If it's going to be groundbreaking, it's got to be organic... and no, I don't mean without pesticides...

I guess I should probably follow my esteemed colleague and introduce myself as well. Don't worry, I'll be brief. I agree with most of everything that George said, although I would also say that by having a background in literature, I do prefer a good story in a game over one without.

That being said, Metal Gear Solid 4 is an extremely poor example of that.

I would put myself in a category that is probably more leaning in the direction of game creator Jonathan Blow. That's not to say I'm the biggest fan of deliberate ambiguity, or messages hidden within excessive layers of over-interpretation.

However, I will introduce myself by making a blanket statement. Video games as a medium will have the potential to elevate themselves into the category of "art," along with films and novels, the day that they finally realize that all the aspects of a game (graphics, sound, gameplay, story, etc) have to feel organic. What this means is that all of those aspects have to exist in conjunction with the other elements of the game.

A great example of this NOT happening would be in games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4. In GTA4, unlike it's past iterations, we were meant to understand that Niko Bellic was a sympathetic anti-hero who had a moral dilemma when committing murder, even if he had to do it to survive. That might sound like an interesting premise for a story, but it ran head-on into a paradoxical gameplay mechanic where after every cutscene, should your heart desire as the gamer, you could make Niko essentially commit mass genocide on a city street by blowing up, shooting, and beating to death, hundreds of civilians. Sure, we've all had our fun moments doing this in a GTA, but it doesn't fit with the character design Dan Houser and his team were going for in Niko.

I want gaming to elevate to that level of art, and there have certainly been many games in the past that have done this to incredible levels. George mentioned Shadow of the Colossus and Ico. Games like Bioshock and the original Deus Ex have also done this extremely well, just to name a few, in which the gameplay and first person perspective lend themselves to the overall meaning and point the game itself.

In Bioshock, you had singular objectives that you completed because, well, the game required you to. Atlas said "would you kindly save my family," and "would you kindly kill Andrew Ryan," and, as the player, you followed orders because, just like the protagonist, that's what you were programmed to do. Bioshock made the player very self-aware of a linear video game, because after all, when you put that game in, are you really NOT going to do what the game tells you?

Deus Ex used the first person perspective in the opposite way of Bioshock, in that it was all about perception and choice. Every newspaper article you "decided" to read, every email account you hacked that revealed what was being said behind your back, all served to allow the player the feeling that which side you ultimately took in the grand conspiracy of the story depended on your own initiative in seeking out knowledge. If you never took the time to learn the history of the world in Deus Ex, then your character simply followed orders as he was intended. But if you found yourself suspicious, and confirmed those suspicions for yourself by taking a few minutes to read the notes on your boss' desk, you suddenly realized you were a pawn being guided to selfish ends.

There's other games that do this well, I'm just not going to sit here and name them all. My point is that it's been done well in the past. The technology keeps improving, so there's no reason why the core of gaming has to remain stagnant, or even rescind backwards.

Here's to hoping the golden era of gaming is right around the corner... in the meantime, Fallout 3, GTA4, and MGS4 aren't how we're going to get there.

Oh, and I guess I lied... it was a long post. By the way, my name is Brett.