I'm a writer. I have been working on getting published before, and I have in a few local magazines. So I'm an advocate for good stories in video games. Now I know a lot of people don't generally focus on the story and when people hear I advocate story they assume I want five minute cutscenes or ten minute. That isn't what I mean when I say I advocate good stories in video games.

For example, I'm going to use Skyrim. First off the unskippable content is ridiculous. And second off, the very first cutscene. I feel like there was no focus. They introduced two different ideas and concepts that I feel loosely tie together. But barely.

I once gave this example on this forum somewhere, that I think that it would have been better if either Skyrim focused on one side of the story they were trying to tell. Or find a better writing way to tie them together.

I always liked the idea:

You and the Stormcloaks are about to be executed. And then an arrow goes through the neck of one of the imperials. Instead of a dragon coming down, the rescue party of the Stormcloaks is coming to save Ulfric Stormcloak from being killed. You are in the middle of a battle in a war you don't understand and try your best to escape. Leading into three different paths

-You could find a way to leave Helgen and then just go about your own way

-You could fight off, maybe the moment you kill a Stormcloak or Imperial someone of that faction tells you to fight for their side

or if we want to get fancy

-You could allow your character to "die" and one of the factions, random generation each time for which does, rescues you, exposition, etc.

I'm just so tired of uninteresting written stories. Oooo boy dragons. Instead of deep seeded poltiical intrigue, and social commentary.

I did kinda when the dragon landed in Helgen. 'Already?' I thought to myself. I also don't like how quests are shoved down my throat, and I have absolutely no choice in how I finish the quest, no decisions whatsoever, even though that's how TES is commonly advertised.

I'm not a writer, but I do have some lore for a fantasy world floating around in my head. It would be great if I woke up one day and had the inspiration to write it down.

The civil war should have been the Main Quest.

It was written by Bethesda. I don't know what you were expecting.

I don't care about dragons either, and the fact that the game revolved so heavily around them was a major turn-off for me. I think I dropped it after a couple of months, and not just because of the dragons, but because the writing in general was so mediocre. The "civil war" was a joke too; the most underwhelming questline ever, and it had so much potential too.

You're no writer? you made a great backstory for boris hagrid, don't sell yourself short

I agree with you. T'is one of the reasons I prefer games like FNV or the witcher 2 (In fact, Playing the witcher 2 made me question what I liked in skyrim)

I really dislike the argument, well writing takes a lot of time and a lot of work.

I honestly don't like the game, but I respect what they tried to do. FF 12 I believe, actually was well written. "Well written" here is a game made in 2007, with as much [censored] content and things they put on the screen that still looks like a game that came out today in this year. It's graphically impressive, what they did on screen was impressive. The story to me is boring and I get tired of the angst. But I appreciate the effort in designing each character as their own. And I think that's where it stands out.

I wish that game companies had the same respect for writing sometimes as they did graphics and gameplay. Good writing can make or break a game easily as well. Especially in a RPG. The RPG isn't just about good graphics, good gameplay. It's all of those, but it's also the effort in its people and the story.

If you went to a DND or Pathfinder game here in real life, with a DM that didn't know what he was doing and a poorly plotted campaign or story, most players would leave. As a tabletop RPGr I appreciate RP and story more so than the other features. I like to have them, sure, but I also want companies to have the drive to write.

Thanks! Well.. I like roleplaying in the fanfic forum, and am a member of a couple of roleplay threads. I can be imaginative at times, but to put it down on paper is extremely difficult. I'm no writer, honestly. I wish I were though!

I know what i was expecting: a stupid evil villain that gives an excuse for my murder hobo to go on a dungeon crawling spree. And boy did they deliver with Skyrim, three times, if counting the DLCs And i expect the very same thing from Fallout 4. Get ready Deathclaws and Enclave, my murder hobo is armed, angry and dangerous, and can never loot enough bodies!

But i don't play games for stories, i play them for the enjoyable mechanics. That are another thing BGS svcks at.

...Why am i here again? Oh right, great open worlds and hyperactive modding community

Well I play for story. I don't play for just gameplay and open worlds.

GTA 5 has a better story than Skyrim.

Fine piece of work these two games.

But yeah, I'm pretty sure everyone can agree Bethesda doesn't excel much in writing, as their main focus is the well designed open worlds that offer much exploration and at the same time deliver an RPG experience. And that (open world exploration) is what they're praised for most, like for Fallout 3.

Rockstar tends to deliver quality stories with their works, Bethesda? Ehhhhhhhh, not so much. They seem to more be capable some lore and fun open world, but writing isn't exactly their strong suit. Compare Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the writing in NV is way better while 3 is much more diverse in open world. I just wish Bethesda would actually try and work on the quality of their writing.

Bethesda's writing Isn't that strong. I did see last night however, a Quest writer opprotunity on the Bethesda Proper site. Deliver us from bad fetch quests?

I think one of the issues is that writing for a game is nothing like writing for a novel, or even a movie/TV script.

It's difficult to maintain an awesome, emotionally captivating narrative when that narrative is constantly interrupted by combat, side exploration, crafting/gear fiddling time, a hundred independent quests, and so on, and has to take into consideration a multitude of optional and branching directional input. eg, it's easy to lose the narrative when there's so many distractions inbetween that you almost forget there is a narrative. Especially now with the emphasis on visuals vs. long screens of story-text.

Sometimes I get the impression, too, that when people mention they want good writing in a game, what they really mean is they want meaningful choices. Which I see as a different thing. You don't get to pick choices in a novel or a movie, for example.

Course, you can have games with characters and overreaching arcs that try to move away from the stereotype motivations and such (eg, not "savior of the world/the one!" or whatnot) but ... yeah. Anyone remember those children "choose your adventure" novels, where you'd read a page and then get a choice menu? Pick A, skip ahead to page 23. Pick B, skip ahead to page 24. Sometimes that's what game writing feels like to me. Kinda fun, sometimes interesting, but not much emotional investment, most of the time. The story bits I often notice most in games are from the side-quests, where they're more self-contained or used to build up npc or player character motivations/history.

I think (or hope) that over time, game writing will mature as more people in that field figure out what works best with the format.

I'm not a huge fan of the writing in Bethesda games but I wouldn't say they were flat-out terrible...

In Bethesda games, it's hard since there so large. The world writing/world building is excellent, but the day to day stuff is sort of lacking. There's always a trade off.

That's why I play Visual novels for writing, and video games for fun.

I am not going to say anything because if I do it will be on a tangent.

Radiata Stories has 178 recruitable characters, each character has a distinct personality from the last and they are pretty well developed. Each has more dialog than the what? Five lines followers in Skyrim have?

Then Morrowind's quest were extremely well written too.

I could say more, but like you, I would don't want to go out on a tangent.

For an RPG game, I feel story is integral to choices.

You can have choices up the butt if you like. Those choices mean nothing if there isn't something for me the player to hold unto tangibly. Skyrim is again the perfect example, sure it gives its players freedom and choices. But the story is lackluster, so I don't really give a [censored] about the choices. The characters are lackluster, so I don't really give a [censored] about making who is my companion choices.

Choices sure are great, but they mean nothing if your [censored] game means nothing and you don't take the story seriously.

Dragon Age Origins

Even for [censored] sake Dragon's Dogma. I cared a lot for my Pawn. Despite we never having very very long conversations and they repeated the same owning crap. The end with the Pawn you know what I am talking about was actually very emotional.

Fable 2, I cared a lot for that dog. He wasn't even human, had no backstory. But I put a lot of time in games of fetch and then those [censored]s had to shoot him.

Also did I mention all three of the games I listed had some good stories. Even Fable 2, despite it being shorter. But [censored] Fable 3, that should be burned from existence.

Morrowind didn't have fully voiced characters, it was mostly text based dialog, with some voiced greetings (as is alot of JRPG'S). Voice acting costs money. And Morrowinds quests were horrible, boring fetch ones or just kill some bandits, At least Skyrim mixes things up (though Oblivion had by far the best ones.

Dragon age origins is a different RPG then Skyrim, besides the fact skyrim is ten times as big, it's fairly linear in the sense that your given objective you have to do (but with plenty of choice along the way how your suppose to do that objective. In Skyrim you can go around going on a bunny genocide, or killing some farmers chickens for the lulz.

You may want to try the Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLC. (Dragonborn's side quests are leagues above skyrim, in terms of uniqueness and writing, while Dawnguards main quest is league above Vanilla Skyrim's. Has a very well-written companion in the form of Serana.)

Dragonborn makes me mad.

Because it was so good compared to the [censored] I got for Hearthfire and Vanilla Skyrim.

And Dawnguard is just as cliche as Dragons, better written sure, but so blegh.

Dragonborn is the only good DLC.

Miraak was interesting, if slightly lacking in backstory. Hermaus Mora stole the show.

But still, Serana was one of Skyrim's most developed characters, and it was really interesting with the forgotten vale and the Snow Elves.

There's some examples of good writing in Skyrim. The Civil war (though the quests themselves are awful), and Erandaur for example.