Until something like IBM's Watson is used to make the NPC dialogue dynamic RPGs will be immersion breaking train-wrecks in my view. And I can't even begin to count how many times I've done things in RPGs that should have changed not only the course of the story but how everyone reacted to me, nothing happened.
As for engaging story, looking in the wrong place if you want that from PC Games, the worst book I've read in the last decade had better story and character development in the 1st chapter than the millions of lines of brain dead awful dialogue I've read in RPGs. I could make a similar arguement comparison between cinema and RPGs.
So, at least in my view, managing to get through them even once and feeling like you had some good entertainment is an achievement. Often requiring that I ignore a lot of the repetition and stupidity that crops up constantly. Not surprisingly I guess I don't play many RPGs.
The best way to handle story telling is emergent imho. The story I craft myself in strategy games or in a world exploration games like minecraft or hopefully No Man's Sky don't require that the story or characters be crafted by the developer, they get a helping hand from the player themselves.
Yeah, I'm a harsh critic of the medium it might seem, but then I don't see why I shouldn't be given that all forms of entertainment compete equally for my time.
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