His first point of discussion is bringing up Super Marios Bros, one of the most successful videogames of all time and talks about how it doesn't need a story. I hate it when people think using old games is a strong argument against videogame stories. The reason why these games were successful back then are because the medium was new and people were just impressed by the fact that they were able to control what was happening on the screen. To compare it to movies (we'll get more in detail on that in a second), back when movies were first being made, nobody gave a shit about the stories, they were just blown away by the fact that we were able to watch moving pictures. But unless the medium progresses and tries something new then it'll die out fairly quickly. You think people would still be playing videogames if they never tried to do anything new? And yes, that includes giving them stories.
Now this isn't to say that every videogame needs to have a complex story with themes and character arcs and narrative structure, but at the same time, neither do movies. Some movies can just be fun popcorn flicks to waste 2 hours of your life, but others have to more complicated and put more effort into their narratives, to challenge the form and the audience and give them a new experience. When people think of the best games in modern days they talk about the story driven games, Bioshock, The Last Of Us, Metal Gear Solid, etc.
The next thing he brings up is how the only genre he feels needs story and characters is role-playing because the whole point to those games is to have a personalised experience. But then he makes the dumb statement of "Why not add a sports element for example? Why don't we just start adding basketballs to videogames?". Yeah and why not just start putting spaceships in all of our movies because sci-fi does it? Because that would be fucking dumb. Stories and developed characters are used in other genres because they can still fit. You can have a story in a first person shooter because it doesn't conflict with the genre's conventions, you can't put a fucking basketball into say a stealth game because it makes no damn sense why a basketball game would be there. Seriously Maddox, use your damn head. One genre doesn't own stories, it's not this exclusive element that has to be told in specific ways, stories can be changed and molded to fit the setting of the game, you can't change the rules of basketball to fit your setting because then it's not fucking basketball.
Now this is where he has his only good argument to be made, when discussing Tetris Worlds, a game that tries to set itself up that the tetris homeworld is dying and when completing a level you come closer to helping the citizens of the planet escape. But the reason why this doesn't work is because Tetris doesn't have any characters, it's literally just a bunch of blocks, it'd be stupid to do so. But that's not to say games like Pac-Man or Super Mario Bros can't have stories, okay, i'm not saying they have to and i'm not expecting The Godfather or anything, but they at the very least have pre-established characters and relationships to work off of, Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man are in love, the ghosts are the antagonists, work your way off from there, or don't, it doesn't matter. But then when he says that Tetris was still a very popular game...no it wasn't. People got bored of Tetris, it's the same damn thing over and over again, when was the last time you saw a let's play of Tetris or an ad for the new Tetris game? It's fun for like 10 minutes, then you don't need to ever play it again. Is a story needed? No. But they need to do something new.
Maddox then goes on to make another comparison to movies, so here's where the comparison to movies and videogames really pisses me off yet again. People...movies and videogames are two separate mediums. Saying videogames are copying movies is ignorant as shit. Why not say television is copying movies? Or movies are copying plays? Or plays are copying books? No one form of entertainment owns the right to tell a story. But yes, he does have a point that a lot of game makers don't have experience in story telling, in fact a lot of videogames design the levels first and try and build a story around that. Does it work? No, not always, but putting the effort into making a story is what differentiates games from each other. If all videogames had no stories then what would be the point in playing Gears of War and Mass Effect? Without the story they are 90% the same game. Or Batman and Shadow of Mordor, or Dragon Age and Witcher 3, or Sleeping Dogs and Grand Theft Auto, or Devil May Cry and God of War? Take away the story and characters and these games are practically the same apart from aestetically or with minor gameplay changes.
His next point feels like it was written by a 13 year old, he complains about unskippable cutscenes "Hey dickhead, i paid for the game, so i should be able to skip whatever the fuck i want." Hey Maddox, someone spent months working on this single cutscene and put a lot of hard work into it, how about you get off your high horse and have some damn patients you whiney brat? "The average age of a gamer is 31, that means we have jobs, families and shit to do" If you're life is so important that you can't spare 2 minutes to watch a cutscene then you clearly don't have time to be playing videogames dipshit.
Then he makes the dumbest possible descion and uses The Last of Us as an argument against videogame stories, you know, that game that was a massive success, was praised by both critics and audiences for it's engaging, intelligent and well developed story? Because that makes sense. His big problem here is "random character babble" where characters would talk about meaningless shit at random moments in the game. First of all, it's not random, the majority of dialogue at these intervals is often about the location they are in or about recent events. When it's not, it's acting as world building and making the characters feel more realistic and well developed, even the smallest of lines can actually add a lot to the character, seeing what they're like in their down time helps flesh them out. Am i a little biased in this case? No, i'm a lot biased, The Last of Us in my opinion is the greatest videogame story of all time, of course i'm going to defend it, especially with a weak as shit argument like this.
"Remember when people played videogames because they were fun?" oh right, because Rocket League, Bayonetta 2, Far Cry 4, Pokemon OmegaRuby, Grand Theft Auto V, Shovel Knight, Super Smash Bros, are in no way fun as hell and focuses more on the gaming aspect than the story. In fact, let's focus on some more story based games and remove the story, do they hold up? The Last of Us would still be an incredibly well put together stealth/action game with great shooting mechanics and customisation to your weapons. Spec Ops The Line has some of the best cover based mechanics to a third person shooter than i've ever seen. Shadow of the Colossus treats it's boss battles like puzzles that are challenging and rewarding, as well as having beautiful imagery and music. Arkham Asylum has one of the most influential combat systems of this generation and is fun as hell. So don't act like story is taking away from videogames, if anything it's improving them, making the format be taken more seriously as an artform and helping it expand it's audience and survive for generations to come. It's a shame because I love Maddox's videos, but this is the first one to make him seem like a douche bag who likes to complain about things just because they're different from what he wants when in reality there is no problem here at all, this isn't challenging comedy of opposing ideologies, this is just whining like a 13 year old spoilt brat.
-Danny
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