Jaffe Ditches Games With Stories

1up reports on David Jaffe's latest post to his blog, where he rails against games with stories, claiming that moving forward he'll be all about play for the sake of play. From the article: "Jaffe goes onto explain his thesis, believing many modern cinematic games don't properly play upon the raw 'real' emotions videogames can elicit: tension and release, fear and anxiety, triumph and defeat, and confusion and joy over challenges. We're wondering how Jaffe intends to make us cry without playing up the story elements, but we're interested in seeing him try. Maybe Project HL will simply feature an extended Path of Hades sequence ripped from God of War. I simply loved climbing those spiked poles for over an hour."

Comments

Here's the link to the blog post - skip 1up

[Pvt_Waldo]

http://www.davidjaffe.typepad.com/

Why someone would put up a news post with a link to a news post about a blog post is beyond me - unless they just wanted to drive traffic to 1up ;^)

Hades

[BenjyD]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that got fed up on the Path to Hades. It just seemed to take the least fun part of the game and stretch it out for ages, just when my interest in the game was already waning. Especially annoying combined with God of War's crappy camera.

Jaffe Ditches loves games with story...

[grumbel]

If you read the actual blog instead of that summary of a summary, you will find out that he is not tired of games with story:

As a game player, I find myself enjoying single player action adventure games more than I have since I was a kid. I get immersed in them more, get more wrapped up in the stories (even the ones told thru cut scenes), and actually feel like I am living the adventure.

So he isn't tired of playing them, quite the opposite, he loves them, what he is however tired of is developing those games, since the experience developing them is a lot less entertaining then the experience playing them.

Re:no story? Baloney

[AKAImBatman]

Plot != Storyline

The plot is the fairly static concept of what you're doing, while the Story is the narrative that slowly exposes the plot. The old games had a plot, but they lacked any sort of narrative short of an end-game sequence. This has been hashed, rehased, and hashed again every time this subject comes up on Slashdot; always to the same conclusion.

Sorry.

Please deposit 25 cents for another lesson.

Re:no story? Baloney

[AKAImBatman]

Street Fighter II had a story; in fact, it had a different story for each playable character. True, all eight of them were simple variations on "I must beat the last opponent because of reason x, but still.

You consider an ending sequence to be the same thing as a narrative story? Ooo-kay.

I doubt that millions of fans even remember S.T.U.N. Runner.

It made it into the Midway Arcade Treasures 3 pack right alongside Rush 2049. So it must be at least somewhat well remembered. ;)