What's more important, story or characters?

[Armagon]

So i'm sure we're all familiar with the classic debate of story vs gameplay, and it's a debate that will probably never end. But recently, i was thinking about a different debate: story vs characters. I don't know about you but i would rather have a bad story with good, likable characters than a good story with bad, unlikable characters. Naturally of course, it's a good bonus when i find a game with a good story that also contains good, likable characters. And of course, i do feel that most of the time, a good story has good characters while a bad story has bad characters. But there's those rare cases where the story is good but the characters are bad and vice-versa, which is why i'm bringing this subject up.

On a related note, this can also apply to books, anime, movies, etc.

[Xaos Steel Wing]

If I had to pick, I would say story.

Ideas, concepts, events, situations, cultures, civilizations, places, phenomena, ideologies, philosophies, technologies, possibilities etc. interest me more than characters when it comes to fiction, particularly when it comes to science fiction. I've read books where the characters have almost nothing to them and are little more than tools that function to present the story, and yet they were fantastic because of the ideas and concepts they tackled and some really neat plot twists and points they made (some of Stanislaw Lem's short stories come to mind).

But if a work had a poor, boring, uninteresting story but great characters, I would imagine that would not interest me very much.

Which is a bit ironic, as it's the characters of the GBA games that really made me fall in love with Fire Emblem, though I liked the GBA stories too.

I think Fates had decent characters but pretty poor stories that were very disappointing. Meanwhile, I think Awakening had an alright story but poor characters (too tropey and gimmicky). I like the narrative of Awakening a lot more - I'll take the better story over the better characters.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Xaos Steel Wing

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Misread title, please ignore.
 

Edited July 4, 2017 by はたの 秦 こころ

[carefreejules]

For me, characters actually help me get engaged with their world and setting so even if the story isn't necessarily good, there have been cases where I was able to overlook that because the characters were well written imo.

[Tryhard]

Characters. Games like Undertale got widespread because of their characters not because the story was particularly compelling.

[Integrity]

characters

 

you can have the most intricate and hugely designed world you want, if i don't have a tether to it it's just a template for a dnd campaign essentially

[Darros]

Characters, but it's important that you have to have some semblance of a story. A character with no motive is worse than one with poorly-written motives.

[Locke087]

Characters all the way because I've never come across a story that I would consider great with bad characters a story can only be good at that point but never go beyond, so I would take it any day of the week before a story with really good characters because if there's really good characters that's better.

In fact one of my favorite games ever is this way Mass Effect 2 is not the greatest story in the world but I has amazing characters and that's what makes all the difference it's why it's my favorite in the series.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Locke087

[Captain Karnage]

well there are only 7 basic stories when you boil everything down to the bone

so characters are a lot more important

[Flee Fleet!]

The story can be tolerable if the characters are likeable and good enough, as their personalities could make things more interesting even if the story turns out rather dry or bland.

However I can't say the same about the story being good and the characters being totally unlikeable, because if the characters are like that than continuing to go through the story would be....off putting I guess.

[Ercdouken]

For me, the characters.

[sylveonzoroark]

I can deal with a terrible story if the characters are great. If the characters are annoying it'll be unenjoyable for me no matter how good the story is.

Edited July 4, 2017 by sylveonzoroark

[EricaofRenais]

If a game,book,anime,manga, show or movie have characters I like in it even if the story is not top notch I will still enjoy it, but if the story is great but I don't like the characters I can't get in to it and will drop it.

[MediocreLee]

I'll have to go with characters for a couple of reasons.  Characters are who we normally sympathize with or relate to whenever we play any game.  We like to see the character grow and become a cool and interesting person.  What would normally draw people into a story are the characters.  Even the story is terrible, if there's a really good character we can probably stick out the story because we enjoy the characters.  Meanwhile, a really good story can't exactly fix horrible characters.  Even if there's good world building and politics or whatnot within a story, if the characters aren't interesting then I lose motivation to even continue the story.

More often than not, I tend to remember characters and what they did in a story rather than the story itself.

[DisobeyedCargo]

For me, they both need to be good. A game could have an absolutely anazing story, but if I hate the characters, then why bother seeing what's going to happen to them, and vice versa. 

[Ertrick36]

I'm a hugely character-oriented person, so it's undoubtedly characters.  Unless there's something special the author is doing where the characters don't really matter, having a bland, unlikable cast in any medium will set the story up to fail, no matter how well written the rest of the plot elements are.  Stories are almost always centered around their characters, and if I can't get invested in the people I'm being exposed to in a book then I why should I care what trouble they get into or even if they end up okay in the end.

I can ignore some of the most egregious flaws in a plot's writing (Fates, for example) if I really like the characters.  Though there are some lengths of badness where not even great characters can save the story (again Fates, though specifically Conquest).  But as a rule of thumb, it takes quite a bit to get to that point; it almost never happens, in fact.

[Zera]

Aren't good story and good characters two sides of the same coin? Is it actually possible to have one without the other? Also, why didn'tcha make a poll in this topic? Seems like the perfect time for one.

Edited July 5, 2017 by Zera

[Armagon]

1 minute ago, Zera said:

Aren't good story and good characters two sides of the same coin? Is it actually possible to have one without the other?

While it's the case most of the time, it's not always true. Using a Fire Emblem example, Fates has a terrible story, but since most of the characters are good, it makes up for it.

4 minutes ago, Zera said:

Also, why didn'tcha make a poll in this topic? Seems like the perfect time for one.

The anwser to that is......I forgot to make one. Oh well.

[Ertrick36]

9 minutes ago, Zera said:

Aren't good story and good characters two sides of the same coin? Is it actually possible to have one without the other?

I think it is possible to at least have good characters and a bad story...  And the inverse is probably true as well.  They are undoubtedly interwoven into each other, but that doesn't explicitly mean that one being bad automatically makes the other bad as well.

I suppose this is a sort of Siskel and Ebert type of deal; some would value the individual parts over the whole while others would do the inverse.  Of course it'd be great if every piece of media succeeded in every field, but that simply isn't realistic.  So to prevent myself from being too bitter, I judge each piece of media for its unique positive merits and try to accentuate those as much as I can.  Of course I lay down criticisms as well, but it's so that I don't become so disillusioned that I believe everything is perfect and can further appreciate it for what it is.

[Slumber]

It's a careful balance. If I don't care about the characters, why would I care about what's happening? Conversely, if I don't care about the story, why do I care about the actions of the characters? 

So both are very important and can affect each other very directly. 

That said, I think characters edge out story by a bit, simply because stories where I get to enjoy the characters, regardless of the content or context of said story, are still ultimately enjoyable. I can think of multiple bad/meh stories that get carried by the strength of the characters, but not so much the other way around. 

[Magical CC]

Well, there are games with good story but bland characters and they are still....good.

[Water Mage]

5 hours ago, Slumber said:

It's a careful balance. If I don't care about the characters, why would I care about what's happening? Conversely, if I don't care about the story, why do I care about the actions of the characters? 

So both are very important and can affect each other very directly. 

That said, I think characters edge out story by a bit, simply because stories where I get to enjoy the characters, regardless of the content or context of said story, are still ultimately enjoyable. I can think of multiple bad/meh stories that get carried by the strength of the characters, but not so much the other way around. 

That's my view as well, there has to be a balance between characters and story, otherwise things just feel out place. But I also agree that characters a little more important, mostly because a the story just feels empty without characters to be invested in it. A good example is Final Fantasy XII. An interesting story, amazing worldbuilding, but the characters are very lacking, and hardly interact with the world outside of the main story, making the worldbuilding and story feel rather pointless at times since there are no characters to react to those things.

[Slumber]

3 hours ago, Water Mage said:

That's my view as well, there has to be a balance between characters and story, otherwise things just feel out place. But I also agree that characters a little more important, mostly because a the story just feels empty without characters to be invested in it. A good example is Final Fantasy XII. An interesting story, amazing worldbuilding, but the characters are very lacking, and hardly interact with the world outside of the main story, making the worldbuilding and story feel rather pointless at times since there are no characters to react to those things.

While XII was a game I would have thought fit the bill like, 5-10 years ago, I actually liked a good chunk of the characters in FFXII after replaying it a few years back. At least, Basch, Ashe and Balthier, who are more or less the main, main characters. It's just the style of characters in Ivalice. They're a lot more flowery and Shakespearean than they are loud and emotive, which is a bit of a personal preference. I like characters who aren't always shouting out their emotions, which is way too typical of JRPGs.

But I do agree that they don't interact much with the world, and a lot of the story happens divorced from their actions. It really isn't until like, halfway through the story that they got super involved.

I think it was replaying X and playing XIII that got me to appreciate XII a bit more. Simply because the more subdued, calm dialogue was a breath of fresh air from the cartoons of X and the melodramatic infighting from XIII. And if you want to talk about people not interacting with the world, the characters of XIII barely interacted with each other. It made XII very digestible by comparison.

 

Edited July 5, 2017 by Slumber

[Res]

Characters.

I wouldn't have over 500 hours in Fates otherwise!

The first time it really struck me how much I value characters over story was trying to play Icewind Dale (1 or 2, I forget), where you create your entire party. The lack of party banter/dialogue made playing through the game a real slog and I never ended up finishing it. I began playing it after completing Baldur's Gate 2 - despite BG2 having far from the greatest characters, they were at least solid enough to add a lot to the game. 

[Tryhard]

33 minutes ago, Res said:

Characters.

I wouldn't have over 500 hours in Fates otherwise!

The first time it really struck me how much I value characters over story was trying to play Icewind Dale (1 or 2, I forget), where you create your entire party. The lack of party banter/dialogue made playing through the game a real slog and I never ended up finishing it. I began playing it after completing Baldur's Gate 2 - despite BG2 having far from the greatest characters, they were at least solid enough to add a lot to the game. 

I suppose I didn't mind in Icewind Dale since I'm a fan of hack 'n slash games but outside of those you generally need a little more. Though I would recommend Planescape: Torment if you haven't played it after neglecting it having critical acclaim as one of the best stories in games for many years - I picked up the Enhanced Edition that came out on Steam recently and it's very good even if the gameplay is poor as a primarily story-driven game. It's kind of the brother of Baldur's Gate (being on the same engine as it and Icewind Dale) but never gained the same popularity, sold poorly and is generally regarded as a cult classic these days. But it is actually pretty thought-provoking for a game made in 1999.

/shillage

Edited July 5, 2017 by Tryhard