Nope. Just that the best writers don't write for games. You'll almost always get a second rate story. Until novels go away (don't hold your breath) this will always be the case.
I must say, I don't understand your position here. Novels are non-interactive medium, whereas games are (or at least are supposed to be) interactive. While these two media have things in common, they are vastly different - perhaps more than novels and movies. I would hazard a statement that even the best novel writer would do badly in gaming medium, if not properly prepared.
BTW the movie analogy while applicable (even though I dislike analogies) also actually supports my argument. Very few movies for me are as compelling as a well written novel… Visualization cannot make up for poor storytelling. Same can be said for gameplay.
I don't agree with "very few movies" being as compelling as a novel. There are very good films out there, who fully take advantage of the visual power of the medium - from blockbusters to little known films, from fully realistic depiction to animations - if you play your cards right, you can achieve something formidable. There are actually movies realised better than their novel orilignals. For example, compare Forrest Gump - the Novel, with its film adaptation. The movie wins hands down, because it delivers genuine tragedy mixed with sour comedic elements, instead of being a string of cliche misadventures of a village idiot.
Yes, there is plenty of hackneyed trash among all films - but the same is true in the book market. For every Dostoyevsky there are hundreds of Harlequin novel writters some of whom enjoy substantial readership. Is this a reason to tell me - "well, if you don't like it go to the theatre or something" (and theatre is a form of artistic expression that vastly predates novels)? Hardly. I simply will demand and look for more of Dostoyevsky and avoid Harlequin novels like plague.
Why won't I do that with Mass Effect franchise, you ask? You see, normally I couldn't care less about the quality of the story in ME series. So it's a pulp fiction game with some robots going pew=pew, and aliens going pew-pew, and humans going kboom! Cool! You can enjoy that in the same way one enjoys B-grade horror movies with lots of ketchup. No biggie.
The problem is, this B-grade rubbish is actually held as a model of writing and encapsulating stories within the gameplay? The hell? This is quality? This is the future? No! So when people tell me that ME3 story is decent, but for that attrocious ending, i feel as if I were called to the blackboard and show that it's in fact poorly written and executed, and therefore it's a model for nothing. Sure, it has good parts, it has its moments, but that's just it.
But I'd prefer a game with good gameplay over story any day. I can get a good story from a novel. Similar holds for movies. Best for visualization, not story.
And here is the place we simply misunderstand each other. If you think that I favour story over gameplay you are dead wrong. What I advocate is something reverse - a complete integration of storytelling within the framework of gameplay. In other words, I don't want to see non-interactive cutscenes, dialogue wheels, responses that lead to the same outcome, fake choices and one facet of gameplay (e.g. combat) being completely divorced from another - at least in RPGs.
I would like to see more interaction, practical utilisation of acquired skills in every facet of gameplay (e.g. say you play as a biotic and acquired Lift ability - now during dialogue while making a threat you can use it on your interlocutor to make yourself more… persuassive), ability to interact with the world however you want (within reasonable constraints), the game setting responding to what you do in believeable fashion. That level of interactivity would strongly reinforce story and story telling immensely. We've already had something akin to that in Fallouts and Arcanum - I fail to see anything like that in modern Bioware games.
It's great when you can get it all in a game, but I've rarely seen it. Realism is a bummer…
Yes, but that's no reason not to try, or worse… accept mediocrity and intellectual poverty as quality.
One more thing - I don't believe games can reach Dostoyevski's level of storytelling - at least in the next 50 years. The reasons are countless and their name is legion. However, I am convinced that there's a distinct chance of them achieving the level of Pratchett, Gaiman, Pullman, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. LeGuin and so on. And yes, I know that's a poor analogy, because of the things I said before.
I'd say the stories in those games far exceeded "decent" by video game standards.
