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> narrative games haven't been really mainstream until relatively recently Interested in your take on this since my perspective is exactly the opposite. For m
by kaoD 4y ago
> narrative games haven't been really mainstream until relatively recently
Interested in your take on this since my perspective is exactly the opposite.
For me narrative games were part of the mainstream triad (arcade vs simulator vs narrative) in the 90s/early 00s until the open-world-sandbox sidequest-filled games took over the SP narrative-ish niche. Even before the 90s RPGs and IF (back then known as "text adventures") were all the rage in the non-console-gaming world (which was large, at least here in Europe).
There's a reason Kojima is such a celebrity in the genre, and that's MGS1 (from 1998) which would probably go unnoticed nowadays.
Now that I mention 1998 that was a huge year for narrative-driven games: Half-Life, Grim Fandango, Zelda: OOT, MGS1, Final Fantasy 7, Resident Evil 2... What a year!
I'm no longer that into in SP games. Does your post imply the pendulum is changing directions? Can you recommend some titles?
- User23 4y agoA lot of people think Disco Elysium has a great story.
- t-3 4y agoI'm not actually into gaming much anymore - my tastes trend towards traditional roguelikes, which are not very popular with modern gamers. The narrative games you mention are all great, but I think gaming at that time was still pretty niche and limited to middle/upper-class and geeks, just like home computers were. In my memory, vastly more people played arcade-style games and multiplayer games than RPGs.
- User23 4y agoThe NES changed that. Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy were quite popular.
- t-3 4y agoI wasn't even born when the NES came out. Maybe my perception is faulty, but video game consoles were the domain of "rich" kids when I was young.
- User23 4y agoIt was the opposite in my experience. The upper middle class parents didn’t want their kids playing with “that trash.” So everyone would hang out at the welfare kid’s house because his mom got him the Nintendo.
- kaoD 4y agoInteresting, could that be a regional difference? Every single 90s kid owned a PS1 or N64 over here (western Europe) and MGS/FF7/Z:OOT were mandatory titles to own. PS1 was so easy to pirate that even lower-ish class could afford it.
- t-3 4y agoCould be, or maybe I just uncritically accepted my parent's reasoning for not having them? I don't remember many kids having consoles and remember those that had them used them as a status instrument, but I didn't have many friends either.
- User23 4y agoThe early 90s cool kids in Germany all had Amiga 500s and the AD&D games Eye of Beholder and so on were very popular.