Tangent on the Carmack quote - “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not important.”
I never agreed much with it, as the games I got hooked on as a kid I did mostly because of their stories - however, very recently, I started to like games that are almost 100% story and 0% free-form gameplay. Namely, the "choose your own adventure" stories with quick action events, and such. Bear with me :).
Two strong titles from that category (both 11/10, will play again, recommend to everyone remotely in the target audience):
- Star Trek: Resurgence - IMHO the best Trek game in the past 20 years, and the very one you want if you'd like to feel yourself, if for a moment, living and breathing Starfleet life (not just on the top, but also on the lower decks).
- The Invincible - based on Stanisław Lem's 1963 novel of the same title, it's something you want if you're into hard sci-fi, sci-fi meets philosophy, or that sweet atomic era / Soviets-in-space punk.
Why I started to like this genre? Both games above I could describe in one phrase: Mass Effect but without all the running around and other bullshit distractors.
The games are designed to give you choices (usually time-sensitive) that alter events. There is limited freedom of movement, but it's always obvious where you need to go. The fights, if present, are real, but simplified. The quick action sequences and minigames are designed to mimic context-relevant behavior in the simplest possible way (say "press W" to lift a panel, or "press D + LMB" to push the person to the right away from sudden danger while shooting towards it, etc.). This results in a kind of flow - you have pretty much all the meaningful choices and gameplay of a typical CRPG like Mass Effect (or even more), and zero of the frustration of getting lost, tripping off a ledge, or doing any of the many other immersion-breaking things you would encounter in a typical CRPG on a regular basis.
In essence, this is subverting the article's concept: those games are minimum viable story-driven games, distilled and stripped out of all boring gameplay parts :). Or, in Carmack's terms, captivating erotica that lacks explicit depictions, but achieves the same result by being cleverly suggestive at all times.
I agree with both you and Carmack. Building excellent interactivity combined with an excellent story at the same time is mostly a fool's errand. The two concepts are at odds: good interactivity means relinquishing control of the story, and a good story means relinquishing control of the game.
But as you have observed you can still have one or the other. A great game with a decent story, or a great story with a decent game. Choose-your-own adventure interactivity can be fun, sure, but it will never have depth. It's a deliberately shallow approach that makes room for the story to exist.
When the main character of a highly-interactive game goes on fetch quests, grinds levels, and barters with NPCs it's inherently compromising the story. Stories need pacing and direction. Interactivity is the opposite of that.
You'll notice most games with "good stories" have to go through great pains to divorce the story from the game, primarily through the use of cut-scenes. In the moments you're receiving the story you're no longer playing the game. And in the moments you're playing the game you're no longer furthering the story. And that's OK!
I never agreed much with it, as the games I got hooked on as a kid I did mostly because of their stories - however, very recently, I started to like games that are almost 100% story and 0% free-form gameplay. Namely, the "choose your own adventure" stories with quick action events, and such. Bear with me :).
Two strong titles from that category (both 11/10, will play again, recommend to everyone remotely in the target audience):
- Star Trek: Resurgence - IMHO the best Trek game in the past 20 years, and the very one you want if you'd like to feel yourself, if for a moment, living and breathing Starfleet life (not just on the top, but also on the lower decks).
- The Invincible - based on Stanisław Lem's 1963 novel of the same title, it's something you want if you're into hard sci-fi, sci-fi meets philosophy, or that sweet atomic era / Soviets-in-space punk.
Why I started to like this genre? Both games above I could describe in one phrase: Mass Effect but without all the running around and other bullshit distractors.
The games are designed to give you choices (usually time-sensitive) that alter events. There is limited freedom of movement, but it's always obvious where you need to go. The fights, if present, are real, but simplified. The quick action sequences and minigames are designed to mimic context-relevant behavior in the simplest possible way (say "press W" to lift a panel, or "press D + LMB" to push the person to the right away from sudden danger while shooting towards it, etc.). This results in a kind of flow - you have pretty much all the meaningful choices and gameplay of a typical CRPG like Mass Effect (or even more), and zero of the frustration of getting lost, tripping off a ledge, or doing any of the many other immersion-breaking things you would encounter in a typical CRPG on a regular basis.
In essence, this is subverting the article's concept: those games are minimum viable story-driven games, distilled and stripped out of all boring gameplay parts :). Or, in Carmack's terms, captivating erotica that lacks explicit depictions, but achieves the same result by being cleverly suggestive at all times.