How to write stories for your games, you sexist shitlords!

archive.is/Aqqub

Look at the 4th image and you'll be surprised on what example he gave to follow for professional game developers and writers when it comes to storytelling.

Was anyone ever really bothered by audiologs?
I mean his argument does make sense in that it's not very realistic that people do some kind of audio diary, but I still like audio logs if they are done right.

except they're not at all wrong, if anything it's about the only thing Gone Home did right.

I was never bothered with em. They're a nice touch.

They work especially well in horror games.
It's not a terrible way of doing it but if there's heavy action it's a bit distracting trying to listen to them and surviving at the same time, so sometimes i'd end up going into a silent spot listening to them, essentially robbing me of gameplay time just like a cutscene would.
But i guess in that case it's by deliberate player choice so that makes it a bit better.

The writer sounds like they need to go to take a wicked pissah.

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I especially like them in a setting of solitude. >abandonded space station, village whatever
The contrast between the former lively state of the place and the dead silence in the present really elivates the feeling of being alone.

Do you prefer audio logs essentially stopping gameplay or playing on in the background like in the batman games e.g.?

They're boring I barely listen to them if it's not in an RPG

They aren't there for immersions sake. They are there because they allow the dev's to make a game which lets you skip the story, on the assumption that people who are interested enough will seek it out and thus not miss it. It also does double duty as a mechanic encouraging exploration since it rewards exploring everything.

It's strictly a response to casualization of games. Instead of making chad thundercock sit through exposition which will inevitably make them bored, they just let you steam roll through the game.

This does not happened commonly enough to complain about it being overused. I think the only game which I've ever played that even toyed with this was FF7. Maybe it's confined to the horror/survival genre, which only furthers my point.

That wasn't why you had a silent protagonist. They had it to remove a layer between of immersion, not so that you could redefine the character however you wanted. This is one people have been getting wrong for a long time. Maybe something gets lost in translation. The character is fully established, but by making them silent, the dialogue is implied. You are getting to experience it from the characters point of view. Not that you get to determine the traits of the character.

No argument here. It's funny this is the one good point they make.

Yes and no. Ultimately it's true they are being used and abused these days, but anyone who used to play games back in the day know that cutscenes were more like rewards. It also allowed for changes of perspective in a game which couldn't support it (think a cutscene in starcraft).

You've had 2 years to know what it's about.

What else is new?

Why should I give a shit about it if I don't intend to ever play it?

NO YOU FAGGOT YOU SOLVE THE PUZZLES BECAUSE YOU LIKE SOLVING PUZZLES
IF YOU DON'T LIKE SOLVING PUZZLES FOR THE SAKE OF SOLVING PUZZLES DON'T PLAY THE GAME

go away from my board!

Most audiologs aren't recorded during whatever shit is going down anyway. Most of them are from prior to the real shit going down, and make more sense. Bioshock for example has very few logs from when Rapture had gone to shit, and for that matter nearly everyone in the city was insane. There's even a female splicer talking to a baby doll in a stroller. How do you justify that it is unrealistic for them to leave a log or even to pick up someone else's and move it somewhere else (like to a toilet) while doing whatever shit they do day to day?

The only really stupid use of audio logs out of any game I can think of is in Bioshock Infinite.

Whoever this is, they obviously didn't actually pay much attention to the story of The Talos Principle. Solving puzzles is ABSOLUTELY integral to the plot: they're one and the same.

You're an AI subroutine that the master AI has been building for an unspecified (but extremely long) length of time, with the express purpose of holding the knowledge of humanity and its problem-solving skills. You solving puzzles is (one way) how the master AI determines you are worthy to be uploaded from the mainframe into the real world. Puzzles are woven INTO THE FUCKING PLOT. The few other characters you are aware of, not counting the God figure and the devil figure, are all other AI subroutines WHO ARE COMPLETING THE SAME FUCKING PUZZLES TRYING TO ESCAPE THE FUCKING WORLD. 90% of the messages you come across in the early game are other subroutines wondering what the fuck the point of the puzles are, and only in later puzzles, as it becomes apparent to all participants what's going on, do the messages lean more toward metaphysical bullshit like meaning of life and whatnot.

The puzzles are absolutely essential for the plot. If there were no puzzles, the plot would be nonsensical.

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Some games do them really shit, where it's like someone was secretly recording the characters instead of them logging their speech. And the logs are supposed to be their diaries.

This. They're arguments automatically loses credential when you point out old arcade games and puzzle games like Tetris and point out they were successful because they were fun not because of deep plot. Hell, point them to how simple puzzles like sudoku and crosswords had appeal without fucking plot or whatever and mostly because the guys playing these games just loved to have their brains stimulated. Direct storytelling requires the audience to watch and be a bystander to achieve full enjoyment. Yes, video games with plots can work, but mostly because plot gives more meaning to the gameplay. They're the special sauce to the overall entree. But the way these assholes do it by gameplay requiring the player to find the secret button to turn the page to see more of the story is just stupid. It makes me mad.

Now this is a pathetic argument truly made by someone who has never played the game. Anyone who even reached the second audio log of The Talos Principle knows that the game is interweaving puzzle-solving, the human consciousness, the end of humanity and religious themes all into one.

"The answer that came to me again and again was 'play'. Every human society in recorded history has games. We don't just solve problems out of necessity: we do it for fun! Even as adults: leave a human being with a knotted rope and they will unravel it. Leave a human being alone with blocks and they will build something. Games are part of what makes us humans. We see the world as a mystery, a puzzle, because we've always been a species of problem-solvers.

Boom. Plot and problem-solving interconnected within the first twenty minutes of game.

Besides, What should we do about having piecemeal narratives? Incorporate narrative in every single moment of the game? I'm sure Cloud would love to be interrupted mid-battle against a boss because Barret wants to talk about Aerith's death.

Examples? Can't remember a game like that, but it does sound shitty.

No I won't.

The problem is that people somehow always forget that at the end of the day, games are GAMES

At a core level, video games have more in common with football and chess than they do film or literature. Even if you could find a way to work a narrative into a game of football, nobody would really give a shit since the only reason anyone's there in the first place is to throw a fucking ball around.

I don't understand how people still don't understand this

wow user don't you see how deep that is. It's like about the entire history of man kind and consciousness.

This goes for me too, I generally do little to nothing in-game while listening to them. If any action happens there's a solid chance I will just cease to mentally acknowledge them at all once my focus switches to fighting, and then I'll have to listen to the whole thing over again just to get to the last but I missed. And sometimes they can be well over a minute long, and your character NEVER has the technology to fast-forward or anything like that. Plus, they might get in the way of important audio cues that something is about to attack me, since once again, I'm bad at splitting my focus.


Not that I even care all that much that audio logs are unrealistic, but whether they were made in times of peace or crisis makes little difference. Odds are we're all fortunate enough to live in parts of the world without major disasters and war raging, and who among us is ever just sitting down and recording audio of our thoughts and plans and such? I sure never do that, do you? Do you personally know anyone who regularly does that? I don't.

The closest I come to leaving records of my thoughts and plans is emails and chat logs and such that were made to be sent to other people, I don't even write some kind of personal journal. So the only "realistic" way I'd leave behind records for main characters to read in a game is that somebody got access to my online communications and littered them here and there for some reason. In which case, the best comparison I can think of is in Resident Evil games where you find Umbrella's internal company communications laying around to read.

So yeah, I'd say personal diaries of any sort are a bit of a stretch, but messages made for the purpose of telling somebody else something make more sense.


Sometimes there are games with puzzles and not at all puzzle-related stuff, though. In that case you might be playing the game for the other stuff and just have to put up with the puzzle sections. For example, Misadventures of Tron Bonne has a bunch of different things to do, but the block puzzle parts are the absolute least fun part by far, and I'm glad that you can make the money you need without ever touching them. Or it seems to be a universal complaint among Darksiders players that they wanted more fighting parts and less puzzle parts.

I'd totally get avoiding purely puzzle-based games if you don't like the puzzles, but it's not always that simple.