[Zababa]

I find it really weird to judge a story on what it boils down to instead of on how it's delivered. Imagine you have two versions of a game. The first delivers its story by long cutscenes and a omniscient narrator. The second delivers its story with the environement and dialogues with the characters, with the playing having to piece everything together. Even if the "story" is the same, the second game has a better story. Storytelling is a essential part of the quality of a story.

[losvedir]

What the story is, and how it's told, are both important aspects to varying degrees to different people. This is the case with novels, too. For example, I love a good mindbending plot, and barely care how it's told. I can tolerate / enjoy hard scifi or fantasy with detailed magic systems, even if the writing is considered not great. To me, the Ciuxin Liu Three Body Problem series is one of the greatest of all time because it has some absolutely wild ideas, even though it was translated from Chinese by different translators, and some people say not well.

On the other hand, a lot of people enjoy the art of literary composition. Grand scenes with precisely chosen words, "show don't tell" (which has little bearing on the underlying plot ideas, to me), and lots of rich description. I don't care for that sort of stuff, probably because I don't visualize things in my head much while reading, but I know a lot of people who judge books and authors on it.

[Zababa]

I agree with you, what I was opposing was more the reductivist view of things like "Half life is just ...". You could do the same with the Three Body Problem series and it would absolutely fail to explain what's great about the series. First book: detective story mixed with historical events. Second book: smart guy vs other smart guy. Third book: history through the eyes of one person that was here at pivotal events.

The comment I replied to mentionned:

> There were some cool extra details - the G Man, the marines entering as a third force, the diversions to do things like launch a missile into space - but all of those things were additional to that same, basic story.

I think it's wrong to separate a story between "a story" and "the details", all stories are the same if you boils them down enough.

[hairofadog]

Thanks for that perspective! I think about this all the time, and though my tastes are different I think you're exactly right.

I think of narrative as a combination of several elements: character, plot, world-building, execution (word choice, visual choices and performance for film or games), concepts and ideas. I tend to be drawn to strong characters first, but not always. Some examples off the top of my head:

Clerks: strong characters, mediocre almost everything else

Reservoir Dogs: strong characters, strong execution, minimal plot and world-building

Portal: strong characters, plot, world building, concepts, and execution

Brazil (the Terry Gilliam movie): strong world-building and execution, weak characters and plot

Lolita (the book): strong execution and characters

Harry Potter: strong characters, world-building, and concepts, goofy plot and execution

Primer: mind-bending concepts, good execution, weak characters and plot

Don’t know why, but I could go on and on thinking about it.

Edit: this list would imply I have pretty narrow tastes but really I like a little bit of everything; these are just some notable examples that came to mind as being particularly strong or weak in certain areas.