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So tell me, what was the most memorable moment of Skyrim’s story for you?

Lambonius - 08 September 2014 03:43 AM

So tell me, what was the most memorable moment of Skyrim’s story for you?

The whole pilgrimage to the top of the mountain, and meeting with Paarthurnax.
And then how the main storyline ends up combining whole Elderscrolls theme,
Scrolls that are essence of multiverse in the series.

Apart from that self contained and connected quests like Diplomatic Immunity ,World Eaters Eyrie or investigation ones like Blood On The Ice etc.

In comparison talking with Marek from Diamond (BrokenAge) feels good but not as good.
As he feels super childish and makes less sense, not to mention his art.
And being 4 hr chunk doesn’t help much.

The mountaintop is the only damn thing I remember from the game, and only due to the voice acting. It’s a typical 1980s “kill the foozle” RPG plot, pasted onto a ridiculously overproduced walking simulator. Worth maybe 4 or 5 hours of your time, but no more.

I’m actually struggling to think of an adventure with a worse story than Skyrim. Even Quest for Glory was better - at least that had Erasmus (and a walking hut).

Zifnab - 08 September 2014 04:04 AM

The mountaintop is the only damn thing I remember from the game, and only due to the voice acting. It’s a typical 1980s “kill the foozle” RPG plot, pasted onto a ridiculously overproduced walking simulator. Worth maybe 4 or 5 hours of your time, but no more.

I’m actually struggling to think of an adventure with a worse story than Skyrim. Even Quest for Glory was better - at least that had Erasmus (and a walking hut).

Brokenage already mentioned.
That Monster eating people in Brokenage oldass Indian/Chinese folklore cliche.
Monster is coming and and he will eat , seriously??? People enjoying that has audacity to criticize Skyrim.

The premise is super childish and full of tropes.

Shay’s plot is direct ripoff of The Moon starring Samrockwell.

Take the idea and mix in with cakes on sky and voila.

Broken Age isn’t exactly the pinnacle of AG narrative. Can we talk about, I dunno, Miasmata instead? Riven? Sanitarium?

Multiple narratives and such are just possible devices to tell a story.
Just because they have been deployed by the writer doesn’t make the narration de facto better.

Kind of hard to make specific comparisons between games but, in my opinion, narrative in games can’t be just about a script or a story (big or small), they are not books, same way a movie narrative is not just about the script.

In that point RPGs have been a lot more progressive considering the storytelling - just look how much evolved between Daggerfall and Skyrim or how Bioware revolutionized characters, relations and story with Baldur’s Gate and more specifically Kotor.

Now adventure games seemed to be stuck for years in the passive linear point and click narrative (first or third person) and just in recent years tried to deviate from the formula presenting some interesting new ways of storytelling (Heavy Rain, Gone Home for example).

Iznogood - 08 September 2014 02:20 PM

At least most of the story-heavy RPGs are also very linear, with at best 2-4 story-quests at any given time where you can chose the order yourself, and at worst all the story-quests have to be played in the exact order planned by the developers. They are just padded with a lot of side-quests to conceal the linearity of the story.

So there seem to be a consensus among developers of all kinds of games, not just Adventure Games, that if you want to tell a story you have to do it in a linear way, though I don’t necessarily agree with this myself.

 

I don’t agree that a narrative has to be linear to be good, in any genre, but in RPGs its specially dangerous to become too linear.
But even Mass Effect that is an extremely linear RPG (specially number 3), even taking out the combat. has that element of choice in dialogues, missions, relationships and well-developed characters that sets its narrative apart what is mostly done in adventure games.

An example of a mostly non-linear RPG with a strong narrative is a favorite of mine : Fallout: New Vegas. Most of the stuff in the world is built the a purpose, a lot of quest are carefully crafted, good dialogues and built system of factions that works. Plus is has that “Old World Blues” expansion that is just wonderful! seriously, I think any adventure gamer would get a kick out of it, even with the combat.
It’s possbile but you need Obsidian

Now take the RPGs elements of these games and add adventure elements like puzzles to these games adventures. (I know it doesn’t make sense…) It doesn’t exist - they tell stories and involve players in ways that don’t really exist is adventures right now…

In the end I agree that most RPGs have bad stories and I prefer too play 20 average adventure games to an average RPG because the story is almost always better but very good RPGs do stuff with narrative that it’s not done in adventures today.

wilco - 08 September 2014 12:54 PM

Now adventure games seemed to be stuck for years in the passive linear point and click narrative (first or third person) and just in recent years tried to deviate from the formula presenting some interesting new ways of storytelling (Heavy Rain, Gone Home for example).

That and skewing towards more commercial/critical hits like TTGs or Gonehome etc.
are making the genre more limited in expression. Good story yes, depth and diversity , hell no.
Thats why i tend to get more excited for games like Ethancarter or Witness. Give
room and make it rich.

wilco - 08 September 2014 04:57 PM

 

An example of a mostly non-linear RPG with a strong narrative is a favorite of mine : Fallout: New Vegas. Most of the stuff in the world is built the a purpose, a lot of quest are carefully crafted, good dialogues and built system of factions that works. Plus is has that “Old World Blues” expansion that is just wonderful! seriously, I think any adventure gamer would get a kick out of it, even with the combat.
It’s possible but you need Obsidian

Now take the RPGs elements of these games and add adventure elements like puzzles to these games adventures. (I know it doesn’t make sense…) It doesn’t exist - they tell stories and involve players in ways that don’t really exist is adventures right now…

 

Yeah Obsidian still have it in them , i have yet to play Vegas and Alpha protocol.

Origami - 08 September 2014 11:07 AM

Multiple narratives and such are just possible devices to tell a story.
Just because they have been deployed by the writer doesn’t make the narration de facto better.

Its other way around, not using those devices by AGs is defacto and have made them look
limited and now its AGs commonly accepted practice.

I could have made the thread with Action/adv or Shooters do narrative better and given so many examples from Bioshock to Specops:The Line etc. But i believe even in Action/Adv the mindset of linearity and problem of depth exists.

This thread made me think, can role of exploration in rpg-s and typical adventure games be compared? In very abstract level, you explore in both for gaining upper hand in gameplay, in form on experience and equipment in one, in form of inventory items and information in other. So choosing what info or inventory items to get would compare roughly to choice what creatures to kill or what quests to take. Trouble is, you can easily give choice by adding places with different level enemies in rpgs and linking quests to these places. Creating game where for most steps in most puzzle chains there is alternative choice sounds humanly impossible or would take centuries to create.

You should have started by analyzing games such as Trinity, The Last Express or Azrael’s Tear, not the silly characters/silly story Lucas Arts branch of adventure games.