So the key to having a good video game story is by having everything

>>385612709

It's definitely one way. It encourages discussion which gives the story longevity.

>>385612748
Holy shit you're a nerd

>>385612709
t. brainlet

>>385612709
>So the key to having a good video game story is not shoving it down the players through with dialogue, cutscenes and artificial choices
Yes

>>385612709
show don't tell

>>385612709
yes pretty much, that is the most effective storytelling method in videogames.

>>385612709
>i don't read the item descriptions

>>385612709
The intro cutscene tells you a lot, the rest is told by item descriptions.

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>>385612709
That's half of it. The other half is making sure the player feels intelligent when they "decipher" whatever random shit you make up and write dozens of paragraphs about how it all fits together.

>>385612709
No. Just make sure everything is in item descriptions and optional conversations so self diagnosed autists can get jacked off at the prospect of knowing something that seems obscure but its literally right there and no one actually gives a fuck except them. Dark Souls is cool but shouldnt be lauded. I think something like the old cRPGs do a way better way of storytelling

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>>385612709
Most of the dialog given to you by NPC's do make sense, but they are very forgettable and are rather cryptic. It's basically the Legend of Zelda dialog, but spoken like it's the 1600's and without the bolded-in hints to emphasize what they are talking about.

Yes, I fucking hate reading walls of text when I'm playing a videogame.

Apparently. Poor dialogue and terrible voice acting helps.

>>385612709
Having it being optional and not obstructing gameplay is the right way to do it, being vague has nothing to do with it, really. If i want story, Id read a book.

>>385612794
>Being proud of not reflecting on shit

the key to having a good game is having it be moddable

>dark souls series became harder and harder to mod each game

>every character did a thing then died
>whole fanbase wanks over how TRAGIC AND SAD their story is

Who cares? The stories in the 'lore' are sub-pokemon level trash

Well, that's what soulsfaggots will tell you; but soulsfaggots are idiots. As well as faggots.

>>385614608
>dark souls mods
>a handful of bugfixes and HD textures

yay

I don't think it's the story but the atmosphere that souls delivers on

t.never understood the story

>>385612709
DS was never meant to have a good story.

>>385615068
ds1 had mods that let me have key short cuts like press shift to jump attack, and let me customize the render quality so I can run the game with the exact performance/quality ratio I like.

these no longer exist in ds 2 and 3

>>385612709
The key to having a good story is to have a good story. The key to having retards circle jerk around your shit story for years is to be vague as fuck and not really have a story. Souls games are the waiting for godot of video games. Critically acclaimed garbage with no thought put into that just got popular because faggots could inser whatever story they wanted into to tickle their autism.

>>385612709
At first glance yeah it seems vague but that's because they told it through unconventional means the story makes plenty of sense and really isn't that vague.

>>385612709
Question: how is "death" explained in Bloodborne? Does it ever get explained?

>>385616960
shut up

>>385616960
fuck off

>>385619391
>>385619208

WELL?? It hasn't popped up anywhere for me yet.

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I played every game and the story is just bs that goes down in these lovecraftian kingdoms, it's just like a apocalyptic survival game with zombies and demons

They just made lore, they filled every spot where story should've been with lore

>>385619875
holy shit I hate you so god damn much

>>385620291
WELL????

>>385612709
>>385613761
>>385613947
>>385614218
>>385614719
>>385614751
>>385615956
Holy shit how does it feel to be a fucking faggot contrarian on /v/

>>385614719
>every character did a thing then died
That is how it works irl though.

>>385620490
God forbid someone doesn't like Dark Souls, right? You fucking child.

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>>385612709
Yes

>>385612709
The key to good video game story is not to have all of it shoved in your face.

>>385612709
if by 'vague' you mean abstract, then yeah

fuck games that rely on blatantly showing you stuff, even in MGS the characters are talking about things a lot more than trying to show them in cutscenes.

>>385621960

nah I mean theyre just ripping on it cus they've never played it. if you played the game it subtly tells you key things that build up into the larger narritive. the item descriptions are just supplementary.

>>385621960
I don't care if you like it or not but blatantly lying about it because it's popular is retarded and you should kill yourself

>>385612709
>Dark Souls story
>Vague
But the story in the first game was fairly straightforward. Dark Souls lore only got confusing in the sequels.

Now, bloodborne, on the other hand, is still so fucking confusing when the aliens start showing up.

>>385612709
Dark Souls' story is pretty straightforward though. There are several NPCs that literally spoonfeed you the plot.

It's the lore that's vague, which makes sense.

>>385621960
>hurr this game i never played has a pretentious and vague story because i said so

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>>385614123
yeah... nothing from DS is eeever referenced

>>385612709
>>385612709

No rational person would claim that "the story" is what drives dark souls.

Nobody would claim that the story is what makes dark souls great, it's the game design, the system and "intricate" mechanics of the game etc

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>>385612709
-subtle and abstract
-have the player WANT to actively understand the story, so it doesnt impede the gameplay; i.e. the enticing story is put on the side at the players discretion
-story factors into mechanics. themes of hope are embodied by fire. fire is something u require for leveling and healing.

>>385622621
>It's the lore that's vague, which makes sense.
Lore is part of the story isn't it?
Besides, the lore in the first game wasn't even that confusing. Its the later games that had bloated lore because they kept tossing new things out without explaining them.

>>385612709
Honestly yes, even if it can be less cryptic than Dark Souls.
The Nolanesque exposition is the standard in vidya and it's horrible.

>>385614123
I can't think of a single dialogue that's cryptic and where I had no idea what it was talking about.

>>385621876
If IRL didn't suck you wouldn't be playing video games, and even less take any interest in a fictional lore.

>>385612709
"Some assembly required" can be a good way to tell a story - it keeps it from obstructing play and allows the writers to go crazy if they want. Dark Souls is a particular case. The act of assembling the story by studying environmental details, parsing the limited dialog, and reading item descriptions is the storytelling. That is to say, the story is you building that narrative as you go.

If you want the story to be clear, direct, and have straightforward beats you need to find a way to either subsume it out of play or build play around it. The former approach is done to death - Ninja Gaiden did it in 1989 and an uncountable number of games since have blatantly copied its method. The latter approach is rare and unrefined. It's a tricky problem, most devs mess it up, to my knowledge only Looking Glass, Ion Storm, Black Isle, early Bioware, Obsidian on occasion, GSC and 4A, Eidos Montreal and a few others ever managed to work out an approach that actually did it right.

Story? No. But Dark Souls isn't about the story, it's about the subtext. It's about the themes it explores. Lore-fags don't realise this, they try to look too literally at the events happening in game. I'd bet they put more thought into how it all fits together than the devs.

It's not about the story being vague. Dark Souls mixes many influences that please a wide range of people.

Hell, just the premise: A dark gothic Medieval Europe-style horror with a Japanese touch (and obviously made by Japanese) seems like it should please both Westerners and Asians alike.

A lot of you seem to be thinking of story in terms of linear narrative. As if all story telling needs a setup that requires linear progression to be fulfilled. Dark Souls doesn't really do that. It refrains from establishing a lot context. It simply puts the player in the middle of a world that has been there long before the player ever arrived. This world has rules and inhabitants, everyone and everything is kinda set in it's ways and no one really pays much attention to you or your progression. The story telling elements arrive from exploring this world and it's laws - with little or no exposition.
Of course, behind the scenes the world reacts to everything you do, but it tries to create a feeling that you are just as much stuck in this shitty limbo as everyone else. It wants to avoid this Skyrim Truman Show vibe where everyone is creepily waiting for you all the time.

>>385612709
It's gameplay first, story second which is rare for modern RPGs. With modern games the gameplay feels like an afterthought in a sea of cutscenes, QTE, grinding, gear-dependent fights, tedious NPC interactions, ...

Modern RPGs are just books for people with ADD

>>385623397
This. I think developers need to be much more bold in excluding information. So much is already given away by exploration.
A simple way to achieve this is thinking of the player as an archaeologist. Place all the information the player needs in world design, pick ups etc., and let the player piece things together.

Gone Home is a classic example, without claiming it to be neither a good or bad game, but it create tension and mystery through exploration, I think Last of Us did this really well too. Neverwinter Nights 1 comes to mind, even though that game had a shit ton of dialogue and exposition.