am i the only one who prefers games without stories?

oblivion is a good example - 400 hours in and i've never once finished the main story, and it's pure awesome.

star wars battlefront is another - countless hours and i'm far from sick of it, for the sequal they "listened to fans" and put a story in, and it made no difference, you played it once and forgot about it and then went back to doing battles, except they'd taken away the freedom to choose any soldier type and instead made you get a certain amount of kills before you could swap to jetpack man or whatever, thereby taking away the ability to play the entire conquest as jetpack man - bad move, obviously.

demon's souls is another - fantastic setting free from the inevitable cliches of a story and i love it. i hope they don't listen to those damn fans again for the sequel.

i would love to see game worlds developed with more of an emphasis on players creating their own stories - smaller stories that don't involve being the child of the prophecy or anything, more about factions, npcs, relationships, towns, and developing one way eliminates other avenues - rules you out from other factions, other relationships etc. this allows for far greater scope imo.

i'm fine with bioware going off on their tangent and making their stories, but i hate to hear about other developers following suit, i think it's a mistake, i think it narrows down the roleplay possibilities, greatly. i think games are the perfect medium for world design, for inventiveness, for player creativity, and i think they are very far from the perfect medium for storytelling - constantly having to ignore the fact that you are purely a killing machine committing bad guy genocide, for example.

so tell me, am i the only one who feels this way?

I wouldn't say I prefer it (could go either way), but it confuses me when people say a game absolutely must have a good story for them to enjoy it. I grew up with an NES, and many games whose "story" was little more than "there's a bad guy over there. Blast him!" There are lots of old classics like Castlevania, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario Brothers which spawned tons of sequels for their gameplay alone, not for stories that were just saving a princess or hitting a villain. Of course, you're talking about a good roleplaying landscape, and even that is a major step up story-wise.

2/3 of the games you like for having no story have stories

Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft are two great examples of games that have literally no fixed story. Instead, it's the (randomized) game experience itself that allows for the players to tell a story themselves.

There are many great DF stories. Such as the visually illustrated http://www.bravemule.com/, or the old famous classic http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/.

Nope. I've always preferred to make my own story. Having some rich lore to back that up is nice. There aren't too many games out there that allow for that sort of thing. Even open-world games like Oblivion assume you will eventually get around to doing the main quest.

sure, but they're not key to the experience,
i've no problem with optional or background stories, just the ones that are in your face

A story can make a game, see Thief series, Deus Ex, even Half-Life...

But a lack of a story can be great too, see Rome: Total War, Counter-Strike, Zero Hour...

Depends on the game-style.

Demon's Souls has a story, it just uses a lot more minimalism than most. And Oblivion...come on! Even if you ignore the main quest, each and every single guild and side quest has its own story to tell.

Regardless, story's not really important to me in enjoying a game. It's appreciated, and I like a good yarn as much as anyone, but it's not an absolute requirement for every game.

Enslaved Odyssey to the West is a really great story time game.

During the game I ended up really disliking one of the characters. Which is kinda odd. Me sitting on my couch, thinking to myself "I hate that guy" and its just some made up guy in this story/game I'm playing. And at the end of the story I was all :unsure:

When I went through the credits (yeah, I look at credits lololo) the first people who gets props is the Story people. (Can't remember exact titles, would check but I've passed on the game)

The problem with the industry is how so many choose to ape movies and Hollywood for telling their stories, which is holding back the real potential of the medium.

One game that really goes all out with the "create your own narrative" approach is Sleep Is Death.

Neverwinter Nights is good for this too

If the in-game world is detailed and interesting enough (FO3, Oblivion, GTA 4) then pure exploration and goofing around can satisfy me for 100s of hours, but if there's no story, or I happen to dislike the story (like in GTA 4) then eventually I feel bored and aimless.

this sounds great

It depends on the type of game. If the game I'm playing is literally a game (as in, it's designed for the sole purpose of being fun to play) then I don't really mind the absence of story. However, if I'm playing a game that is meant to have some sort of meaning, be artistic, etc., then story is important because at that point, the purpose of the game has gone far beyond simple, fun gameplay.

I can't play most genres as they are today without a good story (and roleplaying is completely out of the question), but I don't usually wish for extremely deep storylines while I'm playing older games either. There are some exceptions though, as I wouldn't mind a 2D Metroid game with a bit more to the story. I also enjoy tons of shooters, many of which are in Japanese and I can't understand the story anyway.

Basically, depends on the game and what it's trying to accomplish.

Thanks, this sounds very interesting.

My thoughts exactly.

Minecraft is the perfect example. It literally has no story. Most racing games have no story either..take forza 3 for example.

Ya know, if you want a more balanced answer to this question, you might want to post on a general gaming forum, instead of the forums of a company that is known for making open world games with more exploration then story.

I myself much prefer having a good storyline. I don't really play any games that don't have at least a minimal storyline, as I get bored just blasting enemies non-stop without at least having a decent goal besides "get to the end of the level".

Garry's Mod comes to mind.

Also, Left 4 Dead used to have no real story, but DLCs and intertwining with Left 4 Dead 2's plot changed that.

Pong. It doesn't have a story. Or is that what they want you to think?

Star Wars Battlefront 2.... Wow does that take me back to the good ol' days. Sitting inside on nice summer mornings playing Battlefront before I went outside for eight hours, and then coming back inside at night to continue playing was the greatest.

So, games with no story? I've got one: Blood Drive. I literally found this game thrown in the trash can outside of GameStop and figured, "Hey, there could be some good achievements in this." Oh, was I wrong. Not only do the achievements svck, the game has no story at all. The only thing you do is drive around with sloppy controls doing races and running over zombies.

I always hated Tetris.

This.

And I like both ways.... depending on how I feel at the time, different games can be fun. (For instance, I've played and enjoyed plenty of Bioware games & cutscenes-broken-up-by-battles JRPGs. But I also prefer FO3 to FO:NV because FO3 has less story dependence - you can just go off and explore more than in NV.)


Locking yourself in to one preferred game genre & style seems so limiting.

This. Though, my mates prefer multiplayer games, like CoD liver oil (laugh, it's a lame joke). When I introduced one to the Skyrim trailer first thing he asked was of it had multipllayer...

No, bro. No.

(He's still getting it though.) IMO, I prefer first-person RPGs to third-person (Dragon Age, Mass Effect.) Dunno why, I just do