Castle Paradox

[Onlyoneinall]

I don't understand what people liked about Golden Sun's story. The story idea was hardly original, and while this wouldn't necessarily be a deterrent for making the story still memorable, both games made themselves so not because the dialogue was great, but because the dialogue was shit. None of the characters had any distinctive personality and they all blended in with one another. If I had to describe each character's personality, it would be something like this -

Issac - Wishy washy, then suddenly cops an attitude
Garet - Stupid
Ivan - Weakling
Mia - Girl
Felix - Obsessive, then suddenly wishy washy
Jenna - Stupid
Sheba - Girl
Piers - Weakling

I disagree that Golden Sun did something right storywise. I don't know who this 'many' that cried out for Issac and co. to be in Brawl happens to be, but it's definitely not because of their personality.
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

[The Drizzle]

[Moogle1]

The thing is, you're muddying the definition of story to the point where you can't say if it's good or bad. That's not good.

Let's subdivide it: plot, characters, and setting. Plot is the basic progression of events, the what of the story. Honestly, most video games follow a very hackneyed, cliched plot. For example, Final Fantasy 6 and Secret of Mana have exactly the same plot.

Characters provide the meat of the story. This category could be further subdivided, but this is fine for our purposes. A character can be a blank slate, like in most American RPGs, or he can have tons of backstory and personality and motivation and so on. Backstory is usually not part of the plot.

Setting is a peripheral piece of the story, but in some cases it's important. Exploration-based games like Shadow of the Colossus rely on setting to make you care about the game world, whereas the Final Fantasy series does this through characters. Setting is also usually very important to the story of horror games.

In a sense, all games have a story -- the playing of a game tells that story. For example, playing Tetris shows me the story of a bunch of blocks falling from the middle of nowhere. Eventually those blocks stack up too high and the story is over. It's a really boring story, but it's a story nonetheless. A better story is the story of Fatal Maze, where an unnamed hero fights a bunch of monsters and eventually kills a dragon. It's not much of a story either, but it's something.

A good story has certain objective qualities: it captures the interest of the reader/listener/player and it evokes emotion in him. The better the story, the more interest and more emotion. These vary from person to person, but a given person can say that it objectively captured X interest and evoked Y emotion.

Story isn't the easiest thing to quantify. It's hard to scientifically measure how good a story is, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to accurately determine whether a story is good or bad.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Onlyoneinall]

That was well put Mog, I was also going to say a good story tends to evoke a person's emotion and interest more, but it looks like I won't have to say anything about that. now.

It's important that a story is able to suspend a person's sense of reality somewhat. Not sure if that was said correctly, but what I mean is I guess caring about what is happening, even though it isn't real. If a character in said game dies and you feel hurt or shocked, there's a good chance the story must be good. However, if you aren't bothered to care at all, the story is probably not holding up. There is the fact that some may be more affected by certain stories than others.

One of the important factors is being able to relate to the story in some way. While we may not be in a world full of magic and dragons and flying donkeys, a world such as that surely has conflicts and inhabitants with inner conflicts just as we do. Being able to relate to characters in this element can allow a stronger connection with someone who is not existent in our reality.

Of course this can't always be the case. A game that takes place in a more realistic setting is going to have an easier time incorporating things to allow us to relate. It doesn't have to necessarily be "Oh wow, that character has been abused as a child? So have I... and the way they are like is sort of how I am because of my traumatic past..." Perhaps the character is out for revenge because someone has killed their brother. The character can express rage, hatred, sorrow, and other emotions that would be like one who has lost their sibling to a murder. You may not have lost a sibling yourself, but if you really love your brother and you imagine yourself in the character's position and can feel their emotions in that sense, then that's a good thing.

Basically, a good story should be able to make you feel. A bad story would make you care less. A good story should be able to cliche elements and stlil make you care. I hope I explained all this well enough.
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

[The Drizzle]

(I'm going to kill myself. I spent a good 10 minutes typing in a response and then I wasn't logged in so it all got erased. I hate that. Here's the abridged version of what I said.)

Moogle: You're missing the storytelling aspect of a story. There's pace, tone, point of view, and a lot more that go into the actual way a story is perceived. It isn't just plot, setting, and characters. That's an enormous oversimplification. This isn't really an argument, more of an expansion of what you said about the parts of a story. The same story told in two different ways makes a world of difference.

[Moogle1]

Storytelling is completely distinct from the story itself, although when people refer to a game's story they usually also mean the storytelling.

I didn't say it was easy to deterministically say a story is good or bad. In fact, I said the opposite, but I said it's possible.

Let's use a metaphor. Suppose the story is a drug. It has different effects on different people, but if it's a good drug then it'll have positive effects on people, and a bad drug will affect people negatively. The fact of its effects differing from person to person doesn't mean that you can't call it good or bad. We'd generally call aspirin a good drug even though some people are allergic to it. The same applies to stories. Not everyone will react the same way to it.

As an addendum, a story everyone hates is better than a story no one cares about.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Newbie_Power]

[Artimus Bena]

The words good and bad are just words. They blend into each other at some point, so dealing with them as extremes is a little short sighted in my opinion. Since we are not one consciousness, good and bad can be defined in any way which anyone pleases and they will be "correct". It's like the subtle (or not so subtle, who knows) differences in the way we perceive colors. Instead of saying someone is wrong (which is also just a WORD), it's a more enlightened gesture to agree to disagree. Everything we say, think and do is strained through a (currently) incalculable filter of bias. However, in spite of this viewpoint I will have appease my own bias and agree with drizzle. There's more to what makes a traditionally good story, good. There really are very few "rules", and even those are mainly culturally influenced. It's not as simple as programming, where the right words and organization make a "good" story. That kind of formulaic approach is what makes a lot of films terrible. I do see though why the telling of a story in a game should differ from that in a movie. Generally I find that there's a different balance which must be achieved, since what makes a game a game is the direct interactivity, an element that films and music do not have, and naturally aren't obligated to accommodate.
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SACRE BLEU!

|||Compositions!
|||Eldardeen Soundtrack!
|||Red Mercury!

[Moogle1]

"Enlightened" is just a word. Your argument is made of just words. Words, words, words. This is a dumb argument and I can't understand why anyone would use it. We use words as a means to express concretes. Don't be relativistic. When I use words, they mean something and I'll thank you all to stop robbing them of that meaning.

Anyway. You're misinterpreting me, and it's hard to say whether you're being intentionally obtuse or you didn't understand my point of view to begin with. Nowhere did I say that a set of rules makes something good or bad. I said it's measurable, which is far from the same thing.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Artimus Bena]

[Ronin Catholic]

There is such a thing as a gray area, but it's much smaller than most people think.

Personally, I loved the story, especially the characters, of Golden Sun. Now, I may agree that they're objectively bad character designs, but that is exactly where I find them charming. What I liked about Golden Sun was the way it managed to fill almost every cliche.
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"I didn't start the flame war;
I don't know what you thought here
'Twas that way when I got here"

"I didn't start the flame war;
I can't understand a word you're saying
nor the game you're playing~"

[Clamps]

Where a story falls in the good-great spectrum is a matter of subjective opinion.

Where a story fall on the good-acceptable-bad spectrum can be measured objectively.

It's exactly the same as music, in that regard.

[The Drizzle]

[Newbie_Power]

[Moogle1]

See, that's the distinction I'm trying to make. A story's goodness isn't tied to a person. I think Ronin Catholic best sums it up in his comment: