Losing The Narrative

In the past, fighting games haven't exactly been known for their great story telling.  With fighting games having a great deal of characters, you can't expect many of your favorites endings to be canon. After all, everyone can't win the tournament.

With gaming reaching a standard of movie production level, it is not far fetched that the need for an enveloping story in fighting games has become something that fans of their favorite franchises honestly want to see improve.

There have been plenty of fighting games this generation that have successfully managed to engage their fans. Genre crossing titles like Persona 4 Arena have proven that it's not always about the multi-player and that there is fun to be had in the single player experience.

For a great deal of time, the single player experience was all there was for someone like me. I can remember those days suffering from boss rage just to see the 1 minute(if that) ending that might reveal some sort of clue about the mysterious background story of your character.

Even though great strides have been made in story telling when it comes to fighting games, I'm honestly not that interested anymore. I didn't honestly expect that it would get this far and with my attention span level at an all time low, it is hard to rekindle those joys of the past.

I hear a great deal of positive feedback about the stories and the worlds created and I'm to busy wanting to learn everything else about the game to care. I guess when you've been lacking the ability to play people on a regular basis for so long it kind of takes precedence over everything and anything extra that these developers are working so hard to create.

On the first announcement of Blazblue: Continuum Shit Extend for Steam, I felt a little annoyed. The final game in the Blazblue series has long since been released and for us to just be receiving the games second part of the series, it felt very shady.

It took another individual to point out the fact of a continuing story line in the game and that maybe, just maybe people would appreciate playing the game for its' story to knock me out of my saltiness. When you've been so wrapped up playing against human opponents and trying to improve your skills in training mode, it is very easy to forget about the narrative of the character you're spending so much time with.

The strides that companies, like Arc with its upcoming release of Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign- and Netherealms Studio, are taking to give us a complete narrative for our beloved characters has been forgotten in my eyes.

For the first time in the history of fighting games the narrative is becoming just as important as the gameplay itself. Maybe it is time I took notice..maybe.