Being the Hero: 1000 Times Later
Well, hello there! Today I am going to complain about the state of video game stories. (Heavy spoilers ahead for God of War and Prey. You have been warned)
So, you know that new game, you know what I am talking about. God of War. The perfect, 10/10 game. I despise that game, because it stands against what the original series represented, but this is not the problem we are focusing on. We are focusing on the story of the game, mainly, the introduction (more like shoehorning) of Kratos's son, Atreus. At the end of the game, it is revealed that the little urchin is none other than Loki, a fact that is so easily predictable that I have been saying it without actually playing the game. Why is that a problem? Well... This is a story-based game, not a gameplay-based one. You play it to unravel the story, and if the ending is so easy to foresee and the journey is about reaching that ending, then what is even the point of playing in the first place. I was already reluctant to play the game in the first place, as Kratos was the embodiment of rage and destruction in the older games, a god of war, if you will, and now he has become a grumpy dad, which would not ever have happened without major concessions to his character.
This problem also popped up in Prey, where two major plot points were so transparent that it actually hurts. One, you are not Morgan Yu, but a Mimic which was conditioned to believe it was him. Two, the events of the game are a simulation to test said mimic. Those plot points, although vital, are also easily predictable. Scratch that, marketing spoiled the mimic part before the game was even launched. If this article makes me seem bitter, it is because I actually am. What happened to good story writing , real plot twists, events you can not foresee just by looking at the game's box? Years and years of video games have lead up to this overnormalisation of storytelling, of following a pattern, which is easily predictable. This weak plot is a huge disappointment, as the rest of the game is simply stunningly well crafted, and I would like to commend Arkane on their determination to work in an immersive sim environment with their games.
Now, after that small nugget of happiness,let's get back to our subject. Being the hero, you must first pass the challenges to become more mature, more experienced, then you must defeat the evil guy, meeting a cast of coincidentally helpful characters on the way. That is fairy tales 101 and it has seeped into video games, ruining creativity. This sequence I described can be applied to a disturbingly large amount of video games, no matter the general themes they are pretending to feature. Now, being the hero boils down to choosing a setting for the blueprint to disguise itself. You have medieval fairy tale in modern Elder Scrolls, post apocalyptic fairy tale in The Last of Us and Fallout 4, space fairy tale in Prey, and this goes on and on. You can clearly see the beginning, middle and end in these games, rarely seeing an unexpected turn in the story, and if it happens, it does not change the course of the main character's adventure.
All in all, after my rant on video game storytelling, I would like to see your opinion on the subject of video game plotline homogenization, because I feel like I am not the only one dissatisfied with this turn of events.
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