Agent_L wrote:I was replying to the OP. My mistake I didn't make it more clear. He sounds surprised because of his defeat. Which is natural part of "game", I wanted to point out.
I can go on rambling about games "this days", starting with Spielberg-produced Medal Of Honor, and how most modern games indeed became interactive movies, which are impossible to not to finish. There is no victory in that.
For the record, while I definitely agree that there's a distinction between FTL and games-as-story-first, I certainly wouldn't want to propagate the idea that those are bad things, either.
Interactive stories are a futuristic method of storytelling, which takes the role of the "reader" or "viewer" away from the passive role in TV shows, movies, and some books, and integrates it into a more immersive experience where the reader/viewer can more directly share in the frustration of difficult situations and the joys in overcoming such hardships.
In a way, though, I would categorize FTL still as a "games-as-story", just not "story-first". In FTL, there's clearly a story involved and you're able to build more of a narrative as you go along, but unlike in more "open" games, you're still essentially railroaded into one overarching storyline. However, because the gameplay is the primary focus for FTL, rather than the story, this is less of an issue, since it's done to improve the gameplay. In other more modern games, the focus is on "story-first" because each individual game takes longer, so you're unable to as easily tell more parts of the story through "incremental plays" (such as how you can with FTL), and as such, sometimes gameplay concessions are necessary (or at least not as heavily emphasized) to promote the telling of the story. And that's not a bad thing, either. It's just a different thing.
(Yes, I know this was a tangent and not necessarily what you were thinking anyways, but since I've seen the "blargh modern games are all just stupid interactive movies not games" complaint several times, I wanted to address it.)