The recurrent thing that I hear with David Cage’s games is that his stories suck. At some point, they suck and Fahrenheit had left me with a sense of WTF like no game before.
The NYT said from his last game:
It would be one of the worst movies you’ve ever seen, even though Ms. Page and Mr. Dafoe give fine performances.
Four games, four times where the main critic is about the story. I don’t know, maybe David shouldn’t write stories, only direct and produce games. Or maybe they shouldn’t spend so much on making believable 3D characters and hire a solid team of writers.
IMO stories in games work better in an “expressionist” way like Kentucky Route Zero or Gone Home. Engagement is triggered by your own curiosity, your own building. When engagement is directed heavy-handedly through a blockbuster movie like experience, it always feels tacky and probably always will. So you’d better have a great, great story.
The sad part is that it underlines how the French, auteur vision of creativity doesn’t work at all. Collaborative work is where it’s at and in ten years, Quantic Dream has shown to the world how the French model is broken as fuck. Motion capture is top notch though.