WTF: GAMETRAILERS GOTY AWARD FOR BEST STORY

WTF: GAMETRAILERS GOTY AWARD FOR BEST STORY

"The following tales were judged by the size of their heart as well as the complexity of their character," the video states about it's nominees. Now let's go through all of them one by one:

BioShock: totally agree. This game got an amazing setting, that is the underwater city of Rapture. Though it joins the likes of Half-Life 2 in breathing no life into the player's character, who opens the game with one line of dialogue and never speaks again, it has interesting characters and complex relations between them from the Big Daddies and the Little Sisters to Atlas and Ryan. It also has a great sense of discovery as the player learns about the city and its citizen.

Halo 3: here's where the bullshit starts. If you played any Halo game you would hit the credits screen, at least for the first couple playthroughs, without noticing that it has a story to begin with. I cannot understand how could someone nominate a game in best story category, no matter how great it is as a game, if it has a story that didn't matter and none other than the hardest of core players cared about. This game, in story context, has no interesting character, setting or dialogue. Halo series has a great fiction behind it but all Halo games did a poor job presenting it in the context of a story.

Assassin's Creed: couldn't agree more. This game tells two stories and link them together in a creative way. Most of the game is set in the Holy Land where you play as an assassin name Altair who is one of the most interesting fictional characters I've seen in the last few years. I do not need to say more than that I am looking forward to a sequel to know what happens to all the characters and how the story progresses as a whole.

Mass Effect: this is a tricky one. Mass Effect does NOT have a good story though it definitely has one of the best dialogues in a video game. I certainly did not find the universe of Mass Effect interesting or even it's characters (except for Wrex who is not the main character). Again, this is all considered in the context of stories and storytelling since some of the alien characters design is fascinating.

Kane & Lynch: cannot say much since I only played the demo.

And the winner is: this doesn't matter since my only objection is about the nominees and what makes my blood boils most is what is not in the list of nominees. Unfortunately I cannot remember all games of 2007, but I sure remember that God of War II was release in March. God of War II had a surprising sense of story even considering the high expectations the first game set. It is more than enough to say that the unveiling of Gaia in this game was the biggest surprise I had all year long (in the context of a game's story, of course).

Between the sheer genius of Mass Effect's dialogue and the depth of Rapture where a city becomes a character in its own right, one can only say that 2007 shows how much games have matured especially in their storytelling. Game on!