/v/ - Video Games

dark souls storytelling was really good, but every NPC had a name and almost all had a quest and that might have something to do with it more then how open or closed it is

> Are open-world and good storytelling mutually exclusive?

Yes, "open world" means "not scripted."

>create open world game

>fill it with characters and scenarios

>give the player an opportunity to engage with these characters and influence the outcome of the unfolding events that affect that character as they occur

>completely remove the pretense of a baked in linear storyline

>???

>PROFIT

>>14712799

I beat every Dark Souls and I didn't even know Dark Souls had a storyline.

Open world should in theory give you a whole ton of short little stories that can be whatever you want but usually its about killin' 15 crabs

>>14712820

>>14712822

Except Dragon Quest sold like shit in the west and Nintendo was giving away free copies of it with their subscription magazine.

>>14712829

cause dragon quest is the only game with a story? what are you talking about?

>>14712833

>Dragon Quest

>Story

Oh here we go.

>>14712829

i never finished any dq game, only played 8 for a few hours. what's the problem?

>>14712822

Almost sounds like Sea of Thieves but that couldn't make a profit when they made so many ways for you to play it for free or trial run it for a month before you drop it.

>>14712822

>>>sell millions in america and other illiterate countries

Including grorious nippon.

>>14712853

No I'm curious, why are you mad?

>>14712822

Implicit in your condemnation is the admittance that you value a rich and winding story more than any given gameplay that could facilitate it. Open world games are more about the moment by moment adventure than some underpinning series of events that exists to give you a motivation for whatever it is that the game wants you to do.

For all their faults, the Elder Scrolls games are pretty good at encouraging the player to go out and explore for the sake of it. If you want a game like Elder Scrolls, in which the bulk of playtime is going to revolve around exploring decrepit dungeons and damp caves or collecting valuable trinkets to craft increasingly better equipment, then a centralized main story merely stands in the way of that goal.

Conversely, if you want to present a focused and story driven experience, then it benefits you to limit the player's ability to waste time or, at the very least, use the gameplay merely as a vehicle for the story itself.

>b-but open world is shit and I hate it

Yeah, well, you'll get no argument from me. That's not the point, though. You asked if they're mutually exclusive. The answer is an emphatic "yes" but with certain exceptions. For instance, you can create a world with a large spattering of interesting places to explore, and then fill these places with characters who the player can engage with. You can create areas in the world that themselves contain some type of story for the player to piece together. You can create a game with dynamic systems that allow for a robust number of possibilities and let the player use these tools to craft a story for themselves. In this way, "story" is created by and for the player himself, and merely serves to contextualize his time spent in the game.

>>14712864

Curious about why you created a shitty thread? Only you know the answer to that faggot.

>>14712866

>Open world games are more about the moment by moment adventure

every game is about that…

>, in which the bulk of playtime is going to revolve around exploring decrepit dungeons and damp caves or collecting valuable trinkets to craft increasingly better equipment, then a centralized main story merely stands in the way of that goal.

this is only true if the main story has a time constraint, but if there's no time constraint then the player is free to roam and explore barren, empty worlds and do all the fetch quests he wants, and then return to the main objective. The game can bounce between being truly open world, and then semi-open world when it needs to move the story along

>>14712886

curious why you are so hostile and seething when nothing controversial was said. Is it something about dragon quest in particular that makes you grind your teeth or do you have a problem with open-world games and their lack of motivation/story/purpose ?

>>14712889

>>14712890

You type like a faggot, keep bumping your shit thread. I want to see how retarded you really are.

>>14712895

>still no content or argument

So you're just mad for the sake of being mad? If you want to see something retarded just read your own posts.

>>14712896

Continue.

You need some kind of red line to move you through a story in order which already clashes with the open world idea.

It's simply not a safe idea to make money with to give players absolute freedom.

They'll be bored out of their minds 30 minutes in ala No Man's Buy.

>I did everything now, guess I'll follow the story or something.

You cannot have an open world game be carried by a story unless the world itself is the story.

Also dubs

>>14712911

>It's simply not a safe idea to make money with to give players absolute freedom.

what are you saying?

Shit thread

>>14712889

>every game is about that

Not true. In the interest of avoiding any confusion, I will point out that when I said, "moment by moment adventure" I was referring to the actual gameplay itself. The act of walking from point A to point B. The act of going forth into the great world and exploring for the sake of it. Open world games are decidedly focused around this, and this does not require any story driven pretext in order to motivate the player.

>this is only true if the main story has a time constraint, but if there's no time constraint then the player is free to roam and explore barren, empty worlds and do all the fetch quests he wants, and then return to the main objective.

If the main story has a time constraint, then the player will be pressured to complete it as soon as possible, and that will stand in defiance of the desire to explore on one's own terms. If there is no time constraint, then the player is free to choose when to finish the main story. In all practicality, this is done to accommodate player agency and still provide a linear story that has a beginning, middle, and end. However, this is a bad thing because any sense of tension that the story may have tried to raise will be instantly deflated when the player realizes that he does not have to participate. Here's an example:

>Batman: Arkham City

>Batman gets poisoned by Joker, he has to find a cure

>Neurotoxin that only one character can create, the Batman only has 24 hours before certain death

Therefore, time is expected to be a very valuable resource in this scenario. In practice, the story's attempt at creating urgency fails because the player will not suffer any consequences of his supposed poisoning outside of the designated story missions. This means that the player can fuck around all he likes in the city and without the threat of impeding doom hanging over his head. Now, in what world is this good storytelling?

>The game can bounce between being truly open world, and then semi-open world when it needs to move the story along

No. You can't, and for the aforementioned reasons. What does 'semi-open world' even mean?

>>14712920

>what are you saying?

The concept does not sell enough copies to warrant it being made.

Especially if you can't sell DLC for it nowadays.

Ask yourself, what do you even want from an open world and then ask yourself, do I want a story with all that?

>>14712944

>What does 'semi-open world' even mean?

parts of the world become closed off until you do X,Y,Z then it reverts to full open world once the events are complete, and so forth

> I will point out that when I said, "moment by moment adventure" I was referring to the actual gameplay itself. The act of walking from point A to point B

even very linear rpgs have this moment to moment adventure, it's "what happens". linear rpgs aren't just visual novels, they still allow exploration, customization and making choices even if they are actually pseudo-choices in the long run

>>14712973

>The concept does not sell enough copies to warrant it being made.

>Especially if you can't sell DLC for it nowadays

One of the big fan complaints about Zelda BOTW was its paper thin story, I think in the next Zelda they will be focusing more on the story/characters, theres demand for it. an open world game isn't complete without a story

>>14712994

>One of the big fan complaints about Zelda BOTW was its paper thin story

Last I heard every normalfag ate it up.

>an open world game isn't complete without a story

You're just asking to be disappointed if you think that way.

>>14713022

I commend you for your bait, anon.

>>14712994

>BOTW

Kys

>>14713068

???what is your problem

>>14712991

>even very linear rpgs have this moment to moment adventure, it's "what happens". linear rpgs aren't just visual novels, they still allow exploration, customization and making choices even if they are actually pseudo-choices in the long run

Fair point, but I was just pointing out that open world games are supposed to be built around a sense of exploration that is not itself reliant upon any reason or need to actually explore. Open world games are best when they do not place any restrictions on the act of exploration itself, and when they provide the player with a variety of things to do and see that make said exploration worthwhile. Is it a perfect system? No, there are glaring faults, but they're not really relevant to the discussion. The original question was about the relationship between story and open world gameplay. While story can give the player a pretext to explore, it is by no means necessary. Additionally, any scenario that expects the player to be invested in some 'wagering of the stakes' will lose any sense of urgency if it is placed alongside free roam exploration as an alternative.

Story can be done, but it's better used in service to the free roaming nature of the game itself.

>you climb a mountain

>atop the mountain there is a village on a mesa

>go to the village, it's empty and in ruins

>hear a crying child, search the area

>find NPC child cowering in home

At this point, most games would just use this as the backdrop for a static story that was deliberately designed by the developer. Maybe the NPC is a quest giver and the quest has a set beginning, middle, and end. Maybe he has some dialogue and sends you on a quest to find his parents, after which he'll reward you with some valuable trinket. That's fine, but what if this whole scenario actually happened in real time? What if the game was designed so that dynamic events like this could naturally happen? What if this NPC doesn't even have any dialogue, but was programmed to illicit a series of basic emotional expressions. This NPC is clearly distressed, but you have a series of options at your disposal

>kill child and move on your way, maybe you search the town over for things you may need

>take the child with you and bring him back to a place where you know he'll be safe

>leave the child and ignore his emotional distress

To be fair, there probably aren't any open world games that were designed in this way. However, the point still stands. It should be possible to create a complex world whose own mechanics and systems themselves provide the basis for the player's own narrative to unfurl. You could even take such a system and add an additional opportunity for certain characters to ask you to do something for them that will depend purely upon your circumstances in the game. For instance, maybe someone wants you to break into a building and steal some documents, and the success of such a mission would be impacted by your own ability to stay quiet, the time of day, the weather, the number of guards on patrol, and a number of other variables that are themselves dependent on the dynamics of the system as they change in real time.

Such a game would not feature any focused story, but maybe it could facilitate role playing to an extreme degree, which itself would facilitate a player-driven narrative. Play the game for a long fucking time, write a fucking journal about what happened. Use the game's systems to derive your own purposes and choose a resolution to your story as you see fit.

Open world works fine when it isn't the "Holy shit, the [ancient evil] has returned, we better do something before we're all dead!" type of story. Skyrim is a good example as Alduin returns to eat worlds and time, so you better get a shift on right? Nope. You can do none of the main quest and nothing ever happens. The civil war doesn't move on as well unless you get involved.

Ideally, we'd get an open world RPG that either doesn't have a save the world plot or at least doesn't start it until you've done the main quest for a decent amount of time. That way players can explore, quest and not have that silly thought in the back of their minds that they're wasting time fighting this bandit camp when they really should be raiding that ruin which is said to have information on the ancient evil. Perhaps pull a Dead Rising and introduce a time limit so there is a sense of urgency.

>>14713259

Isn't that just what the first fallout is? People bitched about it so much that they patch the time limit out. Never mind if you just do all things you can do in each town and your route instead of hopping between towns just to do one quest it's feasible.

>>14712814

It kinda doesn't. More of a cyclical theme that only acts as window dressing for the gameplay.

>>14712792

>Are open-world and good storytelling mutually exclusive?

Yes, because wandering around being a jerk-off for hours on end ruins any sense of narrative pacing. They are incompatible.

>>14713265

People bitch about time limits full stop. I see their point, but you miss out on a big sense of urgency and extra immersion when its gone.

>>14713319

True. Time limit is what made Dead Rising stand out but they started stripping it down as it became more mainstream and casualized.

>>14713295

That's a good point. But you can "waste time" and be a jerk off in very linear/narrative heavy games.

When I first started playing JRPGs I assumed the mainstory had some sort of internal clock. So if I was tasked to save a character or go to another town I did it immediately, I'd ignore leveling up or even gearing up and would just rush to the next town/event…soon I realized this was a mistake and totally unnecessary. Even linear games allow time for exploration and experimenting.

>>14713319

One of the reasons Persona games are so immersive is cause of the time limit. It's an interesting mechanic more RPGs should learn to use.

>>14713334

True but an open-word game should, by design, encourage wandering off from the main plot and just doing whatever you want until you feel like getting back to it. Attaching a time limit to the story but not the gameplay hurts the presentation. A story like New Vegas's works better, something not time critical and progresses on the initiative of the player. "A man robbed and shot you, go find him. Or don't and just fuck off into the desert, whatever."

>>14712792

>Also why do westerners love their "open worlds" and fetch-quests so much?

Braindead consumer-goyim eating up the shit publishers shove down their mouths. Same reason why capeshit movies are so popular amongst low-intelligence people.

>>14712829

>Dragon Quest sold like shit

With that incredibly ugly art-style and stone-age jap rpg gameplay it deserves to flop.

>>14712792

>Are open-world and good storytelling mutually exclusive? Why can't any developer figure this shit out??

No, it's possible, it just relies on giving the player an ultimatum: Play the game the way it's designed to be played, or lose. And since developers are scared of hurting players feefees, they make games safe with quests that have no time restrictions on them.

For example, a good system was sort-of present in TW3. You could stumble across events in the game that occurred in real time. There's a mage burning on a pyre for example, and you hear him cry out. It could be background noise, or maybe you can save him? If you intervene, you save a life, get a reward, potentially start a new quest chain, if you don't, the mage dies, the quest disappears. That's how it should be. There's no floating ! mark, just a screaming mage strapped to a pyre, and if you come back that way later there's only a charred body.

However, most of the time there is a floating ! on the mini-map to tell you there's a quest nearby, and the quests do have situations that will wait around forever for you to resolve them. A quest, once started, should have its own time-limit unless there's a narrative reason for breaking it up, and even then there should be consequences. Say you agree to help someone with a problem, and you'll meet them later at a tavern. The game keeps track of how long you took and the companion becomes increasingly drunk and useless the longer you take to continue the quest line.

But again, this relies on developers a) thinking that far ahead and b) creating fail states for fragiles gamers who have never faced a game over screen in their life.

To avoid having too many active things going on at once and making an impossible itinerary you could set a flag so if there's a time-active quest currently going on, the trigger events for other time-sensitive quests aren't present in the game world.

Making a good game is not impossible (although people on /v/ will find any excuse to bitch about anything) but getting a good game made requires giving players the benefit of the doubt and offering them the chance to fail, which is simply not going to happen while the twin cancers of "feels > reals" and "cinematic everyone should experience the incredibly derivative story we shit out" development mindset infests the industry.

heheh bump

Open world games don't preclude telling stories. Possibly they make telling linear stories harder. With recent games it seems devs have to pick between the two. I don't really think they should have to. Lots of stories could be intermixed with open world gameplay. Large undirected spaces shouldnt be a hinderance to a well conceived world. Recent games have more shallow worlds however. Even ones that are given a great setting rarely utilize it. People need to start giving videogame stories a chance. Levels shouldnt be designed to force you through the story. You need to put a little effort as a designer to integrate the world and its narratives.

Asheron's Call had both an open world and a decent story for 1999. Truly sucks WB bought Turbine and SHUT IT DOWN after they had already made the promise to release the server to the public so we could have private servers. RIP the best pvp/pve MMO ever well… besides the first ~3mo of UO.

>>14712792

What's wrong with the way Morrowind and FNV do it? People complain about these games all the time, but they hardly deserve complaints for the way they do their stories.

>>14712792

Literally >>14712802. Sure, you can tell stories in the world, but open-world implies open-ended.

>>14712792

You don't want open world, you want non-linear open levels like Hitman Blood Money and Metal Gear V: Ground Zero.

Open worlds are guaranteed to be repetitive and filled with fetch quests that lazily lengthen the content.

>>14713830

>>14712792

Does Deus Ex count, or is it more of a non-linear open level type of game?

>>14713835

You know for a fact that Deus Ex has levels so is therefore not open world.

Story telling shouldn't even factor into game design. Toss in some shit to the manual about how an evil wizard in the land of Gildedbung stole the magic cugnarp gems, or how demons are invading and killing people. That's all a game needs for storyline. Games aren't a plot-based media, they're experiential.

>>14713096

Morrowind did it best, right? I wish Skyrim didn't have so many restrictions on what you could do since I preferred its aesthetic.

>Pretending like BOTW is good

>Region war bullshit

Garbage

>>14715372

A story's progression can be a wonderful reward for playing the game well or beating quests, and it's a great way to get someone invested in your world. I'll absolutely agree that too many games nowadays put story above gameplay, but the people that are allergic to stories in games are just as cancerous. Ultima 4 and 5 are some of the best games ever made for a reason.

why is this even a meme? While they are both "open world" Skyrim isn't even fun or well designed. This is becoming Rick and Morty

>>14715416

Video games aren't a good medium to tell a story. That doesn't mean they can't tell a decent or even good story, but it does mean that liberties have to be taken when it comes to fun. I really want to get into CRPGs, but I just can't have fun with them because of their expository pacing and their design not as games but as stories. A little less conversation, a little more action.

>A story's progression can be a wonderful reward for playing the game well or beating quests

I feel the reward for playing the game well should be even more game to play. Things such as secret levels and alternate paths are more fitting, heartfelt gifts than cutscenes or additional dialogue options.

>>14715453

BOTW can be fun at times, but is horribly designed. Better than Skyrim in my opinion, but still a fucking long way to go before I would call it decent. A shame, it got close to being good.

Regarding the topic of the thread, I guess it depends. I would say open world game needs to better integrate the narrative with its gameplay. Make the story about discovering, aim for a more minimalistic storytelling. Perhaps make it flexible, instead of a big epic narrative go for more self-contained stories that builds the world around you. Make the player the explorer of the world, and make him feel part of it. I'll say to go for quality instead of quality when designed the world, make it interesting and fun to travel through, less quest but longer and more memorable. I guess I would say to make kind of a combination between Metroid, BOTW and Nier, with extremelly well designed maps, fun mobility and freedom and memorable sidequests. Hell, make the entire fucking game sidequests, Majora Mask did sidequest pretty fucking good. Make the main storyline something more vague, like finding a treasure in a lost dungeon, but give no fucking clues to the player. To win, he should explore, visit lesser dungeons, help people, explore ruins and fight monsters. Hell, let the player be able to find it just by exploring. You can make it so that he needs keys to open it if you want to avoid the game being too easy or short to beat (although probably good balanced foes and player progression should help with this too.)

>>14712792

Why do chinks like a million hours of autistic grindan and garbage writing?

>>14713393

>Fuck the flashbacks, just have people tell you about what happened to their towns in Ganon's takeover of the land.

Most of the people who were around when that happened are dead, though. And why are you advocating a "tell don't show" approach at all?

>>14715511

What's wrong with BoTW? Seems like decent gameplay and design from the videos I've seen

>>14715517

Fetch quests are a western phenomena and so is collecting tons of useless shit.

>>14712802

>>14713793

its less about scripted but more about linearity. you can have scripted event in open world game like fallout 4 and ffxv. a story need a structure that peoples can follow

the other downside of open world is losing the feeling of exploring. in old school jrpg, you always moving from town to town, and each town trigger a new quest. in open world game like botw,mgsv, ffxv, it feels like you just running around in circle, you always coming back to the same place

the easy example of how open world ruin storytelling and gameplay is mgs3 vs mgsv.

You know what would have been cool is a mix of backstory and Majora's Mask shenanigans.

Traveling through destroyed Hyrule you come across shrines to the champions, that tell of their exploits once the hero fell and was sealed away in the chamber of resurrection. When you touch them you relive the final moments of the hero in their fight against Ganon's invasion, which acts like a tutorial segment for the hero. Then, when you're done, you unlock that hero to use in the open world by switching out with them, or having their spirit temporarily surround and suffuse your body. So instead of pulling a paraglider from nowhere in midair, Revali's wings (in some magic glowy shit) sprout from your arms and you glide down, or you go morph ball and roll like Daruk across the plains when his shield surrounds you in an orb. Shit like that.

But nothing could fix the fact that most of the "content" was locked away in identically designed fucking shrines, instead of actual ruins and caves and dungeons and, you know, basically what people want from a Zelda game, the actual exploration of the underworld part.

>>14716981

To put it short, awful rewards for exploring, repetitive content, you will get tired pretty fast of Shrines and towers. Disappointing and boring side quests. Enemy variety is extremely poor, and combat is too easy. It relays too much in stats to make the beginning harder, the enemies themselves are a joke, with the exception of Lynels. Simple and disappointing dungeons, badly implemented durability system for weapons, lost of a lot of what made pasts Zeldas fun, like interesting items. The game is impressive when you start, but quickly all its flaws kill the sense of wonder you get for exploring, because the reward for doing so is always a fucking shrine. Even the 3 fucking huge dragons in the game, which I hesitate to even call them "boss fights", rewards you with a shrine. There are bosses on the open world, but they are literally of one type, just recolored or re-skinned. It came very fucking close of being a great game, yet the screwed it up. For what is worth, is probably one of the best open world game of this generation, but the bar isn't set very high.

because its hard?

You can craft your perfect story, have the planned pathing lead the player through a specific series of events leading to a crescendo reveal that blows them away -on a small scale think of link leaving the tomb and cresting the hill in BotW's opening, but try to do that in a regular moment of gameplay and testing has shown time and time again from casual to hardcore 99% of players will go in any direction that doesnt look like the critical path to look for secrets and instead of walking through this planned valley of spectacle will just bumblefuck their way through the woods and oblivion their way up a hill with fucked jumping mechanics and end up in the final reveal area in completely the wrong way and miss the intro set piece of something.

The whole point of good storytelling is a finely crafted and directed experience, the point of a sandbox is for you to craft your own experience. To use a random example i saw the rooster teeth people on a podcast or something get in a very heated retard argument over 'the first town you go to in skyrim after the opening' because some followed the story and some made their own and naturally this conflicted.

>>14712792

Might as well play mmos tbh

>>14718002

Do you consider Persona 5 good jrpg?

>>14712792

>Are open-world and good storytelling mutually exclusive?

Of course not. Developers (or the people responsible) are just incredibly incompetent. Instead of creating a game using a genre that suits the characters and story concept, they choose the genre and paste any focus tested, cookie cutter generic idea they can, resulting in the terrible trash gutter content we call the gaming industry.

>>14718073

inb4 another retard (you) says persona 5 is bad because it's popular

>>14718779

just because something is linear doesn't make it bad. Persona 5's boring because it focuses too much on style over substance and the cutscenes drag fucking on, it's basically a visual novel.

But plenty of games that aren't open world are good. Hell most open world games fucking suck nuts.

japanese devs still cant even make a good open world game like fallout nv all you some dicked chinks do is make hentai games you can make a open world game with good story begone chink

>>14718779

>>14718809

>>14718815

can't tell if you're trying to bait or you actually crawled out of the confines of some slimy subreddit to post on this board

>>14718815

>cant*

>>mfw i make a grammer mistake

but the entire run-on sentence that was your post is not an issue to you?

go back to what ever hole you managed to leave

>>14718857

>runs back to jerusalem

İ WAS DRUNK DONT JUDGE ME İNFİDEL

>>14712792

Yes it has been done in isometric CRPGs since the 90s but those games are not "open-world" but they have the precedent.

Like >>14713386 said it's tricky because you have to factor failure and consequences into the equation so the world/people/factions react accordingly and given the budget required to make a run of the mill open world game it sounds like a developer's nightmare.

Ex: the dialogue options in the witcher 3 are somewhat more limited than they where in W1 and to a lesser extent W2 because most of them boil down to fuck yes, fuck no or somewhere in between.

Also you need to factor in character actions, not just their dialogue and the only game that comes to mind that has done it successfully and is not an isorpg is Morrowind.

>>14719066

>Dark Souls has a story, it just happened before your character arrives

That's called LORE, you nignogs. BACKstory

>Dark Souls is like a detective going from crimescene to crimescene, finding evidence until eventually you corner the perp and have a showdown.

Not really. It's more like someone broke you out of jail, who then tells you about some bells to ring. When you do it, some old ass nigga wakes up to tell you about lord souls, and to go link the fire to keep the current age from dying out, so you do just that. Not much of a story, but it's still a fucking story. It also doesn't cease to exist when you go through bloodborne's story like >>14718932 seemed to imply.

Or you go talk to some other old ass nigga who says you've been fooled by the first old ass nigga you spoke with, so you just let the current age dye out

>>14719776

Super Metroid is a pretty average game and System Shock did everything it did, but better.

>>14719788

Nintendo is still years ahead of its time.

>N64 had a 64-bit processor in 1993

>It's barely the standard now

>>14719793

>Nintendo is still years ahead of its time.

Didn't System Shock come out the same year as Super Metroid? You had more control in that game than you do in most if not all games today, and let me reiterate, it did everything Super Metroid did, but better.

>N64 had a 64-bit processor in 1993

That seems very irrelevant to this discussion and I don't think the N64 released in '93.

>>14719788

>System Shock did everything it did, but better.

except action, lol

>>14719776

Super Metroid barely had a story.

>>14719831

:clap: EMERGENT :clap: NARRATIVE :clap:

>>14719848

It's emergent if you're a fucking retard and didn't read the manual.

>>14719865

>The game's story relies on outside factors that aren't within the game itself

>>14719807

>it did everything Super Metroid did, but better.

>Cyberspace

>>14719821

Especially action. Learn the controls. Granted, it didn't have flashy bossfights, but if I wanted those I'd just play an arcade game and get a 10x better experience than anything I'd ever get on a console or PC game. The range of movement and general control you have over your character is way better in Shock than Metroid.

>>14719793

N64 had 64 bits because of its retarded bitwars with sega, and those 64 bits did absolutely nothing for the console. That's why the PS1 took over.