EGM scores. Some pretty big games.

[A Black Falcon]

I love Fire Emblem, probably much more than even you do. But I wouldn't call the the story "great". It's good for a game.

Great by game story standards, especially for portables. Probably just good if you go beyond that.

Reading the length of an entire novel would be a pain, but mainly because of how stressful it is for the eyes to read on a tv or pc screen.

But it's not just pages of text... I've never played a game that was just reading text the whole time just like how I have never played a game which had absolutely no gameplay and all cutscences (that is, a game identically done to a movie). You adapt. For books, the results are as I have said: mixed with things from films and other inspirations and put into games like Beneath a Steel Sky (futuristic game -- Blade Runner/cyberworld style), The Longest Journey (high fantasy and science fiction), Grim Fandango (film noir), Torment (ah, hard to catergorize... fantasy I guess, but that does not do it justice.), etc.

I've explained it at least a dozen times in this thread. You must be dyslexic. That's the only explanation I can think of.

No. You have repeated that line over and over. You have not gone into detail about why you believe that opinion is correct for Baldur's Gate. Not here anyway... if you have before you could link that... but here, you have not. Just saying "it has a badly done story because of this and that reasons" and then not explaining WHY is not making a good case for your position.

That is, I want details. You can't say you have provided them in this thread. In one of my posts I gave more details about how I believe the story to be structured and presented... what I wanted was your counter-position.

Brian. Seriously. You are wrong. You've proven to me that you don't know anything about stories aside from the fact that you like some of them. You don't understand pacing, execution, or the narrative form in general. That's okay, you've never studied any of this. But continuing to talk as if you do know anything about this is getting very boring.

We are talking about games, not literature. I was talking about games. So no, I was not wrong, not unless you have specific proof of past computer games in the RPG genre that sufficiently prove your point... there probably was SOMETHING, but Fallout and Baldur's Gate set new standards in the genre in every way.

Well you can't tell the difference between great story-telling and not-so-great story-telling, so that comes as no surprise. Just like how many people can't tell the difference between Once Upon A Time In The West and Tombstone. Or how many people can't tell the difference between Crash and Mario.

Look, Grim Fandango didn't come out of nowhere. That guy had previously made other games and was influenced by other stuff Lucasarts had made. I think it'd be appropriate then to mention some of their greats as likely influences... it has Lucasarts humor, Lucasarts puzzles, Lucasarts style, Lucasarts-quality voice acting... what could you say was different? Just a couple of things: the setting, the controls (direct and with the head-look-at-item thing), and the fact that it was more serious than most LA adventures (though not the first... see Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis...)

In this case, the main designer of Grim was Tim Schaefer. He made Full Throttle and Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle too. I haven't played most of Full Throttle. As for DOTT, it's a good game but not great, IMO. I've never quite liked it as much as its reputation says... but it is pretty good. Anyway, he also worked on a bunch of other LA adventure games. This suggests that the ideas didn't just pop out of nowhere for Grim so other games from them definitely are a legitimate comparison for storytelling... I know I at least have always felt that LucasArts adventure games have a consistent style in many ways, and storytelling really is one of them. Grim Fandango is not excluded from this. Now, comparing it to other publishers and sure there are differences, but within Lucasarts... they have a consistent style. You're trying to denigrate their other games for some strange reason, and I am certain that there is nothing substantial to back up the claims.

For instance, overall among adventure fans if you were to ask people their favorite LucasArts adventures, three games show up more than the rest. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Sam & Max, and Grim Fandango. All great, all different, and yet all with quite noticable similarites... I don't see how you can deny this.

Oh, and I've never (seen?) either of those (movies?). Westerns aren't my thing.

Your rebuttals keep on getting better and better, Brian. How you saw that as a response to my post is beyond my comprehension. You said that BG tells a great story, while it does not. You did not address any of my points. Not one. You're just mad because deep down inside you know that what I said about you being one of those immature gaming nerds is true.

Commenting decisively like that on games you have never played or have barely played is the height of arrogance. Given you though, it's exactly what I expect, so a sweeping generalization like that is right on target for your standards. It's stupid, and utterly wrong, but hey, that doesn't matter as long as OB1 believes it!

In this case, you had one "point": no PC RPG has a real narrative. We'll start with the obvious that I have stated fifteen times now: you fail to define your terms or give any backing for your statements! No real narrative? What do you mean? What games or instances in games do you have as examples to prove this? Without backing this is exactly like your other "points" about the methods and execution of storytelling: useless and completely unsupported.

Of course the 'game backing' aspect might be hard for you, given your clear lack of experience with the genre. But you could at least try...