User blog comment:Gundam Legilis/If you were Monty Oum.../@comment-23790511-20141214024614/@comment-24891101-20141214044530

Ultimately, my point is that there are only so many ways that a video game can make a player do something, that isn't all dialogue options. It's always point A to point B, kill or avoid everything in your path. There are other possible objectives necessary for storytelling. And turning other aspects into minigames annoys the players, who want to get back to the rest.

I'll address the two I'm familiar with: Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls. These both suffer from diverging problems, which are indicative of the problems trying to tell RWBY's story by video game would suffer.

In the first, you're employed by your government as a commando. Therefore, most of the action is straightforward killing things. The effects you have on astropolitics are a direct result of this. And I agree, it's a good story, if your protagonist is an elite commando entrusted with highly sensitive missions, all of which demand combat skills. The necessities of the structure require the galaxy to seemingly revolve around the protagonist. Nor can it focus effectively on developing interactions between other characters. You're a soldier, you are pointed at the enemy and told to kill.

You're already criticizing the writing for being poor. How much worse would it be if they had to connect action setpieces by plot, rather than having action contribute?

The Elder Scrolls has a different problem. There, there's no chaacterization whatsoever, which necessitates a blank-slate protagonist, which doesn't serve the setting of RWBY. You can't write in an extra character to fulfil the role otherwise it's Protaginist and NPCs, where it's supposed to be about those NPCs. The other option, making Ruby the protagonist, prevents her from being characterized. The show, is, after all, her story (and that of her friends). It's not about the role of certain people, whose identities are secondary, in an overarching plot with a clear resolution. It's about these characters and their (action-packed) life in college. It's hard to marry slice-of-life, basically, with an action game. These sorts of games are still too combat-focused, in my mind, to properly tell this sort of story. Games of this sort degenerate into either "kill these enemies", or "take a message".

I'm not saying an interactive format would be bad. In fact, there would be certain bits which would be downright amazing, from my perspective. Ruby keeping watch, for instance. Imagine spending some length of time doing nothing, to drive home the boredom. That would make what follows much more interesting. But a lot of the story would then revolve around limited storytelling options, by having gameplay of the sort.

I think the sort of story they want for RWBY is better served, on the whole, by the vobulary of a visual medium, rather than that of a video game.