Godus - Story Mode

According to the steam forums it's just diary entries by a child like God. I expected nothing and was still a bit disappointed it's just a bunch of text to find.

Since this forum doesn't have 'spoiler' tags I'll link a post from Steam with an example. This also shows how much the story is connected with your actions.

Please tell me it is not more of the pedephila like IM chat they had way back in the beginning.

"Story mode" is not really a mode, and adds no new functionality or value to the game. I fired up Godus for the first time in months to take a look, but as people have said, it's just a few extra chests with little narratives in them from the POV of an entity (presumably the user) assuming a god-like role.

When I think story mode, I think campaign mode in an RTS. Not this. There are very few ways in which they could have actually put less effort into this implementation. I guess they could have just stuck a paragraph of text at the beginning of the game that said "you're a god and now you're going to save some people from drowning and guide their development through the ages". But honestly that's not a million miles from this.

I'm not too impressed by the actual quality of the writing or the content, either. There is nothing engaging or interesting about this. But I can't really say I'm disappointed because it's pretty much par for course at this stage.

A small win indeed... if you can call a glorified e-book reader a win. I'd rather read a book to be honest. At least I can get those for free in a library.

It's a possibility. I suppose it all depends on how well they manufacture the necessity for conflict, and it's resolution.  I'm guessing there will be a twist along the way... you left the chests in the first place and got amnesia somehow, etc.

Unless the child god ( childish god? ) becomes corrupted and turns into Morgoth, Sauron or Darth Vader I don't think I'm too interested in this thing ( aspect, whatever ).

Taking a nap. Call me in time for the apocalypse.

The story does seem a bit lacking, doesn't it?

I fired up Godus for a bit last night & yeah, it's just blue chests scattered about that unlock what seem like diary entries. Reading them, it's not clear if they're your own or from another god before you, but from what I gather from the forums they're meant to be from a previous god. Given that, the "story" for Godus is all back story; you have zero agency in how it develops. That could work; other games have done similar things. Gone Home, Metroid Prime & Demon/Dark Souls all have all or nearly all of the story told through things you find in the environment — and all do a really good job of building mystery through journal/data entries or item descriptions.

But it doesn't work here — why?

First off, it's all blue chests. So we're losing out on a huge vehicle for conveying story. In Metroid Prime, for example, you scan objects & features of the environment. You get story from the data entries, but you also get story sense from what the object you're scanning is. In the Souls games, a lot of the story is from item descriptions, and works the same — you have the story, and you have the object, which makes it concrete. The other half that Godus is missing out on is how these things are integrated into the environment. Gone Home, e.g., does this really well, because all the things you're looking at are placed in a home that feels very lived-in. So much of the story is never spelled out explicitly — it's just in the environments (Bioshock is famous for this). The landscape in the only map for Godus are beautiful, but it doesn't really have much information packed into it. And the placement of the blue chests feel pretty random.

What can Godus take from this?

Well, don't get me wrong, it's a decent start for "Story 1.0". If you're going for a story where the player has any sense of agency, that's an entirely different conversation. And I imagine most people would want that. But I do think it's possible to tell a good story w/o agency in a game like this. The level designer will need to be intimately involved in the process. Is there still a level designer on the project? Get rid of the blue chests. Find other things to "hold" the story elements, and for god's sake don't make them disappear when you "collect" them. Integrate them with the environment, and have them make sense in context. And build mystery! This sort of storytelling is made for mystery, and honestly I'd go so far as to say it really only works when used to build mystery.

(and then make the game rich & fun so emergent story is possible through game systems so that, while players are uncovering the back story, they're telling their own story about their followers)

In the early version with the combat temple there was some sort of fake chat window where people were talking to eachother and challenging you to battles. One of the fake people was a little girl. (supposedly) It was all very contrived and creepy.

I enjoyed the chat story and didn't see anything creepy about it <shrug>

It may have been contrived, but it did a good job (better than anything we have now) of driving the game forward.