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Storytelling in games
Xagarath
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, Gamesradar is normally a terrible site, but this article is actually decent
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/why-games-fail-at-storytelling/a-20081009144024109077
Now, I don't agree with everything they're saying, but they make some points I've been making for a while now- games shouldn't be trying to be like films. It's crippling, and ultimately something of a dead end. The question that we should then be asking is, obviously, what should they be?
I'm going to look briefly here at a few games that I feel represent the best storytelling games have so far managed, and I'm sure at least some of you would agree with me: Portal, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2, Planescape: Torment and Pathologic
(I may now have to slightly spoil the above)
Planescape: Torment is the most traditional of these, with narrative being entirely centred on text, the graphics only providing an exploratory backdrop. The quality of said text is about the highest gaming has yet managed, and this is where most of its reputation derives from, but in the way the story is told it's relatively unsophisticated, being predicated entirely upon dialogue choices from a set list. I mention it here mainly because it's the best example in games I'm aware of of nonlinear storytelling- every single minor dialogue choice in the game impacts the later stages in ways that are not immediately obvious. The other noteworthy innovation of the game was in making the main character immortal, making the story the central challenge of the game rather than the tacked-on combat.
Pathologic is obscure, poorly-translated and decidedly broken. In terms of ideas, though, it's arguably more sophisticated than any other game I've encountered, relying upon metaphor, symbolism and, most intererestingly, Brechtian detachment, whereby the story deliberately uses the awareness of the player that they are playing a game. This is obviously a technique to which games are particularly well-suited, and while most others I know of simply used it for brief jokes, Pathologic weaves entire strands of narrative around it, pushing for the player to react to the events by noticing that the unimportant characters are essentially interchangable, and other such cliches that are normally overlooked or forgiven in games rather than deliberately used. Really, I'd love to see this kind of ambition more often.
Silent Hill 2 reinforces an idea I've had for a while- that currently, horror is the genre at which games are most adept at telling a story. This is obviously due to very basic reactions- it's much easier to frighten, unnerve or disorient someone when you place them in a situation, as they can be relied upon to react in very instinctive, visceral ways. This, essentially, makes horror much easier to plan for in a game than most kinds of narrative, in which the reactions of the player are much less predictable. Silent Hill 2 is simply the most sophisticated of the bunch, aiming for subtle psychological horror rather the generic story most horror games fall back on.
Shadow of the Colossus is in many ways much more important than the above three. In it and its predecessor Ico, the designers realised that the best way to get the player to emotionally engage with a story is not through cutscenes showing off the characters, but through the very mechanics of the game itself. The protection of Yorda in Ico and the reliance upon Agro in Shadow create a much more effective, if more basic bond with them than the overwrought cutscenes of other games. Unlike ico, however, Shadow of the Colossus went further, taking its other mechanic, the defeat of the colossi, and using it to form a basic deconstruction of its own narrative, not only having the player's actions through the game being misguided but actually transforming him into one of the selfsame colossi and fighting smaller foes at the end. Basic, but effective.
Portal is often overlooked in discussions of narrative because the actual story behind it seems lightweight and humorous, without any of the self-important dramatics of the above four titles or of most games centered on story. The fact is, however, that the narrative form in Portal is arguably the best yet seen in the entire medium.
Portal first adopts the rule that Valve have long adhered to- that cutscenes interrupt the flow of a game, and shouldn't be used. The only problem with such a situation normally is that the player then often winds up as a mute, unreactive protagonist, even in situations where they could reasonably have been expected to say something. Portal, however, sidesteps that through the artificial, enclosed situation of the game itself, perfectly matching its story to the cutscene-less approach.
The second notable feature of Portal is that it doesn't force the player to notice all of the story (something also done by Planescape). The hidden spaces with graffiti scrawled about them are left for the player to discover.
The third is that Portal not only adopts the above Shadow of the Colossus approahc with regards to forming attachment to a character through mechanics, it satirises it, through the Companion Cube sequence.
The fourth and most important thing about Portal story, however, is how it extends the deconstructionist of Shadow of the Colossus, whereby assumptions made by the player through the mechanical tructure of the game are effectively flipped on their head. While Shadow did this in a very rudimentary way, as described above, Portal uses its puzzle-oriented structure and its narrator to create assumptions in the player that are then subverted once the end of the test chambers are reached- the top-down, instruction-led appraoch of most games is deliberately attacked with the player discovering that following it relies in their own demise, and they have to instead rebel against the instructions and system given to them in order to reach the end. In the process, Portal also adopts the Unreliable Narrator approach to storytelling, forcing the player to think for themselves about the story rather than take it as it is presented.
It is for these various reasons, I think, that Portal represents the apex of narrative in games- an effective postmodern approach to the problems created by the presenced of interaction and gameplay. However, it is also obviously a fraemwork that cannot be easily applied to all forms of narrative.
Do you agree? Disagree? Prefer the "cinematic" style of narrative? Prefer purely textual stories?
Discuss.
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/why-games-fail-at-storytelling/a-20081009144024109077
Now, I don't agree with everything they're saying, but they make some points I've been making for a while now- games shouldn't be trying to be like films. It's crippling, and ultimately something of a dead end. The question that we should then be asking is, obviously, what should they be?
I'm going to look briefly here at a few games that I feel represent the best storytelling games have so far managed, and I'm sure at least some of you would agree with me: Portal, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2, Planescape: Torment and Pathologic
(I may now have to slightly spoil the above)
Planescape: Torment is the most traditional of these, with narrative being entirely centred on text, the graphics only providing an exploratory backdrop. The quality of said text is about the highest gaming has yet managed, and this is where most of its reputation derives from, but in the way the story is told it's relatively unsophisticated, being predicated entirely upon dialogue choices from a set list. I mention it here mainly because it's the best example in games I'm aware of of nonlinear storytelling- every single minor dialogue choice in the game impacts the later stages in ways that are not immediately obvious. The other noteworthy innovation of the game was in making the main character immortal, making the story the central challenge of the game rather than the tacked-on combat.
Pathologic is obscure, poorly-translated and decidedly broken. In terms of ideas, though, it's arguably more sophisticated than any other game I've encountered, relying upon metaphor, symbolism and, most intererestingly, Brechtian detachment, whereby the story deliberately uses the awareness of the player that they are playing a game. This is obviously a technique to which games are particularly well-suited, and while most others I know of simply used it for brief jokes, Pathologic weaves entire strands of narrative around it, pushing for the player to react to the events by noticing that the unimportant characters are essentially interchangable, and other such cliches that are normally overlooked or forgiven in games rather than deliberately used. Really, I'd love to see this kind of ambition more often.
Silent Hill 2 reinforces an idea I've had for a while- that currently, horror is the genre at which games are most adept at telling a story. This is obviously due to very basic reactions- it's much easier to frighten, unnerve or disorient someone when you place them in a situation, as they can be relied upon to react in very instinctive, visceral ways. This, essentially, makes horror much easier to plan for in a game than most kinds of narrative, in which the reactions of the player are much less predictable. Silent Hill 2 is simply the most sophisticated of the bunch, aiming for subtle psychological horror rather the generic story most horror games fall back on.
Shadow of the Colossus is in many ways much more important than the above three. In it and its predecessor Ico, the designers realised that the best way to get the player to emotionally engage with a story is not through cutscenes showing off the characters, but through the very mechanics of the game itself. The protection of Yorda in Ico and the reliance upon Agro in Shadow create a much more effective, if more basic bond with them than the overwrought cutscenes of other games. Unlike ico, however, Shadow of the Colossus went further, taking its other mechanic, the defeat of the colossi, and using it to form a basic deconstruction of its own narrative, not only having the player's actions through the game being misguided but actually transforming him into one of the selfsame colossi and fighting smaller foes at the end. Basic, but effective.
Portal is often overlooked in discussions of narrative because the actual story behind it seems lightweight and humorous, without any of the self-important dramatics of the above four titles or of most games centered on story. The fact is, however, that the narrative form in Portal is arguably the best yet seen in the entire medium.
Portal first adopts the rule that Valve have long adhered to- that cutscenes interrupt the flow of a game, and shouldn't be used. The only problem with such a situation normally is that the player then often winds up as a mute, unreactive protagonist, even in situations where they could reasonably have been expected to say something. Portal, however, sidesteps that through the artificial, enclosed situation of the game itself, perfectly matching its story to the cutscene-less approach.
The second notable feature of Portal is that it doesn't force the player to notice all of the story (something also done by Planescape). The hidden spaces with graffiti scrawled about them are left for the player to discover.
The third is that Portal not only adopts the above Shadow of the Colossus approahc with regards to forming attachment to a character through mechanics, it satirises it, through the Companion Cube sequence.
The fourth and most important thing about Portal story, however, is how it extends the deconstructionist of Shadow of the Colossus, whereby assumptions made by the player through the mechanical tructure of the game are effectively flipped on their head. While Shadow did this in a very rudimentary way, as described above, Portal uses its puzzle-oriented structure and its narrator to create assumptions in the player that are then subverted once the end of the test chambers are reached- the top-down, instruction-led appraoch of most games is deliberately attacked with the player discovering that following it relies in their own demise, and they have to instead rebel against the instructions and system given to them in order to reach the end. In the process, Portal also adopts the Unreliable Narrator approach to storytelling, forcing the player to think for themselves about the story rather than take it as it is presented.
It is for these various reasons, I think, that Portal represents the apex of narrative in games- an effective postmodern approach to the problems created by the presenced of interaction and gameplay. However, it is also obviously a fraemwork that cannot be easily applied to all forms of narrative.
Do you agree? Disagree? Prefer the "cinematic" style of narrative? Prefer purely textual stories?
Discuss.
Xagarath on
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Indigo Prophecy was a neat experiment (until the story becomes batshit crazy).
Indigo Prophecy was interesting, if pretty much entirely cutscene-based. It did some nice things with nonlinearity early on.
The specific reference I'll make here is Aeris from FF7. Lots of people say she was such a sweetheart, but (as far as I can remember from having played the game to completion more than a few times) none of her mannerisms or dialogue reflected this. And she made her fair share of snarky or lewd comments. Cutest thing she ever said was that Barret looked like a big marshmellow.
I think we may be over this as an issue because translation is more on the ball.
I'm waiting on the translation project, who're still active.
Why is this relevant?
awesome.
I liked the linked article's point about mute protagonists. I know some people criticize this as lazy design or point out that it doesn't make sense, but when it fits(mostly FPS, RPGs), I really like it and it can bring me more into the game. The character isn't actually mute -- YOU are that character. It's kind of an abstract thought since obviously the characters in the game aren't responding to what you are saying/thinking. It's easy to screw up too, when the game forces your character to do / not do something you would have expected them to. I'm playing SMT: Nocturne now and that has occurred a couple times. But again, this is something video games can do that other mediums cannot.
they really aren't that bad people
On the other hand, I feel that games that do the cinematic approach well can involve you in a number of ways, in as much as a good movie can
I think they are both viable methods, particularly now when developers haven't fully grasped the nuances of the medium
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
But that may just be my inner fanboy sticking out.
Oh and I'd add Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter to the list of examples of exceptional video game storytelling. True, the story is mostly told through cutscenes (very well directed cutscenes I might add), but the different between BoF: DQ and most videogames is that the gameplay actually enhances the mood & themes of the game's story rather than merely interrupts the flow. The ending actually brought me to tears and I'd argue that it wouldn't have had that effect on me if I had merely watched the cutscenes separated from the game.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Because there's something interesting about one of the endings that's worth discussing in the context. But also because my experience of playing it doesn't match up to that description at all.
I have only seen one Brecht play, to be fair (Good Person of Schezuan), but it was really impressive stuff.
Exactly.
I think the best stories in a given medium are often the kind that wouldn't work in any other, or at least wouldn't work in the same way.
I have read a fair bit of analysis by others of the relevant plot (the RPS articles, for instance). Which ending were you thinking of?
The Brechtian elements kick in on things like the fact that important NPCs have portraits and unimportant ones have identical rag dolls, and a character in the Bachelor path comments on this early on and draws it to your attention.
I found the experience incredibly engaging, at the time, yet barely even touched the main storyline.
I agree in as much as most games that are praised as having a good story really don't if they're compared to anything beyond video games, but really, games have only been around about twenty years and only cared about writing or story for maybe ten. They've got a lot of catching up to do to get to where film is today. I mean, twenty years after movies were invented, they hadn't figured out what the hell they were doing either
I think as time goes on, games will find their voice and more and more people will come forward who have actually figured out what to do when it comes to telling a story within a game
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Morrowind drew me in the same way.
Oblivion had books as well, but the entire setting was altogether too straightforward for there to be any need for reading up on it.
I definitely wouldn't want to do this in most other games, but I really like the way you can piece together the story for yourself based on the bits and pieces of evidence they give you, or even the scans that straight up give you a good chunk of story. Not to mention scanning dead space pirates and imagining how they died.:P
Twenty-four years after film was invented, they moved beyond trying to imitate theatre altogether, with Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Have games even got that far yet?
Thinking about it, games are at least 37 years old (Spacewar, 1971). After 37 years, film had produced Fritz Lang's M. There is nothing comparable in gaming to that film on an artistic level, and this does not, to me, seem right at all.
I don't think that comparison is fair
For one, counting Spacewar as the first game is, I feel, misleading. You might as well count the development of the first 2-D animation in the 1860's as the first motion picture. Then Fritz Lang's M would be sixty seven years old
Secondly, games were not originally concerned with storytelling and narrative, they were originally made to entertain or simply to make money. I suppose you could say the same about film, but there is a crucial difference: games were designed primarily for children, and even if someone did have a brilliant vision of a deep and moving story that he wanted to tell, odds are he wouldn't have been able to do anyway since the perception that games were for children would have stopped him from going too far with his vision
And I think games have gotten that far. Like you said, Shadow of the Colossus and Silent Hill 2 and Portal are all proof that people are beginning to realize that games have their own way to tell a story. The problem is, I think, that games don't really attract great writers. There is still the lingering perception that they are immature, and in a way they are. Games that push the envelope and tell stories differently tend to be the exception rather than the rule, which is why I think it will take more time before games start getting a little more "artistic"
I am not sure I am articulating my views very well, but whatever
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
I don't think the quality of writing is the sole problem, though. As I've been saying, it's as much about the form as the story itself.
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
If the developer wants to make the story an important part of the game, I think they should make the goal of using as little cut scenes as possible. Preferably none.
There are some who to try to claim that the 'no cutscene' style, of which Half Life 2 is often held up as being a shining example, is the best and only way, but this is somewhat arrogant. I'm going to get burned here, but i hated HL2's style, didn't find it engaging, and to this day haven't even finished it, let alone ep. 1 and 2. To me, it just felt like 'hey, we've got a physics engine, with a one-trick pony gravity gun attached to it. Now, let's throw a game around it.'
I felt the same way. I've never finished any of the half-life games and found their style off-putting. I enjoy a story in games. They give it depth. Most games do it poorly, but I like knowing where the characters came from. What they did, how they lived, they goals and thoughts. It makes me feel closer to them, as opposed to neutral to their presence, which just makes them less characters and more puppets.
Here's a weird one, but i really liked the 'support' system that the Fire Emblem games have- where leaving certain characters next to each other at the end of a set number of turns would then let you trigger a short dialogue scene, where they would interact, sometimes seriously, romantically, or comedically etc., with the result that when close to one another, they would receive stat boosts.
These scenes weren't at all interactive, unless you count pressing the button to advance the text, but they added a richness and depth of interaction between these characters, who were for the most part thrown together as strangers by the ongoing conflict.
Anyway, not to keep bashing the HLs, which are far from bad games, but i found the aforementioned parts of FE to be way more engaging than any of HL1 or 2.
This is a good thing from a pacing perspective, as it keeps you engaged and constantly moving forward. It also makes sense in the context of the story, since most people will either just assume you know what the hell is up, or they don't feel there's any time at the moment to have a cuppa joe and shoot the shit. Now I for one would love to have a character sit down and have a conversation with Gordon Freeman, even if he is "mute" and you can't actually interact, specifically because the voice acting and facial animations make the characters feel more human and draw me further into the world, but I have a feeling a lot of people would be bored to tears by that experience
The Half-Life games are a shining example of story and gameplay meshing together without getting in each other's way. The only snag is some people want a bit more of one and a bit less of the other, and you just can't please everyone
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Totally. Writers? More like wrongers!
i actually feel that it ends up with neither
Cut scenes are movies. One of the things video games have over other mediums is the interactive factor. I feel that if a developer wants to emphasize the story as part of the gaming experience, they are cutting themselves short by ignoring this.
Eli has a nice sit-down with you. (Episode 2)
Yeah, honestly, when you are just delivered a cutscene it's more of a mixed-media form of storytelling than a straight up video game form of storytelling. Now, how you arrive at those cutscenes may involve interaction, for instance the Fire Emblem thing that was mentioned, but the cutscenes themselves do not take advantage of the interactivity of the medium. What I mean to say is, cutscenes aren't bad, but games often use them as a crutch in storytelling when they could instead take advantage of the tools of the medium to make a more meaningful point.
It wasn't long enough, though
I'm talking like a long drawn out thing with someone like Eli sittin' down with you and explainin' all this shit
I mean come on, with the awesome animation that Valve does, it would be totally sweet, with hand gestures and facial expressions and cool voice acting
But again I'm probably the only one in the world who would find that sort of minutiae entertaining
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
The one where you basically realise that the entire story that you've just played is wrong and what actually happened is the result of children playing in a sandbox. I can't remember it properly now which is a bit of a shame, but it's something about how the town is made up of little bits and pieces that they've found, like a cow's skull forms the basis of the idea that the town as a dying animal, and the puppets are the players, whilst the dolls are the cast. It was something to do with how the children had encountered death for the first time, and now it was part of their play lexicon, but they didn't really understand it and it started to run wild. It was something more than that, though, but I think the point was to just say games aren't really about story, but about play.
So, if you've not played the game, I think you'd probably miss that point. It's like the difference between say, a description of a painting, and the painting itself. One just isn't going to give you the experience of the other.e
But I think that ties fairly neatly into what I'll say, game stories are terrible. If you want a good story, read a good book. Games should really concentrate on what they're good at which is play. I don't think I love planescape/mask of the betrayer etc because the stories are really good, but it's that they put you in situations where you think about what to say. I don't think Metal Gear Solid series is a good story, but I like it when they break your expectations of what is allowed in a game. I don't think Stalkers story is great, but I like how they leave it up to you to get to the end. I think this might also be the reason I don't like where Half-Life 2 is going, previously it was here's a situation, what the fuck are you going to do. Now it has turned more and more into let's have a 5 minute chat, and now SCRIPTED FIGHT GO!
Afterall, I've played civilization plenty of times and there was tons of "story" created. But that story was my own making. I had an 'epic' war with the bablyonians etc. This is even more true in multiplayer where there is more opportunity for a 'story' to form between two 'players'.
The various attempts to combine these over the years (Comic-style load screens, cut scenes) demonstrate what happens if you confuse one for the other: You have the narritive/animation/whatever, AND THEN you get to the game.
What I'd like to see, personally, is for "scenes" to have more AI and less script to them, and for the story to change based on your behavior, even if it ultimately leads to a game-over scenario five minutes down the line and forces a restart (though, ideally, this would become less of an issue). That was one of the nice things about Planescape and so forth: You could get in a fight with just about anyone.
Frankly, I don't think any answer is the right one. I love Portal and Metroid Prime, but that's only some forms of interaction. In real like, people have conversations. They share their knowledge and argue. Removing that from video games is like making all effects in movies CG. The same is true of storytelling and narration. Open-ended, sandbox worlds, and forumaltive gameplay and endings are fine, but I'd hate to lose the cinematic RPGs, Silent Hill brain-fucks, subtle Shadow of the Colossus tragedies, and countless others for it. In other words, I don't want to watch some of the strongest games and developments of the last two generations become what's "wrong" with games.
Besides, there is the matter of complexity. Let's say a single-narration game takes x amount of development time and dollars. If you make a branching story, it will split the focus of design. Either it will cost you x times the number of branches to make or it only takes x resources to make multiple plots not as long or strong as a single plot would. Procedural development, Far Cry 2 or Silent Hill 2 style, will be even more stratifying, and the more open-ended you go, the more the design splits. It's just a question of how much you can and are willing to spend.