Yesterday, Disney showed off the first 5 minutes of Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two. The game’s introduction (which can be seen below) outshines the storytelling efforts seen in many modern AAA games.
In typical Disney fashion, the game starts with a musical number starring Oswald and The Mad Doctor. The good Doc has supposedly changed his ways and asks Oswald for his assistance to help save Wasteland. It’s a simple plot and a simple song, yet it outdoes the storytelling seen in some of the most popular games released today.
What exactly do I mean by this? I mean presentation. In less than 5 minutes the main plot of the game is set up in an entertaining manner. Many big games attempt to do this and fail. Today Laser Lemming takes a moment to examine great games that miss the mark when it comes to story.
Before we continue let’s just get this out of the way: Some games do an excellent job at presenting their stories. The Uncharted series has done a fantastic job at replicating the cinematic feel of the films that inspired the games. The God of War, Portal, and Batman series’ also do a decent job at telling a good story without boring the player.
So without further ado, we present to you: Big games, Bad stories.
Sonic the Hedgehog
I figured it would be good to start this list by comparing apples to apples. Mascot to mascot. It’s sort of a double-whammy because most of Sonic’s games in the last decade have been pretty bad on their own merits, story withstanding.
Sonic didn’t always live in a world of terrible story-telling. Somewhere along the way though, Sega decided Sonic should talk. A lot. Nintendo came to this same fork in the road with Mario when the Nintendo 64 arrived. They went the other way. Instead making Mario tell zany jokes and act tough, Nintendo relegated his speech to one-word phrases describing Mario’s mood, such as “Wahoo!” and “Yippee!” Nintendo knew Mario was about jumping on bad guys and mushrooms.
Sega decided Sonic should deal with the real world and its inhabitants. He should talk a lot and so should all of his friends. They would hire 6th graders to write the stories and pay them in all the Lunchables they could eat! The stories became way too convoluted for a series about a blue hedgehog that runs fast.
Don’t believe me? I present to you, the longest 10 minutes of your life (in 2.5 minutes):
Spoiler alert: those two kiss later.
And just for good measure, here’s some Shadow the Hedgehog love (spoiler below, but that really shouldn’t matter):
Now if you’re saying “Who cares about the story? It’s a platformer.” then you are halfway there. Some games just don’t need big stories. Sonic should take a cue from Nintendo’s Italian plumber. When people see a 3 foot blue hedgehog kissing a 5.5 foot human, it’s time to fire your writer.
Call of Duty
There’s a lot of love for the Call of Duty series. The games have continued to break sales records, year after year. It’s most notable for its multiplayer mode, which a large portion of players seem to buy Call of Duty exclusively for. Whether or not you like the games, Call of Duty is popular.
But when it comes to story, the CoD franchise is a bit of a mixed bag. There’s great set pieces and scripted events. Call of Duty has influenced many games in this manner. But when it comes to the actual story presentation, Call of Duty falls short. You would be hard-pressed to find someone that can accurately tell you the Modern Warfare story in detail. You’d be even harder pressed to find someone that cared.
I would dare you to watch that whole video, but we both know you won’t. The biggest problem with the Call of Duty stories is that they are presented in very yawn-inducing methods. A large portion of the story is told through loading screens where captains and generals and colonels zoom in on maps and tell you who has to die next. Many people wisely skip right through these. Another large portion of the story is shouted at you over gunfire, while you wait for the blood on your screen to disappear so that you can start shooting through foreigners like butter. Just like in real life.
Most of the notable good stuff doesn’t happen until the end. There’s a betrayal. You find out Bruce Willis was dead the whole time. And one of the black characters in the game turns out to be rapper during the credits. Thank God for multiplayer.
Soul Calibur
This franchise. Cheesus crust I can’t stand the storytelling in these games. Soul Calibur likes to really emphasize the stories of its characters but seemingly puts so little effort into the actual content of the stories, let alone giving enough context for them to make sense to a casual player. When you beat the game with any one character, you are greeted with a cutscene related to the character’s story. And it is terrible.
A bad story in a game is nothing new. The problem with Soul Calibur is that it embraces the story aspect so much. You might be able to attribute some of its flaws on dialogue being lost in translation and poor voice acting. But by that point you’ve found yourself making excuses for a poor story.
Xenosaga
I won’t say anything about these games that out-of-place dialogue, awkward pauses, and melodramatic music can’t say for me. A lot of Xenosaga’s story issues can be extended to many JRPGs, really. But don’t listen to me, just watch this 7 hour video and find out for yourself:
Metal Gear Solid
This one is a tough one for me because I really like the Metal Gear Solid games and their stories. Call it a guilty pleasure. But just because I like the games doesn’t necessarily mean I think they perfect. At all. Series creator Hideo Kojima does a great job at giving great attention to detail in every facet of each game. But dialogue does not flow naturally. People go off on extremely long monologues out of nowhere. Enough to make Andy Sorkin blush. It often goes from entertaining to a long drag. Kojima struggles to find a middle ground that can teach fans the game’s history while keeping the viewer entertained.
Kojima has slowly improved his cutscene technique over the years. He included some form of interaction here and there. And he finally included a pause feature in Metal Gear Solid 4. Here’s hoping Revengeance is more streamlined in this department.
There you have it. These are just some of the games that struggle to present their story without boring their audience. There are many others. But just because a game struggles to tell a story, does not mean the actual gameplay sucks (well, in Sonic’s case, it usually does). The reason so many stories are hard to get through is because most of the game’s funding went towards the development of the actual game. Story is often secondary. Epic Mickey 2 succeeds so well because it’s backed by Disney. They’re kind of good at what they do.
If technology hadn’t progressed so much, we wouldn’t even have so many deep stories in our games. Bad or not. I won’t say that the situation will only improve. We’ve had well over 10 years to see progress, yet we are still often treated to stiff voice acting and bad writing. Some will succeed, others will fail… hard. But take those failures as an opportunity to laugh. To cry. To go make a sandwhich, they’re gonna be talking for a while.
