I don't think Quake 3 is a very fair example. It's polarizing but it's meant to be that way. It doesn't "try" to be anything other than deathmatch with fancy visuals. Unlike Fable which was supposed to have trees that grow in real time.

Fable II was worse than Fable, I don't understand why they followed the same "theme" with almost the same outcomes

It did, but the game was only like 45 minutes long. I swear to god.

It's really short.

I'm not necessarily in the storyline camp either, Jon`C. I have a strong value for all three of those things, maybe less on the technical side, however I do think things like the Euphoria Animation/AI that dynamically reacts should be used in most games. I'm focusing on story here because it's the most underdeveloped aspects of video games, in my opinion. (Although, it looks like I'm going to have to play a few of the games listed here, like Lost Odyssey.)

And you're right about a deconstructionist concept, but I have never felt any emotion for the characters in videogames where I've felt emotional attachment to characters in every other media. I don't think it's hard, or even a fantastic thing to make a good enough story to where I can't assume the next generic line of every character after hearing them speak once. I truly believe the amount of effort would be insignificant considering someone already gets paid to write the dialogue for FF characters: You might as well pay someone with some talent.

A small man is never happy when he spends his time trying to fill the big shoes of his ego.

It's Guybrush, not Guy.

Oops, I knew that.

As it happens I did. Couldn't remember the name of the book, though.

Might have to acquire it, though. Since as I love pretending I'm a real-life Ukranian farmer.

Technically, it was Guy. It was a Guy.brush file because they didn't have a name for him, so hence guy. file extension was brush .. so you get Guybrush

Hang on, I still play street fighter II AND I really enjoyed FF8. Maybe I just have good taste

Not if you really enjoyed FF8 =p

nevermind.

FF8 was excellent.

FF8 was great (for me) not because of the story, but because of the Junction System. Unfortunately FF8 was the first FF game I played, and I have come to realise that SE won't implement that system ever again, despite its awesomeness and therefore I probably won't play another FF game.

Martyn has good taste.

FF8 was fantastic.

Probably my favourite out of the lot actually.

Agreed.

Junction system was amazing once you understood it fully.

Only thing that sucked about that was constantly drawing magic from enemies. There was more drawing than combat.

Probably been mentioned before, but KOTOR and the Force Unleashed are great stories that would hold up in great movies or tv series, as far as Star Wars games go. The Jedi Knight series is ALSO awesome material, which could make a great series, or trilogy.

I think Lucasarts is going in the wrong direction. We no longer see star wars games that advance the story. I want games that move into the EU beyond episode 6, with the same characters.

The Old Republic thing is awesome, but it will only go so far. Perhaps an Old Republic TOTAL WAR RTS would make a great game.

Halo would make a great action movie, and if done properly a good sci fi flick.

Maybe THIEF would make an interesting stylistic movie, but it would have be to done by the director of 300.

Hmm... I dunno... lots of ideas there.

I was actually going to mention Halo. lol

As for the Jedi Knight series - the only one I think has any type of film potential is DF2. JO was alright but I couldn't see it as a film, and JA was just terrible.

Halo would be the most generic and terrible film I've ever seen I can't believe multiple people would say that. It's space marines and alien invaders. And no, I'm not just deconstructing it: it's essentially star ship troopers, but serious! I don't EXPECT halo to have a good storyline though. I'm not saying I don't play games because their stories suck, but I just wish they didn't.

Halo had a plot?

Like the game, the movie would be generically awesome.

Seriously the game was awesome. As for the story, its not too complicated. I see Halo as a short, visually awesome, action packed movie, where the awesomeness comes from the visuals, action and characters. I could probably write a good 60-80 min script for the movie that would be cool, but I don't know much of the backstory.

The movie should start maybe a few weeks before the game does, and should go into detail explaining the back story and what not. It should also end where halo 2 begins. Obviously the movie would have to cover more story than the actual game does, create a few new characters, but I don't want masterchief getting a sidekick.

I was with you at generically, but then you used the wrong word entirely =\

Maybe he meant 'generally awesome'.

I'll never understand why so many people thought Halo 1 sucked. It wasn't exceptional but it wasn't a bad game by any means.

I mean, it's horrendously ironic that the most commonly-parroted argument is the fact that it didn't innovate. We're talking about a first person shooter here, by the way.

I think a lot of the resistance comes from it being a mediocre shooter that fanboys thought was revolutionary. I always attributed that to consoles seldom having good shooters until Halo.

What Halo did was capture the hearts and minds of the average non gamers. It wasn't a particularily spectacular or innovative game, but with Halo, it was suddenly cool to be a gamer. Before that, if you were openly into video games, you were a nerd.

Again, not a bad game, TERRIBLE story. Like Boco said, you have to look REAL close to find anything that doesn't seem like another way to throw wave after wave of enemies at the player.

Gotta disagree, there -- if you separate gameplay from story, Halo's story is surprisingly decent. Gameplay-wise, it was a mixture between fun and 'this is the same f***ing area all over again!'

In Halo, gameplay only contained a small amount of the story -- really, gameplay was the mechanism to get to the next story point.

I never really used an onslaught of magic, I mostly just collected it together for junctioning.

FYI junctioning 100 Deaths to your attack ftw.

Thinking about this over the past few days, I can't believe I neglected to mention possibly the best game I've ever played. Shadow Hearts: Covenant had an amazing story and characters, and was combined with excellent gameplay as well.

Kingdom Hearts

Death was pants - status attacks stopped working 30% of the way through. I put 100x PAIN on Squall's GUNSWORD OF PAIN. That was cool.

omg I want to go break in my parents house and grab my Playstation and play some FF now ...
I only have a key to the basement so I can store crap, damnit.

Did it come on PC?
(And I wonder if it would work on 7 lol)

VMware

I know FFVIII did, but frankly it was an atrocious port.

FF7 did too, and it was an even worse port.

This. Obviously the rest of you never played Mafia, because this discussion will otherwise be over.

Also, I believe it won a couple of GoY awards. But GTA 3 took most of them that year.