My addiction to a good story

*Just a little side note there may be spoilers so be warned*

You may play games for a number of reasons, but for me there is only one.... The story
Now that's not me saying I want to have a story the size of all the game of thrones books thrown in my face from the get go, no, because that's bad. What I do mean is having a world that we learn about through playing and exploration, finding clues about the place I'm exploring...... and yes that means I think that most modern military shooters are crap. (with one exception I'll come back to later) Let me also go on and say that I don't like the narrative given to us through the missions of a game like Uncharted, because I love that too, but for slightly different reasons.

Learning through exploration
The best examples of this are games like Dishonored, The fallout and Elder scrolls series and Borderlands. All of these games have a story...... because they are a game, but a lot that we learn about the world isn't told through dialogue from an NPC in a cut scene, no instead they are in books (or audio logs in borderlands) all of which flesh out the world the game is set in, and somehow make you feel tiny and insignificant as stuff has already happened in the world, and your just a new guy, (who just happens to be the savior of the universe, but that's beside the point) Rather than hold your hand and take you on a lovely tour through the world, and oh look at that, more things to kill, go have fun and then come back the lovely exposition. But I digress, The best thing about this is that you can miss it, similar to a side mission, or rare hidden loot, you have to go out of your way to get it, and although yes its is a block of text when you find it, its satisfying.

And its not just open world games that do this. 2D games like rough legacy, where there are journal you have to find that talk of a legendary hero that came before you, Castlevania, where you travel the castle finding clues to what's happening. The idea that you just turned up one day and shit kind of just happened feels great. Even to a lesser extent the 2D Metroid games, where you don't ever really learn anything, and you just go from place to place, wrecking shit and exploring the world.

Being taught the world
Now I know it sounds like I hate this type of storytelling but its quite the opposite. There are games that are linier and the world is shown to you with your hand pulled through the world. Games like the Uncharted series, Call of Duty World at war (in my opinion the best CoD game) and the game I mentioned at the start of this page. The thing about these stories, is that it needs to be engaging, I need to actually care, In Uncharted we start of and are like, 'oh cool, I'm like Indiana Johns' and then by the third game, we're so invested that I actually was disheartened when Sully died..... and when he came back after Drakes weird acid trip.... thing, I was genuinely relieved. Another great example, The assassins creed series (they could go in the top category because the side missions add to the history but its my rant so fuck off) After number two and brotherhood, I was so invested in the character of Ezio that when in revelations in the library at the end, as we watch the flashback of Altair after the game made me sad, and when Ezio leaves and we don't see him again it made me actually sad.

It really isn't hard to make a compelling story, so why is it that that developers miss out so often. Watchdogs original trailer looked really cool, where your sister was kidnapped and sold into sex slavery, and the mission you had to help your friend get into his apartment to get his laptop and hack into something to find her, and it was really engaging, so I was looking forward to it, then the game comes out, and that part doesn't even exist, they cut it from the game, and it turned into a bland story about revenge where the only compelling character, that of the hacker Clara, but she gets killed off in what is possibly the best part of her character development, and then we went back the bland nothingness.