Has the story died?

[Commonmind]

Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, and the more recent Bioshock, were all fantastic gaming experiences that also told deep and meaningful stories. The former having an engaging and compelling narrative, which has, in my humble opinion, yet to be outmatched.

Save a few exceptions, it seems that we rarely see a title these days which has a genuine story to tell. Style over substance, and all that.

Lucien brought up a good point in another post, questioning Bioware's choice to go the MMO route for its followup to the amazing Knights of the Old Republic -- though the why is easily answered: a financial golden ticket.

I think I find it a little ironic that we've gotten to a point where the technology allows developers room to tell stories without limitations, yet we see the opposite happening. Turning the page back a few years we find games which were held back by their engines and the consumer's inferior hardware, yet they did an unbelievable job of telling a story and pulling the player into the world.

I guess I'm personally a bit disappointed myself, after having seen (not only the announcement of the Old Republic) the recent videos of BioWare's next single-player driven RPG, Dragon Age -- which looks like it took not one, but several pages from the Lord of the Rings, and overall seems to offer nothing new to the genre.

So has the story died in gaming?

[Overread]

I think its simple - in the past the game engine, graphics, units, balancing and such all took far less time than they do now - so there was more time for scripting and story work.
Also the pace of the industry was different, in the golden age of gaming the games would fly off the shelves and they worked - expectation of computer users computer capacty were more realistic in the past. If you bought a game chances are your computer could run it.
Today the market is different, people are harder to win over, graphics and game engines take far longer to put together to start with and then models ingame are far more complex. Ergo it takes a lot longer to develop a working game world - that leaves you less time in development to write out the story.
Also I feel that developers are being affected by marketing - marketing departments that say its graphics, showyness, strategically shown cinematics and hints of online play functions that really sell most games --- note the lack of a good story or even single player mode in that assessment. Ergo we got games like NWN which was not made for the recluse geek, but for the outgoing sort *online of course* who was also willing to make their own campain. A fantastic idea, but it means your singleplayer experience is hobbled.
I think we will see this for a long time to go sadly - especailly from the big (EA) developers who have quick turn arounds with games - no longer can they spend months simply making a story (that won't earn any money - ho ho and how may people buy Baldurs Gate currently just because of that story??). Graphics, bling and online play (and online fees) are the order of the day at the moment and until the graphics area calms down i don't see it changing much.
Its already going too fast for most people to keep up - Supreme Commander and Crisis both were released with requirements far in excess of the average computers ability to support (heck crisis still is for most people) - this can't keep going or developers will outpace their own market - and a big area of the casual gamers will be lost.

There are some hopes though, Blizzard have Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 comming out - the latter has also been split into 1 release and 2 upgrades with each one containing a single races campain - 30 missions each going Terran, Zerg, Protoss. Also companies like Stardock (?) are producing games such as Sins of a Solar Empire which are delibratly hobbled graphically to allow them to be supported on lower spec computers whilst still being visually attractive.

[Cayal]

Story hasn't died, original thought is struggling though.

[Urlik]

in the days of the computer hardware holding back the games, the games needed stories to keep them linear as the hardware and game engines couldn't cope with huge open ended games (although the Elite series managed this somehow :shrugs: )
but there are still plenty of games coming out that have stories to tell.

even the open ended games like TES IV: Oblivion have stories and I expect Bethesda will continue to make this type of game as it will always sell well.

[Commonmind]

I was a fan of Oblivion, but it didn't really tell an intriguing story. As with other iterations of the Elder Scrolls series, the story was a backdrop for the world, not vice versa. And your insinuation that we no longer need stories because technology allows for a less linear experience is troubling; I don't believe these concepts need to be mutually exclusive -- in fact, I think the problem is that the developers still haven't figured out how to stop themselves from doing just that; creating games which are expansive, while telling interesting stories.

[Urlik]

it isn't that we don't need stories, some of us do, but there are plenty of people playing MMO games that don't have a linear story to follow and loads more MP games like CS where 2 teams battle it out in various arenas with no story to follow in the gameplay.
these are great for developers as it means they don't have to do one of the hardest creative jobs in bringing out a new game.
but then when you do get a real gem, like Deus Ex or Half Life, you realise how much fun the story driven games can be.

[Lith]

Games have stories? Admittedly I haven't played a lot of the titles mentioned, but the only games I've ever played with anything resembling real story are Final Fantasies.