A battle with pirates. (NES version shown) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]I've always been one to love a good story, which is what my Dungeons and Dragons background was always about. I always loved the story, and would go to great lengths to tell it or make it more interesting, even if it was at my character's expense. My gaming experiences were always a little bit different though, mostly starting with World of Warcraft.
If you've never played WoW there's a LOT of story behind it. I played the game for 7 years, and there is a WHOLE lot of story behind it that I do not know. Not because there's too much to learn though, but because I just didn't want to learn it. When I read a book, it stays in my head for probably a week or two and I start to forget details... So too goes my memory for gaming... I have to do a quest four or five times before I remember it, and I found it extremely frustrating that now and then they'd change things, and the quests would either change or go away or whatever...
I simply downloaded addons that told me where to go, and figured it out from there. Most of the time when you moused over something you had to kill, it told you as much... so I'd do it, and follow the arrow to the next thing, etc. The story never interested me at all. Ever. It got to the point that when I was forced to stop and listen to story, I'd get irritated. When I had to go back and read a quest to figure things out, it made me not want to play.
So when I started playing X-box games this past January, I took a similar approach. Gogogo! Skip the text, just let me fight! '
I'd mentioned before that I had gotten Mass Effect 3 at the mis-construed advice from some friends, and started the ME franchise from the back end. When I started playing it, I went into the options and found that I could turn off the making of decisions. This took me one step further from the story, so that I could focus on the action. I enjoyed this for a little while, until I realized that you could greatly change the outcome of things. That was then compounded by the realization that decisions made in ME1 and ME2 would impact the action on ME3... I decided to turn the decisions back on, and start again.
Now, suddenly I find myself enjoying story lines in video games, all over again, the way I did in the original NES days with the first Final Fantasy, and Ultima Exodus. I find this a curious transition, to be perfectly honest.
So I mentioned (I think??) that when I found out how important the decisions in ME1 and 2 were, I bought them, and started playing them... Well, a kid of mine scratched ME1, and now it won't play... Color me angry. I figured I'd go into my gamefly queue and get ME1 from them, and install it (now that I have a hard drive... Ididn't before) and then maybe my disk will work well enough for disk recognition, and I could play off the install from GameFly... So I put ME1 at the top of my list, clicked "Keep" for ME3 that I had out...
They didn't send me ME1... They sent me Gears of War... THREE... Because when I was taking the advice from my friends about Mass Effect, I guess I took the same advice about Gears of War... I haven't gotten it yet, but I think what I'll do is play it for a couple hours, and if I like it, I'll get GoW1 and 2 from Amazon... And "Keep" 3 so that they might send me ME1 again... I'd really hate to have to buy ME1 again, even if it was only $17... Oh and by the way, I also played Assassin's Creed 3 recently, having never played the first two. ALSO at the recommendation of those same friends... This was actually not misunderstood though. They told me to go with 3 first. I made sure of it... I may just stop listening to them all together though.
Anyway, like I'd said, I played all these games in reverse order, only to realize while playing Batman Arkham City, while I waited for GoW3, that I've never played Arkham Asylum... Another franchise I played backwards! I didn't mind so much the first time through, but as I'm playing AC now, I'm picking up more mentions of old business that I am assuming had to do with AA... Yet another game I need to get, and play, and beat, before I can enjoy the games I have now! GRR!
Ah well... Too many games is not a bad problem to have, methinks! :D
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