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What is more important, the puzzles or the story?

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Story has always been much more important to me.  That’s why I have no problem with the Telltale style of games.  If you have a great story with interesting characters that’s presented well, good puzzles aren’t a necessity (though they’re still a welcome bonus).

     
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TerminusEst - 11 January 2017 01:06 AM

This integration and the attendant sense of interactivity seem to make the magic of adventure games for me: I keep returning to them despite the allure of books, movies, and TV.


Exactly.  That seems to be a factor that a lot of people miss whenever they say something like “If you want a good story read a book.”  I enjoy other forms of fiction too, but it’s a different experience entirely.

There’s something unique about being immersed in a world that you enjoy the story and characters of, and being able to interact with those characters and that world.  That feeling really can’t be replicated in any other medium than games.

     
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Detective Mosely - 11 January 2017 02:00 PM
TerminusEst - 11 January 2017 01:06 AM

This integration and the attendant sense of interactivity seem to make the magic of adventure games for me: I keep returning to them despite the allure of books, movies, and TV.


Exactly.  That seems to be a factor that a lot of people miss whenever they say something like “If you want a good story read a book.”  I enjoy other forms of fiction too, but it’s a different experience entirely.

There’s something unique about being immersed in a world that you enjoy the story and characters of, and being able to interact with those characters and that world.  That feeling really can’t be replicated in any other medium than games.

im interested in seeing what lucasfilm and disney do with the star wars universe, bc it seems they are dead set on making it all connect. from the movies to the tvs shows, to the books,comics and games. I know battlefront had little to no story elements but I know they got games in the pipeline that are very story driven. Im just curious how all this connected universe will pan out over time. It would be awesome if you beat a game with a good story and then go see the latest movie and your character from the game is a character in the movie or at least mentioned in the movie. This happened in rogue one already where a character from the animated show was in the movie and another character from the show was directly mentioned.

     

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Even the best, most memorable story won’t be any use if the gameplay is so awful you can’t stand playing.

     
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crabapple - 11 January 2017 04:51 PM

Even the best, most memorable story won’t be any use if the gameplay is so awful you can’t stand playing.

And people who are puzzle addicts will play “adventure games” such as Rhem that have no story at all. And there are games that are so bereft of puzzles that they are nothing more than interactive movies. And, even then I wonder how interactive they really are. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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crabapple - 11 January 2017 04:51 PM

Even the best, most memorable story won’t be any use if the gameplay is so awful you can’t stand playing.

This is much less true of adventure games, I think. There are a significant number of players who are basically only interested in the story and will find a walkthrough before they even start playing - that kind of player would rather play a pretty game with a nice story, minimal interaction and terrible (or even completely unsolvable) puzzles than one with brilliant puzzles and not much story. It’s how anyone can think Syberia 2 wasn’t unplayable, and why the otherwise lovely Keepsake got more complaints about the voice acting than the broken puzzle.

     
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Story is more important to me. A good story can make me return to a game to finish it, even if gameplay sucks.

     
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crabapple - 11 January 2017 04:51 PM

Even the best, most memorable story won’t be any use if the gameplay is so awful you can’t stand playing.


Harvester and Deadly premonition disagrees
There are plenty of pathetic gameplay design that i pushed through for story,
to check the end

 

     
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darthmaul - 10 January 2017 08:32 AM

Puzzles.  Most videogame stories are fairly boring and derivative.  I want an actual game.

Yes, I agree. If I played for the story, I wouldn’t play games at all. I would read a book. The reason I want to play a game is for the interactivity, the challenge.

     

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Phlebas - 12 January 2017 05:00 AM
crabapple - 11 January 2017 04:51 PM

Even the best, most memorable story won’t be any use if the gameplay is so awful you can’t stand playing.

This is much less true of adventure games, I think. There are a significant number of players who are basically only interested in the story and will find a walkthrough before they even start playing - that kind of player would rather play a pretty game with a nice story, minimal interaction and terrible (or even completely unsolvable) puzzles than one with brilliant puzzles and not much story.

That type of gamer may also actively avoid any game that isn’t point-and-click or has action or QTEs—anything that can’t be ‘solved’ with a walkthrough and has an interface more complicated than a single click cursor. So saying the puzzles (or at least the type of puzzles) are less important than the story for them would be incorrect when dexterity requirements make the game a non-starter. The game interface is actually more important to them than either story or puzzles. They’re happy with both poor stories and unimaginative puzzles as long as they have an easy point and click interface with no action or QTE’s.

     

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crabapple - 11 January 2017 04:51 PM

Even the best, most memorable story won’t be any use if the gameplay is so awful you can’t stand playing.

Or if there is no actual game at all.

     

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Detective Mosely - 11 January 2017 02:00 PM
TerminusEst - 11 January 2017 01:06 AM

This integration and the attendant sense of interactivity seem to make the magic of adventure games for me: I keep returning to them despite the allure of books, movies, and TV.


Exactly.  That seems to be a factor that a lot of people miss whenever they say something like “If you want a good story read a book.”  I enjoy other forms of fiction too, but it’s a different experience entirely.

There’s something unique about being immersed in a world that you enjoy the story and characters of, and being able to interact with those characters and that world.  That feeling really can’t be replicated in any other medium than games.

I rarely get “immersed” in video game worlds.  The medium is not great for story telling on its own.  For a pure story experience, tv or books are 10,000x better mediums.  Their stories are way more complex and have more depth.  For me to play something on PC, it needs to have a game to it.

     
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darthmaul - 12 January 2017 01:16 PM
crabapple - 11 January 2017 04:51 PM

Even the best, most memorable story won’t be any use if the gameplay is so awful you can’t stand playing.

Or if there is no actual game at all.

This is not true. Visual Novels(considered games) at times have 0 gameplay, but still receive acclaim for their experience(if story is good).

     
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darthmaul - 12 January 2017 01:17 PM

The medium is not great for story telling on its own.  For a pure story experience, tv or books are 10,000x better mediums.  Their stories are way more complex and have more depth

Even Bartenders

     
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I still say story is the most important thing to most gamers, bc I belong to a lot of gaming forums and read a lot of gaming message boards and most of the time when a game is brought up, discussions mostly revolve around the story and characters with some general light discussions about gameplay. for instance this is typical of most discussions I have seen. ” I love this character and he made me laugh and the story was awesome but this boss fight sucked.” Now there are exceptions to every rule as dark souls is 90 percent about the gameplay and is talked about, but the most part videogames are remembered fondly bc of the story especially in the adventure game genre.

Not to keep harping on grim fandango, but in another thread it was pointed out that in a knockout contest it won for the best adventure game of all time on this site, can anyone really say it was bc of gameplay over story. Once again 95 percent of gamers all hated the tank controls and camera angles with players constantly running into walls, the inventory system was cumbersome having to scroll through 20 items every time just to get to the one you wanted and even at release the game had some serious bugs. Of all the remastered games out there, this is the one that needed to be re-done the most, just so it could work at all on most modern computers. So the reason it was voted number 1 was bc of the characters and story and setting. There are countless examples of this, take the quest for glory series, most gamers claim 4 is their favorite (even though I love three) and that has to be bc of the story and setting bc once again QFG4 was broken at launch with many gamers not beign able to pass the first screen bc of issues, even after that the game crashed constantly. Modders for scummvm to this day are still trying to get that game to run better. So it has to be story that makes it rate high.

Even with all the talk about gameplay what I find funny is there a 100 more topics about bad puzzle design rather than clever ones. like the goat puzzle in broken sword, the mime in gabrie knight etc…. Nothing really to do with this conversation just an observation

     

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