Issue 41 - Suspend My Disbelief

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Asher
http://www.physics.rice.edu
Concerning emotional attachment and player control in a GTA setting, it's not too hard to take the existing game mechanics a little further. For instance, every time an NPC dies an ambulance comes and fixes him, whereas instead, if we really wanted to make the player feel remorse, there should be a funeral a few days later. (Of course, the player doesn't have to go, but occasionally you should see some actual processions goin' down.) I believe the most emmotional part of San Andreas is near the end of the game when all of Los Santos starts rioting. Similarly, the economic environment of the cities should change depending on how badly you've ruined the infrastructure, etc. Like an FPS-sim.

Also, with regard to players changing the storyline, have you noticed that there are no time travel games that are really about time travel? By keeping track of keystrokes, a player could really revisit a past event and keep himself away from dangers he previously never knew existed, by taking out enemies, unlocking doors, etc. If you end up changing something, just let the NPC take over until the next checkpoint. In the last stage of the game, it may even become necessary to alter history ( in a race you could pilot an enemy ship and beat your previous record) or even kill your past self for the greater good.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Rob

Christian: that example is also a good one because if you'd reloaded and both survived then... it's different. The only trouble is that when I played that quest, they both died, and I failed. Oblivion didn't tell me that the sky was falling in or anything dramatic (which possibly made it worse) it simply said something dry like 'I failed to save the two brothers from being killed'.

I failed, so I reloaded my previous save. I've been conditioned into this cycle of gaming where there's always a perfect outcome, so I couldn't accept it. I find myself reloading constantly in games like Oblivion or GTA, and I don't like it all, but I can't help it! Ideally Oblivion should be played as a series of sucesses and failures which craft an experience, but it isn't happening for me.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Isaac

To build on the previous examples, there are a couple of roguelikes that try to use storytelling techniques. Since roguelikes don't allow you to go back to a previous save -- you don't have saves, you have characters -- anything that happens is irreversable.
The first example is from ADOM, and is a bit like that example from Oblivion. A little girl asks you to find her lost puppy; the cave it's lost in is tough for low-level characters to get through. If you wait too long the dog will die, so if yuo want to rescue it, you'll have to go right away. If you fail, but manage to make it out alive, when you run into the little girl again, it'll give you the choice -- do you want to tell her that her puppy is dead?
Wasteland (at least the version I played) autosaved the game every time you moved between maps. Every choice you made in the game was permanent in the long term.
In both cases, the permanence of the choices have drawbacks (I've never come close to completing ADOM because its so deadly, for example) but they allowed the games to give you consequences that are usually lacking in the save-reload cycle of most video games.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Sarah

I think the game that comes closest to what the article spoke of for me was Silent Hill 2. The game itself is extremely immersive (as survival horror needs to be) and there are 5 different endings. Which one you get is dependent on your style of play, such as whether you heal yourself frequently, and on whther you have come across certain items. Of course the storyline is very linear through the game itself, but I can imagine how much more could be done with the concept if you could branch off in the way that Dana suggested. In the actual game, aside from dying yourself, shooting Maria gives you an instant game over. It made me laugh when I tried it, and I just started over from my last save. If that had taken me on another game path to another whole set of endings...

"It's possible to make a person enjoy (in an artistic sense) someone else's suffering, but how do you make that same person enjoy their own suffering? Tragedies are powerful stories, but I submit that nobody wants to be Hamlet."


The Silent Hill series is very punishing to the PCs. You have to do quite a few things that you would probably never want to try in real life, like reaching into a dirty toilet for an important item. I think this sort of thing actually helps you to bond even more with the character you are controlling. ("I haven't gone through all that just to die here!") The genre effects what kind of punishment is being dished to you, but it's one of the main components of something very emotionally affecting, like Braveheart. I would love to see more games try out this largely unexplored territory.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Alison Scott
http://www.kittywompus.com/macadamia
I've played no end of text adventures that deliver a wider palette of emotions than the ones you describe. Try for example Andrew Plotkin's Spider and Web, or Adam Cadre's Photopia. And after playing Ultima games for many years, I was shocked to the core when Dupre tossed himself into the furnace. Er. Spoiler warning.

But it's not only highly-plotted games that deliver emotional content for me. You list "excitement, enjoyment, curiosity, frustration, and very rarely, fear". To which I'd add, well, most of the rest. Wikipedia has an alphabetical list of emotions: for nearly every one of them, at least one game comes instantly to my mind. Glee? Guitar Hero. Nostalgia? Star Raiders. Friendship? Puzzle Pirates. Disgust? The Aliens mod for Doom.

I think that if games didn't deliver a wide range of emotional content for me, I wouldn't play them.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: John Keel

By all means a fascinating discussion. It's something anyone addicted to gaming thinks about sometimes and every game developer should be working on. But I must admit that there are quite some highly-plotted games that did succeed at getting me cry or have emotions other than the typical agression/frustration. And I agree with Mark that a flawless presentation with solid voice acting is one of the things which can greatly help to achieve an emersing gaming experience. MGS:Solid Snake was one of these titles. Of course it's highly linear, the main character is well worked out and not someone you would absolutely emerse into. But because of this, because he has a really worked out, deep character, I can feel with him, even if I don't agree with him. But the game has some really nice spots that give you quite a strong emotional experience.

(Spoiler Warning)As an example you get to this part of the game where you have to follow this river and see all enemies which were killed by your hands. The more you killed the harder it gets, but the point is not to punish you for your way of playing the game. It's just giving you a feedback of your interactions with the game-world. Not Snake killed this men...I, the player, did, Snake could have easily avoided them or put them to sleep. But I chose the easy way of killing them. And it was quite a scary feeling, thinking that I played rather cautios without senseless killing and then wading through this river seeing this 20-30 dead soldiers moaning "Why did you kill me?".

Or the endfight of the game: You got to fight "the boss", you're longtime Mentor, Partner, and "kind of"Mother, for political reasons to complex to explain here. You know she did not betray you, like you were told before, but she did her duty and is now to be disposed off. When you win the fight against her she aks you to kill her, so that her mission will be fulfilled. And I must admit this was one of the hardest buttons I had to press in my entire (over 20 year long) gaming life.(Spoiler end)

So I feel that it is possible to handle a game like a sort of interactive movie. Of course it will be much harder to achieve this with absolute freedom and an avatar filled by the player without any sculped out character, but it is something we have to try. But I feel, that it would be a powerfull first step in the right way just to get the emotions we know from movies and books. I don't think there has to be ONE right way. Some games will manage this by giving you complete freedom and getting you to fill the avatar with your personality and other games will tell you a thrilling story with a fully worked out character, who is played by you even if this means limiting your freedom. We should strive in both directions and try to enrich ALL gaming experiences with more emotions.

Yes, it is hard to force permanent consequences on the player without restricting his freedom. I think it is allmost impossible without taking at least a little of his power from him. One way I've seen in some games and already mentioned here is the "one save"-method, which I personally think is a good compromise. Of course your game is saved in case you can't finish the game in one run, but there are no multiple-savegames and therefore no going back. For this to work the consequences of your action have to be delayed. If you see them the moment you decide, you would just end the current game and restart from the latest savepoint. But if you decide, play on till you got to the next savepoint, and then see the consequences theres no going back. Of course this is limiting the player in his freedom, but I think this one practicable compromise

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Paul Georges
http://www.paulgeorges.com
Both epidodes of Xenosaga made me cry at several points throughout the games. You should check them out.