As many developers can attest, many games are re-appropriated into different titles several years into the development cycle, simply by altering the story to suit another brand. It happens way more than we'd like to admit. It's an unfortunate by-product of corporate economics, but also an indication of just how far we still have to go as an industry when it comes to creating games with sophisticated narratives, i.e. indisposable narratives that couldn't simply be stripped and re-used elsewhere without ruining the inherent game.

In the field of architecture, this was a principle debate during the emergence of the Modern movement. Classical architects were too often content to simply emulate archetypal forms in the facades of their buildings --- forms which brought no organic function to the rest of the structure.  The key to the maturation of architecture, the Modernists believed, was to created works of art where form and function --- or story and gameplay, in this analogy --- were irrevocably and organically linked.

To our credit, there have been a few games that have managed to accomplish this in recent days. "Portal" is the first that comes to mind. Without a single cut scene, or even so much as a reference to some kind of back-story, it manages to transport us into the virtual space of its plot, allowing us to deduce our own way through its elaborate puzzles and come to our own conclusions about the conspiracy that is amiss. We don't need Niko's idiot cousin to tell us we're about to be betrayed --- in "Portal," we actually act out the story as part of the gameplay. The same goes for "Ico," which does in fact utilize cut scenes from time to time, and yet they are brief, to the point, and earned by the narrative.  After navigating through the mysterious castle for several hours, we're starved for information, dying to hear what is going on. The cut scenes play into this desire, giving us what we want and allowing us to feel that we've fulfilled it through our achievement in the gameplay.

But for the most part, we as an industry are stuck in the same trap that GTA exemplifies. We value narratives in games, we understand their purpose and their necessity, and yet we have no idea how to parse them effectively into the game's interactive structure. As technology gets better, the weaknesses of poor story integration are more exposed. Even in "GTA IV," possibly the pinnacle of mainstream gaming to this day, we are still very much stuck back in the time of the "Star Wars" arcade game, playing through an awesome experience while having our story force-fed to us via external packaging. 

And to those who would complain, "Yes, but you can skip through the story if you don't want to see it," that's exactly my point. No one would say the same thing about the Sistine Chapel: "Yes, but you can skip through that lame entrance portico." It's all part of a complete work of art. To say that one part is lesser diminishes the value of the whole.

We need to stop thinking about story as a device to make us care about the gameplay (it doesn't), and start thinking about the gameplay as the narrative itself (thus, making us care). Now that the technology has finally reached a breaking point, a place where we can genuinely craft sophisticated worlds, we have to understand that plot is not forced upon those worlds artificially, but grown from our interactions within their environments. Story design needs to be less checkpoint-focused and more focused on implementing a meta structure that makes us believe we are shaping events with our choices, even if these choices have already been made for us.

The "story on rails" has now been exposed. Game engines are strong enough that we can see the seams in the narrative fabric. It's no longer acceptable that we can take our girlfriend on a date and never once have her mention the fact that we're carrying a missile launcher by our side. We need to believe our actions have consequences within the virtual universe and that the experiences we are living are wholly unique, even if they aren't.

And yes, this argument doesn't just apply to open world games. Even traditional narratives-on-wheels have had the bar raised. "Call of Duty 4" has effectively shown that with a certain amount of inventiveness (dying of nuclear radiation? Flashback sequences from the POV of other characters?), games can actually defy the predictability and inevitability of basic story blueprints.  It just takes some thought and a little bit of willingness to go off the beaten path.

Because for what it's worth, the game industry is not the interactive little brother of cinema.  Ask any overzealous industry pundit (I won't name names) and they'll give you a thousand reasons why gaming is a superior art form.  And yet despite our arrogance, we still act like we're just the doting charity case, clumsily marrying sophisticated gameplay with narratives that better belong somewhere else.  This industry is better than that.  We need to stretch further.