How much does story matter?

#1

You’ve all played Defender’s Quest, I assume that’s why you’re here at least. Defender’s Quest is probably the TD game with the best mechanics I’ve played, but how much would you have honestly been invested in the game if the story wasn’t as good as it was?

Take literally any other Tower Defense game available. You have one of three options for story available in it.

A) A generic “We have to get to the end and kill the dark one” story with little to no plot beyond that.

B) Hilaaarious fourth wall breaking comedy, pop culture references or other nonsense.

C) No story. Just mechanics.

If Defender’s Quest had decided to save expenses with the story and went with one of the three options above, I believe that - no matter how good it’s mechanics - it wouldn’t have gotten far beyond flash hubs. The sort of game you fire up, play through a bit to pass the time, close and forget about. But by not half-assing things and trying to deliver the best story possible, you become invested in getting to the end and seeing where it all leads to beyond your obligated ‘CONGRATULATIONS! THE END’ screen.

People who play through the game tend to have the same reactions when they come across the characters. Slak is hilarious in a ridiculous way, Ketta adds flavor for life in the pit, Bakal spices up the game with story teasers, Wrenna adds darker humor than Slak can provide and drops lore, Markos serves as thre straight man for Azra with more grounded humor and gives her someone to relate to, Niru is there for one final “Holy crap, this world has dragons? And they’re on my side? Awesome!” smearing of icing on the cake.

You’re made to have an investment in each character because you get a feel for what they uniquely provide to the plot and you want to see them all reach the end for reasons beyond simply beating the game and being done with it.

Take that away and what really makes the game that much better than Protector, other than the better battle mechanics? Mechanics alone don’t leave a lasting impact. Another example is Thomas Was Alone, there’s already plenty of games like that on Kongregate, but none of them had assigned a story to each character before. Everyone has a personality, everyone provides a unique function to the mechanics and you want to keep them all alive, help get them to their end goal.

I think it might be in the best interests of indie developers to try and hire actual writers for their games like Lars did, instead of relying on their own ability if they’ve never written anything before. The only problem is, how reasonable is it to expect that?

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#2

The best thing about DQ’s story is that everyone acknowledges the game itself. Azra knows she’s in a TD-ish thing and Salk feels and speaks like if the mechanics were important to the story (and they are).

#3

I’ve got mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, “no story, just mechanics” is my general approach to games, especially flash ones. Playing something short on the web these days, I look for the “Skip” button - because really good games in their genre do not need the story to catch me. (Bloons TD 5 to name the most obvious “no story, just mechanics” success story).

On the other hand, the story CAN play a big role. With DQ, the story of the demo was what immediately caught me and never let go. I decided to buy the game straight after finishing the demo BECAUSE of the story. Sure, the good mechanics helped, but whatever tactical appeal and replay value the game turned out to have was largely discovered from the full version and its subsequent development - and I’m not sure if I’d even consider buying the game based on the mechanics of the demo alone.

To answer your question “what makes the game that much better”, for me it’s really the replay value. There are multiple, significantly different ways, to play the game - and that’s what basically matters to me the most. That after winning I have some reason to try again and do something different instead of deleting the bookmark and forgetting about the game once and for good.

For this same reason, i.e. Kings Bounty series is quite high on my list. Pick it up once every year or two, task yourself with “let’s do it with humans only if possible” or “no shooters” or “no magic” - and it’s definitely worth spending time on.

#4

Well, that’s an easy one to answer. The story played a massive role when I decided to make my purchase after playing Kongregate demo. The thing is, I’ve played sooo many games already and learned quite a few platformer/RPG/shooter/CCG/TD mechanics and their possible twists. Growing more and more tired of repetition I’m more annoyed when I see yet another generic platformer, with only thing setting it apart from other games in genre being usage of elephant main character instead of giraffe. Therefore, game mechanics are often of little appeal and importance of me, as long as they don’t get in my way when discovering the rest of the game.

With that, I naturally find myself being attracted to well-written story-driven games much more. While gameplay mechanics are often re-used and get mostly similar, the stories differ significantly between each other; even if they use similar base plot, there are details making them unique, whether that would be characters, specific style of writing or something else.
It doesn’t necessarily needs to be “serious” or something (does a game with overly carnivorous sheeps level count as serious, anyway?). I don’t mind fourth wall breaking or cultural references, myself, as long as they connect well within the game, rather than make a sequence of throwaway jokes. I guess the game benefited from having generally limited cast instead of loads of NPCs as well - I’m pretty sure the remark about Magnificent Turban of Violence wouldn’t be as hilarious if it’s been made by randomly encountered barbarian NPC instead of Slak that we learned to expect that sort of thing from. Also, I don’t know who got an idea to make Slak literate, but it’s been one of the best ideas ever; and a neat way to add another bit of depth to his character. :slight_smile:

So yes, I can’t speak for others, but judging from my recent experience, the only games that really got my attention recently were the ones to have:
a) well-composed story and/or setting
b) awesome music
Needless to say, I’ve found DQ to have both. ^^

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#5

[quote]It doesn’t necessarily needs to be “serious” or something (does a game
with overly carnivorous sheeps level count as serious, anyway?).[/quote]

I loved how the game still went out of it’s way to justify them in-universe despite that. Quaid sheep stores held up underground for times of emergency, turned rabid and monstrous over time.

Unrelated to your post, but on a sidenote, if I had any complaint about a character in Defender’s Quest it would be Zelemir. For so long he’s the main antagonist and yet he causes us no real great harm or inconvenience. He chases us and attacks us, but fails to so much as scratch us. We don’t meet and helpful friend in the pit who he strikes down, the worst he does is destroy a town we might have thought to go back to and buy new rangers from a battle or two earlier. That’s a small inconvenience.

Unless the intent was never to make us hate him or make him out to be pure evil, but rather show him as a mere annoyance we constantly have to fight off so that we don’t feel too obligated to let him die in the final battle.

#6

Oh my god I can’t agree with you enough, I really love games just because of their music and nothing else. Good thing is, game music is overall getting better (you can see many flash games with awesome music today, EBF3/4 for example, while you couldn’t in say, 2007 or 2008).

Also I forgot to clarify my post, but here’s what I meant: (Story + Mechanics) x Sense = Boom, perfect gameplay!

#7

For me, it’s all about story. I have trouble getting interested in a lot of old games or platformers in general because they often didn’t (or couldn’t? ) include story progression during a level. Like, why am I needing to fight these things, where am I, why am I, etc. Having a story answers those things and helps keep me interested or devoted to a series, even if the game is a parody or has a joke story. So long as the mechanics aren’t difficult to work with or otherwise impossible.

I also agree with a lot of the points that Alice makes in her post.

#8

So yes, I can’t speak for others, but judging from my recent experience, the only games that really got my attention recently were the ones to have:
a) well-composed story and/or setting
b) awesome music
Needless to say, I’ve found DQ to have both. ^^

For me, there’s sort of a “holy trinity” of Mechanics, Music, and Story, where there needs to be 2 out of 3 in order for a game to really grab me. Doesn’t matter if it’s AAA, Indie, old, or new.

Examples:

Darkest Dungeon, Chasm, any Spiderweb game - mechanics, story
Shovel Knight, Mega Man (original trilogy), Jamestown - mechanics, music
Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Final Fantasy 1, 3, 4, 5 & 6 - music, story

So basically, for me, if your music isn’t absolutely incredible, your story better be, or I’m going to lose interest sooner rather than later.

Of course, there are certain games where drip-feed progression systems and/or compelling replayability can substitute for a solid story - for instance, I was obsessed with Rogue Legacy for months, but it fails the “holy trinity” test: the music is catchy (but not great) and the story is barebones at best. However, the steady buying of upgrades and procedurally generated castles somehow took up the slack and the game just wouldn’t let go for a long, long time.

The same could be said for Dungeons of Dredmor, a more traditional Roguelike with solid mechanics but middling, repetitive music and no real story to speak of - here again, the variety of character builds and randomly generated dungeons hooked me anyway.

Anyway. I guess what I’m getting at here is that Story is an important element to keeping my interest in most cases - but it can be replaced by progression systems or procedurally generated content for certain genres of games.

#9

It really depends on what it needs. Once you’ve decided, you should be consistent.

For example, too often RPGs are just marathons of fantasy RPG cliches strung together in a sequence of unskippable cutscenes with cardboard protagonists vs cardboard god-villains. They put a lot of production into it and force the player to spend time on it, but it’s way too “been there done that”. A game that is very straightforward and honest about skimping on the plot instead of treating it like another chore on the checklist can often be a lot better for the choice. Diablo 2 actually did a decent job with story, but they communicated very efficiently and in ways that were easy to skip, and it evoked mood and an overall sense of the story graphically and with an occasional two to twelve words of demonic smack talk. It both knew that we weren’t necessarily there for the story, but gave it a bit of attention and polish anyway. It was around you instead of a regularly-scheduled interruption of gameplay.

For me, story has to be at least X good before it can demand Y of my time. An extreme example where Y is 100% is To The Moon. It takes gaming to an extreme where it’s more of a mildly interactive movie where gameplay metaphorically acts as a page turn.

I guess Dragon Age 1 is somewhere in the middle. There are many interruptions for plot, but they took it really seriously. A lot of Dungeons and Dragons games are similar.

I thought DQ1 was slightly wordy for its depth, but I’ve seen much worse. It maybe faltered by trying to be sort of epic while at the same time not taking itself seriously at all. The prologue made it look like we were in for something a bit weightier than what we ended up with. I don’t know of any one thing in specific I would do differently, but overall it didn’t quite work for me on the large plot arc level. There just wasn’t enough in between the dysfunction squabbles to inspire confidence in a substantial whole.

Overall, it’s about making intentional decisions about what role story plays and how it should be deployed. DQ2 will probably have a fair amount of plot. It could be pared back, or it could be enriched. But the gray area is the most dangerous one.

#10

I actually feel like dq1 did an excellent job in balancing silliness with seriousness in terms of story and progressing it, but that’s just my opinion.

The only time where story is meh for me is when it’s a puzzle or matching game, because more often than not, one’s there for the actual gaming and not the story. (I’m currently playing pokemon shuffle, and while I love pokemon and matching games, I’m definitely not playing this for the non-existent story, though I sort of wish there was some semblance of one to give me reason to want to progress, rather than the poorly attempted intro)

#11

I think a game has to, in most cases, first and foremost shine with the mechanics.
A good story alone can’t save a game with bad mechanics, but a game with good mechanics can save a game with bad (or no) story.

When I playsed the Demo of DQ1 back when it was new, I immediately fell in love with the mechanics. I loved the new RP aspect for a Tower Defense and instead of random Towers you now had persons that you could polish with exp how you liked.
That’s the reason why a I bought the original to begin with.

Playing the game for some time, I also realized that it had a well written story that was both serious and hilarious (Slak makes me laugh every time :slight_smile: ). Later on, with the addition of New Game+ and several features (for example, the Diary), the Story got even better and it made me want to play the game even more.

So while I initially played the game because of the mechanics, it was basically the Story that made me go all the way to the end of New Game+ to get all the story parts I could get.

So does story matter?
For me, the answer is: definitely yes. But only after you have some good mechanics and good gameplay.

#12

May as well throw my hat in here.

As much as I love me a good story, I think this sort of question misses the point a little.

It goes back to that trifecta comment and having to achieve two of the three for a game to grab us, but personally, it goes deeper than that.

And that deeper question is whether the dev team has a cohesive vision of what their game is suppose to be, followed by how closely the game they make manages to achieve that vision.

A vision is more than an idea, a story, the mechanics, or other aesthetics. It’s how the game is suppose to feel when you’re playing it, and if the team is able to grab onto that vision, they are more willing and able to fix the initial design flaws, are better able to reach into their artistic soul and create assets that evoke that feeling, can better know how this little piece they’re coding is suppose to fit into the greater whole.

The other trick is to have the right team with the right timeline to pull it off.

For a long time, my shorthand was to say that such games had a soul (that I connected to), but I think it’s closer to say I connected to the vision the team had and managed to implement.

Because I really connected to the vision the Mega Man X4 team had for the Zero character for that particular go at the series, and the story was rubbish, the music only good, and graphics solid to great but not especially inspiring. The reason is that they aced the feel of the character, they managed to evoke the exact experience they were hoping for in me. For Mega Man X4’s Zero, it was mostly mechanics, sure, but a bit of everything else too.

In Bastion, it was the story of the Calamity and those it effected, as conveyed by the Narrator, other audio/visual aesthetics, and supported by solid gameplay with one moment of genius.

In StarCraft, it was Kerrigan and everything surrounding her.

In Chrono Trigger, it was the cast of characters supported by pretty much every aspect of the game.

#13

In Command & Conquer, it was playing as Brotherhood of Nod by way of Kane, the missions where you used flame tanks to torch whole villages in a horrible and evil and a little hilariously campy way, it’s the choice of which landmark you want to destroy/melt in a plot to frame GDI for an atrocity, and it’s the choice of putting in grunge rock when the credits rolled for Nod. I really have to give them a nod for that bit of music, because even if it was a bit of mediocre grunge rock, it was also ‘Destructive Times’ and answer to the question of what the player should be feeling after winning and blowing up a monument. That feeling being - I’m here to burn your world order to the ground.

So to complete my thought, it’s not ‘How much does story matter?’, because the story always matters. The story is how we frame and give meaning to the numbers and equations running in the code; it’s how we decide on the aesthetics. Monopoly is Monopoly because the board game coached the rules and tokens in relatable and appropriate terms for the gameplay, and the terms and tokens used are a sort of very crude story framework that gets filled out through play.

The questions we should be asking are - What story am I going to tell with my game? And how do I convey my story in a way that enhances and solidifies the desired game experience?

And by way of disclaimer, this holds true for all but the most stripped down, board game type framework. Even Chess conveys a story, but arguably, Tic-Tac-Toe doesn’t.