Sakurai Has Issues with Video Game Storytelling

The man behind Super Smash Bros. and Kid Icarus: Uprising, Masahiro Sakurai, has voiced his opinion on the state of video game storytelling.

In the latest edition of Famitsu magazine, translation via Polygon, he notes how "stories that told in video games are honestly irksome", highlighting how long introduction sequences or games that are fully voiced "wind up having their tempo all messed up as a result".

He continues by delving into RPG storylines in particular, where a character may suddenly die or leave your party - "it's totally unreasonable" from a gameplay perspective, Sakurai mentions, where the storyline forces players down another route instead of rewarding their efforts.

If players wind up in a predicament because of what the story calls for, that's like penalizing them even though they made no mistake. As gameplay, it's lacking.

But still, Sakurai does mention how it is necessary sometime for storyline to affect gameplay but there needs to be some form of balance.

I just want to enjoy the game and I think I'm just intolerant of aspects that block that enjoyment. I can enjoy a story in any other form of media; I just want the game to let me play it already.

Concerned about the storyline in his last project, Kid Icarus: Uprising, the game designer even took the time to write the whole storyline for the game so that "every character, including the bosses, had their personalities shaped by their roles in the game, or the structure of the game itself", so there'd be a consistent structure and dialogue.

A game's story absolutely needs to match the content and the gameplay. In an ideal world, we could take advantage of this to provide new story developments that you'll never be able to see in other media.

What do you think of Sakurai's comments on video game storytelling?