id Software On Rage, Storytelling In Games 97
Tom Willits of id Software took some time recently to speak about storytelling as it relates to id's previous games, and how it will be a part of their upcoming shooter, Rage. He also dispelled rumors that Rage would suffer content cuts due to Xbox hardware limitations. Unfortunately, he called into question whether mods will be a possibility for the game, saying that the issue is still under consideration.
FPS Storytelling? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a few FPS games that do a decent job of storytelling. Half Life comes to mind, but even that doesn't have much of a storyline. id did some nice things with datapads in Doom 3 and such to try and tell a story, but id games, and the FPS genre in general is certainly not famous for story.
Re:PC/PS3 Version and 360/Wii Version (Score:3, Interesting)
Ideally, Id should just work on the PC for the real version and let another company do a downgraded console version.
Really though, Id has a lot to prove after Doom III. RAGE, while it does sound like a good design, has a lot of iffy little catches floating around it. The mere fact that Id is questioning whether or not to have mod support is bizarre to say the least.
Welcome to the emerging future of gaming, where everything is dumbed down so as to be marketed toward console kiddies.
Re:FPS Storytelling? (Score:3, Interesting)
FEAR [wikipedia.org]...no idea why I'm referencing Wikipedia for this.
That was a first-person shooter with a great story, was actually scary, and had you reeling at just how screwed up it all was after you finished playing. I recommend.
Re:PC/PS3 Version and 360/Wii Version (Score:1, Interesting)
Ideally, Id should just work on the PC for the real version and let another company do a downgraded console version.
Really though, Id has a lot to prove after Doom III. RAGE, while it does sound like a good design, has a lot of iffy little catches floating around it. The mere fact that Id is questioning whether or not to have mod support is bizarre to say the least.
Welcome to the emerging future of gaming, where everything is dumbed down so as to be marketed toward console kiddies.
Indeed. One of the things that killed the possibility of a trilogy for Deus Ex was the second game, which was made for PC and XBox. The problem was that rather than making it for the PC and then downgrading it for a later console port like what happened with the first game, they made the sequel with the console as a baseline!
As the fans of the original game were mostly PC gamers (which was it's original format), they were understandably disappointed in the second game while the console players who had never played Deus Ex saw little reason to pick up the sequel. And so the franchise died.
http://marathon.bungie.org/story/ (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, if you're supposed to 'participate actively in creating the storyline', as you inside, then there's absolutely no problem with today's FPS's. If it's all in your head, why spend the time creating a story for the game?
Personally, I prefer a well-wrought story, that allows the ability to affect the story, around the edges. Branching level progression, for example, that depends on player decisions during the game.
http://marathon.bungie.org/story/ [bungie.org] , for example, Bungie's previous FPS trilogy before Halo, is still regarded by many as one of the pinnacles of story design in an FPS, and this came out in the mid-90's.
Other games with good stories (Score:3, Interesting)
Story games are good, but sometimes you have to appreciate the games that take a minimalist [soldat.pl] approach to story-telling [progressquest.com].
Don't mess with us, man. ID Software is no more. (Score:1, Interesting)
I was one of the forum participants back on LINUXQUAKE.COM, and we remembered when hosting a Quake 1/2/3 server was worth somthing. We remembered when people with *class* would downport and crossport, and be satisfied with the release. Going way back to xquake on RedHat 5.0 is where I'm talking about. If ID Software would have gone all-out Linux, then they wouldn't be in the bad shape they are in today. There would even be a more popular 3-person POV Quake-engine game out there that would keep Linux going as with any partnership, but instead the developers split and gone to either GuildHall, Unreal, or worse...Eidos. ID Software is a shell of its former splendor. And here we see classics like Quake 1 being re-invented with Pixel Effects and Vertex Shading, re-presented by the Tenebrae and Dark Places engines somtimes with abridgments of complete texture replacement projects, and they turn more environment effects than Quake4 and Doom3.
ID Software just has too much competition against it to continue. There is too much independent development, and like Blizzard with respect to buyout by a better management company, should've died-out if not for licensing their code. The IP police can only get beyond negative outlook if it is a unique and highly attractive title, for which ID Software just has not been able to continue. What do they do nowdays that they haven't already done in their ground-breaker Quake 1? Their groundbreaker is Shit(tm) story, and lots of graphics.
So many more developments have been made and incorporated through audio effects and ID Software just doesn't touch any of those. The first perfection was an off-beat title Hexen, and none have followed the audio effects anymore. Not even Duke Nukem 3D could touch Hexen, yet here we are and even 3D Realms is having a hard time to continue a good story with an engine they kept trying to buy and adapt from ID Software. Can you believe that, 3D Realms is even failing because of ID Software's failure in product exendability?
Anyways, they (ID) don't even keep to their original product whoring from ID-mom Pam, or any of the related box-packing assembly-line staff and technical support. It's no longer a family-like atmosphere, but a stock-ticker clicking for every sale per second. I remember looking forward to Radio Shack or Target to look in the trialware aisles because I know the short-version was much more suspense than buying the full-version; my first let-down was 60 US dollars for Quake 2 from Target, which was just someone from ID Software's graphics department shooting their nugget of brown shit on my SVGAlib console. I couldn't even finish Quake 2 when it hit Windows 95, because of its stability issues needing so much harddrive access and its implementation of copy-protection over such large data files. This in a day the average PC was 166MHz MMX Pentium and no more than 32MB RAM. Rich kids could afford that Voodoo2 at 600 US Dollars, and that extra 96 or 128MB RAM from Fry's Electronics for US 700 dollars. That was their heyday, and it sucked evein in Quake 3.
There is only one trace I can make to ID Software's failure and that is its original attachment to Apogee shareware distribution.
Re:id Software on storytelling in games? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:PC/PS3 Version and 360/Wii Version (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever play the PS2 port of Deus Ex? It's not actually downgraded. I'd use the term..altered. They upped the graphics (character models are better), divided up levels into pieces, kept most of the interface with some minimal streamlining AND they put keyboard and mouse support in (though I personally recommend playing with analog stick and mouse)
Re:PC/PS3 Version and 360/Wii Version (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you are only partially right though: the first game was great because it had a great story that turns out to be more and more like the world we live in. The second game had dumbed-down mechanics, but it also had a crappy irrelevant story where you could switch allegiance on every level if you wanted and it never mattered.
As for Deus Ex 3... It is in production, but I fear the worst. About the only info we have is that it will be a game about "what it means to be human". That's not at all what DX1 was about - DX1 was about what it means to live in a world where those in power are unscrupulous powerhungry bastards.
Ok, so maybe we don't actually need a game anymore to see what the result of that is, but that is what DX1 was about. That, and open, non-linear gameplay, and interesting locations and characters, and mildly amusing AI and physics problems ;-)
Re:hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
even the best 'storytelling games' involves really poor writing and really poor story telling
why place this demand on game developers?
if you want a good story, read a book
be sensitive to games - they can't attract the talent for story telling because ultimately, if your good at writing stories, you wouldn't be working in the industry
While that is true, I liked the stories of e.g. Deus Ex and Wing Commander IV, and of course several adventure games and RPGs (including KotoR).
Of course, none of these reach the levels of literature, but they are good stories, as opposed to "run through this level, shoot at everything that moves and push the button".
While shooting at stuff is cool, the story keeps me motivated enough to turn that next corner and shoot more stuff. Or, if there is a lack of story, I get bored relatively quickly.