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Games That Advanced the Art of Storytelling 121

Posted by Zonk from the moving-on-up dept.
monikersi writes "In October 2006, the editors of Gamasutra asked its readership of game industry professionals to chime in and vote for which game brought storytelling forward in the biggest way, from any genre (text adventure through action title to RPG or sim and beyond) — there are plenty of picks, and some surprising winners." From the article: "Forcing the user to build the story piecemeal through personal logs and snippets of information throughout the game created a varied experience for each user. This drove the player to fill the holes in the story with the next log and their own assumptions and imagination. I remember playing System Shock 2 years after playing it for the first time and had a markedly different reaction due to changes in my own perspective. Phenomenal."
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Games That Advanced the Art of Storytelling

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  • XYZZY
  • Seriously, the bittersweet poignancy of the little guy, always eating but never turning into a lettuce dodger rarely fails to bring a tear to the old eye!
  • ...I find it a little insulting that they only list Planescape: Torment as a "runner up", while Final Fantasy VII is in the top 3. Torment is easily the best presented story in any game past or present, while Final Fantasy VII did nothing to advance storytelling in the medium in any meaningful way.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mprx ( 82435 )
      FFVII was the first Final Fantasy game (and maybe first Japanese RPG, I'm not 100% certain) with an unreliable narrator. This is far more significant than the character development "innovation" (it certainly wasn't the first game to kill a major PC), and the reason why FFVII has had such lasting appeal. What's more, the story was not spoonfed, it's entirely possible to complete the game without seeing information critical for understanding the story. This makes the game confusing enough that the finer po

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ProppaT ( 557551 )
      Not only did FF VII do nothing to advance storytelling in gaming, it set back the genre at the same time. It shifted the emphasis from imagination and open ended interpretation to tunnel visioned fmv popcorn flicks. One of the appeals of RPGs to many early players was that the story could be interepreted as they wanted. Most present RPG's play out like a movie and try to hard to explain things that should be left to the imagination. I think there's a place for both types but, unforutnately the old skool
    • This contest, or whatever, is broken. For "StarCraft" to be more highly rated for advancing the art of storytelling than "Facade" is a joke. A distortion of real value of Grammy-like proportions.
  • Farenheit/IP was touted as being a step forward but actual fact it was cobblers. Your actual actions had very little effect, the storyline was utterly linear, and characters appeared from nowhere. Oh, and the entire thing turned into the Matrix halfway through.

    As for Facade, I have to confess I've never been so moved by a story as when Trip finally opened the door to his flat, my character said 'Hello Trip, you colossal faggot' and he silently slammed the door in my face. Sheer artistry. I'd say this list

    • Farenheit/IP was more experimental than most adventure games. Instead of giving you just cut scenes to sit there and watch, it tried to make the interactive. I don't think it was very successful, but at least they tried.

  • Come on. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Who235 ( 959706 ) <secretagentx9@c[ ]com ['ia.' in gap]> on Friday November 03, 2006 @06:04PM (#16709601)
    All those games are so new.

    What about Zork [wikipedia.org]?

    And what about all the Sierra games from the 80's? (King's Quest, Space Quest, et.al.)
    • And what about all the Sierra games from the 80's? (King's Quest, Space Quest, et.al.)

      Agreed. Although I'm not a fan of King's Quest 1-4, I did love Kings Quest 5, 6, and 7.

      Surprisingly, how could they leave off Leisure Suite Larry?

      • Quest For Glory, Day of the Tentacle, and Police Quest as well. Or even earlier- The Black Cauldron. Played that on my Tandy 1000.
        • Ha, I played Tentacle and Police Quest (I & II) on two Tandy 1000s. The joys of playing games via floppy... especially with that Police Quest II copy protection. Ouch.
      • I also left off Oregon Trail, Indiana Jones, Monkey Island, Loom. 'Everybody' from my generation seems to remember playing Oregon trail on Apple ]['s at school- and Indiana Jones was pretty spectacular for its time. There were plenty of great games at the dawn of personal computing- though there were quite a lot more in the very early 90's.
      • Surprisingly, how could they leave off Leisure Suite Larry?

        Well, I know there's middle age spread and all, but I doubt he's turned into a three-piece couch set. /sorry
    • Heh. I RTFA only to find out if they'd mention Zork, as everyone else always does, or a text adventure that actually has a developed story - such as A Mind Forever Voyaging! Whew.

      What about Zork, then? It's fun, even atmospheric - but the prose is only so-so, and there isn't much of a story, is there? It's more of an intricate, geeky puzzlebox than an interactive fiction, and overshadowed (in that respect) by more or less every other text adventure Infocom ever released. A Mind Forever Voyaging is no ran
    • They mentioned A Mind Forever Voyaging, a game with a story about 3 orders of magnitude greater than Zork-anything. Sorry, but it's true... the commentary was true as well, even the INTRO to the game almost put me in tears, but the ending was so amazing that it was the only thing I could think about for weeks. A Mind Forever Voyaging is probably the greatest work in interactive fiction. (Trinity had almost the same effect on me, as well.)

      But hey, the list actually mentioned Marathon although I think it shou
      • Trinity's aged a lot better than AMFV, which oozes with 70's futurism - The movie version would undoubtedly feature Charleton Heston
    • holycrap that was exactly what I was gonna post I'm old :(
  • For pure storytelling, I still think that was the best in breed for the Final Fantasy's up to and including X-2. X was close though, that was another good story.

    Planescape: Torment was great, one of the first games to not have obvious "right" and "wrong" dialogue choices.

    Baldur's Gate 2 was another solid choice.

    I would have put Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in their as well, but I suppose they went with Jade Empire instead. Now, if only LA had wanted to actually build a game instead of just market

  • I was fairly content with this. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nathan s ( 719490 ) on Friday November 03, 2006 @06:16PM (#16709793) Homepage
    I do think Baldur's Gate and Planescape could have been higher, but I have consistently told my friends that the Half Life and Deus Ex games felt like reading a great novel or watching a good movie as much as they did playing games. Those are the only two games I find myself going back to repeatedly, apart from Civilization. Sheer, utter brilliance. I only wish there were more games like those two.
    • The list did have games like that, though. Marathon and System Shock II, specifically. A little more primitive than Deux Ex's nice Unreal-based graphics, but story-wise they're great.
  • I can't believe they omitted that. The original scared the shit out of me first time through.
    • Awesome series. Great gameplay, but I don't know about advancing the art of storytelling.

      Mind you, I'd easily rank all 3 somewhere in my top-20, desert-island list of the best games of all time... but the storytelling part of them wasn't exactly revolutionary. Still images with a voiceover before each mission, and some text to read. Meh.

      Maybe the best ending to a game trilogy ever, though. Damn satisfying.

  • Marathon (Score:3, Insightful)

    by telbij ( 465356 ) * on Friday November 03, 2006 @06:19PM (#16709829)
    I gotta give this award to Bungie for the Marathon series. It didn't feature fancy cut scenes or voiceovers, but in the Doom era of FPS, having a plot was unheard of. The story was told through a series of terminals where you would communicate with one of several AIs or other people. The plot was central to the gameplay, and was very twisted, so your enemies and friends changed frequently. The level design was also quite a bit more varied and inspired by the story, then say, Doom where the levels are basically just designed around gameplay.

    Although modern FPS stories are more cinematic, Marathon did more with less.
  • I liked Zelda 2 a lot more than most people did, and still enjoy it today. But these people are nuts if they think it motivated storytelling.
    • In terms of 1980s gaming, it actually may have. Remember, this is back when "fight some monsters to kill a bad guy!" was considered a plot line. Zelda 2 had sub-plots, side quests, and NPCs. Limited, yes, but still a new idea.

      I'd have to look at it relative to other games such as FF, release dates and such, to really justify it though.
      • Zelda 2 and Ultima 5 were released in the US the same year. Ultima 4 predates all Zelda games. Am I really suposed to believe there is something innovative about Zelda's story telling? The total omission of Adventure/Colossal Cave (for the genre) or Zork (for the advanced parser) is pretty unbelievable, too.
        • Zelda 2 and Ultima 5 were released in the US the same year. Ultima 4 predates all Zelda games.

          See, I said I needed to check on release dates. That pretty much settles it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by donaldm ( 919619 )
      Actually Zelda II got panned by the purists although I enjoyed it since it was refreshingly different from the original Zelda (I liked this as well). This game did have some story telling although not a lot though but interesting nevertheless especially when you consider this was on the NES. This game also had an element of RPG stat raising and you were free to upgrade certain statistics in any order.
  • I would have put FF-VII above Half Life, but otherwise a pretty good list. One of the commenters nailed it right on the head for FF-VII: When a particular series of tones on a dialed-in phone number immediately cause me to think of a video game half a decade after I last picked it up, that's a helluvva good story.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )
      While FF7 may have had a good story, it was told horribly. It was almost impossible to follow, with large parts of the game not making any sense. I think the writer of the final draft was drunk when they put pen to paper.
      • FF VII had a terrible translation. Most wrote off the story towards the end as "just being japanese". But I thought it made sense after reading some translations and the writtin addendums square released.
    • I like FF games, but they don't advance the art of storytelling at all, and their stories are epic melodramas - a fairly old, established type of story. They are moving and powerful, really, only if you have a fairly limited exposure to the possibilities of narrative. This is understandable: they are oriented toward teenagers.

      I think they "tell" more interesting "stories" in the characterizations of the worlds they portray, really, with their fantasy architectures and cultures. In any case, I'm still disapp
  • ...but the placement of some of those games is just nuts. Planescape should be much, much higher. It's the best storytelling in an RPG to date.
  • Syberia [adventurec...ygames.com] and Syberia II should be on that list. A truly moving story.
  • I can't believe that Chrono Trigger didn't make this list at all. Like Final Fantasy 7, I found myself incredibly endeared to the game's characters. Interspersing the game's locales throughout the past, present, and future meant your actions in one time could drastically affect the world in later times. You felt like your small group of characters were shaping the history of an entire world.

    One of the very best selling SNES games, and a blurring of the line between linear and non-linear storytelling.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by maeltor ( 679257 )
      I completely agree. At the very LEAST it should have an honorable mention. I still play that game constantly on my SNES. That and EARTHBOUND!!!!! If either of those games broke or my SNES broke I'd buy new copies or a new system on EBAY that night. My original SNES is still going strong.
  • I really appreciated the way the backstory was presented in Metroid Prime, scanning Space Pirate logs and looking at recent environmental damage to see what happened. All completely and safely ignorable, but everything you scan adds a little touch of detail to the world, and it really makes you appreciate the deliberation put into its development.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )
      It actually made me ignore all that effort. Spreading a story by placing a ton of post-its all over the levels that connect in no way whatsoever to the actually gameplay is probally the worst way to tell a story. Scanning logs and reading email is very fine to add detail to the story, but as the only element to tell the story I found it absolutly aweful. Having enemies that always respawn in the same spots was another thing that ruined any immersion into that little bit of story that there was.
    • Yes, but it's nothing that Marathon hadn't already done almost a decade before, and Marathon *is* on the list. Personally, I thought Metroid Prime was kind of lame, but part of that was probably the strange controls that I never could get used to.
  • Any such list without Kanon on it isn't worth the...platterspace it's written on.
  • Another World, aka Out of This World [wikipedia.org] really deserves to be on the list.

    You're dropped onto an alien planet. There's absolutely no dialog (except that between aliens which is incomprehensible), but the emotional content is huge.

    There's also an updated version that runs fine under XP if you want to experience it for the first time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dolson ( 634094 )
      Ma tu va!

      (At least that's the dialog I heard in the second level when the big guy smacks you on the shoulder or whatever those blocky characters are doing...) Ah, the good ol' SNES.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by juletre ( 739996 )
      Myst.

      You're dropped onto an island. There is absolutely no intro or clues as to what you are doing there. In another world at least you know some experiment went wrong.

      That Myst didn't make it to the list just says that the list is flawed and should not be used for anything. IMHO.
  • I hate them as much as the next guy. But what of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus?
  • Half-Life gets my vote.
    • But HL2 was pretty decent. Yes, it was an FPS, but as far as a storyline in FPS's go it did a pretty good job of mixing plot with action.

      • HL2 was a spectacular single player FPS experience, no doubt. And in comparison with most other shooters that have ever been made, HL2 stands far above them all regarding storyline. I feel that HL1 did a better job with the story, though. There was just more awe and mystery and speculation surrounding the entire ordeal and all the events that were going on within the game. My gripe with HL2 is that certain parts of the game just felt like they went on too long without being interesting or showing the player

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by phorm ( 591458 )
          Are you saying "I dunno about HL1" because you actually don't know about it (haven't played it?), or are you just politely disagreeing?

          The former. I didn't really get much into HL1 at the time and thus never dived far into the storyline, so I'm forced to comment purely on HL2. As far as the suckage-of-sequels usually goes though, HL1 was (from what I heard) good, and HL2 even better, which is more than most sequel games every accomplish. It seems that for a time FPS's tend to age better (AVP, AVP2 were g

          • Oh, well if you're talking about altogether, then yes, I would say that HL2 was a big improvement over HL1. It's more fun to play all around. Better multiplayer, better single player, better graphics, more fun physics engine, better gameplay, blah blah blah. The story of HL1 was just one of the few areas in which I think HL1 excelled.

            I highly recommend playing the original sometime.
  • Earthbound for the SNES

    The Golden Sun Series for the GBA

    The Ninja Gaiden Series for the NES

    Both Legend of Zelda games for the N64.

    Beneath a Steel Sky for the PC/Amiga
    • I love Earthbound with a passion, but it wasn't really revolutionary. It had a great story, very entertaining elements, and pop-culture references, but the plot was linear (not a bad thing, just already done) and apparently the whole story in modern times thing was already done.

      Still in my top 5 RPG list, though.
    • Beneath a Steel Sky was excellent - and is available as freeware and runs perfectly under ScummVM [scummvm.org].
  • Ultima IV, for taking that step away from "hack 'n' slash". It wasn't the first, but it was important. Ultima V had the same virtue they gave Zelda 2- a living world, where people had schedules and interacted. They came out the same year, though, so I'm not inclined to take props away from Zelda. :)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tilde.d ( 994884 )
      Lets not forget Ultima VII. First game that offered a way to earn money without dungeon crawling: Making bread! I remember crashing the game from making too many loaves: you get 1 gold for each loaf, made over 300, had a memory overflow.
  • So many of those games especially the so-called 'honorable mentions' are among my all time favourites. I do have a beef with some of the listings however. STARCRAFT the RTS that everyone skips the cutscenes on and the inferior-story-but-first-3D-FF-game FF7 get in the top 5 but Xenogears, possibly the richest and most intricate storyline ever developed for the limited genre that is the console RPG only gets an HR? That's just wrong. Xenogears is the game that completely turned around my opinion of the "l
    • Agreed. Xenogears is by far the most detailed and rich RPG I have ever played. I couldn't get into Xenosaga though, they had way too many cutscenes in the beginning.
  • I'll start from the top and work down. It's true that Deus Ex deserves at least one of the top five, and Half life deserves points also, but Final Fantasy 7? IV and VI did more with less, FFVII was a turning point for long time fans as it seemed that Square started pushing graphics over story (a move that is finally being reversed). Just because a game is graphically impressive didn't make the story telling better, it just made it easier to get away with less. I feel FFVII is one of the Final fantasy th
    • On the other hand they didn't act like Halo created a First Person story, and for that I'm thankful. But how about Quake 2, the first FPS that actually had a real story. HL came later and was better, but Quake 2 deserves props.

      Uh, did you not see Marathon on the list? Marathon came out ages before Quake 2, and has a story better than Half-Life's. (At least in my opinion.)

      I get the impression that you didn't read the list all the way through.
      • Or I like almost everyone else never played Marathon. Sorry I didn't spend 2000 dollars back then to get a mac just to play that one game, I was too busy playing the shareware Apogee put out, that I just didn't have time to play that one game.

        From the little I saw of the game I saw no story, but maybe. Then again the perfect game wouldn't be perfect if no one played it, and that's one of the flaws of Marathon.
        • Well, whether you played it or not, the article contains enough information for anybody who actually paid any attention to it to declare your claim that Quake 2 was the first FPS with any decent story completely and utterly wrong. No matter how obscure Marathon is, it did come out years before Quake 2. (And for the record, Marathon 2, arguably the best game in the series, was ported to Windows. So if you didn't play that one, it's nobody's fault but your own.)

          Also, popularity != good, which is a major probl

  • Chronotrigger? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SoapDish ( 971052 )
    This quote from the FF7 page made me laugh:

    Final Fantasy VII is the first game I can remember that had a main character die as part of the unavoidable main story path, and the first game that truly moved me to think of games as a medium for creative expression in terms of the storyline's divergence from a linear path.

    Chronotrigger had both a main character unavoidably die, and a divergent story line. In fact when THE main character died, you could choose whether or not to resurrect him. There were many side

    • Maybe because so many people wanted to revive aeris (with so many rumors of ways to do it) and still couldn't compared to someone that you can fairly easily "revive" in the storyline and that there isn't a cult following of people who wants to revive him?

      Killing Aeris was unexpected and heartbreaking...
      Killing Chrono and replacing with a doll later on made lots of people forget he even "died" in the story...
    • Nor did Ultima VII, which also had a main character die.
    • Either way, Phantasy Star 2 and 4 had heartrending character deaths years before FFVII did. Granted, the impact of the death in PS2 wasn't as great due to the limits of technology on the ability to play out a drama, but PS4 hit me a thousand times harder than FF7 ever did. It was actually a likable, strong, 3-dimensional character that died rather than the usual "magic-using anime princess sweetheart" that too many RPGs opt to include.
      • Thank you for remembering the Phantasy Star series. I praise the PS4 death for the same reasons you do, but the PS2 one hit me more - for console RPG players, this *was* the first big midgame playable chara death. And it's not just a "oh, what a cute, adowwable character" sympathy ploy - it's a horribly unjust death from a moral and ethical standpoint, so it's a double whammy. Not that it doesn't pull on the heartstrings - from the dying character's plea that no "mistake" like them be ever born aga

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by tilde.d ( 994884 )
          PS2 Forever! I'm always on the look out for PS games and have been rather disappointed with the stuff that's come out (trying PS Universe now). And to top it off... there has been a remake: Phantasy Star Generation 2. At this point, I can't find anything that says will be released in America so Japan gets to get the re-release! ARGH!
    • "How does FF7 even get mentioned, when Chronotrigger doesn't?"

      Because FF7 was the first FF to be mainstream, and for the kids who are gamers now, FF7 was the first one they played. They won't play the older games because they're 2D, they're automatically inferior. Shallow, uninformed and uneducated gamers are the sole reason a mediocre game such as FF7 is remembered as this end-all-be-all of RPGs.
    • *ahem* you forgot about Tellah. Spoony bard.
  • As with all lists, there is always some stuff that is missing, while I am very happy that Dreamfall made it in there I missed. First "The Last Express", which I think was the first (almost) realtime-adventure/game out there. Secondly the classic "Another World", which had an amazing story told with almost no word of dialog: "Good moring professor. I have seen you have driven here in your Ferrari", thats all the dialog you ever get in the whole game. It also was the game that broke virtually every rule of th
    • What about Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception and Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge? Then there was the first MechWarrior game. Three games in a series that were all completely different and all had fantastic story lines. I know that even for Slashdoot, I am setting myself up for being called a nerd, but I used to spend hours just reading the manuals for those games, trying to decide which Mechs were better for the current situation and memorising the starmaps and history...

  • I think Myst was the first ever 'storyline' type game that completely sucked me in. No mention of it anywhere...
  • Anyone? Also, Fallout an honerable mention, bah, I should learn never to read these top x lists.
    • I was thinking StarCon2 as well.
      Also, there might not be characters as such, but the story of empires rising and falling throughout the Civ series should have gotten a mention. Who here hasn't had to warm their hands over a toaster at 4am because they want to see their city with just another wonder in it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LSD-OBS ( 183415 )
      Damn straight. Star Control II didn't even get an honourable mention!

      There was nothing else like it in its time. The story was complex, deep, interwoven, and entirely surprising and shocking at times. It blew my mind many times over. The story was much cleverer than, say, Grim Fandango, which placed 5th in that list.

  • I really like to see someone talking about storytelling in video games since I've thought for a long while that it's still horribly lacking. I'm a bit disappointed though, not only because it's one of those "X things that ...", but also because the author doesn't even take time to define what he's talking about, like it's a given. And i feel that sometimes, storytelling is mixed/confused with just story.

    Story is about what you say, storytelling is about how you say it. What happens at the end of Fallout i

  • Nothing even comes close to Metal gear solid 1 and 2, talk about an immersive film!

    I remember buying a ps2 just for the MGS2 demo.
  • I have never played Deus Ex, but I have played almost all of the rest of those games to completion...without a doubt Xenogears is the most thought-provoking, intricate, and truly awesome story of all time. I really wish they had given it more than just an honorable mention.
    • You need to play Deus Ex. It has got to be one of the best games I have ever played. I have replayed it about a dozen times because it has real replayability. In addition it has great cheats that makes playing it even more fun. When friends ask for game reccomendations it is always the first one I mention. Plus it is old enough that most computer systems can handle the computer requirements quite easily
  • I honestly don't understand why Final Fantasy VII is almost universally considered to be better than VI. IMHO the characters in VI were developed far better, the storyline was more in depth and intriguing, and even the music (gasp) was better!
  • The last game I played that I felt truly immensed in the story was the Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker. It kept me on the story so much that the gameplay was as natural as turning pages of a book. The only other game to effect me like that was Chrono Trigger, of course. The Mega Man series and all its different branchings has kept me quite involved over the years as well.
  • I always liked the degree of differences in the dialog trees in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Your character's attributes really changed the way people would talk to you and interact with you, game quests and how to complete them. And playing the Nosferatu and moving about in the sewers all the time was like playing a totally different game. I easily played this game 5-6 times, which I never do just to see the different ways the game would react to different characters and scenarios. Sure the stor
    • VTMB is one of my all time favourite games (despite its extreme buginess and bad performance) and while I do think it has one of the best storylines of any game (and one of the best twists), I don't think it actually did much for furthering the way stories are told in games. It did much the same things with character interactions that RPGs have been using for a while. Although the extra insights you'd get as a Malkavian were quite interesting.
  • Sad that so many "newer" games get touted as being so good when there were lots of momentous storyline games 10, 20 years ago. Games like Quest For Glory IV (and various other Sierra Quest games). Hell even new amazing storytelling games like KotoR aren't even mentioned, but SIMS is? What story is there to Sims!? It's just the minutiae of real life turned into a video game! (And it was rather addictive until I realized I could clean up my actual house instead of a virtual one and have a far greater reward)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )
      KotoR is mentioned in combination with Jades Empire. In terms of Serria adventures they have Gabriel Knight. About the Sims, keep in mind that the article is about storytelling, not story. In terms of storytelling The Sims is quite interesting, since it doesn't have a predefined story, but instead the storys emerge from its gamemechanics, like in few other games. Sure, you never get more deep of the story then random soup opera stuff, but its still a huge leap in terms of storytelling.
  • now don't get me wrong. i'm a huge starcraft fan and have probably spent hundreds of hours playing the game (if not thousands). it is most deffinitly one of the most well balanced rts games ever.

    but really, was the campaign that much more compelling than any other rts of the period? all the story was, was an excuse to build a base and go blow up your opponent's base. sure there was the occasional non base building mission that seemed to show up in alot of rts games of the period but this certainly wasnt don
    • Uh, yes, actually. Starcraft had actual writers, plot, compelling characters, and the *way* it was told was a huge leap over anything else of the time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )
        the command and conquer series was doing campaigns of the style used in starcraft well before starcraft was released. even dune 2 (the first base building rts) had done a campaign like this. you didnt have units with names in dune 2 but otherwise it was the same idea. the gameplay in SC was revolutionary but the campaign itself had been done several times before

        Also, those were hardly compelling characters in starcraft.
  • I'm glad to see that A Mind Forever Voyaging made it onto their honorable mentions list. I remember getting sucked into that game around sixth grade or so. It was truly an experience to sit there at the computer reading the screen and seeing how the authors made civilization change from decade to decade. Parks and streets came and went. Businesses transformed themselves. Honestly, it really did open my eyes to the types of changes I could expect to see over my lifetime (not the sort of thing a typical 13 ye
    • Then again, perhaps you shouldn't. I'm periodically gripped by a desire to play a favourite game of yore and occasionally do go through the necessary motions to install one. I am invariably disappointed. When I first played these games back in the early nineties, there was a true sense of wonder and discovery. Somehow, along the way, I've lost that. Better then to allow those game experiences to remain golden in memory than to drag them once more into the harsh light of modern day. I'd hate for you to
  • I wanted to enjoy the story in Final Fantasy anything, but the realization that the "storytelling" was about as competent as "Days of our Lives" made me stop before I turned stupid.

  • How? (Score:1)

    by Theaus ( 993406 )
    Do you seperate advances in storytelling versus a good story? And multiple points of view/main characters isn't exactly earth shattering

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