Dead Pixels has 41 chronicles

1. The Greatest Stories of the Decade
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Dec 09 2009

   Dead Pixels
   12-08-09
   By Ryan M. Eft
   
   With an assist from Zach Ellsbury, John Bisgnano, and Brad Pennington
   
   There’s been a lot of innovation in gaming in the past decade, but all the technical achievements arguably fall by the wayside when compared to the huge steps forward in the ability to tell a story. Games were long limited by their technology, locked into primitive visuals and strict goals that kept storytelling more or less the province of RPGs. There were exceptions, yes. But only within the current decade has the art of storytelling really branched out to reach genres such as shooters and platformers that were previously thought to be inherently shallow.
   Where can storytelling in games go in the next decade? Its going to be a blast to find out, but for now Dead Pixels looks back at the greatest stories of the past ten years.
   
   Final Fantasy X
   As the oldest pick on this list, it was also one of the most influential on everything that followed. It was one of the first games to sport extensive spoken dialogue, but that was merely a hugely influential technical achievement. Where FFX broke with the past was where it pointed the way to gaming future. The story was more of an emotionally impact than even its predecessors, and it also chucked the heroic quest archetype out the window. The intensely personal nature of the plot, which mixed issues of religion, family, and politics into a kind of world we hadn’t really seen before, drew gamers in almost instantly. In a very real (and somewhat ironic) way, it sounded the death knell for traditional RPGs. The cast was more human than we were used to, and the success of the game sent the message that invulnerable bad-asses were not always needed to make a game popular. The complex ending left more questions than answers, something that had been almost unheard of in gaming before. Where we’ve been since is a long, strange trip, one that FFX helped kickstart.
   
   Braid
   Braid is as close as stories in games have come to truly being artistic, in the way movies and books are capable of. It presents us with a love story that is beautifully told without the slightest cutscene. But by the time the credits roll, the things we thought were true have been turned on their head, and protagonist Tim revealed to be not all that he seems. This alteration in his nature doesn’t entail being genetically manufactured or having some special kind of power; rather, it intimates a difference in perception that could be discerned by reading between the lines of the story. Maybe downloadable games are capable of offering a kind of story that big0budget retail releases haven’t reached yet; if so, Braid is a perfect turning point.
   
   Half-Life 2
   Gordan Freeman’s fight against his own oppressive government may have started back in ’98, but it continued in 2004 in grand fashion. Half-Life 2 not only presented this tale in such epic fashion that the technology involved still draws people in five years later, but the game pioneered the move away from cutscenes as the sole reliable storytelling method.
   
   Metal Gear Solid series
   Debate still rages as to whether Snake’s tale is one of the most confusing or one of the best. We’ll go with “best”. Yeah, its convoluted. Most of the games don’t even star Snake. But that doesn’t make the time-spanning tale of espionage any less gripping to fans, who’ve faithfully followed it for four iterations, and will likely follow it for as many more as there are stories to tell.
   
   Final Fantasy XII
   The gameplay may have received mixed reviews, but the tale at hand didn’t. Throwing six people in the middle of a massive, multi-kingdom war pretty much by chance, FFXII rewrote the book on the types of story a traditional RPG could tell. While series like the Elder Scrolls strive to give control of a story to the player, Square stuck to their guns and delivered a tightly focused narrative. Lacking a central character, a clearly defined love story, and a typical villain, the resulting mix of politics, war, and heroic quest left an impression on players well after the final battle was fought.
   
   Grand Theft Auto IV
   Niko Bellic is fresh from war, crime and poverty, and all he wants is a new chance and a piece of the much-talked-about American dream. His cousin Roman has promised him riches, but Roman hasn’t exactly been on the up-and-up. As Niko finds out that the American dream is reserved for a select few dreamers, he becomes entangled with a laundry list of broken people who drag him further down. It soon becomes apparent that Niko’s search will cost him his soul. The two expansions present different viewpoints on this ultimate tale of life in modern America.
   
   Fallout 3
   Heroic quests don’t have to be in pursuit of power or treasure. In the wasteland, there are more precious things. Bethesda took the world of Fallout and used it to tell a science-fiction story grounded in the realities of survival. Project Purity, and your father’s involvement in it, was a mystery whose answer was satisfying while not forced. And in between, the world and denizens are fleshed out to such a degree that after a while you feel like a native.
   
   Mass Effect
   Sci-fi in video games has traditionally been the realm of space-shooters and high-octane action games, most of which had little to say about their subject matter. Then along came Bioware. This sprawling space epic injected sci-fi gaming with a much-needed dose of thought, creating a convincing scenario of man among the stars. While it might be impossible to judge the full scope of the tale with two installments yet to come, the first captured dutifully the essence of what true science-fiction is all about.
   
   Jak and Daxter series
   Okay, the second two. What began as an (excellent) Mario clone evolved into one of the most lauded tales in gaming. Jak went from your typical no-personality platforming star to a man dealing with both literally and figurative darkness. Along with Ratchet & Clank, this series helped prove that you could apply depth to traditional, action-oriented games without needing an M rating.
   
   Suikoden III
   Three different points of view told the story of Suikoden III, a tale heaped in both classic tenets of the epic journey and layers of political and personal complication. Every character had their own driving forces, which were very rarely the sort of unconstrained heroism the genre had been accustomed to. Suikoden III may have built on the first two entries, but the tale it told was a unique thing by itself.

   
   

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Dead Pixels has 1 comment on this chronicle.

1. MaTrIx
   Posted On Dec 10 2009

   Even though its relatively new for 2009 Assassin's Creed 2 should be on there. Ubisoft made leaps and bounds on the game since the first one. However, it STILL left questions at the end.
   
   OR...you can just write a whole piece on that game alone...LMAOROTF!!!