EGM scores. Some pretty big games.

[OB1]

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

It would never be good as it is if it were a book or movie or tv series.

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 was referring to you saying that books can be duplicated in games just as easily and effectively as movies.

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.

It's the exact same reason I gave for Metroid Prime! BG does tell more story than Prime does, but much of it is told in a very poor fashion by story-telling standards.

We are talking about games, not literature. I was talking about games.

Ah-HA! This is precisely what I was talking about. You, and most gamers out there, always use the excuse "they're just games, not literary pieces of art" whenever someone criticizes the poor form of current story-telling methods in games. People like you are so content in your current opinions of video games that you refuse to let the medium grow as a legitimate form of art. You may deny that but that's precisely what you do. Like Tim Rogers wrote in his essay about Metal Gear Solid 2's themes, people like you defend games and want your friends and family to take them more seriously, but at the same time don't want to let the medium grow into an actual respectable art form, and don't want to look at the problems with games today. The current way game stories are told is not going to legitimize the medium, and there are reasons for that aside from "mainstream is dumb". You can choose to continue to be thick-headed or you can choose to open your eyes and realize these facts. Knowing you, however, gives me very little hope in that respect.

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.

Yes, I'm sure they did. But that's not enough any more.

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...)

I fail to see your point. So something can't be great if it "didn't come out of nowhere", whatever that means? Are you trying to say that something cannot be great if it evolved from previous concepts over time, and that different things inspired it and led to what it became? So I guess that means that the works or Akira Kurosawa should not be considered as great as they are because he was greatly inspired by John Ford, Dostoevsky, and Shakespeare, right? I love your logic.

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.

Where have I even mentioned Lucasarts' other adventure games in this discussion? I said that Grim Fandango is above the heap, not that it's only good because everything else is crap. You have a very strange way of looking at things.

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.

And they're talking mainly from a gameplay perspective. Grim Fandango sets itself apart from all of those other adventure games because of how extremely well it tells a story, and does so only like a game could. Sam and Max and Indy are terrific games, and I never said anything bad about them (according to you if I say that pumpkin pie is my favorite pie that means that I despise apple pie... great logic!), but Grim Fandango rise far above all of them on an artistic and narrative level.

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

That's a pity. Some of the greatest movies ever made are Westerns. If you've never seen a Sergio Leone or John Ford movie before you haven't seen a true Western.

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!

So you're saying that the Baldur's Gate series is just a really bad example of how stories are told in PC RPGs and that I shouldn't look to them when I speak of the genre?

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...

I've already explained myself. Dozens of times. I've explained how reading scrolls and having conversations with townspeople are not good, effective ways of narration and that if you bring these games up to the standards of other story-telling mediums like books and movies, they would be laughed at and never be taken seriously. There are few video games that have actually been able to tell stories very effectively, among the best being MGS2 and ICO, though they approach story-telling in very different ways. I've explained in detail how each game has shattered video game conventions and raised them up to a level where they could actually be compared to respectable books and movies, and that they are the future of gaming. ICO is the best example, as it tells a story so perfectly and in a way that only a video game could do. And there are only a couple of lines of understandable dialogue in the entire game. The story is told through visuals and emotion, something that you have to play to understand. It's easily the most moving game I have ever played.