I think that expectations are different for a Bethesda open world game. A lot of people care a lot more about the open world than the story in games like Skyrim/Fallout and will rate them highly because of that aspect. Tomb Raider is pretty much built around the story, the story is much more important I think.
I think it says that the story isn’t as lousy as people here are making it out to be. It may have not been Pulitzer Prize worthy, but if the story was truly awful, the game would not have done as well.
Story is more important but it’s not the primary draw. It’s a good looking game with decent gameplay mechanics. I can like the exploring and combat scenarios and dislike the story.
I liked that part of the story too. But Lara’s personal drama with her father just didn’t connect. Plus I loved the idea of the prophet leading his people, but just like the TR reboot, when the game starts showing supernatural elements are real, they kind of lose me. I wish they’d been written from the perspective of “these people believe this supernatural explanation, but there’s also a rational scientific explanation for the same things”, and you can believe either one.
Shrug. I suppose I was judging these new games on their own merit without any baggage from previous iterations. And overall I still think they do a much better job with their storytelling and characters than the previous games did.
Your kind of making it sound like the story isn’t really a factor for most people, over strong and engaging gameplay. That’s actually okay by me, because you are summing me up pretty well!
Actually, we don’t know what that the explanation is supernatural. The prophet has found an "artifact’ that extends life, and he clearly says that he doesn’t have any supernatural powers. The artifact could be supernatural. Or it could be some sort of alien artifact. We just don’t know, it’s still a mystery. But yeah, Himiko in the reboot was supernatural.
I’ve always felt story telling in video games is just a nice perk, but nothing I actively think about before, during, or after playing something. A good narrative is fantastic, and I’ll always be happy when a story or characters draw me in, but I am not clear on why it matters when that doesn’t work out. Why it matters when the story is bad or boring or whatever. Good story telling is what movies and books and comics and all sorts of other entertainment mediums are for. Games are about interaction and gameplay. In a lot of ways video games are like porn; they just need some story thread (even just the barest one) to get the ball rolling. And often then not even that. Hell, 99% of any games I played as a kid didn’t even have a story, or the only story was told in the first page of the manual! I’d never skip a game that looked like something I’d enjoy just because it had a terrible story, but I’d avoid any game with a good story but terrible gameplay and/or sloppy and frustrating controls and mechanics.
You do understand the people seek different things in different games and movies, and that what is important in one may hot be as important in the other, and what is a factor in success for one might not be a factor in success for another, right?
Transformer movies are not known for their story, they are purely action movies, people don’t go to them for their story. Hence their success is not based upon whether they have a “good” story or not.
In the two Tomb Raider movies, story is much more integral to the experience. Story is important. The story sets up all the Lara does, she talks to people, she reacts to them, there are a lot of cut scenes with conversations. She does a lot talking and being talked to. So if a game in which story is important does well with respective to sales, then the story must not be so awful. And if a movie in which story plays little importance does well, that tells us something else is driving that success, not the story.
I think of it like the movie industry. The first movies didn’t have competent stories either. They were just excuses to show a few seconds of moving pictures to audiences for a penny a seat. Things like “train comes at the camera” or “horse running in slow motion” or “man take pratfall.” As the medium matured and filmmakers figured out what could be done, movies got scripts and editing and a visual language all its own. Compare early efforts like A Trip to the Moon to Inception and you get the idea. (I’m not saying that A Trip to the Moon is less artful or satisfying than Inception, just that Inception is the result of efforts begun by filmmakers like Georges Méliès.)
The same goes for comics. The first comics were primitive, stilted, badly drawn and badly written kiddie fare. As the decades passed, comics became more complicated, well-produced, and matured to the point that you can have deconstructionist works like Watchmen or theorist works like Understanding Comics make sense to the audience.
I wonder if the first movies had fans that would say “that’s not a movie!” because someone attempted to tell a human story that didn’t feature a train coming straight at the camera.
We agree on the first part, that’s for sure. Story is important in a character-driven narrative. As for the rest of your argument, I don’t see how one logically follows the other. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your argument breaks down like this, right?
Story is important.
It’s important for the story to be good in Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Rise of the Tomb Raider sold well and got good reviews.
Therefore, the story in Rise of the Tomb Raider must’ve been good.
I disagree. I don’t think the majority of people bought Rise of the Tomb Raider looking for a good story at all. I think they bought it because, like Transformers movies, they want a Lara Croft game to fulfill a gaming checklist, and the story is an excuse to hang it all together. I think this is what most Tomb Raider players expect:
Exploration
Action
Violence
Mish-mash of historical gibberish
A challenging or well-told story is completely a non-issue to most gamers. Note that I don’t necessarily think they’re lesser gamers for that. When someone buys Call of Duty and plays nothing but MP, that’s their prerogative. Also note that I liked playing Rise of the Tomb Raider despite what I thought was a poor story. Unlike Tom and others, Rise’s blah script didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment of killing dudes and climbing ice walls. I’m perfectly okay with a Tomb raider game being a transparent set-piece framework.
I really feel like he’s actually saying in step 4 “Therefore, most people that bought the game and recommended it to their friends didn’t care if the story was good or bad.”
I can’t speak for anyone else, but here’s what I need and/or care about in a TR story. 1. You need to find the foozle. That’s pretty much it. I actually find that too much story takes me out of game, not draws me into it.
Sorry for the change in topic, but this game does these two things soooo well. In the Uncharted games, for example, I always found the environment traversal to be very predictable and boring. Uncharted 2 even mixed in lots of “and now you’re going to fall and you’ll be saved at the last second by grabbing onto something”, but did it so much that it also became predictable and boring.
Theoretically Rise of the Tomb Raider should be the same with its ice wall climbs. But they do a great job in making it a combination of a systems-based approach that doesn’t feel arbitrary and an unpredictability that they throw in when things start collapsing. It’s just enough that it keeps it feeling fresh and exciting. I really enjoyed the ice wall climbs in this game.
So are movie and television, books and movies, operas and musicals, comic books and prose, poetry and photography, architecture and sculpture. They’re all worth comparing, despite being different mediums, because they often say similar things in similar ways. Videogames and movies should absolutely be compared, partly because videogames are so heavily influenced by movies, but mainly because they compete for the same entertainment time and dollars for a lot of us (i.e. the kind of people who would be reading this post).
As for people playing Rise of the Tomb Raider for the story, that’s why I played it! And that’s why I was bitterly disappointed with it. I don’t see how anyone can defend the cliche ridden, unimaginative, and messy plot, not to mention the utter lack of character development and the trite dialogue. Ugh. Especially after the first game. Just ugh.
