nope, Morrowind HAD almost no NPCs, they had info boxes that regurgitated the same lines, at least Oblivion was funny with its problems. the PROTECTATRONS were less cardboard then the morrowind NPC's.

To be quite frank i am amazed i am not being attacked and flamed for pointing out a flaw in morrowind..............

"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." — Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

I dont deny I have become the very evil I seek to destroy, it is just an unavoidable result of having to fight it for so long. The only way to fight fire is with fire, or so they say.

Generally, I prefer it if games just embrace their natural stupidity and roll with it.

Elder Scrolls, Saints Row 3 & 4, Borderlands, Far Cry: Blood Dragon, Fallout 1-3 are some of the most fun games I have ever played, if only because they just accept they are stupid, and give the players all the wacky gameplay options such stupidity affords.

Its much more fun then sitting through some dreary game that tries to be intellectual, all the while seeing every "twist" the plot is going to make long before they make it, because they have all been done before, and then being bored when the entirely predictable reveal comes, and the game acts likes its a big shocking moment, when its really just the same boring thing one has seen a hundred times before, and then seeing how the devs are basically patting themselves on the back for their such "deep" writing, and thinking they have "got" ya, when they really they did nothing of the sort.

We could be doing something else, like playing the game in new ways, but all that gets cut for MUH DEEPS PLOT!, and "MUH REALISM"

+1

Do you realize how pretentious that sounds when you're using it to describe arguing on a fourm over a video game?

Anyhow, back on topic. The moral gray works very well as a form of storytelling. Giving a faction motives that are gray means making a faction that is believable and rooted in the world. I don't want more wonky factions that sit around a bomb for no reason, I want factions that have a purpose rooted to the wasteland. I find that devs are able to adhere to this better once they follow the rule of moral grays since they have to design a balanced faction with normal people, rather than one full of virtual Hitler's and Stalin's.

Yes, that is what I admitted to in that post.

As for your other point.

I personally play games to... PLAY.... GAMES, and would rather do that then try to sit through some devs attempt at "deep" plot/characters, that only fall flat on their face because they are nothing more then the same "deep" plots and characters everything else that has had "deep" plot and characters has used, with no real changes to make them stand out in any way.

Virtual Hitlers and Stalins may be less "deep" but it probably offers more fun ways to play the game.

I'm not sure Bethesda (or Obsidian) will establish canon for the modern Fallout games, though. I feel like establishing a canon character undermines the point of having other choices in the first place; it does make it easier for them to tell the kind of story they want to tell, though. So, I'm just not sure.

well, unless they brought back the Chicago Brotherhood, (which seems unlikely), or the (dieing) western branch went all way across the country, there ALREADY is canon of some sort they are creating. it means we know for a fact that Lone Wanderer did not wipe out teh entire Brotherhood.

also, all the stuff with the NCR and Shady rest was not KNOWN to be canon until the new games, so again, they have already cut branches off the tree of their own free will.

Also, the fallout 4 characters ARE going to have canon names in Fallout 4, since it is whatever they are named when they are not chosen.

The "canon" names only apply in games in which that character was not chosen. In a game in which they are, there is no canon name.

That's why they always invented titles like "The Nerevarine", "The Champion of Cyrodiil", "The Dragonborn", "The Lone Wanderer" etc. etc., the names wont matter because they will never be referenced later, only the title.

Technically the CoC's name is Bendu Olo, but it doesn't matter since it will never be spoken in any future TES game.

in ZERO previous games have we had a named character, FAllout 1 and 2 had pregen charaacters, but they had no part in the story at all, and there are MANY who argue that it is possibly one of them being the canon anyway.

these characters are named, and what EVERY OTHER GAME DOES, is if the character is named, whether you can name it personally or not, it is the official name that is the canon name.

Didn't you say earlier that you love TES for it's rich and deep lore? That's not much different. Lore, stories, character, all of those things are what give a series and they games in it its identity. The gameplay is the fun part that you have control over, but it is rarely enough to carry things on its own.

I, and I believe most people, firmly disagree with your stance that (for some reason) NO companies at all are capable of making deep plots or characters who are realistic and not entirely black/white. Honestly, even after reading all of your attempts at explaining for this view, I still don't understand how you could actually believe it. Is it the same with books and movies? Because I fail to see how a game's writers are inherently more limited than those mediums.
Just think of your deviations from the canon as "what-if" scenarios. People still enjoy the original Fallout plenty despite not always playing it the way we know it turns out. We get to play out the stories they intend for us, but with the added bonus of seeing what it would feel like to take said stories in another direction.

I enjoy Borderlands and Saints Row as well. But I don't want all of my gaming experiences to be that way. The original Fallout wasn't like that at all. Fallout 2 was to a greater extent, but it is widely considered to be narratively weaker than the first game, with certain aspects such as it's sixuality being so overblown that it detracts from the game.

I understand the need to want your games to just be fun to play with nothing tacked on. That's why my addiction to CSGO worsens by the day. But I feel as if you're looking in the wrong series, and the wrong genre. Fallout gives you the options for wacky fun, but it is a serious game at heart. And I prefer for the devs to do this setting justice by crafting a heavy narrative, while retaining the awesome exploration and crazy weaponry that make the game a blast to actually play. It seems you don't have a very high opinion of game narratives in general, but I consider certain games to be art. The BioShock games, Fallout 1, Metro Last Light and The Witcher 3 are all games that I love for their seriousness, and the themes they discuss and explore. IMO, when games reach that level they are up there with artwork and the finest literature. They draw themes from those works and explore them in ways that no other medium can. You're the only gamer I've met that can't appreciate this tbh.

Subjective.

I don't need to walk around and see the after affects to have it be meaningful. The slides show that things DO change. Not being able to actually witness it firsthand doesn't matter.

Edit: Also, there are many other things that happen in the wasteland with effects that aren't shown in the slideshow. I still enjoy doing those things though because I can guess to what the effects of those actions might be.

Lore is nothing but background information about the world, not the narratives or how the in-game NPCs are. If that were true, the mobile game markets wouldn't be so massive. Indeed, games started off as nothing BUT gameplay, it was only a decade later that narratives were added.

Because nothing any video game done is original. All of their deep and complex narratives is stuff ripped from books, movies, TV shows, etc. etc. that are just ripping off older books, movies, TV shows, etc. etc. all the way back to when stories were first made in ancient times. Its the same cliches being copy pasted endless, only with character and location name changes. You seen one, you have seen them all. Its not deep because it doesn't require any work, its the most basic of copy-pasting+name changing, and it not deep because it cant be thought provoking unless its honestly your first time seeing anything with a supposedly complex narrative, which, given the over abundance of media trying to be that way, takes all of about 5 seconds to experience, and then see a million more times. Its literally nothing more then repetition ad nauseam.

Games are inherently more limited for the simple fact they offer choice. The narratives of other mediums are as decent as they are solely because everything is linear, and controlled. The author can make sure every little thing perfectly the way it needs to be for maximum effect. In games however, this is not the case, the player can chose to look away, the player can chose to go over that hill in the distance, the player can CHOSE to ignore the narrative. Every choice the player is given erodes the quality of the narrative that much more, which is why games have either moved away from choice, into far more linear "cinematic" experiences, or have made choice meaningless slideshows shown after the game ends, in order to satisfy the ever rabid demand for better narratives in games. In no other medium does something like a movie go "well, we cant show you the ending to this movie because its too complex, read this pamphlet we gave you instead", games however do it all the time, because they are inherently bad at narratives, because they offering so many choices its impossible to actually complete them, or offer so little it stops being a game and starts being an interactive movie.

The state of games today is nothing more then the result of wanting your cake and eating it in a medium where such is impossible. Games started off without narratives, and were without them for years, and did just fine. They only started really caring about them in the late 90's/early 2,000's when the whole "games aren't mature" thing started, and that has railroaded us into the linear CoD [censored]fests, and unfinished RPGs we get today. both of which try, and fail, to be more like something they are not meant to be. Focus on narratives has done nothing but erode the GAMEplay of games, and gameplay is ultimately the only thing that really matters in a game. thankfully, some devs have realized its stupid to try to make yourself more "mature" in the eyes of others, because why does what they think matter(it doesn't), and have just focused on making fun games to play.

If you want some thought provoking narrative, read a book, where such things can be done far better, if still poorly. The best narrative you will get with games is a goosebumps choose your own adventure book.

I'd also like to point out that a game can have both amazing storytelling and fun gameplay. I was immersed in the world of Fallout New Vegas but when it came down to it, none of that mattered when I used a silenced sniper to clear Quarry Junction. None of that mattered when I was rampaging through Caesar's tent with a plasma rifle. I was having fun, but I was doing it in a world with great storytelling. That's what set the game apart for me. Because in Skyrim, I would go a kill some bandits, which was great fun. I could light them on fire, slice their heads off, or pummel them with my fists. But once I'm done with all that? A great RPG should still await, and that I did not find.

To be frank, I don't have the energy, patience, or desire to systematically respond to everything you said in that post, so you'll probably take my response as lackluster because I don't go into much detail.

Simply put, your statement that every single game is a rip-off of some story or other told a thousand times before is simply not true. Your statement that games cannot give a compelling narrative because they give us a degree of control over some elements makes little sense. Your use of story-lacking pre-90s games as an example of it working without them does nothing to refute the fact that it also works with them. And just because we have game today that are "COD [censored]fests" doesn't mean that all of them are.

Honestly, games are every bit as capable as movies and books of portraying characters who are believable as real human beings or telling a compelling story. I still don't see how this is even refutable, and your walls of text just aren't making it any clearer to me.

The other problem I have is the proliferation of "grey" sidequests. Too many of those, and I stop caring about my choices, because people get screwed over anyway.

A subtle balancing act.

At any rate, Fallout doesn't need to have a morally grey story to have a good story, and I'd say the main story in New Vegas is really overrated. Maybe the same is true for the older Fallout games, too.

They've talked about trying to figure out how to tell a good story with open-world gameplay, so I'm really curious to see what that means in practice. My main criticism with a lot of older RPGs (particularly Morrowind and Daggerfall, where it's 90% of the main quests) is that a lot of the main story is padded out by "before I give you the information/help/item that you want, you have to do this random favor that has nothing to do with the main threat". New Vegas had a lot of that too, but after dealing with Benny it was mostly just setting pieces in place for Hoover Dam, which still wasn't a very interesting narrative in itself.

But I did love how the story in Daggerfall branched out. My best guess at a good "open-world" story is some kind of mystery; we can start out with a few different leads to follow, there wouldn't be a huge sense of urgency like the last few Bethesda games, and we can collect clues in a mostly non-linear fashion. Something like Daggerfall's main questline, but with a consistent plot where everything you do in a quest is relevant to the main quest.

So true. Bethesda may not always make the most compelling stories, but I think they get overly criticised for it.

Credit where it's due, I really liked how the tone of Fallout 3 changed as you progressed the main quest. The way the Enclave started making their presence felt across the Wasteland, and then the changes Broken Steel added. The writing isn't perfect, I don't need to talk about that, but it still all felt important. And the first time I went through Fallout 3 it left a very good impression on me.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Not even if you diluted the term, "cliche," could you make that claim. Humanity has been telling stories for more than 3,000 years and we'll be around to tell stories for a good while longer. We can't predict the future nor what advancements we'll make in the time being, some of which will likely transform the stories we tell. The storytelling frontier has come a long way from its humble beginnings and is nowhere near its end. Pessimism is a tired cliche; all of story telling, on the other hand, is not.

New ideas are made every waking moment all over the world. That inexorable tide that is creativity will never stop because the imagination of the human mind is boundless due to our ability to innovate. Just think, this is the time that people in the future will look back at and say, “I wish I could've been alive back then,” just as we do now with past generations. We often wish we could go back to capture those great ideas without realizing that there are still great ideas that simply haven't been thought of yet. To say that everything has been done before - it's like saying that every animal on earth has been discovered, or that every location has been mapped. Unique stories are still being crafted and told and video games are not excluded from them.

Charles H. Duell said, "Everything that can be invented has been invented," in 1899. Look at how wrong he was.

"While it is true that we can only rearrange what's already out there in interesting ways, it's also true that your feelings are hard to shake. There's something so whole and so intimidating about the present and all the past work already done. But, take heart: just as not everything was invented by the end of the 19th century, not everything has been written--not everything good, compelling, innovative by July 12th, 2015."

You conveniently ignore how the trappings of a game can enhance a narrative in ways that film and traditional literature cannot. See Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons for one such example. Narratives don't have to be told nor presented in the same way for maximum effect. Some tales lend themselves better to some mediums than others, sure, but - to say that all stories are weakened when they are not linear and controlled is an example of hasty generalization.

Not only is this an unproven claim, it's the classic pessimistic outlook that has been debunked time and time again. One can most certainly have their cake and eat it too, figuratively speaking.

It's also a fallacy I think, though I can't recall the name of it. It's where one uses an aphorism without using supporting evidence to prove their point, thus leaving it as an unproven claim. For example, some argued that by having a voice actor for Fallout 4, lines of dialogue would be consequently decreased because "you can't have your cake and eat it too," as to point out the concept of trade offs. However, this argument failed because the budget for Bethesda RPGs are not stagnant - they spent more money on this game than Fallout 3 and because of it can very easily have their cake and eat it too.

EDIT: The reason it fails is because one can have their cake and eat it too. Story telling and gameplay are not mutually exclusive, nor are lines of dialogue and voice acting. It may seem counter intuitive perhaps, but with a large enough budget, the trade off becomes a non-issue - one can have plenty of lines of dialogue while retaining the voice actor. And it fails here as well because gameplay and story telling are not mutually exclusive. Having your cake and eating it too only works when the two options are mutually exclusive.

Appeal to tradition fallacy. If it wasn't for stories in games, I likely wouldn't have ever gotten into them, personally. The market would be a lot smaller than it is now and many of the games that you've likely come to know and love would not exist in the way exist now if it wasn't for narratives in games.

Another unproven claim and an example of false cause fallacy. Also, if it wasn't for those "stupid" photographers who fought to make photography respected as an art form, then photography would not resemble what it is today. Same goes for any other form of art that was not respected out of the gate and even story telling with regards to film. While you may not enjoy story in games, many do, and what's wrong with expanding the role that games play in society? Not all games have to be "mature," but if one wants to, what's the matter with that?

People said the same thing when film emerged in the context of story telling. In addition, just about every new addition to art has met the same opposition - like photography. Granted, not many bear the same negative opinion on their subject in general.

That's an extremely unfair assessment.

Pure Brahmin dung, if you ask me.

I kinda want them to concentrate on what they do best, making awesome open world games with a lot of stuff to do.

games that focus on a strong story narrative that can be seen as realistic while still delivering a fantasy or sci-fi setting are actually a really old thing in games. While not popular until recently.

Take the Siberia games, Shenmue was one of the most realistic games in the world and it had a large following, the King's quest series, Telltale is making a huge impact on games with their games becoming popular, the Walking dead game series and the Game of Thrones game both hold up well in terms of writing, story and narrative. How about games like To the Moon which is very large in indie communities or Lisa. Let's not forget about the Last of Us which won numerous wards for it's realistic, strong narrative and writing.

Sure these games aren't in the same theme as fallout or TES but that really means nothing, it's entirely possible to give a realistic narrative in a game and to make it 100% realistic and we know from how popular certain games are there is a demand for games that are written realistic.

My decisions are never grey. Simply gold.

Made me laugh.

-And yet the narrative formula has remained the same for thousands of years. And all of our new ideas have only added background clutter to them, they have yet to change how narratives actually function. Narrative development ended with the second story ever told, as it was nothing but the first story ever told, but with different names in place of the character, and every story afterwards has been nothing but the same.

-The difference is that all technology isn't so formulaic that books have been written on how all technology is just the same thing. Narratives are, hence why "The Monomyth" exists. All stories are the exact same thing, just with different names switched out.

-I actually acknowledged that games can do narratives better in some ways, when I pointed out they gave players CHOICE to do everything from ignore the narrative, to going beyond and seeing whats beyond the nearby hill. Doing some things better doesn't mean the overall narrative quality isn't worse though.

-In some cases yes. In other cases no. This is nothing but blind optimism that has been disproven time and time again. Games have yet to reach any sort of narrative level anywhere close to even mediocre films or books, and they have been trying for decades, what evidence is there to assert the idea they will ever reach it.

-They COULD have their cake and eat it, but it depends on how much the rise in budget was offset by rise in general production cost, and cost of VAs. Having more budget doesn't guarantee that Fo4 will have the same amount, or more, dialog options then past games. Implying that they do simply becuase they have more budget is broken logic.

-And any of those things are bad how exactly?

-You mean something no one really cares about anymore? and something that novelists and traditional artists scoff at? Great job photography! The same is true of films, and both reached their peak not by trying to make themselves more like how other people thoguht they should be, but instead playing their strengths to the limit in spite of what everyone else thought. Indeed, much like game companies do today, film and photography reached their best by IGNORING everyone else's opinion of them, and instead just doing what they do best. Why do you think games should not be the same?

-And its true.

--Books offer far more detail into smaller side things then movies do.

--Movies do a good job at expressing less then books in a visual format, making it easier to digest for many.

--TV Shows can offer the more side details of books, with the visual narrative of movies, but the more episodic nature of them makes them have a weaker overall narrative cohesion.

--Games offer tons of narratives within the content of the world, but each of those narratives is far poorer then a singular narrative of any other medium due to the sheer number of them.

That is the pros and cons of each medium. If you want the most complex and in-depth story, reading a book is always the best option.

-how so?