My point is, for a VIDEOGAME, PLOT should exist to support the GAMEPLAY, NOT the other way around. It's kinda clear through your post that you need bullsh!t like "character-development" and "relateable and fleshed-out characters" in your game, but for me, a simple plot with a good gameplay is far and much better than story-driven games with fleshed out characters but sub-par gameplay.
Honestly, I don't understand what exactly you mean by "legitimate" story and characters, but I am gonna say one thing- legitimacy may shorten the limit of your creativity.
I might sound aggressive while saying this but I am not- wtf is wrong with gamers nowadays?? Logic? What kinda logic are you talking about? Wtf is the need to explain and think about logic? Running low on health? drink/eat potions/health giving items and get insta-healded. You died? No problems, got 3 extra lives and plenty of saves. Yep, LOGIC. For crying out loud, you are playing a ****ing video game. The most LOGICAL thing would be to leave your IQ of 560 behind and ****ing enjoy the game.
I'm all up for jokes on 'logic of games', but when it comes to consider it seriously, it really makes me *headdesk*
With all that said, it is quite clear that we want different things in games. So, before we start trying to slit one another's throat, let's agree to disagree.
Whoa, whoa, I didn't have a knife poised in hand when I posted that...cool it. I wasn't denouncing what you were saying, I was just offering some input.
Maybe you're right---maybe we do have different tastes. After all, you stated above how you thought
Lords of Shadow had "sub-par gameplay to support a story", whereas I didn't find the gameplay to be sub-par at all. The only time I think a game has "sub-par gameplay to support a story" is when the overall product turns out to be a pointless video-game equivalent of Simon Says, such as
Heavy Rain or
Asura's Wrath.
As for "legitimacy limiting creativity"---I assume you're talking about serious or down-to-earth writing and characters limiting the scope and imagination of the game in question---but I've found that in H&S games, it's the opposite.
Lords of Shadow, at least in my opinion, has some nice mythology and sprawling landscapes, to say nothing of its sinister and often-grotesque monster designs. You can be as imaginative and vibrant with gameplay and design as you want...but you can still salvage a good story in the midst of it all. I'm not saying every game
has to, but if a game is using a lot of cinematics, they should at least try to make the characters and story more engaging than the run-of-the-mill action-fest. Such is the case with
Devil May Cry, where the developers inject over an hour's worth of cutscenes. For DMC4's development, Kobayashi even stated that he wanted the cutscenes and story to be so good, that anyone could cutt them out of the game and stringing them together to seamlessly make an 1-hour long film with it. For so much ambition, it doesn't seem a lot to ask for the cutscenes and writing
within said cutscenes to be
good. That's all I'm saying.
And when I mentioned "logic" before, I was mostly talking about gameplay elements that contradict with something the story is attempting to do, not overall logic in games in general. An example would be the recent
Tomb Raider reboot, where Lara is supposed to be a petrified amateur who's completely shocked by the violence and killing around her, but has no problem with shoving an arrow into someone's eye-socket once the gameplay starts.
I wasn't trying to crucify anyone on their opinion----heck, I wasn't even blatantly disagreeing with you. I just made a comment. Calm down.