Games worth steering away from? Generally I get a kind of contrary pleasure from playing bad games, especially if they’re kind of epic in their badness. But let me record for all posterity exactly how much I despise Rule Of Rose, which shamelessly rips off Haunting Ground, Lolita, Silent Hill and Jacob’s Ladder and *still* manages to get everything dead wrong.

Well, the soundtrack was okay.

X

Speaking of Ion Storm games, i think i would also have to vouch for Anachronox–a terrifically creative game and well written game in the vein of Tim Schafer titles such as Grim Fandango and Psychonauts.

Will–I wouldn’t say that the program is asking for you to ‘play this game to know how to design something different’, i think it’s just having a pre-knowledge of the medium…the studio jurors have definitely been advocating for participants to have some exposure to the medium as to become exposed to its affordances and limitations. Although i agree that popular exemplars of what we consider ‘bad’ and ‘good’ shouldn’t guide us to make ‘more of the same’ i think each of those exemplars still teach us something about the medium and game design once critically deconstructed.

Amanda-Good call with NWN. Not to mention I think Knights of the Old Republic is actually a terrific game to look at in terms of narrative branching and plot twisting done right in games. (i adored KOTOR)

Do we have more ‘bad game’ ideas? What hasn’t worked? I haven’t played Star Ocean 3, i barely knew the series continued after the first one, hehe

System Shock 2 really set the stage for first-person narrative experiences in video games. Many games with the strongest narratives determine the character that the player will play - take Deus Ex, for example, or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The story is written, and you experience it from a character’s perspective, but that character is ultimately designed and determined by the game’s developers. Other games eschew character narrative entirely in favor of a free-form experience for the player, games such as Fallout or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, where the player truly comes out of nowhere and a story is loosely crafted around them.

System Shock 2 made the player the character of the game, but told the player their story. While the player was guided by a string of requests that he or she could, ostensiby, ignore, the player’s character itself was developed. This false sense of freedom was capitalized upon in the climax of SS2’s spiritual successor, Bioshock. Both games are fantastic examples of narrative in a free-form, yet structure-limited, game.

Second Pick: Deus Ex / Thief (especially Deadly Shadows).

Never before has a conspiracy story been told so convincingly. The story is plainly epic, from the rough start on Liberty Island through to the secret bases and even more secret societies. The development of JC Denton, along with his relationship to all the other characters around him, was one of the stronger character narratives in American gaming; a strength usually seen in European or Asian games. Likewise with Thief, especially in the third incarnation. Garret has to be one of gaming’s most memorable characters and his conflicts, both internal and external, closely resemble JC’s.

Besides, the one-liners were great. I still live by “My vision is augmented.”

Third Pick: Fallout / Fallout 2

Ahh, Fallout. Need I say more? Really?

These two RPGs showed how free-form un-character-driven games can be so successful by designing such a rich world that the character narrative didn’t even matter anymore. In Fallout, you’re not telling the story of a person, but of an event. The characters that bring the event about are mere footnotes to the tale of the event itself. While this is generally the aim of most game narratives, few achieve it quite as powerfully as Fallout. Queue Maybe by Inkspots.

Fourth Pick: World of Warcraft / Final Fantasy XI (for the particularly masochistic)

These days, with the turn of PC gaming to the online scope, one cannot forgo a crash course in MMORPGs. Game design aside, these two titles have particular poignancy in the narrative department. Both feature very rich worlds with history and drama to fill hours - literally. What’s interesting is how differently both tell their tales. WoW’s lore is more fragmented: players have to seek out much of the story and history on their own, and often outside of the game. The major events play out in real time before the players eyes, often in the exclusive domain of 40-, and later 25-player, raid instances. Take, for example, the fights of Kael’Thas in Tempest Keep or Illidan in Black Temple: both are accompanied by lengthy introductory speeches detailing the game’s lore and the presence of the bosses.

Final Fantasy XI, on the other hand, takes a rather unique approach, at least among MMOs. It’s the only MMO I’ve played that fully employs cut-scenes to tell the story of the player’s unique story withing the world of Vana’diel. What’s particularly odd about it all is that it tells the story as if it were a single player game: while a group of six might complete a quest together, all six see the same cut-scene of their character alone meeting with the NPCs and completing the quest. The end result, however, is rich storytelling on par with the best of the Final Fantasy series.

Fifth Choice: Star Wars: TIE Fighter / Defender of the Empire

One of the very large foundations of the game industry is adapting existing IP to games. It’s a great challenge to capture the spirit and feel of the IP from its original form, be it books, comics, movies, or TV, and produce a viable game from it. It’s particularly difficult when the IP has such a strong following, and few IPs have as strong a following at Star Wars. The original floppy disk version of TIE fighter and its expansion, Defender of the Empire, showed how well good narrative could bring such repetitive gameplay and such a staunch IP to life in a very fun, engaging game.

Besides, having this game under one’s belt adds a nice 14-years-of-experience notch