Home
I think we're obsessed with endings and cinematic moments in a game. These big, beat-you-over-the-head-with-melodrama set pieces can easily swallow up the finer points to a game, the subtle inclusions. I'm playing Red Dead Redemption right now, with full knowledge of how it ends, but it doesn't matter to me. It's not the ending that's interesting. It's the development of Marston and exploring a beautiful landscape. Same can be argued about Niko and Liberty City or even Rapture in BioShock. Some of the best storytelling in Western culture is predictable--the Aeneid, for example, is spoiled before it starts (uh, they build Rome, so we know everything's going to be okay), and Shakespeare rarely had an original storyline. That doesn't mean these aren't fine pieces or that I'm not excited every time I experience them.
There's no such thing as an original story, even if you never heard a drop of news/hype/previews before experiencing it. Every story has been told before. It's how the stories are told that's important."
