I had a debate with a certain person in regards to Phoenix Wright, someone I completely and utterly disagreed with. While I had this semi-intellectual debate it had occurred to me that maybe the simple forms of storytelling may be the best form of storytelling in this medium.

I make it no secret, I hate videogame storytelling. Most of them are horrible cliches and it never ever goes to a higher level of storytelling encompassing more complex storytelling elements. What makes it worse is that there are certain videogames that even try to hide terrible writing through unnecessarily complex dialogue. A great example of that is Xenosaga or Metal Gear Solid. These games have terrible writing and even get a little pretentious and preachy by hiding the writing under the guise of complexity. After all, writing and scripting are the fundamental basics. Yet, it is these simple basics were our hobby miserably fails. For example here is a quote from FFX I got from IMDB,

"Summoners challenge the bringer of death, Sin, and die doing so.
Guardians give their lives to protect their summoner. The fayth are the
souls of the dead. Even the maesters of Yevon are unsent. Spira is full
of death... only Sin is reborn, and then only to bring more death. It
is a cycle of death, spiraling endlessly."

You notice the problem with this quote? Yes, it says too little with too much dialogue. Isn't it irritating when someone tries to add too many unnecessary words to make themselves sound greater than they really are (yes, before any of you point this out I am very guilty of this). For games, maybe the simple storytelling is the best way to get your point across.

As I was playing through Tales of the Abyss, it occurred to me that the game had a very simple story. The story centers around the meaning of birth, and our destiny. It is a very simple story and a very simple concept. The game struck me as being one of the most engaging gaming experiences last year. How could such a simple concept be so amazingly well done? That is because they likely used this main concept and branched the entire story from this simple idea. As you play the experience you are not talked down to, nor does the game get pretentious by tackling scientific subjects they don't know anything about. In fact, they do the smart thing and create their own world with it's own set of physics, history, science, and lore instead of using our own and getting preachy. That is what makes the game so great, they don't act condescending to the player because the player isn't well versed in Math, Biology, Chemisty, History, Physics, Engineering, Philosophy, and Mechanics. There are many games that are too complex for zero reason at all.

To use my old lady example, this is akin to an old lady who pretends she is young and she wears a bikini like the old days. Instead of an old lady who accepts the fact that she is old. Videogames have crappy writing and crappy storytelling, it is magnified even more so when the videogames try to create more complex storylines to hide the bad writing. That is why I advocate that they use simpler storytelling, because it would force them to work at a common theme and it would also hide the bad writing much better than something that tries to be grand and expansive. Not to mention a simple storyline in capable hands can create great, amazing experiences.