We are going to have to agree to disagree... Game writing requires talent and discipline. Today we have some of the best video games ever. Well, I'm talking about the RPG games department. First person shooters have gone downhill. But RPG games are amazing... I'm talking about great storylines and beautiful architectural designs. Let me tell you something... The physics engine is also fantastic! If game writing was trash, all video-game selling stores would have been out of business since 2010. Technology has improved and so has game writing.

I'm just gonna assume that you're not a completionist, because if you were you'd know that probing does not add pacing. It adds hours of repetitive drudgery.

It may be better than in 1995 and many people might like it, but that doesn't change my personal opinion that, compared to storytelling and writing quality in other artforms (theater, film, books, comics), games writing has absolutely abysmal standards. Not a single game I have been told has good writing ever impressed me much. Even the best pales in comparision to middling examples in those other artforms. Plus games writing (especially in RPG's) has a weird tendency to dive heavily into exposition - which is just a really awful thing to do and which would be frowned upon heavily in any other medium of storytelling.

At the risk of being a really arrogant a-hole, I'll have to say that I'd wager most gamers don't exactly read many proper books or watch proper movies of the type made for grown ups (so to speak). Super hero and fantasy movies don't count. Writing in games could easily look a lot better if you don't have much of a frame of reference. I might be wrong, but It's beyond me how one could see games as having great writing, while at the same time having seen the best of other artforms. The math on that just doesn't check out in my mind. As alway, I might be wrong.

/snobby old guy ramble

I think gamers just don't care as much about storyline and cutscenes as the actual game, and even when it's a "story" game, the gameplay still takes the edge off a 2nd-rate story so that it doesn't bug you as much as it might.

I have a really hard time understanding how exactly that works, especially when a lot of gamers explicitly say that they mainly play games for the story.

So the story just becomes something to progress through for a sense of accomplishment? That would explain something, but also be a really sad thing to reduce storytelling to.

I can see the point of story in a game a bit better if a game really uses the interactivity to do something interesting with it. That old Blade Runner adventure game with the myriad story branches was sort of fun to explore.

Cut scenes, logs and walk'n'talk sequences in action games drive me nuts. Extended story sequences and shooter gameplay go together like peanut butter and mayonnaise.

You know how in a movie there's a scene, which then follows another scene, and then there's more scenes? Not really how story in a video game works. There can be minutes or even hours of gameplay in-between "scenes" so that shoddy story writing isn't necessarily as obvious or jarring.

I liked stories in games better back when they were just a short pre-rendered cut-scene inserted for every handful of gameplay levels. You could watch them and marvel at the horrible 90's 3D modelling or instantly skip them and continue playing. Then Half Life came and they made you wait while the scientist stands in front of the door you have to get through while talking at you. Ever since the influence of Half-Life took hold, for me, stories have been something very unwelcome in a lot of games.

Except MGS4 which has hours and hours of cutscenes and only about an hour of actual gameplay.

New Hearthstone expansion drops tomorrow and damn it looks awesome.