Is it possible for a fighting game to have a coherent story?

Naitsirhc

Naitsirhc

[08] Mercenary
I've never seen a fighting game with a decent story. I think Soul Calibur V should have at the very least a decent story, and story mode. I'm one of those fools that like playing games with interesting stories, it makes me enjoy the game more.
 
I think you expect too much fellow backwards name speller. While there is nothing that completely bars a fighter from having a good story, they aren't built to make it work that well. Even an interesting story can feel tacked on when the majority of the time spent in game is in fast-paced action. With so many characters to involve and split the story between, the message can get lost too. Besides, what is the incentive for developers to make long pretty cutscenes or slap a bunch of text boxes in when they are going to be skipped the vast majority of the time and people already have a good reason to buy the sucker? Keep expecting nice intros cause they make the sale, otherwise little else. That's what I think anyway...
 
Malice said:
MK's story mode is great. It's actual story is ass.
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different realms ? A tournament to decide who gets to conquer who ? elder gods, assassin clans, evil warlords, shaolin monks, killer cyborgs all duking it out ?

The premise is so absurd that it fits into itself perfectly.
 
Anything but a shadowy, evil organization that holds a martial arts tournament for some nefarious purpose, which even having a hero win the tournament so many times, they keep on sending him/her an invite.
 
nah the MK story is not ongoing. it goes back and retells itself in different ways over and over again
 
WuHT said:
Anything but a shadowy, evil organization that holds a martial arts tournament for some nefarious purpose, which even having a hero win the tournament so many times, they keep on sending him/her an invite.
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Thats one of the nice things about SC tho right? There's not really a tournament, people are just drawn to fight for the sword.

Fighters CAN have strong narratives (capcom is the only company that really falls down on that), and namco has been strong. The other advantage of rebooting it tho' is that you can cut all the excess garbage that you have pulled up over 5 games. Kind of a spring cleaning thing.

Games I can think of with strong stories:
Soul series
Samurai Shodown
Art of Fighting (story > game)
Arcsys games (if you like it on the edge of insane)
Tekken
Mk 4+

Weak stories:
SF
VF
KOF
Darkstalkers
Old MK's


The problem being that the really big titles have been the ones with stories along the lines of 'hey go fight!'


~~~ And yeah. MK9 had the best story and presentation of story ever. Its writing was spot on for the themes of the game, the characerizations were rad, and the actual story presentation was just insane.

Soulcalibur has a way they like to present stories, but I hope htey take some tips from that.

~(drugposting probably shoudln't do hope this isn't too carayz)
 
MK9 had a great story mode, so did Soul II & III
Teeken's pedigree story stems from Heihachi and Kazuya alternately throwing each other into volcanoes ie. Shit.
Street Fighter has hardly got a story, more a series of poorly done character bios.
Blazblue whilst having a fun story (Terumi is awesome! ^^) does require the player to be into anime and just go with it - so good for some, bad for others...
Anyone who has played MK9 I think will agree the story mode gives you your money's worth.
 
Can I join the "we spell our names from other words backwards" club? MK9's story works because everyone has a similar goal that revolves around this single event, people from Earthrealm are trying to save Earthrealm. People from Outworld are trying to conquer Earthrealm. Netherrealm is teaming up with Outworld to further their goals etc.etc.. in a game like Soul Calibur, even though pretty much everyone is more or less trying to either obtain Soul Edge or Soul Calibur, there are too many different angles to tell each character's individual story from for a story make up like MK's to work. I think Bamco got it right with the idea of short and sweet individualized story mode playthroughs. Maybe to improve upon that, better narratives could be involved with a little more in depth story telling? I didn't enjoy having to read a paragraph of text to get what they're trying to portray.
 
I think there's several elements which is against that idea:
-Most fighting games use the typical arcade mode to present the story. Which leaves no easy way to tell story between fights, and it has the problem that any character in the game can "win" the game so each ending is contradictory.

-They can't easily kill characters off as they are expected to return in sequels, which reduces a lot of the suspense (this is honestly a minor point though. Everybody knows Nathan Drake will always survive in Uncharted games, but they're still compelling from a story standpoint.)

-Fighting games are notorious for awful storylines. I can't pinpoint the reasoning for this. Maybe it's common the story is written by a producer/director instead of a person dedicated to only that.

So yeah, I'm gonna go with no.

I think the only fighting game which actually did a somewhat good job at presenting a storyline (I should note I haven't played MK9, so I can't speak for that) is SC: Broken Destiny. I'd love to see a fighting game go for a pure comedic storyline than a serious one. That way they'd have an easy way to get around some of the problems (like the multiple ending thing).
 
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