Talk about video game cliches you agree/disagree with

[Second Duke Revier]

This is a pretty simple game: pick a common video game cliche, state whether you agree, disagree, or partially agree/disagree with it, and, if possible, elaborate on the why.

I'll begin:

"NES and SNES games don't have good stories."

Partially agree, both those systems were seriously limited in what they could convey, either through text or through visuals. But it doesn't follow that no story on those platforms was good. Tactics Ogre and Genealogy of the Holy War stand out as solid examples, even if they did have lots of creaks and stumbles which were in large part shaped by the hardware they occupied.

 

[Kirin]

I mean... FF6 sure has some good story *moments* at the very least. Heck, I remember FF4 felt like a revelation in storytelling in games at the time, even if it kinda reads like a big pile of tropes and cliches in our current context.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I remember FF4 felt like a revelation in storytelling in games at the time

The whole 'at the time' thing is the kicker I think. The relativity of perspective changes a lot of things, be it because we were young and weren't worldly yet, or that the game's contemporary peers were even more narratively stunted. I missed out on most of the 8 and 16bit generation of console gaming, so going back to those games well after the fact often felt like a chore on account of how threadbare those games narratives were versus what I had been growing accustomed to in the 32bit era and beyond. I don't think it's a knock on those games, just a statement of fact. Just like how by modern standards, revolutionary works in the film industry during the early 20th century might have been technically impressive for their day and important to the history of the medium, but to modern standards and sensibilities they don't quite entertain the same way anymore.

I think a gaming cliche I disagree with - that extends beyond just gaming and more broadly into other pop media - is the idea of "filler".

Filler used to get discussed regarding things like anime adaptations of manga, where original storylines absent from the source material were conceived to pad out a show's runtime as the adaptation began running out of source material in an ongoing series. Lately, the idea has been abused, misapplied, and extended to describe literally any facet of a piece of media that doesn't actively forward the progression of a central plot. The whole idea reeks of a lack of media literacy. Scenes that develop characters or help imbue life into a setting are some of the most classical examples of normal storytelling, and yet I see people describe such things as "filler". It's essentially gotten to the point where if you are complaining about filler, I see that as an immediate red flag for the veracity/seriousness of your PoV. There are absolutely lots of times where a game's total play length gets extended well beyond the freshness/natural entertainment value of the gameplay loop that is worth discussing, but I've still observed that most cries of 'filler' end up feeling extremely hollow upon even the barest of scrutiny.

 

[Peklo]

"NES and SNES games don't have good stories."

There's nothing preventing games on these platforms or earlier to be able to engage in interesting and worthwhile storytelling. Stories need not be textual or verbal to tell a compelling narrative. Castlevania is a great story told through the environmental narrative that transpires, with as many twists and turns as any lauded pageturner. Metroid II is one of the best stories in the medium, and it doesn't use words to communicate itself. Gimmick! is a cute, surreal and occasionally frightening bedtime story filtered through a child's imagination, and that's all evident whether you have access to a manual preamble or not. Video games aren't plot synopses, even less than other art forms are; the spaces you inhabit and interact with as the player must be accounted for in any kind of evaluation that seeks to reach a holistic critique of them and the part they play in a story each game that utilizes them tells.

It's even less tenable a position when you start bringing in material that does use textual writing as a storytelling method. Mother is the only one of its series that's made me viscerally cry in response to individual lines of dialogue and phrasing in it; that's what they sold the game on. Dragon Quest II is a terrific story for how it frames the coming together of an RPG party and their travels, and its positioning as a follow-up to the original. A similar relationship exists in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, a game that is bleak as death with an ill, dying protagonist who travels a landscape full of illusions and misdirection, interacting with a populace that hates and lies to him at every turn, tapping into paranoia about the surrounding world and its obscure rules the game is built on. With something like the SNES catalogue, it's just such an immaterial statement, rendered moot by anyone's own personal favourites. Mine might be a lot of Quintet's output, or the Lufia games, any SaGa, or whatever else--the crux of it is that actively reading a console game was a common draw at that point in the medium's history.

 

[Lokii]

"NES and SNES games don't have good stories."

This is a cliche? Honestly never heard this sentiment before? Is it a zelleminal thing?

Of course they have "good stories." What does this even mean? What criteria are we judging by here?

"Ninjas captured the president. Are you bad enough dudes to have a hamburger?" That's a good f'in story!