The thing is I get why some gamers are against the idea of "story". Because reviewers use the story concept to cover over game flaws and pretend they don't exist. They've started to review games as if they are fucking movies instead of games first and foremost which is annoying as fuck. And gamers tend to be more about the gameplay which in most cases is the right call. Then there is the tiring debate about what constitutes quality game story telling which means different things to different people. Which is why I don't really like to talk about or debate story merits in video games. All I can really say is when I play a game whether I'm hooking into the character and want to continue to find out what happens to that character or I dig being that character. Mass Effect has high immersion for me. Red Dead Redemption had high immersion for me. Fallout has high immersion for me. Hell MW 2 had high immersion for me because of the combat, the music, and the atmopshere. The story is garbage but I was immersed as hell and in the moment. So yes immersion does matter to me. And it means different things to different people. And it matters more the longer the game is.
It's why Crackdown never attracted me. Or Just Cause. Even though I get why others really dug those games.
I'm not against story. No one in this said we're against story.
I brought up a point and that being that many western rpg fanatics tend to overlook flaws, and call completely average games great purely because of story on a very regular basis.
Sure, other genre fanatics do the same. But this comes with the territory with wrpg fans (yes, I am an wrpg fan, and no, I did not want to start a wrpg vs jrpg war).
Like The Witcher. I tried out that game, and the combat was ass. Combat is a big part of a game like this and it was undeniably awful. So inquire about it and I get..."yeahhhhhhhh, the gameplay's not too great, but the story!" and then you get people listing Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines as being one of the best rpgs ever, when it plays like total dog shit, is a half made game, and bug ridden at that. Why? Oh. The writing. It is a dissonance in my head.
It's not story can't exist, it's that story should never take a precedent over gameplay. It's not that we think all games should be the same, it's that we are operating on completely different gaming philosophies here. Story can add to a game, but I don't it ever -- ever -- makes a game, with few exceptions.
This makes the contingent split hard because I'm the dungeon crawlin', lootin' tootin', numbers obsessed, how can i customize my guys numbers NOW, oh shit this dungeon has traps, type of rpg player. I play rpgs for the scale of adventure, the clash of bone and steel, and player involvement you don't
get from other genres. So it makes it hard to take suggestions from a oh man, I loved the characters, the story was great but the gameplay sucked, wow this game is more buggy than my grandma's corpse but the writing is SO. GOOD. type of rpg player's suggestions seriously. Whether it's from a j or w fan.
But no where in there did I say that I couldn't like story, it's just not what I emphasize. Much like how I see graphics.
So I'll prefer the Fallout's and Dragon Age's over the Vamp: Bloodlines and The Witcher's (though I'm excited for 2). By the same token, I also any prefer Shin Megami Tensei and Valkyrie Profile 2, Etrian Odyssey, Breath of Fire 5 over anything Final Fantasy has put out in the past 10 years aside from X-2 and XII. Sometimes I enjoy these games because I like the characters, or the themes, and or the symbolism, or the general writing, especially in SMT's case, but I never -- ever -- act like it's the only reason.
Not mad or anything, just clarifying something that probably needed a bit more grease n' spit.
