MY BRAIN HAD A THINK ABOUT A GAM3

Exactly!

I can't comment on Jak, but you look from Crash to Last of Us, which The Last of Us Part II has Halley Gross co-writing along with Neil.

That studios evolve overtime and why Naughty Dog is the best of the best.

Especially when hear what's happening with Xbox Game Studios, takes time to be that good not let's buy studios and hire peeps.

I don't even know where to start with some of those recent posts.

EDIT:

Buska wrote:

I've liked games' stories but usually, like yourself Jim, because they're tied to the gameplay or expressed through the gameplay or whatever.

If a game feels like watching a TV show or reading a book, I'd usually rather actually watch a TV show or read a book. For one thing, they're different headspaces and when I'm up for one I'm not necessarily up for the other.

This from Buska pretty much covers how I feel though & why I said elsewhere on here that no one recently has done it better than Hades because everything is just so interconnected that if you remove one element then the game is worse off for it.

Because I have a bunch of different games on the go at one time, having one game that feels like a book amongst them isn't a problem for me. I can fit it in when the headspace is right. (Also maybe my headspace is perhaps less sophisticated, i.e. if it's on a games machine and there's some level of interaction beyond the cerebral then it's a game to me. Nonetheless Fata Morgana definitely occupied a slightly different space in my schedule than, say, Beast Breaker.)

OrangeRakoon wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

I agree with this for the most part, but what's the difference between story and plot?

As I understand it to be usually differentiated, plot is the series of events, the logical cause-and-effect, the bullet point list of scenes that objectively happen. Story is described in themes, it's the message, the moral, the Point with a capital P. Plot serves the story. Something can be well plotted without any substance, or conversely full of plot holes (logical errors in how events unfold) but with a compelling story.

The Last of Us Part II has a very compelling story about the futility of revenge, the cycle of hate, and the effect of perspective on empathy. It's plot is full of contrivances in people just happening to bump into each other so that events can play out. That's what I am meaning!

Ah, okay! Is this an officially defined distinction? Because otherwise I think I'd just call that, 'story/plot' vs. 'themes' or 'thematics'.

I agree that the themes are a different aspect of storytelling to the plot though. It is however not one I tend to think about much in videogames, because in the videogames I play there's not so much emphasis on thematics, or they're often quite trite. When I do notice it it's when a game has done it wrong, like Ys IX's treatment of rebelling against oppressors and how you shouldn't. (Yes really. ('Ys really'?))

I've also heard that distinction made, though I think rather than plot they used the term incident. It was at, of all places, the Harry Potter Studio Tour. The director of Goblet of Fire was talking about how the studio asked him to split it into two films, to which he replied that while there is plenty of incident, there isn't enough story.

Story to me is themes, yes, and things like character development, the point of it. In a Sherlock Holmes, for example, the story is that a murder happened and Sherlock solved it, but the plot is him investigating the clues and discovering the truth out of order.

In a game, then, we could say the "story" is that a character overcame such-and-such a challenge and developed in whatever way, but the "plot" includes all the gameplay stuff we did to get them there.

Balladeer wrote:

Ah, okay! Is this an officially defined distinction? Because otherwise I think I'd just call that, 'story/plot' vs. 'themes' or 'thematics'.

I don't think there exists some authority that can make it "official", but no I am not formally educated on it or anything so I have no idea, it's just what I've read like

'Official' the wrong word, 'commonly recognised among writers' perhaps. I'll take the Transphobe Studio Tour's word for it! Although the way Buska spins it, I think I'd still be inclined to break down story into themes (which I care about little), worldbuilding maybe? (which is fine), and character development - which, as mentioned above, can be make-or-break for me.

Guys I meant I just like running and jumping and finding stuff

Why my suggestion of play Kirby not Horizon stands.

Writing can improve running and jumping and finding stuff! Or make it worse.

A story in three parts.

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3: