21st May 2018- Mechanics or Story

Today's Topic - 21st May 2018

submitted by @WhimsiesClad

Do you think mechanics or story driven games add more to gaming as a whole (and why)? Should mechanics driven games focus on one thing or try to cover a breadth of things (and why)? What are the best implementations you have seen of mechanics tying in with the story or other parts of the experience? How would you change your favorite games to make them fit your preference for the two former questions, and be mentionable in the latter?

Fusiondenny - Yesterday at 10:01 PM
Well as far as implementations of mechanics tying in with the story go I'd have to say Pyre is the best example I can think of where most if not all mechanics actually have narrative meaning to it. I also really loved how the HUD in ECHO was a holographic projection around the player character and that the character was able to see it. It wasn't this block of text in the corner of the screen it was an object that existed within the world of the game. I love it when the game does very little to take you out of it and instead puts in the effort to make it seem like the player sees the world as the character or characters see it.  I don't really know or care whether it adds more to gaming as a whole but I can safely say that it definitely adds to my experience.


Old Senile Mushrooms - Today at 12:14 AM
I've already talked about my love of narrative-driven games but in regards to mechanics in games, I've been talking to friends a lot lately about my opinions on spyro 3 and how much I actually kinda hate it because of all the shit it tries to do. It's a bloated mess. And frankly, spyro 2 is guilty of that sin as well to a lesser degree.

As a player, I like going into a game with some idea of how good I need to be at video games to 100% it, and games like some mascot platformers in the early 2000s made that hard because their GENRE was 3D platformer but they could have any fucking thing thrown in there regardless of how well it meshed with my pre-existing game knowledge and it often meant learning how to play an entirely different genre just to beat one or a couple segments. (That FPS shit in banjo-tooie can burn in hell, it was so hard for me! I resorted to using emulation and savestates because doing it on the hardware was frustrating!)
The 3D platformers I jive with the most lately are grow home (and its sequel) and fe, two games that focus almost exclusively on exploration and collection, and the ways they mix up their gameplay are through variations on rules both games established very early on so the player never ends up in a situation they can't deal with and certainly don't have to learn to play a completely different game just for 100%. (An activity that I personally feel should only take one or a few playthroughs of a game if you're familiar with the game already, and I can't do that with spyro 3 or banjo-tooie so I have a terrible opinion of them.)

This might've also been implied already but this problem is compounded when a game's idea of variety makes you play genres you don't even like. (I hate FPSes, keep that shit out of my platformers!) Or when games make you do things you just aren't good at and never expect from that genre. (See: the cardinal sin of putting timed segments into point and click adventure games.) It's more fair to the player to just do a few things and modulate on them, it's easier to digest and probably easier for the dev to refine as well.

Kristian's Good Values - Today at 12:43 AM
One of my favorite games is Tactics Ogre Let us Cling Together for the PSP. It's a game similar to Final Fantasy Tactics, but it has its own original mechanics that not only tie in with gameplay, but also the story. Tactics Ogre allows you in combat to essentially have a redo where you are able to turn the clock back in time to a certain unit's turn and are able to do an action differently which can result in a different outcome. Tactics Ogre's story has three different routes you can take depending on your decisions in the story which affect which characters you can recruit, which battles you fight, etc... After a certain amount of progression, you are able to go back into certain parts of the story and replay them, or even go back far enough to let you go down another path. Tactics Ogre is a unique experience since you're able to experience all three paths without having to make a new save file or have a new game plus. I find that spoilers in the story and in obtaining the mechanic to replay the story actually go against the game in trying to experience the story. When I found out that you could replay the story, my attachment to certain characters lessened since I would be able to recruit them in different paths. This in turn made it so I focused more on trying to recruit who I wanted rather than pay attention to alternate parts to the story. Tactics Ogre mixes story and mechanics well, but it ends up favoring gameplay more than the story for the aforementioned reason. I don't think it's a bad mix by any means, but right now I cannot think of a good balance between the two.

<Tepid,Name,Change> - Today at 2:36 AM
I think this is quite an odd question to start out with, and it ends up being akin to "do you think apples or oranges add more to fruit as a whole (and why)?" I think any game, even mechanically driven ones, benefit from aesthetic development. Story wise, the format of some games doesn't really allow for a developed story (ex. multiplayer exlusively). But if a game with mechanical focus does have a well done story it can add to the product. Though in terms of resource allotment, if the game is inclined to be "mechanically driven" I don't think effort put into the story should ever detract from the effort put into gameplay. I don't think I've seen any particularly incredible examples of mechanics tying in with narrative/aesthetic components, at least not enough to seriously resonate with me. I've discussed the lack of achieved potential I feel exists within narrative involved games previously. My favorite game would probably be the original bioshock (possibly for partly nostalgic reasons), and I'm not sure I'd change it. I feel as though it was primarily a mechanically focused game with a fun story that had some interactive aspects through voice recordings etc. I don't think it was a particularly remarkable narrative compared to accomplished works from other mediums, but the way the story incorporated the gameplay (especially how it played off of common gaming conventions) was a very cute addition to the experience. Though ultimately the story was a nice compliment to an overall mechanically and aesthetically engaging game.

Till - Today at 11:16 AM
I do Think mechanically complex game are probably the best the medium has to offer, whilst sotry focused ones rarely get my attention, not because i'm some kind of crazed action boy, but more because i value getting better at games more than a good story, my favourite game of all time is devil may cry 3, I talked about it in all discourse I answered because to me it's the perfect game ( Even tho, devil may cry 4 upped the gameplay possibilities even more, creating easily the most complex action game around, hands down ) I value mechanical complexity over story for the simple reason that, It allows me, the player, to make meaningfull decisions about my actions, choosing what combo's to go with, is more important to me than chosing which caraacter dies or not, it's just how I am.  " Should mechanics driven games focus on one thing or try to cover more things " Well, this is a tricky question, technically when you are doing a combat system you are already covering a huge breadth of the game, from the movement of the character, to all of his weapons, and sure, you might asnwer me with " But that still ends in combat prowess, not in new mechanics " But I'd argue allowing me to do more is better than allowing me to do new stuff, which promplty become gimmicks in my eyes. Devil May cry 4 has, atleast with Dante, three melee weapons, and three long range weapons, that doesn't sound like much but they are focused like a laser to give the best type of combat system around. And Putting stuff like vehicle sections, turret sections, tons of quick time events and button mashing surely wouldn't make a better experience ( Looking at you bayonetta ) atleast from my point of view.

And probably the game that implemented It's mechanics and story really really well, is the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, Shadow of chernobyl, and call of pripyat mostly though, probably because the game has such a vague story for the probably the first two halves that you don't really follow that, but follow what your idea of a stalker is, which shapes the world around you in a tangible way, that maybe doesn't give you story branches, but gives you gameplay ones, you could help a stalker that's getting eaten by dogs, but you could also wait for him to die and take his stuff, but then there are less patrols, means more bandits, more mutants, which makes it astonishinlgly interesting. And like I said, my favourite game is devil may cry 3, the only thing I would add is a style switcher type mechanic like it's present in dmc 4 ( also i know they did a mod for it on pc but that's not the point ) Devil may cry 3 has styles of combat, 4 main ones and 2 that you unlock later, they focus on movement, attacks, guarding and gunplay but, you can only change them either at a vendor statue or at the start of a mission, having the possibility to change styles at my pace would allow a crazy amount of gameplay choices that thankfully were mostly present in the next installment, but not the the extent i tought, not that dmc 4 is less complex, more dmc 4 adds stuff like momentum control and all that, but removes stuff like Buffering which eh, i missed to be honest, tought maybe dmc 4 would put ontop of what the third one did instead of changing some gameplay ideas that really helped with the game.