wait what were the Yugoslavia wars like?" and then get interrupted by someone screaming "Big American Titties!" As much everyone is going to crap on MGS or FF stories, but those are more genre style story telling in the same way an anime or a soap opera can get away with melodrama while doing something crazy like someone's dead uncle with an eye patch talking to a doll. Compared to saints row which just embraces all of it's silliness like a big fluffy blanket, GTA just becomes this angry mess of everything wrong in storytelling.

Yeah, to be honest, I couldn't remember any really effecting moments from either of those. I do remember enjoying them a lot more than XIII though. At the time I played VIII, Square could have shit in one of those fat, four-disc, 'crystal' CD cases and I would have bought it.

Almost all of them.

How is Tidus irrelevant? Final Fantasy X takes place from his point of view, and he plays a key role in the narrative. And while the amnesia plot point in FFVIII is hokey, Ultimecia's goal isn't really difficult to figure out. She wants to compress time and become all-powerful.

Guys, guys. Stop arguing. The one thing we can all agree on is that FF9 is a great game.

I've actually never played FFIX and a couple of my friends that have say that the game falls apart after the first disc. :P

I highly recommend it. It's the only 3D FF game I have genuinely liked.

Final Fantasy IX is one of my favorite RPGS ever

I beat it in a weekend. I just remember the characters having more character than 3d FFs of the time, and those weird fox things, and not knowing if the bad guy was a boy or a girl. The story itself was utterly forgettable. I think Bahamut and Alexander got into a fight for some reason and that was pretty to watch.

Oh, we're recommending Final Fantasy IX! Yeah, play FF9, it's fantastic. Has a great cast and is one of my favourite in the series.

hmm capcom. I remember i liked DmC just for its gameplay becuase story wise it was subpar. But then again i dont think that capcom's games are too brilliant regarding the story but the actual gameplay and hack and slashy mechanics.

DmC was Ninja Theory. The previous DMC games were all Capcom, though.

LJN, obviously.

Quantic Dream

@hailinel: yeah my bad. However i still retain my opinion regarding the other dmc games. Especially the fourth one