Yeah, it’s worded stupidly, but there’s a point there. TLOU was emotive in a way I haven’t felt often in video game writing. Ref how well it adapted into TV.
I think what he’s getting at is that gaming has focused more on gameplay loop than storytelling, which is generally fair.
If anyone has recommendations for games they think have writing of comparable quality, lay them on me. For me so far the pantheon is bioshock, RDR2, TLOU, and I have high hopes for Bg3.
Planescape Torment, The Longest Journey, Max Payne, Mafia the city of Lost Heaven, BioWare games (KotOR, Mass Effect, etc), Persona 3/4, Dead Space, Alan Wake, Deus Ex… I mean storytelling over gameplay is Quantic Dream’s whole schtick, success/failure aside. Previous Naughty Dog games.
There’s a bit of a a conflation between cinematic presentation and storytelling. I literally grew up on story driven games well before TLoU. Homeworld was absolutely haunting with its understated dialogue, sweeping score, and timeless themes.
Even the year before TLoU, Spec Ops the Line came out, a deft and timely reimagining of The Heart of Darkness for the late Iraq war era–adding into it through the mechanics of the shooter genre. Talk about literary.
Oh shit dead space, yeah that definitely needs to go higher up my list.
Cinema/storytelling interesting point. For sure there’s a lot of personal taste at play. Maybe the other dimension is agency in the story. A branching narrative is obviously harder to write/produce but is what separates games from other media (which is a reasonable critique for e.g. TLOU, which works so well as just… a HBO series).
The first two are “walking simulators”, i.e. very linear. But the story telling of all three is amazing. Firewatch also feels like a “game for grown-ups”. It deals with a person who leaves his wife because she gets early onset dementia. He runs off to work as a firewatch in a national park. Lots of complicated feelings involved and an extremely engaging mystery unfolding.
Yeah, it’s worded stupidly, but there’s a point there. TLOU was emotive in a way I haven’t felt often in video game writing. Ref how well it adapted into TV.
I think what he’s getting at is that gaming has focused more on gameplay loop than storytelling, which is generally fair.
If anyone has recommendations for games they think have writing of comparable quality, lay them on me. For me so far the pantheon is bioshock, RDR2, TLOU, and I have high hopes for Bg3.
Planescape Torment, The Longest Journey, Max Payne, Mafia the city of Lost Heaven, BioWare games (KotOR, Mass Effect, etc), Persona 3/4, Dead Space, Alan Wake, Deus Ex… I mean storytelling over gameplay is Quantic Dream’s whole schtick, success/failure aside. Previous Naughty Dog games.
There’s a bit of a a conflation between cinematic presentation and storytelling. I literally grew up on story driven games well before TLoU. Homeworld was absolutely haunting with its understated dialogue, sweeping score, and timeless themes.
Even the year before TLoU, Spec Ops the Line came out, a deft and timely reimagining of The Heart of Darkness for the late Iraq war era–adding into it through the mechanics of the shooter genre. Talk about literary.
Oh shit dead space, yeah that definitely needs to go higher up my list.
Cinema/storytelling interesting point. For sure there’s a lot of personal taste at play. Maybe the other dimension is agency in the story. A branching narrative is obviously harder to write/produce but is what separates games from other media (which is a reasonable critique for e.g. TLOU, which works so well as just… a HBO series).
The first two are “walking simulators”, i.e. very linear. But the story telling of all three is amazing. Firewatch also feels like a “game for grown-ups”. It deals with a person who leaves his wife because she gets early onset dementia. He runs off to work as a firewatch in a national park. Lots of complicated feelings involved and an extremely engaging mystery unfolding.
I need to find more time for walking sim stuff. Played “everybody’s gone to the rapture” and ejoyed it.