Please Sir, can I have some more? (plot...)

One thing that has begun to seriously bother me of late, to the point where it has actually influenced my buying decisions, is the quality of story writing in the computer gaming industry these days, or lack thereof in many cases.

Okay, so I shouldn't expect a great deal of plot and intrigue from "Boomstik McShooterGuy 6000," and honestly, I don't. If I've had a stressy day, and I need to blow off steam, well then, I load up one of the many mindless shooters I've got on hand, lock and load my trusty flak cannon or rocket launcher, and go to town, cackling like a mad, homicidal monkey.

However, when I want something a little slower-paced, a little more involved, and a bit less with the twitch-reflexes, there's a dearth of good entertainment, of late. Honestly. I think the last PC game I actually bought a copy of was the Gold Edition of F.E.A.R. and with that, I was still somewhat disappointed as what initially promised to be some good spooky-vision fun basically turned into this:

Oh, look. Another batch of mooks. *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM*. And another. *BLAMBLAMBLAM* And yet another overwhelming batch of mooks. *BLAMBLAMBLAM* Oh, hey, the music's gone all eerie and shite, and I'm moving into a dark area. Yep, there's the little girl. And there's the super-soldier commander. And ooooh, Spooooooooooooooky HUD flicker, check.. Expositional dialogue, check. Next obscenely ridiculous wave of oncoming mooks, check. *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM*

Gag me with the business end of an M4 Carbine. I mean, while the game does well setting up the atmosphere, and has a few nice moments where you feel like you've just been zapped with defibrillator paddles, I've yet to see anything that really resembles an o'erweening plotline. It's like they were trying to go for a mix between System Shock 2, X-Files, and Poltergeist with some thrilling military/police drama thrown in for seasoning. Throw in some contrivances like how the elevators always conveniently close behind the bad guys so you can't get out, and your character's ability to go into "Slo-Mo" which isn't "Bullet Time, HONEST," and, well...

The CD has sat on my desk for the past month, untouched save for when I had to go rummaging for some papers my wife needed.

It's a symptom of an overall problem in electronic and computer gaming these days. The field has gotten so competitive that there is a vast amount of pressure from investors to get the games out on schedule, damn the torpedos. Things like plot often get left by the wayside, or if they don't, then more often than not, the game suffers a shortening of duration as bits get cut out to make sure the street date is hit. In some cases, such as with KOTOR II, whole endings get scrapped, leaving the player feeling a bit unfulfilled and cheated. Of course, there's also the opposite problem: Games which are possessed of glorious, intricate plots, and gameplay so frustratingly broken that they might inspire pacifistic, enlightened societies to become revenant hordes, should they be loosed upon so innocent and unsuspecting a people.

It's rare that you find that proper balance between gameplay and plot. Half-Life 2 tried, and came close. System Shock 2 did a bang-up job, and was one of the best I've ever played in that respect. Independence War 2, while the plot was a little loose in a few areas, and the antagonist was more or less Snidely Whiplash in space, remains one of my favorites. There are a few up-and-coming ones that I'm looking forward to on a story perspective: Mass Effect looks promising, and Starcraft II seems like it's going to be another Blizzard megahit. Fallout 3, needless to say, makes me happy in pants.

The problem I see on the horizon for the gaming industry, having grown up alongside said industry, is this: When I was younger, I was a lot more into the twitch-games, where your primary objective was to just blow the everloving crap out of anything that moves and rack up points. As I grew older, I got into role-playing games, both online and tabletop, and my interests moved more toward diversions with some meat on their bones, so to speak. Granted, these days I'm as into MMOs like City of Heroes/Villains and World of Warcraft as your average casual gamer, but they at least try to have interesting story arcs in their multitudinous mission trees.

The current generation is faced with a range of choices several orders of magnitude more prolific than anything I had to deal with, and the competition for their dollars is by logical extension much more fierce. The publishers seem to me to be focusing on fancier graphics, more realistic visuals and physics, more "shock factor," and of course, getting the game out the door and into the waiting hands of the masses. Either that, or they're licensing the unholy everlovin' crap out of anything Hollywood decides to put out, especially if it has to do with superheroes (but that's another rant).

I just hope that along the way, story doesn't totally get discarded. I hope that plot doesn't get pruned away, because to me, without something to tie all the action together, the games of the future are just not going to be worth playing.