narrative story telling and seriousness of video game story

A comparison of nintendo's metro and gears of war:

Most of the time, we are alone in the metro world, besides the aliens we are supposed to shoot.  the narrative story telling, by which, I meant that words and sounds, was kept at minimum.  Gears on the other end, were heavily worded, and acted out by voice talents.  Metro were heavily emphasizing on the player's own exploration rather than the direction from games.  Gears is the contrary.

In my memory, during those lonely exploration by myself in metro, I felt more about right brain than left.  My mind somehow goes to a quieter places.  the easy game play mechanics helped along this line.  It even made me focused more in the game world.  No, rather a world inside of myself.  On the contrary to this, I did not felt the same thing about Gear.  The voiced dialogues broke into my conscious mind, the game world is outside, rather than inside.  The control is more realistic and complicated.  I will have to concentrated on it more.  The differences is obvious.

by producing a game with less narrative dialogues and quieter game, actually producing different result.  That is not to say that this fits in every genre!  For example, classic adventure game needs narrative.  This is only for certain "actiony" games.

one of my favorite games of all time, is Sacrifice, which is actiony and heavily dialogued. This leads to the second topic.  You be surprised just how easy to tab into right brain, by heavily dialogued narrative with a little twist. 

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 Many European and American games are heavily narrated.  For example, Sacrifice was heavily narrated.  But it is incredibly funny.  I think that's rare for European and American games.  Narrative story telling is very hard for movies.  It is especially hard to create a good hero movies.  For games, it is even harder.  That's why most of the games that wanted to create a good hero, usually fails.  Because, in an actiony games, for a game designers to put players in a situation where, the players could emphasize with heroes in the games through actions would be extremely hard.  For the players are the ones doing the input.  So most of the game designers did the next best thing.  They created dialogues and narrative story lines to beef up players experience, and to emphasize with the heroes.  But by doing so, it is exhausting.  I am sorry, Heroes are not that different..., especially hand crafted by human's brain.  It is so rare to create an universal hero icon that everyone would agree is a heroes and feel refreshed.

For example, gears of war's and assassin's creed's narrative are both too serious.  There's not much of lightness on the story line.  At the same time, it would be hard for players to really create an entrenched sensation in their brain.  Because narrative story telling and complex control keep them from using their right brain.  A hearty laugh however, would open that door, or at least an window to the right brain. 

One of the sad thing about taking it too seriously is that it is hard to come down from the  throne of seriousness.  And it created a good boy effect...  You need to create light hearted contends in a serious game.  Seriousness is fun, to a point, beyond that point, it is exhaustion. A game taking itself too serious in story department is a torment, to the players, and game creators.  You need to find a way to loosen up a bit.