I know what you mean bro, and I agree with most of it. However, from a purely academical standpoint in terms of storytelling, they have done something truly remarkable :D
The complexity by which it unfolds is something that is very seldom seen. I mean, it ticks all three theoretical approaches when talking about immersive storytelling design.
Usually you design with one primary, but here you have spatial, temporal and emotional storytelling running in parallel while keeping all three in emphasis, which is so awesome xD

@Che- I don't disagree with you they've made an absolutely amazing story simply that I don't really necessarily believe knowing how they made an amazing story also translates into them making a equal to better story.

I mean you and I may know the components that help make that story grade but I just don't believe that we would be able to match their talent as it's not enough to Simply know the process.

As I don't really believe somebody goes into writing a game to write crap , they probably feel very confident with their work it just so happens the writers are just better with Nier, but better is just our opinion.

I think if all things remain equal in terms of how somebody writes a story for a game you're still going to have them not as good as this game simply just based on Talent.

It's just something you can't really teach.

I remember in my concept class for art students would always look at my SketchBook and even though we were all learning lots of the same things they were a lot of times people would ask me how I came up with my strange designs for character art , and there really isn't something I could teach, I can't explain how I just randomly come up with characters, I could clearly teach you the technique, I could clearly even show you how I do ink and lines and composition and all the other techniques but that doesn't necessarily put my ideas in your brain and sometimes it's simply just comes down to one team is talented that the other it may not be something that could be actually taught.

I'm simply saying the concept of knowing how they did it doesn't necessarily mean someone's even going to make a better story , (to us anyway) they could believe in their hearts they're creating something better , so I don't really know if there is a guideline to teach someone how to be talented simply because that's not necessarily how art even works.

Absolutely agreed I actually wish I talked about that because of how expensive games are it's just that developers have such a limited amount of risk and they literally might have to go with a story that makes more sense take , Final Fantasy 15 for example I actually personally believe that that game probably should have had a more simple even cliche story as opposed to the bazaar convoluted mess that it was even though Final Fantasy 15 moved huge units and broke records for Square Enix I actually believe it might have been able to still do slightly better with a more interesting story that was not as bizarrely complex as Final Fantasy 15 's was

They actually allow that team to have a story that was pretty complex more complex than maybe I would really approve of such an expensive development.

Which I know sounds strange coming from the person that's kind of asking for that type of artistic freedom 😂😂😂

I'm simply saying from the business side of things if I made Final Fantasy 15 I would actually make that team I have a very simple story of (the king's brother is trying to kill the prince because he's already killed the father and he wants to assume position of the empire, throw in some Romeo and Juliet cliche and move on lol )

Because of the cost of Triple A development it makes a lot of sense while you see Publishers absolutely scared to hand over that type of Freedom to Writers. Yet I believe Publishers need to be a little bit more liberal in regards to how they give out this freedom take Horizon zero Dawn for instance Sony basically allowed this team to have a very very complex story along with a very deep narrative well also having a female protagonist something huge Publishers may not be okay with ,with a new intellectual property.

I think Sony and lots of other Publishers a sort of show that if you give the creativity over to your development teams and trust that they could produce something creative the actual reason these Publishers even hire development teams in the first place that they will be rewarded and I think Horizon zero Dawn and Nier are good examples of what happens when you allow a team to create without limitation.

There's only a small number of Publishers unfortunately that are willing to take that huge risk and huge Gamble and I believe it pays off more than not.

@EDMIX
Agreed :D
While I love FF15, there is a huge gap in terms of storytelling disposition. There actually is a really great story in there, it just doesn't come across without further research outside of the story world. This is where I agree with ya, where they should have either said complex and complete, or cliche and straightforward.

In terms of you pointing out the freedom thing, I do think another factor in FF15's was creative freedom under deadline, which is also a pretty hardcore inhibitor :P

But yeah, essentially we're on the same page here. The best example I can think of, from the top of my head, would be Ubisoft. They tend to make these "standard 8/10" games if you know what I mean. Whether you like them or not, Division, Ghost etc etc are pretty solid games, but they never really rise above just being kinda similar and that's where we need some of the bigger publishers to push out the Creator's vision instead of the known and trusted. Like you suggested, creation limited by imagination and not by capital ^^