How Can Next-Gen Help to Tell Better Stories?
Video games as a medium for storytelling is among the youngest of it’s contemporaries. What started as basic premises such as aliens invading, an Italian plumber rescuing a princess, or a booger-flicking janitor turned super-hero, quickly turned into deeper stories with something to say. Was this due to improvements in hardware? Can next gen consoles help tell better stories?
With heavy hitters like The Last of US Pt. II rumored for February it looks as if the last of the big games for current gen consoles have shown their hand as they wind down. Both the next-gen PlayStation (we’ll call it PS5) and Xbox Scarlett are roughly a year away, and both companies have the same challenge that comes with every new generation: How to get people to upgrade?
What Makes Good Stories?
In a recent episode of our podcast, Triangle Squared: A PlayStation Podcast, we discussed these upcoming consoles and how developers felt in regard to them. It appeared that there is a bit of a divide with 2 notably contrasting statements coming from different parts of the industry. Ubisoft praised the consoles power and the revolutionary nature of having a solid-state drive (SSD) as standard, while Platinum Games’ head called them “more of the same”. We decided to take the question to our listeners. The responses were as expected: Some were more than ready for PS5; others were happy with PS4. One response in particular though posed a great question. How can next-gen help developers tell better stories?
With each new generation of consoles, developers are given more power and resources. The first thing we tend to see these improvements put to use on is the visuals of the game. Better resolution; more dense flora; particle effects; higher frame-rate: you name it. Can these improvements be connected into helping story-tellers express the story they wanted to craft? Are great stories inherently separate from the tech that helps build the delivery device? Simply put, can next gen consoles help tell better stories?
We share our thoughts this week on that and more on Triangle Squared: A PlayStation Podcast!
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In terms of reception, the game is sitting at a 95% approval rating on Steam. Players say that the game’s current content is enjoyable. The only downfall of the game is its length, being 10 hours with 6 more to 100% the achievements. For Metacritic, the game is currently sitting at 
Starting with reason 1, the number of guns. Each game in the series boasts an unprecedented amount of guns from common to legendary. The series boasts 17.75 million guns, all totally different from the last. There are a variety of companies that make guns and a variety of elements to choose from, making the number of guns grow to unprecedented amounts.
Reason 2: Each Game has an original story that takes up to 25 hours to complete with four playable characters to choose from. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you want a Sniper character or you want a character that is more of a heavy gunner. Whatever character you pick, you still have three skill trees to choose from. Each game has four characters to choose from than three skill trees to choose from for each character. The NPCs are hilarious and provide sidequests that help you get weapons that are exclusive to those missions, making each sidequest as important as the main story.
And Finally, Reason 4: Sidequests. Modern Looter Shooters have sidequests that basically provide you with information on modes outside of the main story. There are 127 missions in Borderlands 2, not including DLC. With DLC, there are 287 missions. Each one has its own dialogue and provides context as to why you are doing these things for them.The amount of detail that goes into each quest is insane as some quests have you defeat a powerful enemy to shooting a guy in the face because he asked you to.
