Story in Games - What The Fuck is Going On?

In the games I grew up with, story pretty much took a back-seat. Iconic characters such as Mario, Sonic, Pikachu, they all ran around doing what they did without any explanation why because it was obvious and would have took away from the gameplay. When you sat down to play Super Mario Bros. was there a moment when you said "yeah I can go and jump on a turtle, but where's my motivation?" and it was the same with sonic, not at any time did the question of why he needed these rings come up, because it was a collectible item and what do you do with collectible items? That's right, you grab all the fuckers you can while you still had the chance.

There was a time before my childhood, a time that I and many modern gamers will not have been ar0und to see, an age before the first arcade game was even seen, I am talking about the age of text games. These games had essentially no game-play, and relied completely on story for anyone to want to play them. of course I'm not going to write about them because gamers who were there when they came out would be insulted by someone of my age talking about something I could not possibly know about, and gamers that are my age would find it incredibly boring so I will just get on with what I'm actually supposed to be writing about.

Modern games have come a long way since both of these eras, and it is rapidly progressing into the future of gaming. But how far have we actually come? Just take a minute to think of your favourite game, now forget the fancy graphics and the incredible sounds and concentrate solely on the game-play. I'm not talking about the controls or the genre, I'm talking about what the game actually wants you to do. Think a lot about this and don't be blinded by "oh my favourite game is the best and not like this in any way because its awesome and I love it" because that's bullshit. When it comes down to it your chosen game will probably come down to one of two things, and the first is doing something over and over again to solve different problems and get similar rewards. This includes two of my favourite games of all time, Borderlands: shoot stuff, get a better gun, repeat; and minecraft: get things, make things, use things.

So your game doesn't come into this category does it? Think about it again, and if it still doesn't then it WILL fall into the second one. This category is the games that are all about story, some of them may include the ever repeating features of the previous group, but you're doing it for a reason, and you always know just what that reason is and thats what makes you want to do it. Games such as my beloved Fallout 3, where you may be repeating a lot of things but you will do other things too, and as much as it pains me to say it, Mass Effect I guess does it too.

I have never played a game that can't be put into one of the above categories, quite a lot actually fall into both. So that is where Stories in games are going, nowhere. I hear a lot about how this is "the golden age of gaming stories" and at the same time there are people who say "the narratives in games are slowly getting worse". Well the people who have these views should get a different fucking job where they actually know what they're talking about. There are a lot of games where story does not take centre stage, but that's just the same as the games I grew up with, its not needed, so why put something in the way of what people actually want? There are also a lot of games with riveting stories that just make you play on and on until you find out what you've been looking for, but stories have been like this in games since before I was even born. So the narrative in games isn't changing, which to me is a fantastic thing. Someone once said "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and storyline is far from broken.