Tangenital story (background)

Senno

I've been playing Watch Dogs of late, and while it has a great story, I really like that it has background. How I can see a little bit about each person, and can pry into their conversations and such. The tangenital story is there - the background noise gives me a greater awareness of the games universe than a simple cutscene or text crawl would allow. Red Dead Redemption did this well with their stranger missions and the random type missions (not the official missions, but the ones you could chance upon), and GTA V took this a step further when I change between the leads, I see a little bit of their lives and what they've been up to while I've been following another character. I can see games being not so heavy-handed with story and allowing it to come naturally as part of the environment. Mass Effect didn't really offer this, but I found that both ME2 and 3 made strides in that direction, while Dragon Age Inquisition really nails it. Fallout also really does this well.

Sometimes you get more story when its not pushed into your face, and you just stumble onto it. Have you noticed this happening? I'd say the last few years, at least around midway through the lifecycle of the seventh generation of games we've seen creators moving away from straigh-up exposition and into background chatter and world-building.

I'm not sure if it's an improvement, but I think it's been an interesting evolution that gamers are taking for granted. It's certainly changed the way we look at games and it's not something I think that has been explored in depth.

CaptainNemo

Bioshock and it's sequels does something interesting where it blends the two approaches, having both overt and covert storytelling, for lack of a better term. The game has it's story, but the world is full of other stories that you peace together as you go. It's pretty neat.

Big Classy

Witcher series is brilliant for world building and the story often comes from that.

CaptainNemo

Dishonored also did a fantastic job of using books, plays, and such to build it's world. For a far worse example, see the Thief reboot.

Senno

I agree, Bioshock (and to a lesser extent, it's sequels) helped purvey a world that had at once been opulent but was now quite literally sinking and dying. The collection of the tapes helped portray the world in far better nuance then in the more simple terms that heretofore were the norm. It's one of the reasons it is one of my favourite games.

But more to the point of naming titles that have this convention, I'm interested in why this convention has become increasingly prevalent and how it suddenly came about. I think Bioshock is a good starting point for this kind of storytelling, as from here on in I can see it becoming more common.

SyphonBlue

Always make sure to put sunscreen on your genitals. Tan is okay but you don't want them to get sunburned. Trust me.

Stormwatcher

SyphonBlue wrote: »

Always make sure to put sunscreen on your genitals. Tan is okay but you don't want them to get sunburned. Trust me.

oh you cad