Killer7 SINdicate

[Jaladen]

The Legacy of Kain games for one.

[CENSORED]

I keep hearing that but I've never actually gotten around to play them.
(I'm really a boring motherfucker, who always replays the same 80s games over and over lol.)
What's so good about the writing in Legacy of Kain? I'm legitimately asking, not fucking with you.

Anyway there's so many obvious responses, like the early Suda51 games, Ryukishi07 games (though those two are mostly comprised of visual novels) or the original persona trilogy (1, 2IS and 2EP).
Majora's Mask is also one of my favourite videogame stories ever, even though it's really a fable about death, and how we cope with death as it happens or as it is about to happen.
I'm not saying it's especially "deep" or "complex", but I really appreciate how most of it is told through visuals and interactions rather than characters sitting down and speaking.

I would argue that the original God of War games also had good writing in that they did a great job at setting up action sequences, boss fights, enemies and what not by using the backdrop greek mythology.
(I was one of those assholes who dismissed those games because they "lacked the mechanical depth" of stuff like devil may cry or ninja gaiden. Nowadays, when we're flooded by "cinematic" games where most of what you do is walk slowly and hear dialog, I realize that despite them being simpler they're very fun games to play and that's really all that matters.)

This really leads into a discussion on what you consider good writing though. I would say good writing in a videogame is the kind of writing that does a good job of setting up the gameplay. Most of my favourite videogame stories have barely any writing in them at all, like Super Metroid or Ecco the Dolphin where the story is told entirely through environmental interactions. Or the Ninja Gaiden series which really tells very basic storylines, that are enough to set up levels and confrontations but it doesen't really aim to be anything more than a videogame.

Actual well written stories that can stand up to other mediums, they're so few and far between I'm struggling to think of other examples. The original Klonoa can probably stand up to some darker cartoon movies of its time I guess. I'm actually surprised that Qish never brings up Klonoa, because that game seems like it would be right up his alley lol.

Now that I mention Qish, I would say that Pathologic also has fantastic writing for a videogame that really stands up even when compared to other story-centered mediums, and it wouldn't really work in any other medium either.

Most videogames I actually play, have dogshit writing that is either so bad it's funny, or very easy to ignore when actually play the game. (Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Kingdom Hearts)

There's some PS2 era platformers that I actually believe had good storytelling for what they were trying to be. That is to say Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank and Sly Raccoon. All they were trying to be was a gameplay-centered version of one of those slightly more adult saturday morning cartoons, and I would say they succeeded much better than the weird-ass 3d sonic games. Though I'm sure that's not what you're talking about.

[Jaladen]

I'd say LoK's pros are a combination of the VAs, Kain himself, and having a decently thought-out Medieval Fantasy world.

[HOUSELANDER]

king of fighter Ash Crimson saga (Kof 2003,kofXI,kOFXIII). i think its a good writing because the first two saga of King of fighters is pretty generic where all fighter is entering the Tournament to become the champion but there is a an evil cult or Organization is behind the scene planning something evil & the winner of the tournament fighting whoever. since Kyo is the main character in his saga. he won the tournament 4 times while K' dash the main character for the NEST saga won the KOF tournament 3 times.

whats make Ash saga is unique for me because The main character Ash Crimson has his own agenda & he didn't even won the tournament or fight the Bosses. in canon Kof 2003 & Kof Xi ending he just observing other Fighters beat up a Boss & proceed to steal their power when the fighter is off guard.in Kof Xiii the final saga Ash didn't enter the tournament in the story at least you can still play Ash in the game. just like the previous game he just observe the winning team fighting the Final boss only this time he caught the Boss off guard & steal his power. it was revealed Ash Crimson is a good guy after all.but the Boss possesed Ash & he become the true final boss.
after the winnner of Kof Xiii defeated Dark Ash,Ash regained the control but decided sacrificed the final boss by entering the Gate of time make him & final boss erased & no one in the real time remember Ash except some few fighters.

Another Fighting game with good writing is maybe tekken 5,6 & 7? i mean in 6 its pretty Political,after Jin take control of the Mishima Zaibatsu he started the war making everyone hates him so he can lure The AZazel the final boss of tekken 6 out. meanwhile Kazuya who is a Bad guy take control of the G corporation fight off Mishima Zaibatzsu making everyone thinks he is the hero when its actually not.

[HOUSELANDER]

Metroid Fusion is my first ever Metroid game its underrated but i can see why its underrated,the games is not allowed you to roaming around freely just like in the previous installment,you have to do what the Computer Ai tell you to do.defenitrly not a telling story through environmental with tons of dialogue in it mostly from the Computer Ai & Samus inner Monokogue through the entire game,but it works for me with the creepy soundtrack backing up the situation you're in.i rewatched The Thing last year the first thing coming in my mind is Metroid fusion i just like the story of Parasite X can mimicking any creature perfectly just like The thing.the idea of Scientist trying to capture SA-X without the help from Samus is hillarious.how greefy the human & don't care the comsequences.

[Jack]

Continued from Nintendomination in response to Jal

Yes I did. Whatever you say.

Hey you getting curt with me mothafucka? LOL! I'd be thinking that all of my novel lentgh babble about shitty writing in the Nintenlard thread is enough to show that I know a thing a two about writing.
I could add a lot of perspective to this thread, I just don't bother to because I think video game stories are retarded. In that thread alone, you'll see me point out plenty of flaws about the Xenoblade stories & how Xenoblade 1 in particular seems to be deemed a classic due to its tone, rather than its writing. The actual writing is awful & everything is resolved by a Deus Ex Machina. it actually makes the entire conflict of the game seem pointless.

Even more-so when you get to Future Connected. What I find funny about FC, is how the fuck are you supposed to understand it if you haven't beaten XB2 before hand? (Most XB1 fans haven't, which is why it's funny to me that they coom over FC, which further proves to I that they have no idea what they're talking about & are just following a bandwagon.)
When you beat the final boss of FC, the cutscene that plays before you fight it, is a direct reference to what happened during Xenoblade 2's ending. The Zohar/Space Odyssey Monolith whatever it's called disappeared, which was the block that birthed powers of creation within the XB universe.


XB1 is actually one of the best examples imo, as to why gaming writing is stuck in the rut it is in. Gamers don't actually care about story. They prefer presentation. This is how Hideo Kojima gets to pretend that he's a good director, coz he's really good at copying movies, but he rewrites over them with dumb ass anime pseudo-science bullshit that he'll waste hours of dialogue on.

You never see that type of dialogue in movies. Or at least I don't. I see that from Anime, but anime tends to have the same pacing problems as vidya gaems.
Anime has a reason though, they have to provide filler to avoid advancing the story ahead of the Manga's current arc.
Gaming has that problem, coz its writers are all rejects. Resident Evil 6, Rev1 & Rev 2 were all written by a guy who wrote some Ghost in the Shell SAC episodes. GITS SAC is one of the best anime of all time, so you'd logically conclude that RE6 - Rev2 would have good writing too. Those three actually have the worst plots in the entire series, which is saying a lot coz every single RE game has a horrible plot, save for maybe RE2.

GITS is great due to its politics & philosophy. Most GITs properties are written with the mindset of humanity successfully blending their human mind with technological advancements as the next evolutionary stage of humanity. To surpass their human shell.
I point this out, because its GITS deep perspective on politics & philosophy which allow you to accept the GITS franchise's eccentricities.
Motoko Kusnanagi looking like a Sex robot, doesn't make you cringe or pull you out of the setting coz it's actually part of the plot. It's making a statement.

RE6 revolving around some CIA simp who held such an unrequited love for Ada Wong, that he actually created a clone of her, that rebelled against him and started the entire RE6 disaster of a story, lol!
Rev 1 & Rev 2 have the serialized nature of GITS Sac down to a tee, but it just looks really corny.
If people cringe from the overt sexual nature of the character designs or the extremely cringe dialogue of Jackass & his partner, or that hotty Jessica constantly flirting with every guy while being half naked, I wouldn't blame them.

I actually like that over sultriness of the female designs & Jessica but the story is so bad that I can't watch through it. GITS SAC is able to make you forget how sexy every girl in the show looks (Motoko even has a threesome with two chicks during 2nd Gig, which is a reference to the original Manga.)
because GITS over bombards you with constant geopolitical information of the GITs setting's current status quo. You have to pay attention to it because later episodes will actually reference dialogue from several episodes earlier. GITS Sac is world building.
RE games are just wasting your time. I don't mean that they're wasting your time coz the writing sucks. I mean that RE wastes your time, coz the writing isn't building up to anything,

RE games make the mistake of assuming that a plot twist is all you need to build a story around. All of the RE games have plot twists, and every single time the plot twist is really fucking stupid.
I like the plot twist with Jessica, only coz I like Jessica. As a story, it's really fucking dumb and it comes from out of nowhere. It's never hinted at and on top of that, she eliminates a far more likable character (Who happens to be an ugly fat fuck, but he's the most likable character from RE imo.) as part of her reveal.
What makes it even more cringy is that she refers back to dialogue she said, when she was flirting with him.


This is why it's so hard to take video game writing so seriously. Everything is just random.
When GITS refers back to a scene, it'll refer you to crap that sounded like nonsense at first, until you learn the whole context such as "I thought what I'd do, was pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."
When Jessica refers back to how you can't keep the promise of buying her a lobster dinner. It just makes me cringe, coz for one. I tried to forget that line, coz she's sexy but really sucks at flirting. Buying a bitch anything, is the last thing I want to do.
Another thing that makes me go meh, is that she's the one who broke the promise coz she kills him. It was probably the writer's attempt to make her come off as an ice-cold bitch, but I just think it's random and makes her come off as bi-polar due to how her mannerisms drastically change out of nowhere. At least with Xenoblade, every character who betrayed you are all hinted at by the first time you see them.
XB had actual build up to the big betrayal. In RE, it just happens. LOL!

GITS SAC in contrast was referring to a series of copycat assassinations that did not actually have an original actor. The initial act was a meme spread through the cyberlink internet & the mass media, every event after that merely recreated the meme, which in turn shaped the reality around it which caused Section 9 to be terminated to lure the puppet master or architect of the money fraud, out into the open so they could make an arrest.

GITS SAC always has a reason for why it does what it does. The main story arc feels like a puzzle that finally fell into place. The same can't be said for the RE games, where everything comes off as random. Unlike Xenoblade, RE doesn't have a Deus Ex Machina excuse to glue the entire story together through Robo-God magic.
I'm comparing GITS & RE because the two properties share the same writer.
I'm guessing that dude was only responsible for the GITS fan service though, lol!

EDIT:
It's actually two different guys who wrote for RE6-REV2, but they both also worked on GITS SAC.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1591046/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0766199/?ref_=tt_ov_wr

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346314/fu ... t_ov_st_sm
They were no where near being the lead writers of GITS SAC though, and it shows.

Shit like this, should be reserved for that story thread. I just happen to post it here, prob coz the Xeno games are the most recent narrative-focused games that I've played. So I end up talking a lot of shit about it.

[Jack]

king of fighter Ash Crimson saga (Kof 2003,kofXI,kOFXIII). i think its a good writing because the first two saga of King of fighters is pretty generic where all fighter is entering the Tournament to become the champion but there is a an evil cult or Organization is behind the scene planning something evil & the winner of the tournament fighting whoever. since Kyo is the main character in his saga. he won the tournament 4 times while K' dash the main character for the NEST saga won the KOF tournament 3 times.

whats make Ash saga is unique for me because The main character Ash Crimson has his own agenda & he didn't even won the tournament or fight the Bosses. in canon Kof 2003 & Kof Xi ending he just observing other Fighters beat up a Boss & proceed to steal their power when the fighter is off guard.in Kof Xiii the final saga Ash didn't enter the tournament in the story at least you can still play Ash in the game. just like the previous game he just observe the winning team fighting the Final boss only this time he caught the Boss off guard & steal his power. it was revealed Ash Crimson is a good guy after all.but the Boss possesed Ash & he become the true final boss.
after the winnner of Kof Xiii defeated Dark Ash,Ash regained the control but decided sacrificed the final boss by entering the Gate of time make him & final boss erased & no one in the real time remember Ash except some few fighters.

I completely disagree that Ash's story from KOF was any good. It was actually the ASH saga that split the fanbase & killed the KOF series for nearly a decade.

Orochi Saga was the best because it was the most classical set up, two rivals from a centuries long family rivalry, put aside their differences to team up with Chizuru so the three (Iori, Kyo & Chizuru) can revive their family traditions' of sealing the Orochi god from materializing back to life again. The Orochi god took over several hosts & eventually materialized inside of Chris, killing him in the process.

It's revealed that Yamazaki is an Orochi, and always has been.
A ton of people died in the Orochi saga which is why you don't see most of the Orochi cast outside of the Dream match games. Leona & Iori are both sleeper agents of The Orochi, which is why they both can tap into the Riot of the Blood. When Iori did it, he killed Mature & Vice. (Although both of them got revived for some reason due to being fan favorites.) When Leona awakened, she just beat the crap out of Clark & Ralf but they were still able to detain her. Which is pretty badass coz they're the two main characters of the Ikari Warriors games. So those two are basically Contra-style characters, going toe to toe with Gods & Machines in KOF.

The NEST saga had a good set up (It was about secret occult societies, but the imagery was awesome coz most of the NEST characters are Cybernetic Sci-Fi Mercenaries vs a bunch of Illuminati larpers lol.) but a bad climax with some random final boss dude who just randomly shows up for the final act.

The Ash saga just sucks, coz the main character is Ash who acts like a villain (He murders some fan favorites, but we're supposed to cheer for him for some reason. Kinda sounds like Abby from Last of Us 2.) and looks like a girl, and he's completely unlikable.
Orochi Saga built the entire Mythos of the KOF franchise.
Nest Saga built up Military & Geopolitical powers of the setting by tapping into the rest of the SNK universe through The Ikari Warriors series. Nearly every character from those games plays a large background role in Nests.

The Ash Saga doesn't add anything to the mythos. They just bring back fan favorites to have Ash kill them off, lol. (They all get brought back to life after Ash saga ends though.)
Even your plot description of Ash Saga sounds very Anime-like coz it's so damn random & overly convoluted. The Nest Saga was also convoluted, but nowhere near as needlessly over complicated as the Ash saga.

It's one of the biggest problems with game narratives, they come up with very simplistic plots that are extremely hard to follow due to how over-convoluted the presentation is.

Another Fighting game with good writing is maybe tekken 5,6 & 7? i mean in 6 its pretty Political,after Jin take control of the Mishima Zaibatsu he started the war making everyone hates him so he can lure The AZazel the final boss of tekken 6 out. meanwhile Kazuya who is a Bad guy take control of the G corporation fight off Mishima Zaibatzsu making everyone thinks he is the hero when its actually not.

LOL that's when Tekken Jumped the shark. Tekken 1 - 4 told a dark story about Corporations becoming more powerful than countries to the point that the Mishimas aren't even considered Japanese any more. Their own country actually renounced them. Then 5 happened, and everything became as goofy & anime as the King of Fighters series. There's a full blown war between countries & the Mishima Zaibatsu in Tekken 6 & 7 but it's just so corny & over the top.

When you look back at Tekken 3, the story presentation looked very dark.

You could clearly see battle between a Super Corporation vs dissidents rising up to topple it.
Tekken always had goofy endings but none of them were canon.
The one thing that makes the Tekken series unique though is that the 3 main heroes, all eventually became bad guys, LOL!
Heihachi Mishima, Kazuya Mishima & Jin Kazama. That actually mimics real-life politics where someone like Jin Kazama is presented as a good guy due to media propaganda but there's enough people within the games who want to kill him because of all of the people that Jin's armies has killed.

The amusing part is that Jin is just warring against his own family, but everyone else outside of the family wants to kill off the Mishimas & Kazamas, lol.
Tekken has that terrible Dragonball Z trait though where in DBZ, everyone who isn't a Super Saiyan is irrelevant. In Tekken, everyone who isn't part of the Mishima & Kazama clan are irrelevant. Lars is actually a Mishima, which is weird as fuck. I think he was adopted similar to Lee Chaolan.

Fighting games are like the last genre to expect good stories from, but one positive that I can say about nearly all of them is how they start out as small scaled conflicts but eventually build up into battles against full blown Cults & Governments.

Street Fighter started out as just a rivalry between two martial artists, then it turned into a battle against a Terrorist, drug dealing, human-trafficking dictator during SF2. SF4 completes the SF2 arc, and SFV transitions from the transfer of powers between SF2 to SF3.
SF3 takes place after SFV, where the rising power is actually called the Iluminati.
Illuminati in SFV follows the religion & dogma cult aspects of the group (In real life, the Illuminati doesn't exist. At least not today, or even when SF3 was created. It's a myth.) which is a unique take coz it's actually based off of their real life history, as opposed to the Alex Jones conspiracy drivel that most Conspiracy-tards believe.

King of Fighter's story actually starts out with Fatal Fury, but I vastly prefer Fatal Fury's take on the same exact subject matter.
FF starts off with Art of Fighting as the beginning of the entire saga where the final bosses are all criminals who work under the South Town Police Commissioner, Geese Howard.
Fatal Fury series is when Geese eventually took over the entire city of South Town.
The following games are actually a gang war between the Ryuji Yamazaki Triads (He's Japanese, but from China.) and Geese Howard's mafia.
Geese is finally killed during Real Bout, and it actually led to an era of peace for about a decade until Mark of the Wolves happened, where Heinlein (brother of Geese's wife) tries to revive the Geese Howard empire by recruiting Geese's son to his cause.

Too bad SNK never continued that story, coz it seemed interesting. It was basically Terry Bogard & Heinlein fighting over control of Rock Howard, & Rock himself trying to figure out who he really is.
He could easily be a Shonen character or a villain.

We skip ahead into the far future with the Kizuna Tag Battle game where South Town became a cyberpunk ghetto. Southtown was taken over by some goofy looking dork called King Leo, and the only other link to Fatal Fury aside for Southtown is that one of the characters is a descendant of Kim Kaphwan.
Rosa was a really cool looking character and it's a shame that she hasn't been in any other game, possibly due to her setting. (Rosa is from far into the future of the 2000s.)
KOF14 shows though, that your timeline doesn't even matter anymore, now that Nakoruru from 15 century Japan Samurai Shodown is part of the main KOF cast.



The King of Fighters timeline basically continues after Fatal Fury 3, but nothing after FF3 ever happened.
The final battle with Wolfgang, Mr Big & Geese Howard actually happens in KOF 96, but that also led up to the Orochi Saga climax of '97. 94 & 95 referenced the Orochi, and Rugal was destroyed by his inability to control the Orochi. The Orochi Saga still had a lot of the Mafiaso implications that the Fatal Fury series had up until the Orochi finally appear. Every saga after that though was when KOF just got really weird.


Fatal Fury's story stayed interesting all throughout from Art of Fighting all the way up to the Savage Reign games. Fatal Fury saga is like the only fighting game series I've seen where the rise to power made logical sense. After Geese died, nobody was able to rise again until King Leo. Although this is mainly due to how the story abruptly ended after Mark of the Wolves. Had it continued, I think the reign of terror would've eventually restarted under Rock, inheriting his father's legacy. That would've been a badass story, coz it'd reflect that Terry Bogard would have to waste his whole life just having to avenge the death of his adoptive father.

What kills Savage Reign for me though is the villain. What the fuck were they thinking with King Leo? I'd rather face a Cyborg Geese Howard with a Terminator EXO-skeleton face over that poorly designed goofball.
https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/King_Leo

[melonbread]

Metroid Fusion is my first ever Metroid game its underrated but i can see why its underrated

Fusion is my favorite Metroid game.

I'm surprised to find so much fighting game discussion in a thread on good game writing. In my experience, the content actually IN fighting games and not found in outside related media, is quite poor. But I'd love to be wrong!



My favorite game story every will likely always be MGS 3:Snake Eater. It is the perfect combination of boyishly romanticized detailed military story, 60s exploitation spy caper, and surrealist/magical realism fairy tale. It's a commonly cited favorite but unlike many overrated games I feel it earns its reputation.



As far as less "Jap-penned" writing, nobody beats Chris Avellone for me when it comes to wrtiting games, particularly RPGs. He wrote both Planescape- Torment and Star Wars: KOTOR II, arguably the two best-written western RPGs ever made. The same guy wrote both. And he's written so many other greats. Vampire- the Masquerade: Bloodlines is another great example of near perfect RPG writing, its technical flaws aside. Same goes for Arcanum.



Adventure games tend to be the best vehicle for great character writing, given the amount of dialogue. Grim Fandango is king where this is concerned in my opinion.



The Legacy of Kain games have the overall best franchise-spanning story in all of gaming to me. Shame their gameplay doesn't match the writing's standards.

Best-written FPS is No One Lives Forever.




These are my picks.

[Jack]

Honestly there's nothing to add after Xed's post, coz he stated all that needs to be said about gaming writing.
It's not worth following due to how gaming has different standards for writing. Writing doesn't matter in video games, and for the most part. What's considered as good in video games, would be laughed at as awful outside of gaming. Especially Metal Gear Solid. Only the original PSX MGS had a decent plot, coz it' was the most Tom Clancy of the MGS games. Every game after that became some weird Alex Jones bullshit. Although MGS2 had the Campbell Soup monologue.

My problem with game stories, is most people don't even bother to explain to you what makes these stories good. They just say it's good and everyone bandwagons the same exact opinion, but what I often find is that gamers bandwagon over the most horridly written games I've ever seen. I don't Planescape coz it's not a real story. It's just a bunch of monsters over philosophizing about whether or not evil men can reform their evil ways.
I don't find that interesting at all. Let alone to build an entire 100 hour rpg out of it. A lot of people brag about Xenoblade 1's story but it's one of the worst stories I've ever seen. it has good build up, but it completely falls apart by the final act once you realize that everything is resolved through a Deus Ex Machina & the Deus Ex Machina is an actual character lol.

I see so many games that pull off this amateur bullshit but get lauded for it, coz gamers themselves have never fucking read any history, or anything really to gauge how a logical story would actually look like.

This really leads into a discussion on what you consider good writing though. I would say good writing in a videogame is the kind of writing that does a good job of setting up the gameplay. Most of my favourite videogame stories have barely any writing in them at all, like Super Metroid or Ecco the Dolphin where the story is told entirely through environmental interactions. Or the Ninja Gaiden series which really tells very basic storylines, that are enough to set up levels and confrontations but it doesen't really aim to be anything more than a videogame.

Actual well written stories that can stand up to other mediums, they're so few and far between I'm struggling to think of other examples. The original Klonoa can probably stand up to some darker cartoon movies of its time I guess. I'm actually surprised that Qish never brings up Klonoa, because that game seems like it would be right up his alley lol.

Why the fuck play a video game for the story? Video games can have interesting dialogue but it never builds up to a coherent narrative due to the interactive nature of gaming. When gaming started, the entire story was told to you through the intro screen. You get an objective, and the rest of the story is just your actions. This is true for Space Invaders & Donkey Kong, and it's still true for Left4Dead, and I guess Fortnite.
I can't really come up with a more modern example coz modern games are such wannabe movies now, that actual games are hard to come by.

I'm surprised to find so much fighting game discussion in a thread on good game writing. In my experience, the content actually IN fighting games and not found in outside related media, is quite poor. But I'd love to be wrong!

SNK fighting games actually have plots inside of the game. They're not good though, LOL! Fatal Fury comes close. If you include Fatal Fury as Art of Fighting series, Fatal Fury series & Savage Reign series. They tell a chronological story where the main character is South Town.

Street Fighter 3-5 all have stories told in-game. SFV has a story mode. (It's awful.)
Tekken's plot has also always been told in-game since T5.
Overall Tekken was always about an evil corporation led by Heihachi Mishima (the leader changes coz the Mishima & Kazama family keep killing each other, & taking over the Mishima Zaibatsu.) taking over the world.
Back in the 90s it sounded far fetched. Then we see everything that happened this year. We find out that Corporations completely control everything.

I'd say LoK's pros are a combination of the VAs, Kain himself, and having a decently thought-out Medieval Fantasy world.

This doesn't tell me anything at all, and I'll elaborate in the response to Xed.
You actually think LOK was medieval? The first game was. Every game after LOK was quasi Sci-Fi with a Gothic aesthetic. The LOK fanbase mostly revolves around Soul Reaver though. Barely any of them have played the original and the original feels completely different from the games that came after.

I keep hearing that but I've never actually gotten around to play them.
(I'm really a boring motherfucker, who always replays the same 80s games over and over lol.)
What's so good about the writing in Legacy of Kain? I'm legitimately asking, not fucking with you.

Kain is ancient ass game too though, it came from the 90s.
Kain has one of the most badass intros of all time, and it seems that it's labeled as a good story just for that intro alone, lol.


Kain is some fucking retarded story about time traveling, and it's overly convoluted as hell. It'd be laughed out of the theatre and only be shown on Sci-Fi tv at best. Kain games have legit great dialogue though, which is probably where the "GUD STORY!" meme came from.

Editorials I've seen about Kain's story certainly do nothing but masturbate to the dialogue.
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BenServ ... riting.php
His entire editorial does nothing but tell you what the intro was talking about, which is exactly what I'm referring to. Everyone loves the intro, but they conveniently forget how fucking retarded the rest of the series is, lol.

It's been a long time since I've played them so I can't tell you in detail what it was about. The story is as confusing as Zelda's timelines. Kain has this bad habit of retconning the games before it through time travelling shenanigans. I think the original Legacy of Kain which wasn't written by Amy Hennig, actually had the best writing, due to how it had the most consistent dark gothic tone. The Amy games have more of a Sci-fi vibe to them, with the story revolving around obfuscation to mask how nothing ever fucking happens in these games, LOL!
I think they even revive one of the most charismatic characters from the Original Kain, or that they broke into an alternate timeline where the Nosferatu looking dude was still alive.

He was interesting in the original LOK, coz he shows to Kain what it truly meant to be a Vampire.

Vorador offended the fuck out of my sensibilities and he still does, but that's what made him such a great character. He's truly alien to what humans are, he feels like how an actual Vampire Royalty would actually act like. He thinks of humans as nothing but cattle.

In the Soul Reaver series he became some bland enlightened exposition character.

Vorador was much more interesting in the original Legacy of Kain coz although his actions may have been right, I still can't help but hate the guy coz everything about his existence fucking offends me, because I am a human and I see that guy as a threat to all of humanity, lol.
It's due to the characterizations that I think the original Legacy of kain had better writing than the latter games, but even LOK's writing turns into complete crap by the game's end due to that time travelling bullshit.
It wasn't that bad within the game itself. Within the context of the original LOK, it made a desperate situation feel even worse coz you actually see fall of entire kingdom due to Vampires.
The time traveling offered a What if scenario away from the apocalypse but you find out that the rest of the series takes place in an apocalypse anyway, that was governed by Kain. Although in the Soul Reaver games, you find out that Kain is a mastermind and that there's an even greater evil that forces you to team up with Kain.

The original LOK was about you choosing between what you identified as more, were you still human or a vampire? The following games do not have this conflicting sets of views, since the following games add in some stupid story about Elder gods manipulating & controlling everything. Basically they're like The Illuminati but as Gods. It's all so blah when compared to the original Legacy of Kain conflict.


Amy Henniq actually did her best to salvage Legacy of Kain, but a lot of what I complain about the series actually did originate with the original Kain. It's no surprise that the dialogue is decent though, since I find the Uncharted series to have great dialogue too. Except Uncharted's dialogue is way better coz it sounds more natural. They're not a bunch of wannabe Shakespearians like Kain was.

I think the reason everyone overrates Kain is due to the voice acting.

They took a goofy ass story, but they were so serious with their presentation that they made you believe in the story of Nosgoth.



Personally I think Deus Ex is way better than anything Kain related. The voice acting sucks but goddamn is the story extremely relevant today.
https://i.postimg.cc/81Txv54h/DXsovereign.jpg

We thought it was relevant back during the Bush era, but that scene alone describes 2020.

Bartender: "China is the last sovereign country in the world. Authoritarian but willing, unlike U.N. governed countries -- to give its people the freedom they want.
Listen to me, this is real freedom. The freedom to own property, make your life. The West, so afraid of strong government, now has no government. Only financial power."

Jc Denton: "Hardly as sinister as a dictator, like China's premier."

Bartender: It's privately funded propaganda. The Trilateral commission in the United States for instance."

You can read the rest for yourself in the screencap. JC Denton basically replies with generic ass Constitutionalist/Libertarian creeds, but the Bartender replies back to him that the democratic governments can only be shaped around the weakest elements of its people. It's not a real government, because nobody is leading.
This def fucking sounds like America to me, AYY LMAO! Denton is all like "MUH separations of business & state", when quite clearly, corporations are the state. Back in 2001 or whatever, we thought that corporations eventually becoming more powerful than sovereign rights, was just fear-mongering, rather than actual reality.

I actually use to say the same shit as Jc Denton up until last month "BLAH BLAH BLAH MUH CONSTITUTION! BLAH BLAH BLAH" (Actually it was SCOTUS that showed to me, nobody in government except for Rand & Ron Paul, gives a shit about the Constitution anymore.), which fucking proved to me that the USA isn't a country.
The USA is just an Economic safezone for corporations to use all those who live within the United States as sustenance to feed of the corporate olligarchs, who don't even spend money anymore. They just live off of Tax write offs & tax returns, as they get richer by fleecing the entire fucking country!


2020 was when saw Corporations make power moves to buy out every smaller business by bankrupting them through the forced Corona lockdowns. I've been under lockdown since March. Most of my relatives who don't live in the USA have been out of lockdown since April, AYY LMAO!

Kain is basically Planescape Torment for plebs who are too lazy to read, and y'all already know that I don't even like Planescape Torment. At least it didn't have fucking retarded time traveling that keeps retconning the story with each new installment.

Edit: I forgot to delete part of a quote that I wasn't responding to.

I would argue that the original God of War games also had good writing in that they did a great job at setting up action sequences, boss fights, enemies and what not by using the backdrop greek mythology.
(I was one of those assholes who dismissed those games because they "lacked the mechanical depth" of stuff like devil may cry or ninja gaiden. Nowadays, when we're flooded by "cinematic" games where most of what you do is walk slowly and hear dialog, I realize that despite them being simpler they're very fun games to play and that's really all that matters.)

yeah I liked them. All of them were good (including the PSP games. The 2nd PSP game is required to play coz you finally see what happened to his brother & mother.) up until Ascension. That was the only classic style GOW that haven't even bothered to beat once. Nothing about it is interesting. The story makes no sense and the gameplay was shit. Resi Evil & God of War were my shit back when they were action games, then they both became internet darlings by imitating the wants & needs of social media. As I explained in the Nintenderp thread, social media is fake.

[melonbread]

Honestly can't believe I forgot Deus Ex.