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Story to Gameplay Ratio: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:TacticalHomoertoScene.png|link=Metal Gear Solid|
Just about every game released nowadays has at least a little story in it. Some games are almost nothing ''but'' story, such as [[Visual Novel
Does this work? It depends. Games with great gameplay and no story, such as the ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' series, sell fantastically. Games with bad gameplay and no story tend not to last. Games with bad gameplay but a high Story to Gameplay Ratio, especially if the story is considered great, sell to those who are willing to slog through the boring game to get at the crunchy story bits and [[Cutscene
Many modern [[Role
Periods where a game takes control away from the player for the purposes of advancing the plot or tutorials are known as [[Exposition Break
Compare [[Check Point Starvation]].
'''''Please note:''' This list is ranked. That means the closer is an item to the top, the more gameplay it has; the closer to the bottom, the more story it has. So, if you know about a really, really plot-heavy game don't place it under "Lowest Story to Gameplay Ratio"; instead, place it right above "Highest Story to Gameplay Ratio".''
{{examples}}
== Lowest Story to Gameplay Ratio ==
* ''[[Pong]]''.
* Many puzzle games such as ''[[
** There is at least one exception, in Tetris Worlds there are cute little robots and their star is about to go supernova, and you have to drop the blocks into the square to power some sort of machine that terraforms other planets in other solar systems so the robots can live on them.
** There are actually several video games that consist of a story shoehorned into Tetris. Another one is Tetris Plus for the original playstation where there was a professor "doing archeology" who had to get to the bottom of the block chamber.
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* [[Virtual On]] has an even lesser ratio than the other typical fighting games. Whatever the [[Excuse Plot]] might say, the sole purpose of the game is to entertain the Gundam-maniacs; the mechas, save for [[The Chick|Fei-Yen]], do not even have a personal story of their own.
* John Carmack of [[Id Software]] maintains that story is completely incidental to gaming. The original two ''[[Doom]]''s and the first ''[[Quake]]'' embody this philosophy, with stories no more complex than "you're here, bad guys are over there; kill them." ''Quake 2'' is only a little bit more complex, and ''Quake 3'' eliminates even the slightest hint of a story. ''Doom 3,'' however, is considerably more plot driven ([[Your Mileage May Vary|for better or for worse]]), as is Raven's ''Quake 4''.
* [[Roguelike]] genre is characterized by fairly thin plots. [[Nethack]], [[Dungeon Crawl]], [[Angband]] and most of its variants as well as the genre-defining ''[[Rogue (
* Fighting games in general ''do'' have a story, but you wouldn't know it from the actual games. Most of it is [[All There in the Manual]].
** The ''[[Touhou]]'' fighting games belong with the rest of the franchise below; in one-player Story Mode there's the same amount of in-game dialogue, with the same degree of (loose) relevance to the plot.
** The Flash fighting game ''Death Vegas'' is on the other end of the scale. Not only are there extensive cutscenes setting up each fight and placing it, but every single character's fights, and their outcomes, are a canonical part of the overarching story.
* Strange to think of it, but long-running console [[RPG
** This was [https://web.archive.org/web/20081007160221/http://www.gamespite.net/talkingtime/showthread.php?t=4183&page=3 pointed out] by Brickroad in his brilliant [[Let's Play]] of ''[[
{{quote|
** ''[[
** ''[[
** Also, when ''[[
* Like the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' series, ''[[Ultima]]'' and its prequel ''Akalabeth' began on this end of the spectrum. As both gameplay and story depth evolved, later Ultimas shifted toward the middle.
* Basically, any video game that tries to be nothing more than a game (not that
** ''
** Nintendo in generally makes many games of that kind even today. If there is any real depth to the story, chances are that those parts are completely optional, like the ''[[Metroid]] Prime'' scans.
** ''[[
** Though the sequels have more developed plots, ''[[Turok (
* [[Cult Classic]] ''[[Another World (
* ''[[Bangai-O]] Spirits'' does not even pretend to have a plot in contrast to its predecessor which at least had an [[Excuse Plot]]. The little character interaction that there is tends to include [[No Fourth Wall|discussions of this issue.]]
* The first two ''Merlin's Revenge'' games had a moderately long cutscene at the beginning and end of each game, with the story having no impact on gameplay. This was changed a bit with the third game, which added a few very short, skippable cutscenes in the middle of the game, most notably the scene with the stone inscription.
* The Japanese Dreamcast version of ''[[Ikaruga]]'' is basically five stages of outright blasting and combo action with a few lines of story at the start of each stage. The most story-heavy section of the game is the last stage, where there are a few lines preceding each of the boss's four phases, and there's some "dialogue" right at the very end... And that's about it. Control is taken away from the player twice per stage; Once at the end of the intro section, again when the boss appears, (except in the last stage, since the boss appears immediately after the intro section) and at the "stage clear" screen. Any other time, the player is free to move and shoot however they like.
** In the English Gamecube port, even this little amount of story is ripped away; The only story to be had is in the manual, and in the very final cutscene.
* The ''[[Touhou Project]]'' series features dialogue just before each boss fight...and that's about it, unless you have the [[All There in the Manual|Japanese manual]]. And much of that dialogue doesn't have anything to do with the main plot until the last 2 or 3 stages. This gives its vibrant fanbase plenty of room to come up with all sorts of fanon.
* ''[[Meteos]]'' has an opening cutscene and an ending based on which mode you play, and nothing else. This doesn't stop what little amount of story that shows up there from being amusing. It also has brief descriptions of each world, typical of games that like to have a bit of story without getting in the way of the action.
* The ''[[Star Fox (
* ''[[
* ''[[
** [http://www.teamfortress.com/movies.htm This page] adds a bit more background to the teams, but essentially the story boils down to "two companies that control the world have hired mercenaries to kill each other. Go help them".
** Now, it has much more story with [http://www.teamfortress.com/war/administrator/ this comic] and [http://www.teamfortress.com/pumpkinpatch/the_last_will_and_testament_of_Zepheniah_Mann/ this page], the latter which describes how the whole mess started.
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* ''[[Left 4 Dead]]''. There are small cutscenes at the beginning of each campaign that last under a minute. There is dialogue throughout the levels, but they take place during the actual gameplay. Not to mention there is writing on the walls which is optional for the players to look at.
** [[Nothing Is Scarier]] in effect. With this game and it's sequel, much of the cause and backstory of the ensuing [[Zombie Apocalypse]] are only in the footnotes. The characters only meet at the start of the game(or at least a week earlier in the case of the first game), meaning that not all of them are exactly open to sharing their personalities and getting attached, as you never know who's going to turn next.
* ''[[Gears of War]]'' had quite a few cutscenes, but they were never very long, and there wasn't much story behind them. The sequel had a more in-depth storyline, but the cutscenes were still not very long, with most of the plot being told in in-game transmissions.
* ''[[Portal (
** One must note, however, that it has been hinted at that Portal takes place in the same universe as the [[Half-Life]] series; if that's the case (and the connections are revealed in later games), it could have an impressive amount of backstory from the relatively important information about that series.
* ''[[
* The early, 8-bit ''[[Ninja Gaiden]]'' games (not to be confused with the current ones). The original ''Ninja Gaiden'' was one of the very first games to have many well-done cutscenes with a genuinely interesting story filled with twists and turns. The fact that it was backed up by some great ([[Nintendo Hard|if impossible]]) gameplay helped a lot as well. One of the first games which caused players to beat each level to see what happens next in the story.
** Incidentally, the writer for these games would later go on to work on a number of beloved [[Square Soft]] [[RPG
** The 3D ''[[
* ''[[Myst]]'' and most of its sequels/imitators. There is a story, but it definitely takes a back seat to wandering around beautiful, lonely worlds solving fiendish puzzles. (Individual sequels waver a bit - ''Myst'' gives you almost nothing to start with, and each subsequent game adds a little more story and a little less puzzles.)
** The split between ''Myst'' and its sequels is because of the story. In ''Myst'', all of the story is backstory and you only really learn it at the very end. The only storyline in the game itself is "go fetch" and there's only one decision in the game that's story driven, so the puzzles and the pretty pictures are all gameplay. In all of the sequels, you're an active part of the ongoing story and the puzzles are part of (or drive) the storyline, so they belong much farther down this list.
* ''[[Vietcong]]''. The briefing and debriefing cutscenes are rather long, but the rest of the game is mostly a standard jungle [[FPS]].
* ''[[No More Heroes]]'' has several-minute-long cutscenes before and after boss fights, but most of the game is spent doing odd assassination jobs around the city, exploring the city, fighting through the levels, etc.
** [[Suda 51|Its creator's]] [[
** And by contrast, his [[No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle|most recent game]] has (mostly) shorter cutscenes and more gameplay than ever, which has earned it greater praise from critics but mixed responses from fans.
* ''[[Half-Life]]'' has a low to moderate ratio: there is story and dialog, yes, but you never lose control of Gordon Freeman during any dialog or event. On the other hand, because you often can't move Gordon to the next area until the dialog is completed (which is usually when the person talking unlocks the door or whatever is in your way), these scenes can arguably be thought of as semi-interactive unskippable cutscenes.
* The ''[[Silent Hill]]'' series. The cutscenes don't go on for too long, and are spaced out reasonably. Yet a lot of story is contained within those scenes.
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' is an odd, hard-to-place example. The world you play on has an extremely rich and detailed backstory that's ''completely procedurally-generated'', but in Fortress Mode they're largely irrelevant, unless you find yourself with a situation where you're the last surviving settlement of a [[Vestigal Empire]] that everyone else is at war with.
* The ''[[Panzer Dragoon]]'' series is a shooter series with a vast amount of backstory, but most of it is optional, aside from 2-minute cutscenes at the beginning of each stage.
* ''[[Halo]]'' sits much higher on the list than one would expect with its rather frenetic violence and combat. This is mostly because in addition to a lot of cutscenes, the games makes a point of having plenty of exposition and dialogue taking place ''during'' the levels.
** ''[[
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' sits a bit lower down than some would expect, as a lot of its dialogue is skippable. However, it is quite hefty on the talking side of things, but still has plenty of action.
** Well, not to mention that the dialogue is playable, so it's really not ''not'' gameplay.
** Hell, pick a [[
* ''[[Uncharted]]'' is quite high on story, AND gameplay. This is part of its appeal.
* The ''[[Trauma Center]]'' series has long dialog scenes before and after operations, but after you've beaten the operation once, you can skip right past them.
* ''[[
* There are two types of ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' players: the type that only see the support system in terms of the bonuses it gives to combat, and the type that launches [http://forums.feplanet.net/index.php?showtopic=26098 The Support Conversation Project].
* Due to [[Gameplay Roulette]], the ratio of [[Rance]] games varies, but it's usually quite even. On one hand, there are a good number of cut scenes. On the other hand, they are [[Visual Novel]] style cutscenes and can be quickly read through. There's also the fact that the games involve a significant amount of [[Grinding]] to get through due to their [[Nintendo Hard]] nature.
== Even Story-to-Gameplay Ratio ==
* ''[[Zone of the Enders]]: The Second Runner,'' while not as exposition-heavy as [[Metal Gear Solid|Hideo Kojima's ''other'' franchise]], frequently splits up the action with scenes upwards of ten minutes long, but the game also has some versus mode with no story. In fact, this is roughly the middlepoint of the scale, being completely balanced between story and gameplay.
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]] II'' deserves a mention here. Entering a new room? Cutscene! Wait, it's just a corridor. Regain control of your character long enough to walk down it for three seconds. Next room: Cutscene! Goofy says something, monsters appear, regain control to fight them, battle ends, Cutscene! "That sure was a tough battle, Sora..." and so on. To be fair, you can skip all of these cutscenes and get straight to the gameplay; that doesn't change the fact that there are so many of them, though.
** It's prequel ''Birth By Sleep'' has a similar problem.
* [[Dating Sim
* ''[[
* The ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' series is essentially a story that you help move forward by doing the right pre-determined things. It's slightly more interactive than a traditional [[Visual Novel]], but not ''much'' more.
* Meta example: classic 1982 ZX Spectrum text adventure ''The Hobbit''. Gameplay was heavily reliant on the story for direction and atmosphere, it's just [[The Hobbit (novel)|that said story]] had been published 45 years previously.
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' is a little odd in this regard. There's lots of story in terms of dialog from NPCs and other characters, but all of it can be (and often is by most players) ignored by those who just want to jump into the quests.
** The Warcraft universe have a really good story-lines but it is safe to say that the game's immense popularity is not because of its story. The game would likely still be as popular as it is even if it had virtually no story.
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* ''[[Dreamfall]]''; the first and last few chapters in particular consist almost exclusively of steering your character around from one cutscene to another.
* ''[[Hellsinker]]'' is notable for being incredibly plotheavy for a [[Shmup]].
* ''[[
** Seeing as ''[[
* ''[[Asura's Wrath]]'': It's [[Crazy Awesome|far]] [[Serial Escalation|from]] boring however, being basically an interactive action [[Anime]].
* [[Planescape: Torment]] isn't so much an actual game so much as it is a highly interactive novel.
* The ''[[
** Just to show how bad it was in the first game, in the first few hours, playtime was only about a fifth of the cutscene time. And the scene when you first get on to the ship you're going to be going around in for the rest of the game, is ''thirty minutes long'', and they even let you save mid-scene.
*** The second game was slightly better, but not by much.
** ''[[
*** And in an insane twist of irony, ''Xeno''-creator [[Tetsuya Takahashi]] has specifically described his next game, ''[[
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'', a game which deserves a special place, due to the sheer length and quantity of its cutscenes being [[Serial Escalation|substantially greater than the previous games in the series]]. Cutscene-wise it's less like one game and more like ''five full-length movies''.
** Most estimates put the total run time of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]''{{'}}s cutscenes at around nine hours. To compare to another AAA blockbuster title, ''[[Halo 3]]'''s total cutscene running time is ... [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEQcNnZKtS4 44 minutes].
*** The ending cutscene alone is so long, there is actually a save point in the middle of it.
** The ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' series in general has been called "the best [or worst] movie I ever played" by some who criticized its sheer number of dialog scenes, which occasionally last longer than the actual gameplay. This plays into a long-running joke that there will never be a ''[[Metal Gear]]'' movie. There's no point. There already is one - the game itself.
** Honourable mention should go to ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'', whose limited edition version included a bonus disc with all of the cutscenes edited together into a feature film ''version'' of the game, thus saving gamers the hassle of having to play anything at all!
** While it is a different franchise, ''[[Metroid: Other M]]'' did the movie thing as well.
* ''[[
* ''[[Fahrenheit (2005 video game)|[Fahrenheit]]'', also known as ''Indigo Prophecy'' in the USA, has been defined as an "interactive movie" by its creators. Its gameplay and story very much overlap and complement each other.
** Likewise with ''[[Heavy Rain]]'',
** Despite being almost entirely focused on its plot, the story is surprisingly flexible and control is only very rarely taken away from the player due to the almost entirely contextual control scheme.
* Like [[Visual Novel
* The [[Steam]] release of ''[[Dear Esther]]'' is, in essence, a two hour film that you can examine and traverse at your own pace.<ref>if you took away the WASD and Mouse controls, '''''it would be a movie from a first person perspective'''''</ref>
* [[Visual Novel
== Highest Story to Gameplay Ratio ==
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[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]
[[Category:Story
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