The Direction of Storytelling in Gaming *Possible Spoilers*

[9NineBreaker9]

It used to be that the most story you would get out of a game would be a three paragraph blip in the manual that came with the game. Then, the concept of an RPG was developed, where storytelling was the major focus, along with character development. With the advent of the past generations, gaming entered a whole new era.

Now, games are reaching epic levels, getting as much attention, if not more, than most movies. And with this, the mechanics of everything has evolved. Graphics got better, gameplay became more complex, and, my favorite addition, the stories in games became far more advanced.

What do you think about the direction of stories in games these days? I've recently picked up Assasin's Creed, and am loving the format of the story. It adds an additional layer to the happenings of everything - you just don't care about the assasin and the various shankings he performs, but the man forced to remember all of this. It's an interesting element that I find highly enjoyable.

Games like Bioshock, Assasin's Creed, just the name a few (games I have played >.>), have very intesting storylines. No longer are the days that the only story that gets any attention is Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII. It's nice to know that gaming is going in a far more artistic direction these days.

So, onto the final point: what is your take on the direction of stroytelling? Is there one story that you just fell in love with, or one that you want to burn at the stake? Will the stories in games ever get as much attention than books or movies?

Of course, this is excluding Halo and Final Fantasy VII, as they are already more popular than God (ZeroPunctuation w00t)...

 

[LordOmnit]

Well, FFVII wasn't exactly what I'd call the most inspired story in the world. Sure, it was hella complex, but at a point it seemed to be getting more and more complex for complexity's sake, rather than there being any point in it being complex, crossing the "mplex" border into the "fused" territory.
We can't dismiss the fact that for every BioShock, Assassin's Creed, and Portal there are ten oceans of shit.
But, since we only care to actually discuss the good games and complain about the bad ones, I'll skip all of that.
Yes, the good stories in gaming are getting better I think. The quality of the top level of gaming stories are getting better, but we still have to wade through the crap to get to them.

 

[Kieran210]

Half life 2 + episodes is, I think, a victory of writing and pacing over graphics. There is a story that 'realistically' re-invents itself, and has twists and turns, even over the course of one game - escape to rescue to war to the admittadly lame ending.

I was irritated by Assassins Creed because once more it insults a players intelligence by dressing it up as 'sci-fi'. I would have much enjoyed a proper 'you are a 12th century assassin' game.

Portal is fantastic as well...though not really orginal, as we've seen crazed AI's before. But more focus of character and plot would be the way forwards for writing in games.

 

[Darren Grey]

Whilst it's nice when a game manages to have a good story, a lot of the time it can be quite poor. RPGs in particular tend to rely on overused stereotypes, whilst other genres suffer from a lack of believability and immersion. Assassin's Creed is an example of this I feel - the poor AI, lack of many vocal samples, and jarring meld of futuristic interface with a medieval environment all take away from any feeling that you are actually in a real setting. You are constantly reminded that it is just a game, and all drama is taken out of it.

On the other hand cinematic games run the risk of being too linear. It's all well and good having a game with as good a story as a movie, but it shouldn't be at the sacrifice of gameplay. I greatly enjoyed the likes of Xenogears with its very complex story and in-depth characterisation, but overall it wasn't much of a game. A lot of titles these days are trying to give more choices (though too often this is oversimplified into good/evil) and this I feel is more suiting for a video game. What I most like is when games get you embroiled in politics and complex NPC relations, where there is no definite right or wrong and your actions can have unpredicted consequences. Fallout and Morrowind are decent examples of this, though this sort of story can be taken a lot further. In these cases it's not so much a movie-style story, but something much more complex and interesting that can really get you immersed into a game and its setting.

David Braben has been hyping up his developing title Outsider as a game like this, with complex, non-linear plots and NPC reactions. In his words this is what true next-gen gaming should be about. Whilst I doubt it'll be as good as he says it should still be interesting, and I agree that this should be the direction of gaming. It'll be difficult for writers to make games with epic stories and still keep them extremely open, but it will allow for gaming experiences that far exceed the simple storytelling of movies, whilst adding to the gameplay instead of taking away.

 

[SOLOcan]

No one wants to mention the kings of armchair philosophy? Planescape Torment, Fallout 1 and 2, Dues Ex, can't really think of others. Bioware has ok writers, though they have a pretty blatant good vs. evil dichotomy. Anyway those come to mind as games which utilize interactivity and choice in an engrossing manner, really using the format of games to tell stories.

If you ask me, gaming story still has a fairway to go. Game developers can't control the viewers view the way a movie can, leaving messages that are easily missed, eg. those three games i mentioned. Furthermore there's still the whole death in games thing, which still jarr's the player out of immersion into "hey i'm playing a game" land.

What i reckon is coming up for game stories, is post-modernism. An example is KOTOR 2 and its use of gaming mechanics to enforce a plot point, or more recently Bioshock, which uses FPS's simple objective based gameplay as its plot twist. But the ending sucked balls. Seriously, so much going for it. My god was that wasted.

 

[Damn Dirty Ape]

Interesting topic, been wondering the same lately. Anybody else find it interesting that newer games, games with better engines and more options at their disposal, often have worse storytelling then older games like half life and deus ex. The only good stories in fps games are with older games, currently I'm replaying undying for instance and it just swollows me up storywise. I finished half life about 7,8 times and deus ex about 3 times, all endings of course. I currently still need to finish bioshock but it just doesn't bother me at all storywise to keep playing it constantly, I've read about some plottwist and I can already see what since it's so obvious. I think that's the problem with alot of storytelling lately in games.

-It's put in priority behind graphics, lacking depth often. Think this is flaw number 1 these days.
-It's teen rated, lacking any realistic depth. I'm not talking about some hot coffee mod, but sexual hints along with everything else that makes us grownups makes a story more easy to pickup for me. This can be implimented with ease on a slight unsubtle way without harm. ( kerrigan raynor love interest in starcraft comes to my mind )
-Moral. Moral highground is never white or black, one side or the other. Yes I'm pointing to you bioshock. There is always a grey area, how many games this lack and constantly push you into a certain way ( stalker bad/good endings for example ) is way to high in number.
-The fear of killing of characters, creating plot armor. For instance I'm having this with several characters in hl2 for some time now, they just won't die. Gameplaywise this is obvious, rather that then a dumb ai buddy that constantly runs to his death. But it just doesn't feel right this way. Remember in hl1 a scientist could help you and get killed right after he opend that door for you? You felt responsible, helpless, you wanted to help those fragile human beings. In hl2 you can leave Alyx alone and she will roundhousekick any antlion in sight.
-Trying to keep it politically correct. Act of war was advertised a while back with "great immersing story" but turned into a pile of doodoo quickly after mission 3 or so with the typical former ussr badguy trying to take over the government. This game had so much potential and it was a ton of fun, if they tried to sway from the stereotypical bs this game could have an amazing sp experience. Still a good game though.

There are other reasons of course, just naming a few. But I do wish developers would take a step back, use a current engine for a change instead of making a buggy new one and just try to get inspiration from the older games. Simple ways of immersing you with greater effect then any graphic hihoo could have.

 

[JamesW]

Half life 2 + episodes is, I think, a victory of writing and pacing over graphics.

It's funny, because I was thinking of Half Life 2 as being one of the worst examples of integrating story and gameplay. The way I look at it, a game needs to do four things to get the story to work: it needs to give the player all the information they need to create a context for the game's story, it needs to foster a connection between the player and the game world, it needs to make the player's position in the narrative clear at all times and it needs to trick the player into thinking that his actions have consequences. And Half-Life 2 fails at every turn, despite having a promising start.

It's undeniable that the game has a beautifullly constructed, intricately designed gameworld. Stepping off the train and seeing the first Breencast sent a shiver up my spine, and the integration of a gameplay tutorial through commands by Combine soldiers was inspired. Certainly it does an excellent job of allowing the player to immerse themselves in the world. And for the first hour or so, there's a lot of fun to be had looking at how things are in the Half Life world and speculating how it came about.

But then it's all snatched away. From the moment that Gordon is found by Alyx, the story slowly starts receding into the background and the game begins to sever what connections it had made with the player previously. For a start, Gordon's muteness stops him from asking the big questions of Dr Kleiner, specifically: "what the hell is going on?" Rather than allowing the player to put themselves in Gordon's shoes, it only serves to highlight the artificiality of the gameworld. The fact that they are sitting at a computer, watching an elaborate cutscene suddnely becomes glaringly obvious.

(As a side note, Bioshock and F.E.A.R., two games that also follow Valve's model of using a heroic mime and never using third-person cutscenes, get around this problem by drip-feeding plot elements to the player in the form of audio files and integrated lectures. The psychic visions help, of course, but pretty much everything could have been covered with dialogue.)

Worse, this means that the player has absolutely no context for the events that are unfolding. The idea behind the Half Life games is that the baddies in HL1 were being forced to enter our world via the portal as Xen had become the last standing ground for species unwilling to join the Combine. By destroying the big bad at the end of HL1, Gordon in fact removes the only barrier between Earth and the Combine. This is never explained in either game. Nor is any explanation given for how the Earth ended up so massivly fucked, beyond a few newspaper headlines in Kleiner's lab. Anything else you want to know must be gleaned from outside sources. So again, the player is left feeling like they're being pushed out of the narrative.

Speaking of which, Half-Life 2, while having an exceptionally well-realised game world, pretty much pushes the narrative to the back-burner. Gordon's only role for much of the game is to run from point A to point C through path B (which is usually the most ridiculously complicated path available) to that he can meet character X. The larger story is pretty much forgotten about by both the player and Valve because it is usurped by the need to get from checkpoint to checkpoint, a process that takes hours of cross-country travelling.

Worse, nothing actually happens plot-wise until Gordon leaps into the future, at which point Valve realise that they should have introduced the story about thirty hours ago, and have a giant uprising take place in Gordon's absence. Basically, everything plot-related up to the very end of the game happens without the player, whether he's busy twatting headcrabs or hanging in time/space limbo. For the star of the game, Gordon is pretty much its most useless character. Even Barey fuckin' Calhoun achieves more than him.

Which brings me to the last point: consequences. Nothing the player does actually affects the story until the final attack on the citadel, largely because the "story" has been confined to people arguing and selling each other out off-screen. Gordon's presence is the thing that triggers the revolution, not his actions. How much better would it have been if the player had spent those preceding hours rallying up troops and performing infiltration missions to bring down key strongholds? There's a bit of that, sure, but it's always secondary to actually getting to the next checkpooint.

But maybe the episodes change all that. Maybe they've got an amazing narrative drive. Who knows? Not me, because I'm not touching them with a bargepole.

 

[Katana314]

Heck, I love Half-Life's story, but even I have to admit you make a good argument there.

One thing I sort of commonly see is that the player doesn't really often have a place in the story. In Oblivion, he's always "Listen! I need your help!" insert evil-slaying here. I remember a review saying that you are "telling your own story". No you're not. You're just the henchmen to about 500 different people in the world. And it's the same way in FEAR, in Bioshock...you're just accomplishing what someone else has asked you to do. You're not making any decisions, you're not the sole cause of anything. Thankfully, in Bioshock, that becomes your downfall.

One important thing I want people to remember is that there's story...which can sometimes be ignored, and then there's storyTELLING. Before you go on some huge, innovative romp about aliens and conspiracy and telekinesis, do a simple story that you can tell correctly. Give the right cues to the player, write out lines to show someone's mood correctly, and find times woven into the gameplay when you can reveal a bit more of the plot.

 

[JamesW]

You're just the henchmen to about 500 different people in the world. And it's the same way in FEAR, in Bioshock...you're just accomplishing what someone else has asked you to do. You're not making any decisions, you're not the sole cause of anything.

What I liked about Bioshock was that your henchman status was actually justified by the story, and an integral part of your character. In fact, the player character is just one small part of the larger Bioshock story, which is really about Fontaine and Ryan battling for control of a city that's dying anyway. If it were a movie, it would all be about Fontaine and Ryan, and the player character would be nothing more than an ironic way for Fontaine to buy the farm.

 

[some random guy]

Personally, I don't give a shit about the story of games.
A game doesn't need a good story to be good and fun. Just look at Burnout, Mario, Timesplitters, the 2D Sonic games, Tony Hawks (before Underground), Guitar hero ect.
I think that people are putting too much emphasis on the story and the gameplay and controls are going to start suffering because of it. I doesn't matter how elaborate the story is, if a game doesn't control well then it isn't a good game.

 

[Zera]

Personally, I don't give a shit about the story of games.
A game doesn't need a good story to be good and fun. Just look at Burnout, Mario, Timesplitters, the 2D Sonic games, Tony Hawks (before Underground), Guitar hero ect.
I think that people are putting too much emphasis on the story and the gameplay and controls are going to start suffering because of it. I doesn't matter how elaborate the story is, if a game doesn't control well then it isn't a good game.

They are not saying that every game needs an epic story. Story can greatly influence a game believe it or not. It could give it a more epic feel to the music, characters, and gameplay. One way to improve a story's development is actually to make the characters act more like themselves during gameplay. If the characters looked more detailed and did not just stand while staying still or there faces didn't stay the same constintly, you should be able to connect with them better, thus fleshing out the story.

By the way, I prefer stories with twists in them and not the expected or ridiculous kind.

 

[Admonished]

Story tends to be a large factor in the games I choose to play. I recall playing Tales of Symphonia and enjoying the gameplay but being completely disappointed by the rather "obvious" points in the story. ( took like 10 mins to figure out who Lloyd's father was)
As for FFvii the story was complex to a point where i didn't seem to care after a while, but at the same time im not exactly vii's biggest fan.
I do however enjoy story's that are pretty straightforward or have you thinking one way throughout a game but throw you a nice twice to rattle your perceptions. (I like the story line to FF Tactics)
But story should be an intergral part of the game (particularly RPG's) that adds to the game's enjoyment and i think can hinder the game's enjoyment just as much as any other factor such as graphic or gameplay.

 

[raankh]

There's also only so much you can do with a linear story. Most interactive games still work along the lines of scripts for tv/movies; the classical plot-point graph with story-arcs between them.

Multiple endings is a now classical way in computer games to address this, but it's still a static story.

Dynamic stories will require a very particular engine to drive them, with semantical capabilities as of yet unavailable.

A very simple way (although 'simple' in this context means difficult as hell but not intractable) would be to have composite story elements that could be arranged into a plot automatically. Although there would still be a finite number of stories, with a sufficient number of plot elements the number of unique story-lines could easily reach into the hundreds, with thousands of variations to each plot (triggered by the players actions).

I think the way forward lies in computer games abandoning their dependence on other media and daring to realize their full potential. Imagine a Sims game with actual dynamical plots; I'm sure developers are working hard towards this end already. The technical challenge is considerable and games like STALKER is a good example where noble goals from the outset simply weren't workable in any kind of reasonable time-frame. That game was supposed to be an open-ended 120 players per instance multiplayer game with dynamical storylines and an artificial life gameworld, with vehicles and all kinds of coolness. Not quite the end result ....

 

[laikenf]

It would be interesting to play a mute game. Imagine, a story told through sound, imagery, body language and music (by mute I mean no talking and no subtitles). There are a lot of possible ways man can communicate If you take away written and spoken words; Shadow of the Colossus was mute for the most part but I would love to see some experimenting on that. Imagine something on the wii where you can communicate using jestures and other types of movements, or the 360 using the camera, could be nice.