Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 12 - Celeste

(+) Yeah! (+)

Todays game is another nominated one, Celeste. How would you rate the story on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest?
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Previous Results:
Outer Wilds - 9.86 (18 votes)
Omori - 9.6 (5 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.58 (12 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.55 (21 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.3 (45 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.12 (34 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.17 (24 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.61 (14 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.46 (23 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.41 (22 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.59 (11 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name> <rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

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1

It is all about the gameplay dude.

Dang looks like I should play Omori when it comes to consoles.

Uhh 8 for Celeste. Thematically it's great and the narrative mashes with the gameplay well, but the story is pretty minimal so I can't put it higher really.

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Celeste gets an 8.5, my first use of the .5 score. Yes the gameplay can work fully on its own. However, the story not only accentuates that gameplay it is also really works well on its own despite the fact that it doesnt need to be good or even there. You might call it the best story in a non-story driven game!

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8.8

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Axl_Rose_85 posted...

1

It is all about the gameplay dude.

This.

As a game, its 10/10, one of the all time best.

Story is lol 1/10. But that doesn't effect how amazing it is!

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But why

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8.5

The game is light on plot, but the character development is outstanding.

9

Only played due to the story. Without that, it's just a lot of jumping and being killed by spikes. Woo.
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9

It's simple, but it's executed so well.

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Nominate Umineko no Naku Koro ni

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8.8
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Nominate: Inside

7.5

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8.5

Much like others have said, it gives just enough to develop the characters and give real meaning to everything

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Nominate Death Stranding

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10

It sets out to do two things and nails both perfectly. Firstly, it's a portrayal of dealing with mental health issues done better than I've ever seen. Second, it really manages to wrap its themes into the gameplay. So much of the game is designed to feel hard, but doable. Struggling with the levels makes you feel the challenges Madeline is facing, and sets you up to overcome them.

Sure, there's not a whole lot of stuff there, but I think it's exactly enough to do what it needed to do. I don't think I'd change any of it.

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Nominate: Leisure Suit Larry 1: Land of the Lounge Lizards


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9

It's minimal and that works for it.

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Axl_Rose_85 posted...

1

It is all about the gameplay dude.

Sorry, are you saying you hate the story or that you don't care about it? Like, I'd give Tetris or Mario 64 a much better score than 1/10, because while I don't care about the story at all, they aren't actively bad, either.
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9

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8.5

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Mac Arrowny posted...

Sorry, are you saying you hate the story or that you don't care about it? Like, I'd give Tetris or Mario 64 a much better score than 1/10, because while I don't care about the story at all, they aren't actively bad, either

You'd give Tetris a higher score than 1/10? What?

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colliding posted...

You'd give Tetris a higher score than 1/10? What?

Yup. 5/10. Neither makes the game better nor makes it worse.
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Tetris would get a N/A, but 5/10 is neutral. Below 5 means you think it actively detracts.

I mean, you can set whatever rating system you want, but calling something a 1/10 just because it's a gameplay-dominant game in your mind -- and I've seen a lot of people laud Celeste's storytelling -- is pretty ridiculous.

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9

If a game doesn't have any meaningful story-related things I can engage with for the purposes of this topic I just wouldn't rate it

5

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8

Perfect for what it is, but need to reserve the higher scores for the big boyz

Celeste isn't one of my favorite stories ever or anything but I am sideyeing those 1/10s really hard

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I actually probably would have given it an eight but I felt like giving it an extra point out of spite lol

Ratings are your subjective feeling and as long as it is really how you feel I will count it. If you view 5 as neutral or 5 as a typical story thats okay. I would recommend against using a 1 for a story you ignored or dont think is important to the game, but if thats your subjective feeling it is what it is. Also I wont do games with no story like Tetris, although I could eventually do games with barebones stories.

Lastly a note on nominations. I am getting through them in the order in which games are nominated except when I was going to do the game anyway, when it is games in a series clumped together, or if multiple different people nominate a game. I wont have a public list to keep it a mystery though.

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A 7 I guess
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Sorry, I never noticed Fallout 4 day, and it has a really low number of ratings, so although this won't move the needle much...

Fallout 4 - 4.4

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9.5

Not outright perfect, but I haven't heard of let alone played a game that better integrates its story and gameplay. Same thing goes for avoiding ludonarrative dissonance, though that perhaps has something to do with my own skill level.

Oh, and:
Axl_Rose_85 posted...

It is all about the gameplay dude.

If anything, I think that's what makes Celeste's story so good. It's a little more prominent than in most platformers and comes from an atypically human place, yet it still very firmly connects to and serves to amplify the experience of actually playing the game. That it's deliberately not ham-fistedly shoving Shakespeare into a precision platformer is exactly the point IMO.

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Any more votes?

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Hmm...4?
Celeste gameplay is amazing but I never thought much about the story (and sadly, the music too)
It's pretty simple

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Yes... Backlog votes.

Omori - 10
FFX - 10
FF IV - 3


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I'm a quarter into Phoenix Wright and loving it, so I'll do that sometime.
And this topic series has got me interested in Outer Wilds now too.

I nominated Leisure Suit Larry because I just wanted to throw something completely different out there.
It's such an old game though.
I'm not sure if anyone else here has even played it.

Feel free to scrap it if it won't generate votes or discussion.

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