News published on March 6th 2009

Square boast games can offer more emotional storytelling than film

reallysquare_news

It seems that once every month some company jumps aboard this bandwagon, and proclaims that video games can, or sometimes already are outdoing films in terms of storytelling. This time Square Enix have decided to chime in, with Yoshinori Yamagishi, producer of Star Ocean: The Last Hope, commenting that games will outdo films some day.

“As opposed to films, books and TV, as a medium it is more of a challenge to produce a game in order to tell a story,” he says when questioned by CVG.

“In TV, film and theatre, the creator has control over how he gives the story to the viewer – it’s easier to control the emotions and feelings expected from the viewer.

But in [a game developer's] case we always have to think about how players might react to each depiction of a character or storyline, and that’s the part we can’t predict. Nevertheless we have to make these predictions to a certain degree, and incorporate this into our work. So it’s more of a challenge, but if we manage to get over this hurdle, then I regard videogames as a greater medium to provide people with deep emotional and exciting experiences.”

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